So even though there's a single, unique probablity space, it won't ever be captured the same way by two observers. — Wayfarer

There is not one, unique probability space. Measurements alter the statistical behavior of stochastic system, inducing different statistical contexts mutually-exclusively.

There is no particular observer problem in stochastic mechanics because collapse isn't rea but measurements do disturb systems. This is just because measurement of a system by a device can just be seen as the coupling of two stochastic systems together and the coupling causes the disturbance. This can be linked to the uncertainty principle which show up naturally in stationary stochastic systems of any kind.

Which falls under the title of 'transcendental realism' - the real world exists external to us, even though we can never capture what it is. — Wayfarer

I don't think its meant in that sense, after all, these hidden particles are what is directly measured. Its just hidden under the quantum formalism.

(Says I'm wrong about the 'stochastic intepretation' not defusing the 'observer problem'.) — Wayfarer

Its confusing but the statistical/ensemble/minimalist interpretation is not actually the same as the stochastic interpretation even though I did use the notion of ensembles before.

It has a separate wikipedia page to the stochastic quantum mechanics page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensemble_interpretation

Maybe you would agree that the brain idea must incorporate into its assumptions that natural scientific concepts such as functioning brain, neuron and physical law are not the product of human observation and representation of a world independent of our representations, but practices of interaction with others in the world — Joshs

I think I am going to quote from something I wrote to myself just to describe how I think about that kind of thing. It is very anchored in a first-person experiential perspective though:

It is not only that words model or describe sensory experiences; trivially, they are experiences, as much a part of our same stream of sensations as any others. Words and any models, therefore work precisely by being directly situated and enacted in the dynamics of experience in very complicated, nonlinear ways, whether in conversations with other people or ourselves, writing up and reading descriptions, learning, making predictions, engaging with math or pictorial representations, etc. Again, it is not a matter of models having some kind of essential nature as objects independent of the living context in which they are embedded; such a view is an idealization. There is no independently existing singular model of quantum mechanics or evolution; what exists are people with shared knowledge who enact that knowledge.

Models, and any word meanings for that matter, are nothing above the cause and effect mediated by people's implicit neuronal processes that drive the generation of future experiences in the context of the past. The equations in our theories written down on paper and the words we physically say cannot actually do anything independently of the minds that generated them and do things with them; neither is there necessarily a determinate way of expressing models and theories which is not contextualized by what is deemed acceptable by people in the context of their cognitive abilities and neuronal architectures. Therefore, in this kind of view, minds and cognition are only as deep as our experiences and the momentary unfolding of their dynamics.

Well, the similarity might be that you seem to be saying that all your talk of brains is true in the sense of metaphysical truth. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well I think it is certainly a better story than just appealing to reason or metaphysical truth without any explanation of how people do it and without being open to the subtleties of people being fallible or interacting with the world in a perspective-dependent way.

Would my claims be equally true as yours, "truth" being merely how the term is used with some given language-game? — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's not how I would characterize truth. And certainly, yes, I would believe my claims were better or more correct than the immaterial soul. Better arguments in favour of it.

Kripke's other philosophy seems a lot more consistent with that sort of naturalism — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't believe that.

On a conventional naturalistic view there is no indeterminism problem or finitude issues — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't know what you mean by the thought that there is no indeterminism under naturalism as if it were a choice. I don't see why naturalists wouldn't also see this indeterminacy, perhaps in a similar way to how there can be underdeterminism in scientific theories, etc.

All experiences of meaning are describable in terms of determinant physical interactions. Any instance of the experience of meaning is uniquely specified by facts about the relevant physical system. How language evolves can be explained entirely in terms of physical interactions, which of course involve the environment and not just language users' expectations. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well I am not this kind of naturalist but I have said that all our acts, cognition and behaviors are a product of the brain. The problem is that "acting" doesn't sufficiently determine what we normally mean by meaning imo; neither does the brain need to use human-interpretable rules or "meanings" in order to produce the kinds of behavior humans are capable of. Plus, I have already mentioned how I think brains are a deeper explanation more fundamental - brains interacting with their environments, multiple brains interacting together.

What you're doing with 'something' is imagining the world with no observers in it as a kind of placeholder for 'what is really there' - but that is still a projection, a mental operation. — Wayfarer

Well, yes, more or less. So are you when you use "you" communicating with me. The question is: do I exist outside of your mind, Wayfarer?

but this seems like more a comforting thought than something which can be 'objectively known'. — AmadeusD

Sure, perhaps, but this would apply to everything you can ever think or say. I wasn't necessarily arguing for 'objective knowing' in some perspective-independent sense. I don't think that should stop one creating theories or stories about how the world works and about the things they should expect if they do x, y or z. At the end of the day, 'objectivity' is neither necessary or sufficient for people selecting their preferred theories, hypotheses, viewpoints. People pick theories that seem to work for them.

I really doubt chatgpt is going to give you a good interpretation from the stochastic interpretation. I doubt it is discussed in nearly enough for chatgpt to give a coherent answer. I have not even seen a single paper that looks at Wigner's friend scenarios specifically through this interpretation so it doesn't really have anything to go off of. This chatgpt answer is definitely wrong.

