The obvious retort here is that so far we have only the word of Skalidris and a few supporters for there being at all a decline in creativity, and no clear way to assess levels of creativity in philosophy. The Williamson article might offer a way to move that discussion beyond mere anecdote. — Banno

This is quite the irony. I criticise the rigour and adherence to rigid principles that prevent the exploration of other possibilities, and you suggest my claims need to be presented with more rigour and adherence to these things.

Discourse, the sweeping, theoretical system building, needs dissection, careful analysis of small, concrete questions. Williamson wants both, but insists that discourse must be disciplined by standards akin to those in the sciences. — Banno

I see science as a product of philosophy and I believe philosophy's power lies in creating disciplines. I’m not religious but for the sake of the analogy: it’s as if God tried to become more human. I don’t mean to say science is inferior, but that it does very different things. Copying the standards of science to apply them to philosophy makes no sense to me because I don’t believe philosophy’s goal is to understand the world around us, but to provide various tools to do so.

Yes, and that was my main point in my response - you're comparing the output of a few years against the output of 5,000 years and finding it wanting.

I have a feeling I'm not really contributing. We should probably leave it here. — T Clark

It’s fine, I just think you misunderstand and think I used this to prove my point, which I did not.
If we let this method run for another 5000 thousands years, I’m sure we’ll have major breakthroughs as well, but it wouldn't be as efficient as if we valued creativity more in the first place. And I'm not trying to prove this, I just believe creativity was involved in the major philosophical breakthroughs, and the current method is very restrictive in that aspect. I didn't try to prove any of these premises, they're just my observations. Creativity is very subjective.

Academic philosopy is such an esoteric field that I'd suspect there have been new ideas that have emerged that are considered major shifts within the discipline — Hanover

Absolutely, it all depends on the perspective. If someone changes a detail in your bedroom, you'll likely notice it because you know all about your bedroom, but if they change something in your friend's bedroom, chances are you won't notice it.

As you've probably guessed, I don't work in philosophy, but my passion is philosophical, so I've looked into academic philosophy and was pretty disappointed. My main problem with it is the importance of authority figures, whether it's about philosophers or philosophical concepts. It seems to be the basis of philosophy, and if you don't use it, it's not valid.

It's this idea that humans have philosophized for thousands of years and we've made all of these concepts, so if you randomly reflect on your life experiences, they're going to say that there are concepts that can describe your reflections and you need to start there or else you'll reinvent the wheel.
And many people who replied here seem to agree with that.

But if everyone starts from the same points, how can you ever make something that's not a deviation from your starting point? I think there are many starting points we haven't thought about, that are the results of unique life experiences, and that can lead to useful places that would be almost impossible to reach just by studying a philosophical concept and deviating from it.

It's the same problem with many things in life, but with sciences for example, experimental results can challenge the status quo and force scientist to think out of the box to explain what they're observing.
There are theories in sciences that have been validated for centuries, yet they can get challenged too, and scientists would probably not believe it until many new experiments show them otherwise.

I'm not saying people shouldn't study philosophy and that it's better to be ignorant, but this focus on deviation rather than deconstruction restrains the creativity. And I'm not talking about the deconstruction of philosophical concepts, but the deconstruction of anything you experience in your life that leads to valuable insights.

No, not like Kripke. From my understanding, the method he used was textbook analytic philosophy, even though his results were unconventional.

Picasso's method was far from conventional.

But if you have other names in mind, do tell, it's interesting.

Imagine someone like Picasso but in philosophy. They start deconstructing what philosophers deeply value and build something totally different that's basically an insult to academic philosophy.

Philosophers spent years perfecting the "complex" realm of ideas and a Picasso philosoher just says "it's too complex, the value is when you go back to the basics and build something else from it".

Do you honestly think that would sit right with them?

