My issue is that I know I have vivid mental states like dreams which I have every night that have phenomenal content. Including dreams about dead people and places I lived as a child and fictional scenarios.

But my eyes are closed and I am receiving no input from the external world. The number one candidate at the moment for where the dream is occurring is entirely in the brain. — Andrew4Handel

Humans have perception of time, internally -- pulse and heartbeats, as examples. This is our starting point of the temporal nature of the mind. Consciousness develops because of the temporal and spatial nature of the brain itself. It is very common to describe the mind as "mental" (and the brain as physical/material). Yet, while we are correct about the brain, to say that the mind is mental is nonsensical. We are not saying anything new there!

The mind is temporal -- we connect the present with the past and the future, no matter how small the elapsed time is. This is how consciousness comes about. Recognition of things and people and places, regret of the past, anticipation of the future.

Consciousness wouldn't exist if the brain can only produce spatial perception. Why else would Descartes insist on the duality of mind and body?

@lorenzo sleakes ,

To say "you have proven nothing" is ignoratio elenchi (failing to see the point of @180 Proof's response).

On the contrary, I've stated a demonstrable biological fact (re: cell biology). Feel free to refute it with more than mere speculation. — 180 Proof

↪180 Proof
you have proven nothing. some people think that even individual living cells may have some form of sentience in which case a nervous system is not even necessary. But even if a nervous system is necessary does that mean insects or clams are sentient? — lorenzo sleakes

↪lorenzo sleakes
:roll: — 180 Proof

haha! This is the kind of exchange that's pervasive here in the forum. :lol:

There are phantoms pains. People experience pain in a missing limb. This what suggest pain is all in the brain. — Andrew4Handel

No. It just means that the spinal cord and the brain sustained a major trauma (losing a limb) that threw the system into disorder. We never said that the system is perfect -- brains aren't perfect.
When we talk about consciousness, we know we're talking about the system as it functions in human beings.

At 22 pages of this of thread, I'm way too late to contribute productively as I cannot read all of what's already been said. That said, I'm interested in the following points. But I won't answer them as I believe some responses have already done it:

I'll ask you the same as I ask everyone who asks this question...

Why does any of this constitute or necessitate subjective awareness. or consciousness, or the capacity to experience?" — bert1


... What would an answer look like? Give me an example answer. It's doesn't have to be the right answer, just an example of what sort of thing would satisfy you. — Isaac

The potential problem here is that if there is such a thing as first person consciousness, and if first person consciousness is essentially private, then by necessity there can’t be any sort of public, scientific evidence of or explanation for it. — Michael

So, why can't brains do all their stuff without consciousness? — bert1

But when I have a pain in my foot I experience that is in my foot extended out yet that is also a sensation supposed to be experienced in the head. — Andrew4Handel

The pain is in your foot -- but neurons communicate with each other to send to your brain the message that your foot hurts. Your brain doesn't "hurt", it's the acuity of the pain receptors that's responsible for exciting the spinal cord.

I think the single most useless thing one can do is to convince themselves they're not allowed to reformulate or change how they use concepts from "other disciplines" which refer to the "same subject of study" - reality jist for the sake of someone saying "but thats physics you can't do that!". — Benj96

I understand your annoyance. But jgill's objection makes sense. Without some numbers behind your hypothesis, it remains a metaphorical device. And Physics is useless as a metaphor. Really we shouldn't even reduce consciousness to a metaphor -- as contentious as it is already.

For example, this:

So a change in speed/rate is the difference between thought and memory for such a conscious entity. This means distance must be able to expand/contract and time must be able to dilate/contract from net zero (0)when energy is just energy, to some positive integers when energy converts to mass (ie the emergence of the space-time dimension).

Sound familiar? For me it sounds like relativity.

Thought and memory can then be rectified with one another relativistically. And so the hard problem dissolves.
But it means space and time relationships must change for this to happen. — Benj96

Why aren't we talking about the behavior of neurotransmitters and dopamine? Why is hippocampus not mentioned here? I'm at a loss for how to argue about this because we have gone so far away from the true source. We criticize and shun neuroscience, yet we're willing to turn to physics to make our point. Did we sign an exclusive contract with physics? Or do we think that we're taken more seriously if we use physics instead of neuroscience?