The Wigner's Friend scenarios are formally not really fundamentally that different from other kinds of contextual scenarios in QM; much of their claims - at the highest generality - come from the non-existence of joint probability distributions regarding measurements of different observers. (e.g. https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.16220)

Different measurement contexts regarding observers are statistically incompatible; but rather than meaning that observers have equally valid views of the same thing at the same time, it just means that different measurements change the statistics of a system. When observers disagree, they are actually sampling from different statistical contexts of the world that can never co-exist at the same time; for example, (https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.07213):

The view that quantum theory may only describe such “observer-dependent” facts was proposed by Brukner [6] and found further support, e.g., in [7].

There is, however, no need for a radical departure from the standard textbook rules [11]. The “contradiction”, discussed in the first paragraph of this section, is a spurious one. The probabilities in eqs. (4) and (7) refer to two mutually exclusive scenarios, in which W either erases all records produced by F, or preserves them. Like the proverbial cake, a record cannot be both present and destroyed, and the results (4) and (7) should never be played against each other (we would like to avoid using an over-used term “contextual paradox”). The wave function (1) just before W’s measurement contains no information about the course of action W is about to take, and contains the answers for each of the W’s arrangements. It remains one’s own responsibility to decide which one to use.

Another allusion to these incompatible contexts but in an experimental set-up (https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.09905):

We then propose a simple single-photon interferometric setup implementing Frauchiger and Renner’s scenario, and use the derived condition to shed a new light on the assumptions leading to their paradox. From our description, we argue that the three apparently incompatible properties used to question the consistency of quantum mechanics correspond to two logically distinct contexts: either one assumes that Wigner has full control over his friends’ lab, or conversely that some parts of the labs remain unaffected by Wigner’s subsequent measurements. The first context may be seen as the quantum erasure of the memory of Wigner’s friend. We further show these properties are associated with observables which do not commute, and therefore cannot take well-defined values simultaneously. Consequently, the three contradictory properties never hold simultaneously.

The stochastic interpretation says that the wave-function is not a real object. The real objects are actual particle properties which are hidden-variables and they always have a definite outcome at any time so there is always ever only one way the physical world is at any one time. Those definite outcomes, however, may come from statistical contexts which are incompatible or cannot be represented on a single, unique probability space.



I think it really depends on what you mean by all these terms which I often find confusing. Yes, realistic in terms of there are particles in definite configurations all the time. But it will also have all the statistical properties in the wavefunction that are responsible for violating contextual realism generally in quantum mechanics. However, the wavefunction isn't a real physical object in this interpretation.

Also, to be more specific, the hidden variables shouldn't be seen in terms of a single particle but ensembles of particles - i.e. many, many repetitions of an experiment.

I don't see the contradiction and I think if you say there is one then maybe you should make it explicit through something like syllogism, where all ambiguities are removed.

I still think that maybe you have misinterpreted my position. You said you think I mean is:

[(1)] "An inference which you've made about the world based on repeated experience can directly translate to a conception of the world in an objective way"

What I said I mean is:

[(2)] "The world exists mind-independently when no one is looking."

["Mind-independently when no one is looking"] is all I mean by "objective". The world and things [in the world when I am not looking] are general concepts not picking out any specific perspective-independent nor perspective-dependent description - they just convey the idea that something, its exact nature unspecified, is happening when I am not looking.

[The two quoted statements (1) and (2) above] seem like two completely different statements to me. Furthermore, the fact that the latter does not seek to pick out some specific perspective-dependent nor perspective-independent description seems compatible with the idea that we cannot have access to the intrinsic nature of the world ["intrinsic" too is a vague concept not picking out anything in particular, is it not].

In fact, I can re-formulate the statement about "not being able to access the intrinsic nature of the world" in terms of the idea that I simply cannot access information about the world without looking at it, and looking at it consitutes some perspective.

Maybe now I can reformulate my thought that the world exists objectively (when I am not looking) yet I cannot access its intrinsic nature simply as follows:

I can only access information from the world by looking at it through my perspective, yet when I am not looking at it, the external causes of those percepts (of my perspective) continue to exist even when I am not looking and even despite the fact I cannot actually characterize them independently of my perceptions - but something is there, without needing to specify too much about that something.

This inference is based on regularities in my cognitive maps of the world when I look at it then turn away then turn back again, or based on reports from other people. My inferences are not infallible (there could be a Cartesian demon), my inferences are all based on prediction and empirical adequacy - but my experiences are not consistent with the idea that things disappear when I don't look at them.

I can emphasize that when I do look at them, I view a percept through my own perspective; however, this percept is being caused by something which exists beyond my experience even when I am not looking. When people disagree, we can explain that away in terms of brain mechanisms and perceptual differences.