If most philisophers build castles, Picasso would have built a castle, disambled it, and built a small odd looking house with the remaining stones.
Do you think that house would be recognised just because he made a castle as well before? He's basically saying he doesn't believe in castles.
And the worst part is that his odd looking house would look like what beginners in philosophy are able to build. Just like Picasso's art looks like a child's. So how would you tell the difference?
How would you be able to tell if he was a madman or a genius?

All I'm saying is that what's valued in philosophy nowadays is these castles, and if you produce something else that doesn't use the complex concepts used to build castles, it's considered inferior.

In the world of art, it's easier to go wild because if people (who are not experts) like your paintings a lot, that's what matters. They don't need validation from their peers, from an authority in art.

But with philosophy, you do, because most people aren't a good judge of your work: they simply don't know enough. And while in art, one person can achieve works on their own, in philosophy it can grow a lot more if more people work on it. It's usually what comes after one's work that's the real deal.

It would be a mistake to think someone unfamiliar with engineering principles is in a better position to design a bridge simply because they are "unburdened" by past knowledge. Quite the opposite: without an understanding of load-bearing, stress tolerances, and material behaviour, their creativity is not just useless—it’s dangerous. — Banno

You could do the same analogy with art, and it would be a totally different picture. In art, it can be a good thing to avoid art school and just play around and learn it yourself, which is how some people come up with unique ways to play with the elements around them, and that’s the beauty of art.

Some techniques can help you achieve a goal you have in mind, but if you are too rigorous in the process, and try to follow what you’ve been taught meticulously, it takes away the creativity. What you’ve been taught gives you a broad direction, and you can take liberties and deviate from it, but not being bound by it in the first place offers a lot more possibilities.
And usually, when you learn things by yourself and don’t have the pressure of having to pass exams or having to meet some standards to get funding for your work, you’re a lot less bound to what you’ve learned.

But the fact that you compared philosophy to engineering makes a lot of sense considering your perspective. You think there is a right way to philosophise, right? That deviating a lot from it, or starting from some place else is like building a bridge without the sufficient knowledge?

What if you don’t want to build a bridge? What if you just want to play around to see what you find and accidentality stumble upon gold while everyone else was too busy building bridges and improving them?

The thing with philosophy’s standards nowadays is that if you produce something drastically different that doesn’t fit this “right way to philosophise”, it’s not going to be taken seriously, even though it might be a breakthrough.

It would be like telling Picasso his paintings are ugly and worthless because it looks like a child painted them, and that he needs to go back to the traditional methods if he ever wants to be successful.

The most original thinkers—Plato, Kant, Wittgenstein—were relentless critics of the traditions they inherited. That’s not the death of creativity; it’s the engine. — Banno

There's a world of difference between criticizing something and then thinking about something completely different that doesn't contain the same frustration as in the criticized thing, and criticizing something to then produce a slightly different version of it.

In the end we all criticize things, it's not an indicator of creativity on its own. It's how much you drift from existing things that matters.

Yes I misunderstood what you meant.

My quote referenced the fact that you've excluded science, which until 1600 or so was part of philosophy, from your evaluation. — T Clark

I still don't understand how you think I've excluded science. Even when science was part of philosophy, it was still just a part, not the whole thing.

You’ve cherry picked accomplishments from 5000 years and compared them to just a few years now. — T Clark

Maybe the title of my post was confusing. I said decline because I do believe creativity has decreased over the past centuries as a general trend (even if we look at just 2 or 3). And I mentioned the ground breaking philosophers to show that creativity matters, not to show that at these points in time when these philosophers lived, creativity in philosophy in society as a whole was higher.

The point of my post is to ask this question: "If the biggest breakthroughs came from focusing on creativity rather than criticizing existing ideas, why is philosophy focused on the latter?"

Artistic movements are themselves grounded in philosophical worldviews. Any innovation in rhe former presupposes annd reflects innovation in the latter, and vice versa. — Joshs

I'm pretty sure you could argue that anything is grounded in philosophical worldviews but that's besides the point. Art and philosophy don't depend on each other, one could stop evolving while the other could keep on evolving. Where did you get the idea that the innovations are dependent on each other? Sure some innovation in art could inspire something in philosophy and vice versa but it's far from always the case.