What would a life without any wants look like? Is this like purely tranquil sitting and never getting up? — schopenhauer1

No. It's not like that. I can speak about it. Tranquil, yes. But the day to day things you want to do, you do it without anxiety or worry. You sleep better at night. You have more energy.

You see things that need to be done -- oh, the birds want refuge under the canopy with the water sprinkler. I'll turn it on. Or the brush needs trimming. It's things you do at the moment. I hope this makes sense.

Edit: I spoke about it briefly in another thread that I took a hiatus in isolation.

Thank you.

Heidegger famously wrote, “If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself.” — Tom Storm

I am experiencing another death in my world.
Several months ago, I found out that my cousin and friend was dying of cancer, stage 4. (too young to be dying) I also heard that he didn't want to go on with the treatment. I knew him. We were friends as young teens. Then we separated after high school. He moved away. That was the last time I spoke with him, although I held him close to my heart.

He was an atheist at a very young age, and that got him in trouble within our family circle. The adults didn't like him. He was very vocal about atheism, and how he hated backward mentality. He became very successful in life, through hard work. That earned him even more hatred among relatives and families. What?? A blasphemous psycho owns a commercial building? I was prevented from communicating with him. :sad: Our families have become so political, it's made me angry. Maybe I'm a coward, too, by not being able to go against it.

When I tried to get his phone number so I could talk to him for the last time, I was met with indignation. I was met with silence. All texting stopped and no one was communicating with me. Days ago, I had a feeling of dread - out of the blue. He must have died already. I resolved to grieve for him, even in silence.

Z, this is for you -- Je t'aime. I hope your journey was worth it. You are courageous.

PS: @Tom Storm, thanks for this thread. Sorry, if I hijacked it. I needed an outlet for this emotion.

In this scenario would death in the living world still be bad and something to avoid like it is now where as far as we know your consciousness ceases to exist when your mortal body expires? — Captain Homicide

It would no longer be called "death" but a passing to another realm.

This is how in the ancient times, when human sacrifice was practiced, people did not think of being murdered for the sake of the deity as bad. It was an honor to be bludgeoned at the back of the head because the deity would be pleased.

The tone reminds me of negative theology, let us get to “Reality” by saying what it is not. But we never can get there, and they come up with equally empty slogans like if only we can get a “view from no where” or if we only can get “outside ourselves”. — Richard B

Yep, pure nonsense! — Richard B

No, it's not nonsense. There is something else that needs to be added to the explanation. I've said this before already, and no one seems to care to include it as a corollary to whatever it is we claim about reality so that we don't run into that kind of issue. And that something else is the hypotheses we keep making about the world that stand the test of time and save us from perishing. If the world population now in the 8 billion does not work as evidence for you, then I don't know what would.

So, to support this explanation, please read John Locke and his argument for critical realism.

We can certainly invite each other to that reality, and not sound lame.

Edit: we don't have to use JTB in our explanation of reality outside our mind.

It's common to see attempts to break a unity that I think can't sensibly be broken. — green flag

Okay.

We can meaningfully talk about personal bias, but it's not clear that we can talk wisely about (as if we could be outside of ) human bias. — green flag

We can talk wisely about the world, if you'd like. Indirect realism does not deny the reliability of our perception -- how else could we have come up with hypotheses that we relied on for thousand of years? We don't go walk off a cliff just to prove we're mistaken. We don't walk off a cliff because we know about gravity. And gravity does not disappoint.

True, but the idea of such a naked world is itself a object within our system of references. — green flag

There is no "naked world" if it's within our system of references. We can't get outside it.

Do our senses give us an entirely complete picture of the external environment, it would seem quite clearly not; we don't see UV or Infrared, we do not hear frequencies above or below certain limits. — prothero

We have devices that can show us those. So, it's not the issue.

I'm not going to read the rest of your post. Thanks. — frank

That's fine. No harm done.