Edit: some clarifying, [ ]

I can agree if I don't take your words too literally; after all, I have said always that there is no perspective-independent view. I am just keen to hang onto the notion that experiences are structures which are themselves tied to structure out in the world in some sense. It just may be very cheap structure as opposed to the one and only structure. I see your point about 'exists' in the sense that you cannot conceive of something outside of your own perspective. But at the same time, I don't think there is any contradiction in using words to convey something about what is in principle outside of one's perspective and cannot perceive or even conceive; after all, we can talk about these kind of things intelligibly. Maybe that this something must also be very abstract means it must always be very highly idealized though (when we speak about it); intelligib(ility) isn't perspective-independent. At the same time, what does it even mean to convey something intelligibly? What does exist even mean? At some point I just have to accept that I am just acting out words. That's all I am really doing. I kind of like the idea that even if words and meaning we are just like scientific instrumentalists when it really comes down to it.

Edits: in ( )

Albert Einstein famously asked one of his friends whilst on an afternoon walk ‘does the moon cease to exist when nobody’s looking at it?’ If you read the account of the conversation, it was clear Einstein was asking the question ironically or rhetorically. But he was nevertheless compelled to ask! And why? It grew out of the discussions prompted by the famous 1927 Solvay Conference which unveiled the basics of quantum physics. It was at this time that the elusive nature of sub-atomic particles became obvious. — Wayfarer

Yes, I take the point that many people do believe that quantum mechanics suggests that the world is observer relative in a radical way but I strongly believe in my preferred stochastic interpretation which does not take this view at all and has particles in definite positions all the time while the wavefunction is not a real object and there is no collapse due to observers. So from my perspective, this phenomena you are talking about doesn't actually exist.

Cognitive science has shown how much of what we instinctively take to be the objective world is really constructed by the brain/mind 'on the fly', so to speak. There is unceasing neural activity which creates and maintains our stable world-picture based on a combination of sensory experience, autonomic reaction, and judgement. — Wayfarer

But what is being constructed here? Seems to me we are talking about statistical correlations latent in the structure of the world, lifted out of the noisy, non-linearities of sensory input. However, that structural information will differ depending on the perspective, its manner of receiving information, the structure of its neuronal architecture and obviously its poverty or imprecision of these sensory interactions, etc, etc. There could plausibly be infinite ways of synching up to and perceive the world in ways that are structurally consistent - i.e. in ways that you can consistently detect the same part of the world (in principle) and navigate to other parts.

I guess the fact we cannot directly detect precise details of the structure of the world like the structure of molecules might in some ways satisfy the Hofmann criteria of the world being very different to how we perceive it (same with probably the impoverished perceptual faculties of a worm or jellyfish). At the same time we have constructed alternative ways to interact with the world at better precision and get more information.

What exactly does an 'objective way' entail? Even Hoffman and most idealists would say there is an objective world. — Tom Storm

I literally just mean something like: the world exists when no one is looking. It was here before we were born and will be there after we die. It exists mind-independently.

Isn't the key issue what is the nature of the world we have access to and think we know? — Tom Storm

So do you think I am contradicting myself when I say that the world exists objectively (mind-independently / when no one is looking) yet we cannot have knowledge of its intrinsic nature?

I just don't understand what your view is saying other than ignoring the indeterminacy or saying it just doesn't matter (must be since it hasn't been refuted)... and then just saying... well, uhhh, reason. So to me, I don't know if that's meaningfully that different to what I am saying. Maybe the difference is you place "metaphysical truth" at the center where I place an instrumentalist brain.

That's an interesting suggestion. I'm inclined to accept that there must (!) be an evolutionary explanation for the development of language games, including mathematics and logic. But that seems reductionist. Nonetheless, the brain/evolution idea has the interesting property of setting up a circle of explanation. No beginning and no end, or perhaps a self-sustaining structure. — Ludwig V

The brain idea is that it doesn't matter if rules are underdetermined because what causes our behavior is not platonic representations of rules but a functioning brain acting under the laws of physics. It is the explanation of how we act blindly and is linked to the possible idea that brains and any kind of neurons learn to perform tasks without any human-interpretable rules. Ergo, the fact the brain can learn tasks, categorize them with words are independent of the idea of rule indeterminacy, since it simply does not use those rules to do what it does... those rules are a post-hoc inference that we perform as categorization acts (e.g. labelling your own behavior "this is plussing") using the exact same implicit mechanisms without human-interpretable rules. Such rule indeterminacy could not matter if you were to actually to consider the full dynamics of how a brain works, which obviously is not information available to anyone's first person experience but fully determines how a person thinks and acts.

Forms of life and language games are all just appeals to the blind behavior produced by the brain - in terms of both cognitive and motor-acts - in an interacting community of brains all "acting blindly" together: bouncing off each other, synchronizing, checking the norms of their use of words that are embedded in the context of their physical environments, culture, ecological/ethological niches, whatever, etc, etc. A single, isolated brain may not necessarily need to come up with words (because it has no one to communicate with) even if the rest of its behavior is totally coherent / consistent; and in any case, it would have no other brains to check its word use - it would be a freewheelin' brain with no social constraints, no pressure for consistency in terms of word-use. However other brains or communities can still classify the isolated brain's coherent behaviors consistently in terms of their own rules. Classification again can be just seen as nothing more than something like the blind acts of saying words when they see that brain's behaviors.