Incandescent lighting for example, or the combustion engine, both great inventions. Changed the world, circumstantially. But didn't introduce a new concept. Not technically. We had light in darkness via candles, we had transportation via horses and carriage. — Outlander

And there was nothing new about combustion engines because the individual components they assembled already existed, they just thought about arranging them in a specific way that was new. This is true with everything, not just philosophy. You can break down any philosophical idea to its primitive concepts that are instinctive to us, so not "new", just like you can break down any physical invention to its specific elements, that were built with previous knowledge, therefore not "new" either.

It just depends on where you draw the line on what's considered "new".

Maybe you think there are a lot less possibilities with philosophy than with math or engineering, to the point where producing anything new is extremely improbable in philosophy, whereas with math and engineering, it's very probable. Is that your opinion?

If so, I understand. We have all these confusing concepts in our mind, that weren't build rationally, unlike the concepts in math which we have laid out explicitly, so it's hard to imagine all the different steps that could have been taken.

If you're open to it, you can try to break down a complex intuitive concept, like ethics, knowledge, whatever pops on your mind. Pick the first element that you think is part of the concept, then break it down, and repeat this process until you reach what I call a primitive concept (one that cannot be broken down into "smaller" elements and that can only be defined through concepts it's included in or synonym concepts). Then look at all the steps you took, all the elements involved. From the most basic component you've found, you could work your way up and think of what these smaller elements are involved in. And this road could lead to a totally new concept that we do not have intuitively. Imagine all the paths you could have taken to build a drastically different version of the initial concept you chose. And then imagine that the new concept is integrated into a whole worldview of other new rationally crafted alternatives of intuitive concepts we've taken for granted for centuries. You've now got yourself a brand new perspective that is so odd that no one in their right mind would ever think of! Is it likely nonsense? Yes, but it's new! And you could always hit the jackpot and find something valuable.

I think the only reason we haven't played around with these combinations much, unlike what we've done in mathematics, is because it's less explicit and harder to share. If you invent a concept in math that is valid but useless, it's fine, but if you end up with a messed up view of the world, people are going to call you a madman, even if you know that your perspective has its advantages.

And I would add, this death of innovative thought is apparently not restricted to philosophy, judging by the popular press — Joshs

I disagree, the ways to do art for example have completely exploded in the last century, basically anything is "allowed", and you can share anything you want online anyway. The internet has allowed so many odd things to be created, and there are entire communities of these odd things that could have never existed before.

I think the lack of creativity in philosophy comes from the fact that it now has an authority that only allows a specific type of content, and that academia is considered to be the only "serious" way of practicing philosophy, so independent thinkers wouldn't be taken seriously unless the authority recognizes the value in it.

you’ve excluded that entire scope from consideration. — T Clark

My point wasn’t to make a graph about how creativity changed over time in philosophy.

You’ve cherry picked accomplishments from 5000 years — T Clark

I didn’t even mention a specific period of time in the past, I was just talking about the biggest names in philosophy, who gave rise to new disciplines – at any point in the past, it’s funny you directly jumped to the conclusion that I meant 5000 years ago.

What I mean is that the current method of philosophy in academia restrains creativity. It’s only recent that philosophical research is founded by an authority that represents it, and basically sets the rules. Before the 20th century, it was mostly independent thinkers who had to find other ways to make money.

Revolutionary ideas are simply not compatible with the way philosophy does things now: you have to analyse someone else’s thoughts, you can’t just produce a whole new model. Being an “independent thinker” is discouraged, and you have to fit into a mould to get funding for your work, as well as recognition.


I'm not really sure what your point is: do you think we're not going to have any philosophical breakthroughs that will give rise to new useful disciplines for example? Do you think anything new we'll find will be useless or of insignificant use? Do you seriously think everything has already been discussed in agonizing details?