Strange. I don't see @I like sushi contributing to this thread.

Ah, so here we go.

I'm glad you folks have the same thought process, because now I could lay down the argument on the idea that what we see is indirect reality. It's reality, no doubt, but a representation. And it's a representation not because of the reasons you say.

If we directly perceive objects without any nervous interface, how exactly do with do that? Your eyes don't see things. Your ears don't hear things, and your fingers don't feel things. Your central nervous system sees, hears and feels. There clearly is an interface between the CNS and the world. Thus, indirectness appears to be the way it works. — frank

If the view is of a valley with a fine village with an old pub in it, and you can walk down the hill to the pub and enter and order a beer and drink the beer, then the view was not a representation, whereas if you just get a squashed nose and the taste of paint, it was a representation. I hope this helps. — unenlightened

Our five senses work just fine. It's not in the touching, or seeing, or hearing that we miss out on the thing-in-itself. It's our concept formation, our language, our comprehension, and all other things human that get in the way of looking at an object and not be able to undo the idea of a "tree", "moon", "triangle", "people". You can't look at a tree and see a "thing". You can only see a tree. A wood table, for example, cannot be unseen as a table. You can't look at it and see a "thing".

Our mind is enveloped in this cloud of a lifetime learning. No, I take that back. Our mind naturally forms concepts/ideas from day one. This (!) is what we can't undo. We can't get outside of our mind and see the world stripped off of names, reference, and qualities.

The question is: does indirect realism undermine itself? If you note in the image above, the indirect scenario has a guy seeing a faulty representation of the object. If this is his only access to the world, can he be an indirect realist without contradiction? In other words, if his view of the world is faulty (or at least possibly unreliable), why should he believe the impressions that led him to consider indirectness in the first place? — frank

This is wrong. It's the indirect realist that actually gets it. Their view is not "faulty", rather they acknowledge that their view is a representation of the world-as-it-is.

Also, it is incorrect to contrast the indirect realism with direct realism. The latter is also called the naive realism because the adherents take their perception of the world as the world-as-it-is.

Just for good measure, Banno's thread External world's poll has the non-skeptical realism as one of the choices. That's a fitting description of any realist.

Good. Just as we have Descartes's animal cruelty to tarnish his name, Heidegger has more serious issues.

I think there's probably no better example than fashion. — Benj96

So true. Fashion does not care about waste or over abundance.

If all possible thoughts don’t already exist in the mindscape, then where do thoughts come from? How do thoughts and ideas come into existence? It seems the only possible answer is that a thought or idea doesn’t exist until someone thinks it. — Art48

This has been argued by philosophers in meaning and objective reality. If you believe in objective reality, then meaning is out there for us to grasp and make sense of. For this to be possible, our mind is equipped with concept formation so that when we encounter something unfamiliar, we can readily make sense of it. We were not bewildered as pre-historic humans that mountains and rivers and trees exist. Our mind has the ability to accommodate new things, and understand them.

Is the structure or design of our markets/economy hindering us from developing a better way forward? — Benj96

The only better way is to use less disposable things and use, instead, things that can be used for many years, like stainless steel forks, knives, spoons, mugs, and plates. We need to wean ourselves from throw-away economy.

At the risk of derailing this thread -- I think we already did, btw. I will respond one more time. The details are vast and long to discuss here.

Pliny the Younger referred to "Christianis" and "Christiani" and "Christo" in his letter to Trajan, inquiring how they should be treated, and Tacitus wrote of "Chrestianos" who were followers of "Christus" who had been executed by Pontius Pilatus. I wonder who they were referring to, really. — Ciceronianus

That word was derogatory as Pliny used it.

I was using quibbleable "atomic" in the original Greek sense of irreducible. — Gnomon

:up: I guess I can't steal that word "quibbleable" now. You own it.

This thread was inspired by the Big Think article, which mentioned "Kant's First Antinomy". The rest is just me babbling about Transcendence --- about which, according to Kant, I know nothing. — Gnomon

I see.