That the world exists in an objective way just means it exists when nobody is looking.

I see no contradiction in what you quoted of me in this post. Its no different from people making an inference that when you see fire, it exist out in the world even when nobody is looking at it. Even though they have no idea what the intrinsic nature of fire is, they can infer that something exists out in the world beyond their perceptions, and it is causing their perception of the fire.

I'm just trying to get a grip on what your solution is and how it actually differs from the skeptical one because I am not sure I understand. If your solution is something like "we just know things", it doesn't look that different from the skeptical solution except for applying the word 'realism' to it.

But then the difficulty is that underdetermination is as much of a problem for making any inferences about nature as it is for inferring meaning. For example, all the observations consistent with Newton's Laws or quantum theory are also consistent with an infinite number of other rule-like descriptions of nature. Yet the same sort of solution doesn't seem open to us here. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The difference is quite subtle but they aren't the same problem at all. The kripkean problem is about word meaning and the scientific underdetermination problem is about picking one correct model. There is no immediate issue where not knowing a scientific model is correct interferes with the ability to use it or advocate it. On the otherhand; you would think that being able to use a word appropriately implies that you are doing so because you have determined its meaning. The skeptical solution effectively inverts this final dilemma - meaning doesn't determine use; use creates the illusion of objectively determinate meaning in words through blind agreement. Underdetermination in scientific theories doesn't need such a solution though you can obviously apply the Kripkean problem to the meanings of scientific words.

It would seem strange to say that nature, or the scientific study of it, is defined entirely by the expectations of members of the natural/scientific community, which are in turn based on usefulness. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I mean, this is more or less just Kuhn whos views are either heavily influenced by or heavily compatible with PI - extensions of concepts such as family resemblance, language games, forms of life arguably appear in Kuhn's work quite blatantly, albeit the context slightly different: science in terms of implicitly-followed practise vs. explicit well-defined rules.

Scientific consensus obviously depends on agreement of the scientific community (almost circular). Scientists may prefer certain theories because they explain data but at the same time scientists are making choices about which theories they advocate despite underdetermination.

From whence this usefulness? — Count Timothy von Icarus

In the simplest sense (and definitely over-reductive), "usefulness" is just empirical adequacy. And the problem with empirical adequacy is that many theories are plausibly empirically adequate.

In the most general sense, "usefulness" is just what appeals to the scientist.

Surely there must be a truth about what is actually useful though. What is useful to us cannot be whatever we currently think is useful, else we can never be wrong about anything. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The problem is that we don't have some external reference for what is correct. All we have are people who agree or disagree with each other. In an ideal world we pick our views based on what accounts for the data best but realistically this is too messy to guarantee anything close to absolute truth ever (or at least the idea that we can pick a model(s) that accounts for the data and there are no possible non-trivial alternatives).

Scientific realists replace absolute truth with the idea that theories get approximately more true over time but its not clear to me that this is much different from the notion of empirica adequacy an anti-realist might use. Such ambiguities are not so disimilar my thoughts earlier in the post about your solution to the Wittgenstein meaning problem being not so different from the skeptical solution apart from the label of "realism" attached.

"An inference which you've made about the world based on repeated experience can directly translate to a conception of the world in an objective way" — AmadeusD

Well, this is not what I said or meant.

What I meant basically amounts to: you cannot know the intrinsic nature of the world but you can infer that the world indeed does exist when you are not looking at it.

So your solution is basicallythat we just know things inherently?

If it isn't "for no reason at all," then we have something sitting posterior to any individual language game or any hinge propositions, namely metaphysical truth. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Or perhaps a functioning brain.

Hmmm, I'm not sure I can accept this position. — AmadeusD

Why not?

To claim that you know that something exists does entail knowing something about it's intrinsic nature (i.e non-illusory for instance) as best i can tell. — AmadeusD

So how do people know that fire exists?

No, because the inability to know the intrinsic nature of things doesn't mean we cannot interact with their extrinsic consequences and make an inference that the outside world exists in an objective way.

At the same time, knowing that there exists a certain thing in the world doesn't mean one has to know the intrinsic nature of that thing, in the same way that someone might know fire exists but not know what fire is.

Yet, we say without issue, "Hearts pump blood". — hypericin

I wouldn't say the heart pumping blood is any different to saying that my hand is splashing water if I flap my hand in a filled up sink. You can put a heart in a sink of blood and have it contract and say it is pumping blood. I'm not sure saying a brain is "thinking" is as straightforward given the usual criteria we use to denote thinking for ourselves.

My question is: in what sense do you mean meaning in the last paragraph? Is this a pre-Wittgenstein Augustinian thing or something else?

That's self-refuting. If there is no determinate scheme or context that can fix the content of utterance, then the content of this quotation (utterance) is not fixed.
In particular, the phrase "outside of language" has no determinate meaning. — Ludwig V

I'm not sure it is actually self-refuting. If anything it complements itself in a weird way. It would be self-refuting if there was a determinate meaning to the phrase, since it would be its own counterexample.