"it's all been perfected long ago" and thus anything else is simply a deviation and less efficient form of creativity that doesn't really serve any utilitarian function other than the fact it's different ie. art. — Outlander

It’s a bit like saying evolutionary adaptations are the result of billions of years of trial and errors therefore living beings don’t need to evolve anymore.

Everything changes around us, we’re surrounded with so much more technology, so it makes sense that we also would need new views on life and new disciplines, which philosophy could help with. It’s a time where philosophy could be grandiose, yet they’re stuck in the past and seem to be scared of changes.

I mean, can you — right now — really come up with something truly "new" that would be taken seriously? — Outlander

Yes, but it wouldn’t be taken seriously by philosophers because philosophy isn’t about creating new revolutionary ideas.

Mental endeavors generally don't result in any danger or negative outcome but a waste of one's time. Not unlike physical endeavors where one deviates from the norm and can end up injured or killed. Though, the principle is not entirely dissimilar, I feel. — Outlander

Yes, when you're exploring new territory, the chance of finding something valuable is much lower than in territories where we already know there is value. So it's a risk.

You can see similarities everywhere if you dig deep enough, just like you can see new elements even in theories or objects that look the same.

I'm referring to the degree of "newness" and the tendency of academic philosophy to focus on existing theories rather than generating new ones.

No. I did not use "multiple" to define the conjunction operator. — ucarr

In other words, the "and" operator is an attractor that puts multiple members into one set — ucarr

You did, you used multiple in the definition. If you only want to used attractor, when you define attractor, you'll still have two use a word similar to multiple, several, and, connect, which all contain the same essence that's fundamental and can't be defined in a meaningful way (or, since you don't like saying that, it simply can't be explained). In other words, if you can't define/explain "and" with smaller parts it's made of, it creates the circularity, the self reference. Do you know what I mean or don't you? Because it's not clear from your response, I'm not sure about where you're going with this.

Perhaps you'll argue that connecting is just the same as multiplying. They're related, but they're not identical. We can prove this by showing how 3+4 = 7, whereas 3x4 = 12. — ucarr

Multiple isn't the same as multiplying... Just as you said here.

multiple | ˈməltəp(ə)l |
adjective
having or involving several parts, elements, or members — ucarr

The underlined part of your quote is incorrect. With A = B, you've set up an equation of the type:
5 = 2+3. This is not A = A, which could be 5 = 5, or 2+3 = 2+3. A and B, as your eye can see, are not identical, as the case with A = A. Stop conflating equivalent with identical. — ucarr

No, the problem I mention is when A = 7-2 rather than 2+3. But the analogy with numbers doesn't work because we know that we can break down 5 in a lot of ways, and the problem I mentioned is when 5 can't be broken down into smaller units, smaller operations. Basically the question "how do you make 5?" is left unanswered and the only way to "define it" is to take a "bigger" category and remove other elements from it, or to use synonyms.

Does it make sense to go from there to saying bell pepper equals the pizza? — ucarr

Bell pepper equals pizza (containing bell peppers) minus all the other elements. That's what I meant when I said "C without B", it means C minus B.

you're saying a fundamental definition cannot be redefined usefully — ucarr

Again, no, I did not say that. I mentioned the use in language here:

It's only useful if you don't know the word for A — Skalidris

If it’s best to insert 5 into one context, whereas it’s best to insert 2+3 into another context, then that stands as a minor example of usefully spinning a fundamental definition. — ucarr

Yes, trouble is that, in the context of primitive notions, you can't define 5 as an addition of smaller parts.

So you're saying that the way you defined "and" isn't A = A?