It seems you're wrong. Or just confused as to historical events. — Ciceronianus

Not wrong or confused. You have to look at the time of Constantine, who made the formal acknowledgement of the Christian religion around 313 CE. The school of Stoic closed around the first century, I think. (I don't have my books anymore, sorry).

Before Constantine, it was a sect, not a religion. They were called the Nazarenes.

Currently Quarks are no longer pictured as atomic, but composite. — Gnomon

Sorry to quibble, but quarks are sub-atomic, not atomic, and considered to be the smallest particle.

Then on the non-quibble, is Kant's work really a good example to use for your topic?
If your critique is on cosmology, why not use Ptolemy and Thales? What's so special about Kant? His transcendental idealism? This is the wrong application of Kant's work.

No, not me. I have not bothered to understand it.

I'm none the wiser. — Sumyung Gui

Of course not! You never practiced Stoicism yourself. You're just talking here in the forum. Practice it then come back and report to us if you've become wiser as a result. Stoicism is not about talking -- it's doing.

.

I suppose there is a thing called adaptation -- we could take the teachings of Stoicism and use in our life.

Well, there's my answer as to why it was once a good practice.

Okay, first let's stop referring to Christianity when talking about Stoicism itself. Stoicism had gone out of practice way before Christianity was born.
Are you just confused as to the historical events?

Oh I know what it is. I'm just not sure why it's attractive. — Sumyung Gui

I left out "raised Christian" in your quote as Stoicism was prior to Christianity, as I have already said.

So, knowing it, you really don't know what's attractive about Stoicism?

According to Jordan (1987), the Stoics thought that “God, who is Nature, knows the whole system of interrelated causes and ‘what every future event will be,’ including every event in the life of each person. — Gnomon

"God" is a creative addition to the writings about Stoicism, as the movement came about before Christianity, whose conception of God is quite the religious conception we know now. "Nature" or mythological is more in line with it.

What is attractive about Stoicism tho? This is the part that baffles me. — Sumyung Gui

I studied it so I guess I can respond to this. It was practiced in daily life -- you're supposed to not be perturbed about things you cannot change and things that already happened. Do not cry over spilled milk. This is the mind over matter mantra.

You should look up the practitioners of this philosophy -- Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus. Yes, obviously, we can say -- "easy for them to say don't sweat the small stuff. After all, they're emperors and wealthy land owners. They had achieved great things." But know that Epictetus lived a penniless life all throughout his life. He lived just enough to be able to do philosophical discourse. ( He didn't write anything)

Stoicism was the precursor for the Christian religion.

You may not like Christianity, but Jesus Christ lived the stoic life as well and was truly a good, peaceful person, according to history. And yes, I saw the sample of the page where a snippet of his description was written.

Yes, I think in philosophy it could be contrasted with something like sophisticated. — Jamal

No, this is exactly what I'm trying to avoid thinking, that primitive is contrasted with sophisticated. I don't think that's what it means in philosophy. But I won't dwell on this anymore as I don't have any other objections.

Thanks.

However, in my opinion it’s pretty clear that Pinker means it in the sense I identified: characteristic of an earlier stage of development, when Enlightenment had not been brought to fruition in some way, or just when things were worse. — Jamal

:up:

But what he really means is that even if we do still suffer from some of those evils, they are relics. We are on the forward march, and it's only a matter of time before we consign them to the dustbin of history. — Jamal

I didn't get this from the passage. Of course I haven't read Pinker, but the passage, to me, did not mean they are relics. He said they are a part of natural existence and countries can slide back to them - at the expense of the wisdom of the Enlightenment. So, in essence he doesn't expect those evils to go away, but only to become latent. He used the word "pacified" at one point in his works (?)

I think we commonly mistake the definition of "primitive" as the past. I actually was first confused as to the use of the word when I came across the word in philosophy. I think in philosophy, primitive means basic and simple, as in the ordinary means of dealing with things. (I don't know, I'm trying to get to the definition that sounds satisfactory).

Anyway, very good OP!

I ramble on a bit more after that but I’ve decided to leave it out for now. — invicta

Have you heard of ...editing?