Hmm, it does seem like a paradox though; maybe the solution to the paradox is the skepticsl solution.

I disagree. How do we derive, conceptually, consciousness from behaviour? — bert1

You can't. But from our knowledge of the natural world, what is it that differs sentient creatures from non-sentient things? The activity of complicated dynamical systems. The differences between death, coma, sleep, wakefulness and psychedelia are the activities of a complicated dynamical system. I don't need to know what it is like to be such systems to make this observation.

I think consciousness is likely causal, possibly even uniquely so. And then the causal closure of the physical is an idea we have to tackle. If panpsychism is the case, we might be able to replace the concept of law with that of will, perhaps, honouring both phychological causation AND the causal closure of the physical. — bert1

I think issues of causal closure only come about when you take models of the physical too literally as more than models - because we are capable of describing reality pluralistically and at different scales. People then get the idea that we need to accomodate causation at different levels when these are just descriptions that model at different scales from different perspectives; there isn't a necessity that it is about some intrinsic causality.

We then don't need to "honour(ing) both phychological causation AND the causal closure of the physical." because they aren't two inherently, fundamentally different categories. One very generic description of "things" I like is the following (https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cluster=10954599080507512058&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5):

To address the nature of things, we start by asking how something can be distinguished from everything else. In pursuing a formulation of self-organisation, we will call on the notion of conditional independence as the basis of this separation. More specifically, we assume that for something to exist it must possess (internal or intrinsic) states that can be separated statistically from (external or extrinsic) states that do not constitute the thing. This separation implies the existence of a Markov blanket; namely, a set of states that render the internal and external states conditionally independent...

In brief, the formulation on offer says that the states of things (i.e., particles) comprise mixtures of blanket states, where the Markov blanket surrounds things at a smaller scale. Effectively, this eludes the question “what is a thing?” by composing things from the Markov blanket of smaller things...

More specifically, we will see that the Langevin formulation of dynamics – at any given spatiotemporal scale – can be decomposed into an ensemble of Markov blankets. These blanket states have a dynamics at a higher scale with exactly the same (Langevin) form as the dynamics of the original scale. When lifting the dynamics from one scale to the next, internal states are effectively eliminated, leaving only slow, macroscopic dynamics of blanket states. These become the states of things at the next level, which have their own Markov blankets and so on. The endpoint of this formalism is a description of everything at progressively higher spatial and temporal scales. The implicit separation of temporal scales is used in subsequent sections to examine the sorts of dynamics, physics or mechanics of progressively larger things.

We just have recursively nested "things" in reality and as you expand the scale, or zoom out, the fast, random, precise details get coarse-grained over by the slower regularities. This seems an intuitive way to me of characterizing say the difference between conscious experiences and microscopic "physical" structures nested within them. The difference is only a difference of scale and how information is lost as you zoom out, as written in the bold above. Seems to me that the structure of our experiences reflects this loss of information from smaller scales.

On the question of the difference between consciousness and non-consciousness being sharp or fuzzy, I think it's clearly sharp. I'm with Goff, Antony and Schwitzgebel (and not doubt many others)on that. — bert1

I disagree. I don't think there is even any fact of the matter you could use to demonstrate the difference between conscious experience and the absence of conscious experience.

I think we're in agreement on that. — Wayfarer

Yes, I see no conflict with the idea that - all our knowledge is perspective-dependent yet we can make statements like "there is an objective way the world is". If you think about it, a statement like that doesn't even really have any content, yet it is still completely intelligible. We understand what it means without having to specify something as totally precise and veridical, not because we don't want to - we cannot; but just because we cannot, doesn't mean we cannot make the word convey something. At the end of the day, all meaning regresses into something ineffable on pains of circularity - For instance, I cannot define for you what it means "to do something", you just have an ineffable, intuitive understanding of that phrase and can identify what accords with "doing something" coherently. Imo, all word-use and all knowledge is enaction within experience, and that enaction is totally primitive from our immediate experiential perspective - just a flow of experiences.

The scientific image of man often tends to deprecate or belittle that. — Wayfarer

I just simply disagree, I guess. Science may not tell us about ethics or aesthetics but that doesn't mean it isn't in conflict with that. Neither does it mean that fields like ethics or other parts of philosophy don't use similar critical faculties to a science. At the same time, I just don't see God or teleology in reality.

How could you possible confirm that: — AmadeusD

Science does not tell us about the intrinsic nature of things, but vicariously through our experiences and other technological extensions of our senses, we can still glean something about the structure of reality and the way it behaves. That is what physics is about. We make inferences from our senses, technology and science that there is an objective world out there when we aren't looking, that was here before we were born and shall be around after we die. You can't definitively confirm anything, let alone in a perspective-independent way but I personally don't see strong reasons to believe otherwise.

All well and good - but that also embodies a perspective, somewhere outside both the mind and the world. A mental picture, if you like, or image of the self-and-world. — Wayfarer

I'm not sure what you mean here.

Hoffman et al — Wayfarer

I don't think I have anything additional to say about Hoffman for this paragraph that isn't in recent previous posts on him.