You defined it as: "the "and" operator is an attractor that puts multiple members into one set"

You used multiple to define it but multiple is just a step further from "and" (if you take one element AND another, you have MULTIPLE elements). It has the concept of "and" inside of it. If A = B but the only meaningful way to define B (or an element within B) is B = A, it's the same as A = A. It's only meaningful in language, if you don't know the word for "and" and that someone tries to explain what that means, they can use words that you know that imply the concept "and", but that doesn't mean they've defined it in a meaningful way. It's like explaining a child what a "number" is and how to do 1+1=2, all you're really doing is giving them words to describe concepts they already have. For addition, you just show two units and say "this and this becomes two", you're only giving them labels. If you were to explain this concept to an alien for whom it is not intuitive, you'd fail because all we can do for "primitive concepts" is label them, we can't explain them. Do you agree?

To me, a meaningful definition is when you're able to define it by using more fundamental elements. if A is made of B and C, Saying A = B∧C is meaningful. But if A is an element of C and that C= B∧A, defining A as C without B isn't meaningful. It's only useful if you don't know the word for A, but know the word for B and C.

multiple | ˈməltəp(ə)l |
adjective
having or involving several parts, elements, or members
The Apple Dictionary — ucarr

Define several.

If you configure a circle of any size, and you construct it by using the sequence: apple_orange_pear, you can start at any point in the circle and stop at any other point on the circle, and the three parts remain distinct. If you make a complete circle from, say, an apple back to itself, it's not conflated with either the orange or the pear. — ucarr

I don't understand what you mean. Do you agree that it's circular?

"Circular" and "undefined" are two different things. If you cannot define something, you cannot establish it as distinct from other things. In other words, if you cannot say what something is, you also cannot say what it isn't. — ucarr

If it's circular, if it sends back to itself directly, then you cannot define it in a meaningful way. In other words, you cannot explain it, break it down into smaller parts. And you could "know" when something is even if you cannot define it: we can feel when we're conscious but that doesn't mean that we can explain it and define it in a meaningful way.

By contrasting "and" with "or," the two operators clarify and explain each other. In other words, the "and" operator is an attractor that puts multiple members into one set, whereas the"or" operator is a separator that puts multiple members into separate sets, as demonstrated by the two expressions above. Now there, I've defined the "and" operator without any circularity. — ucarr

Okay, now define "multiple" :razz: . Have you ever tried following the definitions in a dictionary, looking up each word used in a definition, only to discover it eventually loops back to the same terms? There's no escaping the circularity but you can try if you want to see it for yourself!

I think there's been a misunderstanding: I don't believe consciousness is an illusion, and I don't believe it is immaterial, I believe we cannot know either of these things.

The hard problem of consciousness arises when one believes consciousness can successfully study (and explain) itself as an object in the world. And the problem is that you need consciousness to study anything. If you've ever heard of primitive notions, it's the same principle: you cannot define and explain primitive notions with concepts other than themselves. Have you ever tried to explain what a "unit" is? What the logic connector "and" means? To use the latter example, imagine our brain had some kind of logic gate (in electronic circuits) that serve as "and" connector, we would know that whenever we use "and" or any process of linking things together, we use that logic gate. So naturally, we could try to define "and" as the physical process. It could be: “And” is a circuit that receives several inputs and gives an output of 1 if all inputs are 1. You can see that “and” is already in the definition and even if we try to phrase it differently to avoid the “and”, you’ll still need to talk about the several inputs being received, and what’s “several”? It is at least one unit AND another. Do you see the circularity?

Your first sentence implies consciousness cannot examine itself. Can you explain how this is the case given the fact that, in this very instant, we are examples of consciousness examining itself? If we're not doing that, then what are we doing? — ucarr

So even if we can associate physical processes with consciousness, we cannot break down the intuitive meaning into smaller parts, and breaking something into smaller parts is how we explain things. In other words, consciousness can examine the physical processes responsible for its existence, but it cannot examine its intuitive meaning inside the mind. Just like we can't explain what "and" means (using other concepts) even if we knew the physical processes behind it.

Can you explain why this premise is not an impossible premise leading to the logical circularity you're propounding? — ucarr

Because of the premise that consciousness is required for any explanation, any thought (including the perception of objects).
To go back to the "and" example, any definition or description of the material processes behind "and" includes the concept "and".