But is it? — Wayfarer

Yes, but I am talking about studies on the brain, not philosophers: e.g., studies where the brain is stimulated or examining damaged brains and associating it with changes in experience and behavior. Obviously imaging studies too.

But going back to the point I made above, brains and neurons and physics are themselves mental constructs, in some fundamental sense — Wayfarer

Yeah, I don't deny that all our explanations and knowledge are models enacted and embedded within our perspectives, experiences, whatever other relevant contexts to us, etc. But these stories are supposedly about something... They are stories about the world; and through observation, we glean consistent structure to the world, even if through many different means, tools, perspectives. There is an inherent connection between the experiences we have and what is observed as activity in the brain.

I guess though the deeper nature of the connection may not obvious but if our scientific constructs regarding neurons, brains, physics... are just that... constructs, there is no need imo to reify a stark separation between experience and what those constructs are purportedly accessing or about or what we are interacting with when we probe them empirically.

The idea I keep coming back to is that we instinctively accept that mind is 'the product of' matter. — Wayfarer

which proposes that the brain evolved through the aeons to the point where it is able to generate the mind-states that comprise experience. — Wayfarer

I disagree, such statements presuppose a kind of dualism I do not agree with.

But again, I argue that objective facts are invariably surrounded and supported by an irreducibly subjective or inter-subjective framework of ideas, within which they are meaningful — Wayfarer

Yes, this is not something I disagree with; yet, I seem to have a completely different view to you regarding this matter as a whole.

This is also suggested by a paper on a physics experiment known as Wigner's Friend which creates an experimental setup that calls into question that subjects all see different perspectives on the same thing. This experiment shows that two subjects can see different results that are both supposedly 'objectively true'. — Wayfarer

My preferred interpretation of quantum mechanics does not interpret Wigner's Friend scenarios in this way (at least not in the way I believe that you are implying).

These seem to run into each other quite violently... — AmadeusD

I disagree. For instance, I don't need to know what is happening on the slopes of Mount Everest right now to believe there are some definite events happening on the slopes of Mount Everest right now.

and pointing out that his bar for "certainty" — Count Timothy von Icarus

But you just said his view wasn't about certainty?

Imo, I don't think you are offering any solution that is inherently different from the sceptical solution since what you are saying seems to come down to just ignoring indeterminacy, which then brings up the question of "how are you doing what you are doing?" which comes to be the same kind of acting "blindly".

And I see you as reflexively hanging on to something like scientism, the belief that philosophy must always defer to the white lab coat of scientific authority. — Wayfarer

I think its more about trying to be as clear as possible. I think its about the idea that there is an objective way the world is and the mind is embedded within that. It is a slave to other partsof the objective world that undergird it, not independent from those things; the evidence relating our minds to neurons and physics is overwhelming. There is no harm trying to clarify that relationship as precisely as possible.

To ‘deconstruct’ the mind is to analyse it in terms of something else, or of its constituent elements - the impossibility of which is precisely the point of Chalmer’s ‘facing up to the problem of consciousness’ article. — Wayfarer

Not necessarily, because I think you can analyze the mind from a completely experiential perspective by the same kind of paradigm.

the impossibility of which is precisely the point of Chalmer’s ‘facing up to the problem of consciousness’ article. — Wayfarer

For me, not solving the hard problem doesn't mean that the mind is not still embedded in an objective world and in someways enslaved by the smaller scales of that objective reality.

We may just be limited in the questions we can ask and the answers we can get. All our explanations, scientific or not, are models enacted within the limits of our experiences, the limits of what brains can do. In sympathy with the illusionist, I think there may just be an inability for a mind or brain to explain certain things about itself in a substantial way. Similarly, science cannot tell us anything about the fundamental "intrinsic nature" of things beyond experience.

Yes, I think we are basically in agreement, as far as I can tell!

I agree there with wayfarer there is a difference in these examples. In the heart example, what is being talked about is a single anatomical context or perspective within which heart and blood co-exist and interact directly.

But various claims in the mereological fallacy link talk about things like "decision", "belief", etc. which cannot be defined directly in terms of brain content. Infact, they surely would exist if people didn't know about brains and are learned from experiences of what we do as people as a whole. In a complementary way, I guess, it is difficult talk about what brains do in a complete way without referring to their consequences on the outside world and inputs going in.

I think interpreting these "mereological fallacies" depends on your philosophy of mind, and much of it is possibly about expediency to avoid pedantry. But maybe this just reflects the difference between a cognitive neuroscientists more interested in experimental studies relating brain variables and behavior, as opposed to a philosopher more interested in conceptual clarity.

I honestly don't see inherent differences in any kind of knowledge whether scientific or everyday, just some choose to use vaguer words or reify vague, nebulous hunches. For many of the things I am interested in, that's not interesting. Maybe if I want to analyse music, film or art that is how I would do it. For me, philosophy is a product of the mind and ultimately brain. And insofar as we want clarity in models of how the mind and brain works, I want philosophy - which sits on the shoulders of a functioning brain / mind - to adhere to that. I feel like when going in the opposite direction, its more about clinging onto some kind of spirituality and humanism rather than as clear a view of things as possible... perhaps because deconstructing the mind is perceived as a threat to humanism. People want to hold onto words like "agency" and "rationality" and "subjectivity" without analyzing what they mean because they fear it deconstructs their humanity.