If, as you imply, consciousness is thwarted by the self-referential state into useless circularity, then that's a claim that supports: consciousness exists outside of the subject/object bi-conditional. — ucarr

No, it simply implies that we do not know. We don't know if it's material, causal, an illusion, we can't know anything because we use it to build any knowledge...

brain precedes mind, at least from the materialist point of view: brain and mind always co-exist, but there's no thought without brain, as demonstrated causally by the maxim: absent brain, absent mind. — ucarr

I agree. That's why we can study the physical processes responsible for consciousness. Just how we could explain the "And" logic gate but yet never be able to explain the "And" concept.

In our context here, it is a measurement system. This is a fact about consciousness, thus establishing its identity as an object. — ucarr

No, consciousness is obviously a flying unicorn, or maybe a rock, or a planet. Consciousness can indeed associate itself with all kinds of objects, but doing so creates a self referential problem, aka the hard problem of consciousness.

What does consciousness do? In our context here, it changes the state of superposition into the state of (well-defined) position. — ucarr

So what? How does that have anything to do with this self referential problem?

This would require a little more than improvements in transportation or communication… This would require that our mind is restructured in a way that does not require “consciousness” to be a building block in our mind. And even if that is managed, this would be replaced by another “building block” and we would then face the same problem for this other building block. We use tools from our mind to understand the world, just like in the Lego analogy I explained later in this message, and it’s impossible to explain these tools when all we have to do so are the same tools we’re trying to explain... — Skalidris

You have so much to say but yet you don't have anything else to add to my remark?

If you want a more formal proof of this reasoning, it’s the same principle as Gödel’s incompleteness theorems: any consistent formal system capable of arithmetic contains true statements that are unprovable within that system. The self reference problem brings contradictions when you're trying to prove something by using that thing itself, just like with the liar paradox, just like the hard problem of consciousness. — Skalidris

You wanted a more formal proof of this logic impossibility, are you not satisfied with this one?

It’s easy to dismiss the implications of formal systems by saying they don’t apply to language because it’s informal. Following that logic, one could argue that mathematics never perfectly applies to the real world, and therefore its implications shouldn’t be considered relevant to it.

What would be more interesting is to understand why such implications arise within a formal system in the first place. Once we understand that, we can assess whether it’s reasonable to assume those implications might also hold for language or nature.

Did Wittgenstein even attempt to figure out why?

It's like saying the detective can't solve the crime if you set up a scenario where the clues are out of his reach. Sure. Nothing to do with logical impossibility though — Baden

Of course, the analogy isn’t perfect, and here, it requires some elements to simply be “out of reach” for a human while it seems that other humans can reach it: after all, the plastic bricks are made by humans so naturally it’s not impossible to break down plastic… But it shows that a system has its limits based on how it’s made. Our mind is made out of neurons and the way the neurons communicate and the way the neural networks are built present limitations. Just like the child was limited to working with plastic bricks, our reasoning is limited by what it is made of.

If you want a more formal proof of this reasoning, it’s the same principle as Gödel’s incompleteness theorems: any consistent formal system capable of arithmetic contains true statements that are unprovable within that system. The self reference problem brings contradictions when you're trying to prove something by using that thing itself, just like with the liar paradox, just like the hard problem of consciousness.

But isn’t it intuitively obvious? We explain things by breaking them down, it’s either a bottom-up or a top down but every explanation implies breaking things down into elements and explaining how the elements interact together. We know that any reasoning implies consciousness and that we can’t break it down, this “subject experience” is always there as a whole… I think the problem might arise from the illusion that sciences can break down consciousness, because we’re making a lot of hypothesis about its parts, but we seem to forget that every single one of these hypothesis was made using consciousness as a whole…

Is this an impossible picture? — SophistiCat

Why would it be an impossible picture? It is possible to take a photograph of a painter and his art.

Never say never! Yes, this seems impossible today. But science is full of 'making the impossible possible'. Did we conceive that cell phones would exist 300 years ago? That mankind would ever be able to travel to the moon? Judging what is possible in the future based on what we know today has a history of throwing egg on the face of our collective human race. :)

This is why it is viable to call it 'the hard problem' instead of 'the impossible problem'. — Philosophim

This would require a little more than improvements in transportation or communication… This would require that our mind is restructured in a way that does not require “consciousness” to be a building block in our mind. And even if that is managed, this would be replaced by another “building block” and we would then face the same problem for this other building block. We use tools from our mind to understand the world, just like in the Lego analogy I explained later in this message, and it’s impossible to explain these tools when all we have to do so are the same tools we’re trying to explain...

your argument is a bit like saying it's logically impossible to prove the existence of time because it's an object in the world and we can't perceive it as such because each act of perception is a static measurement that never captures its flow. — Baden

You're comparing apples and oranges. You're talking about the inability to understand something because we would assume that we don't have the right tools in our mind (which couldn't be a certainty solely based on logic), and I'm talking about the inability to understand something because it's self referential. We need consciousness to think, therefore we need consciousness to make any inference about consciousness, that's the problem.

Imagine a child is trying to figure out how a plastic Lego brick was made, but all they have to work with are other Lego bricks. The child could build something that looks like a drilling rig out of the bricks and they can pretend that this rig drills deep into the ground to extract some natural substance (also made of bricks) and then use another set of bricks to build a pretend fire, imagining that the substance is somehow broken down by the fire to create the bricks themselves. But the child can't actually break down or change the bricks. They're trying to use the very bricks they're made of to explain how those bricks came into being, which creates the self-referential problem. The “hard problem of the Lego brick” could be that whatever they try to build, they’ll have no way to actually check if what they built is truly like what’s happening in reality because they’ll never be able to actually build a brick.

Even if we can study our brain and associate phenomena with consciousness, our understanding of it is made through consciousness, through this subjective notion in our mind. And breaking down consciousness is impossible: it's always there as a whole, at least if we consider the whole to be the experience of the subject (you could study altered states of consciousness to learn more about the missing elements in these experiences).

What or where could anything be but in the world? — jkop

It's not so much about whether things "actually" are physical or not but about our representation of what's physical. And since that representation requires consciousness, it's impossible to imagine consciousness solely as an object in the world because that reasoning already implies consciousness to view it as an object, creating a self reference. Do you know what I mean?

Whether physical or not physical, consciousness cannot be viewed as anything other than consciousness because it's there in any reasoning we have.

Wayfarer yesterday jumped from intelligence to consciousness as if it is the same thing. — Carlo Roosen

Interesting.



It seems that we're talking about the same problem, what you're describing also arises from the problem that our consciousness is like a building block in our mind, that we cannot escape it. We'll never know what it is like to be someone else's consciousness because we're only aware of ours, and it's there all the time, in any reasoning we have, so it's impossible to imagine what it would be like with another building block. Any thoughts we would have about it implies our consciousness, not someone else's, so it's impossible to know.

"How can we objectively measure and explore the purely subjective experience of being conscious?" With our current understanding of science, we can't. — Philosophim

Well we can't, however advanced sciences become, that's what this "logical proof" is about.

So I agree that "....the hard problem of consciousness is impossible to solve", but I don't see the logical proof because it seems we are talking about two different things both referred to as consciousness. — Carlo Roosen

Well, I'm also talking about the " first person experience", and people who explore the hard problem of consciousness are also talking about this, aren't they?

Dreams, hallucinations and imagination don't fit easily into discussions on consciousness, do they? — kazan

Dreams and hallucinations are often considered to be altered state of consciousness, so it's still consciousness. But it's interesting because a lot of things we associate with consciousness can disappear in these states, like the self awareness can become very fleeting, or the sense of reality.