'mereological fallacy' — Wayfarer

I actually agree with much here albeit probably in a weaker sense than the authors. Sometimes these "fallacies" may be genuinely due to the way people think about these things, sometimes it may just be out of expediency. I guess also how someone views these analyses might depend on their philosophy of mind somewhat.

(That link above returns a 404 by the way.) — Wayfarer

Hopefully fixed now.

That is true, if the scope of knowledge is defined in purely objective terms. But then, you tend to naturally look at philosophical questions through a scientific perspective, don't you? — Wayfarer

What are the alternatives? I genuinely can't conceive of any off the top of my head.

Yet each scientific theory that tries to conjure consciousness from the complexity of interactions among brain, body, and environment always invokes a miracle—at precisely that critical point where experience blossoms from complexity. — Donald Hoffman, The Case Against Reality

This is miracle exactly what my quote from above was arguing against.

If we propose that brain activity is identical to, or gives rise to, conscious experiences, then we want the same kind of precise laws or principles — Donald Hoffman, The Case Against Reality

Such a thing is impossible imo. What is the limit on experience? I don't see how there is one. You could conceive of infinite kinds of beings that detect different things and are structured in different ways. Surely, you would expect that there is no limit on the kinds of alien experiences things could have if they were structured in the appropriate way to have them. I don't see how mathematical laws could explain this when experiences would scale with the complexity of brute perceptual abilities for some system. A question is whether an information processing system could in principle "explain" to itself its own perceptual abilities introspectively - I highly doubt this.

which I think is incompatible with Wittgenstein's arguments. — Ludwig V

Well he uses the word himself!

I suppose you are referring to Wittgenstein's point that many algorithms are compatible with any finite series of numbers. — Ludwig V

That may be a good example; but I was more thinking that with "pointing" at something, it is similarly somewhat underdetermined what is being pointed at, so pointing is also "blind" in that sense.

But that doesn't mean there is no criterion for correct and incorrect applications (and for which cases are problematic). That's what the practice is for. So the rule is determined as it is applied. — Ludwig V

Yes, this is part of the skeptical solution albeit I would say it doesn't actually solve indeterminacy, just is used as a way of explaining how coherent word-use emerges.

I think my criticism of your criticism is that you assume that consciousness is like a discrete thing that just pops up and then disappears under certain circumstances. I don't think there's any evidence for this. What differs non-conscious from conscious things is how they behave as dynamical systems and it doesn't seem to make sense to say that consciousness is some additional thing that pops up on top of that, under pains of a kind of epiphenomenal redundancy (see sections 4.4, 5.3, 7 of Chalmer's Conscious mind for details, full pdf available on internet).

Nice quote from
https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cluster=7909771384315425233&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5:

On this basis, we can ask whether the FEP really loses some explanatory power as a result of being vacuously true for all sorts of particles.

Having originated in the study of the brain, it might seem dissatisfying that the FEP should also extend to inert things like stones, and that its foundations have nothing unique to say about the brain (or the mind, or living systems, for that matter).

In our view, the fact that the FEP does not necessarily have anything special to say about cognition is something of a boon - it should be the case that cognition is like a more ‘advanced’ or complicated version of other systems, and possesses no special un-physical content.

Indeed, the commitment to a principled distinction between cognitive and non-cognitive systems, or living and non-living ones, commits to a sort of élan vital, wherein the substance and laws of learning, perception, and action should not be grounded in the same laws of physics as a stone, as though they provide a different, more implacable sort of organization or coherence of states [108]. In fact, the opposite has been argued in this paper: that such a theory should be reinterpreted in thermodynamical terms, just as much of the rest of soft matter and biological physics [17,106,109,110]. As such, we reject these implicitly dualistic views.

I don't think we can have a theory of consciousness in the way you want, not only because there is no fine line between conscious and non-conscious, but we are simply limited to describing what living things do (or what things we deem as being alive do) and nothing more.

That phrase suggests that it is possible that I could act not blindly. — Ludwig V

Yes but then there is the opposite perspective on these things where someone might say that we do not act blindly.

I think that "This is what I do!" is, essentially, an ostensive definition, so neither blind nor not blind. — Ludwig V

And the reference in ostensive definition is equally indeterminate!?

Sorry - what is the sceptical solution? — Ludwig V

That people act blindly regardless of indeterminacy.

Now, of course many aspects of Aristotelian philosophy such as his physics have been superseded but I believe the ‘doctrine of the rational soul’ is not among them. — Wayfarer

Well this is all just so antithetical to my viewpoint that I don't even have a response, ha.

Crick believed that the object 'as it is in itself' is simply the same object that our perceptions represent but existing unperceived. — Wayfarer

Yes, I am not suggesting that - we cannot conceive things in a way that steps out of our own perspectives. But I am suggesting a story about an actual objective world and how it would relate to the organism, and it seems less radical than what I interpret Hoffman as saying. Maybe though on some ways its more radical. Hoffman's seems to be saying that the structure of space-time and objects can be different to what we perceive. But if there is not one way for an organism to latch onto structure in the world, to draw distinctions, then is there a fact of the matter that the structure we perceive is different to actual structure? If we are latching onto the world in consistent ways that allow us to navigate it effectively then is there much difference? Seems to me Hoffman would have to show that there is some preferential absolute perspective in which one can view the world in order to show that our perceptions are radically different from it.

Maybe though, all he means is different in the sense of how a whelks perceptions would be radically different from a humans because it lacks sophisticated perceptual faculties. But this doesn't seem as radical as his ideas are made out to be. And obviously, science can always extend those faculties.

You are positing the individual's interpretation of the rule as primary. — Ludwig V

Not at all. Acting blindly is primary.

I have no idea what a determinate objective view might be — Ludwig V

I just mean a view where there was no underdetermination, which is also related to this picture problem you talk about. There is no good presenting another picture because prior assumptions are required, without which we couls not determine action or interpretation or whatever.

So not only can Tarzan not follow rules, but he has no memory and no sense experiences. Seems hard to believe. — Count Timothy von Icarus

No; because like I said, the skeptical solution would apply.

How do we use a basic intuition to avoid an infinite regress of rules? — Joshs

Because its just acting blindly, and "social discursive practise" is just an extension of that involving many individuals.

A picture of meaning would present a determinate , "objective" view of things; but the point is that no such thing can be presented to us. Indeterminacy is always possible.

It seems like it should just as well apply to all memories and all sense experience, resulting in exactly the sort of all encompassing skepticism Wittgenstein was trying to avoid. — Count Timothy von Icarus

If it applies to those things then surely, the skeptical solution also applies.

‘Learning to use’ is not quite the same as ‘inventing’. Was the law of the excluded middle invented by us, or was it discerned? Would it be something that is ‘true in all possible worlds’? — Wayfarer

Well, I would say that such rules and understandings are directly enacted within our experience. And so, just as we are unable to present a perspective-independent view of objects beyond our immediate experience, there is no perspective-independent view of such matters like the law of excluded middle. What can be ascertained is that we learn to enact these notions in various ways in our experience. Are possible worlds much more than a way of making sense of how the mind can generate imaginings we think of as counterfactuals?

Brains don’t do anything, rather agents make judgements. — Wayfarer

Well, agents abilities of doing anything corresponds to the brain's ability to do anything. You may say that what we call the brain is something like a model constructed in experience; but nonetheless, an objective world exists, and we can think of this objective reality as having the kinds of degrees of freedom we consider to be the case in the structure of the brains we observe, down to the level of ions crossing membrane barriers.

An agent can't make judgements without a brain, and messing with an agent's brain will mess with ita judgements.

without the exercise of reason — Wayfarer

I don't see the relevance. You wouldn't consider a damage in someone's reasoning (e.g. due to non-perception-related brain damage) changing the status of how veridical their perceptions are, would you?

The claim is that our cognition is conditioned by adaptation to see in terms of what is useful from the perspective of evolution, not what is true. So - what is true? What does the word even refer to? Well, that’s a question that neither walruses nor whelks can ask. Whereas we can ask it, and the answer matters to us. — Wayfarer

I think my position is not to argue about some single notion of veridicality, or objective truth - If, there is in principle no perspective-independent way that organisms can view and interact with the world perceptually, then such a notion is undermined in the sense that organisms simply cannot pick out such single "veridical" perspective even if there is an actual objective way the world is independently of our perception in principle (very difficult to see how this isnt the case from my perspective).

We are just directly aquainted with experiences, our cognitive faculties and abilities enacted within the flow of experiences. "Truth" is just a word used in conjunction with our abilities and faculties within experience, the ability to (fallibly) use the word then also related to assumptions or contingencies within the perspective. This is not relativism because I am just talking about the use of the word and related abilities. No fact of the matter about reference being assumed here.

However, I guess what gripes me about Hoffman is statements like this:

"Just as the color and shape of an icon for a text file do not entail that the text file itself has a color or shape, so also our perceptions of space-time and objects do not entail (by the Invention of Space-Time Theorem) that objective reality has the structure of space-time and objects."

Seems to imply to me that what I perceive is radically different in structure to the actual objective world. But in my story about the actual objective world, if coherent perception is to work effectively by mapping consistently to actual structures of the world so that we can get payoffs, then in some sense it must be the case that our perceptions are still mapping to an embedded subset of the objective of the world with that structure. At the same time, we can manifest synchrony to other parts of the actual world via extending our perceptual abilities with scientific technology and build scientific models.

Still, there may be no single perspective-independent way for an organism to map states or draw boundaries onto the world or particular subset - a compromise, as said before (And can we actually ascertain an objective fact of the matter about perceptual reference from within our perspectives? An even deeper question perhaps). Is there more to successful perception than how our effective our sensory-motor loops seem to be (predicting which perceptions come next or acting appropriately)?