Well, it is apparent to me that we have already begun to understand our universe with the brains we currently have now, and i don't see any reason why this trajectory will not continue. — punos

What trajectory? The one where we’ll keep on understanding the universe better and better? Sure, I agree, our knowledge will most likely keep on extending. But that doesn’t mean we’ll able to reach perfect knowledge. In many fields, the gain of knowledge ends up looking like a logarithmic curve: we discover something and then make a lot of new theories, and then we keep on trying to discover more but the progress is heavily slowed down (like Quantum mechanics).

What’s even more striking is that uncertainty is everywhere. The only fields that allow for a perfect certainty are fields that we created, not fields that aim at the understanding of the universe and depend on the state of the environment studied. For example, many mathematical proofs can be “perfect” meaning that we are 100% sure of them, in all context. But the fact that water boils at a 100 degrees is not a certainty: it’s not 100.0000000 degrees, the decimals are uncertain, also, it’s impossible to make perfect assessment of the conditions in the environment studied (pressure,…), there are uncertainties on every measure we take.

Every tiny fraction of the universe partakes from the same fundamental logic that everything else does or it doesn't exist. I would say that the probability is 100%. — punos

Why would it not exist if it doesn’t follow the same fundamental logic?
Is it 100% because of the trajectory? Because that’s not mathematically true, as I explained with the log curve, there can be a limit, even if our knowledge keeps on increasing.

It's not arrogant because it's the other way around. It is our minds that follow the logic of the universe. — punos

It aims to follow the “logic” of the universe through trials and errors (evolution), huge difference.
Evolution is far from perfect, and just because concepts in our mind were “kept” because they allowed for an understanding of our environment and gave us an advantage for survival doesn’t mean they are the best tools we could have.

And evolution is driven by the environment we’re living in. So theoretically, if we wanted to have the best tool for understanding the whole universe, we would need to live in the whole universe… And assuming it is infinitely small and infinitely big and that everything is causal, its simply impossible. And if it is immensely big and small but limited, our little planet earth still seems like a tiny drop in the ocean, it seems ridiculous to assume that we could predict such huge things that are happening far from our bubble when we “got created” through evolution from what was happening inside the bubble.

So if you assume that we could “live” in the entire universe (which would imply that the universe is not infinite), let evolution run its course for as much time as “needed”, where we would have “tiny” “humans” that would explore the quantum world and huge humans to explore the galaxies, AND that all these intelligent species could still communicate with each other to achieve a perfect understanding of everything… There’s already a problem with that last part because the basic tools these species would have would most likely be drastically different from each other (like we would use our logic, tiny humans would use some type of quantum logic, etc), which would make communication impossible…

That's how science works now, because we can't perfectly isolate the phenomena we're studying, and even if we were, there would still be uncertainties because we don't have perfect knowledge of every single particle in the experiment. So yes, we would need to simplify and discard some data points.

But in my thought experiment, we have everything: there is no noise, all the information is relevant because it's an isolated system and the particles are the most fundamental.

In my opinion, that's an impossible situation, but I thought about this because I think even then, we still might not be able to find a solution because our logic is limited.

What if you may already intuitively understand that the statement is lacking substance? — Vaskane

Yes that is probably the case.

Therefore, if someone uttered the statement, it would beg the question, "Which sentence do you mean?" — Corvus

Yes, my reaction exactly. The most intriguing thing about this paradox is that a lot of people don't mind reasoning with something that is empty of meaning... Probably because they did not check that it actually has meaning prior entering this logic loop.

The term "paradox" is overrated and abused. Most "paradoxes" are simply self-contradictory, self-refuting or circular statements or statements based on a false hypotheses. — Alkis Piskas

Yes, I agree. And I find it quite unbelievable that no discipline has managed to reach a consensus about all of these "fake paradoxes".

There are such factors as perspective and relativity, which alone leave certain paradoxes "open" or "unsolvable". E.g. The Ship of Theseus paradox (thought experiment). — Alkis Piskas

The Ship of Theseus paradox looks more like a philosophical or linguistic issue than a paradox.

Having distinct and unique thoughts is what produces the idea of individuality. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't see how the unique part makes sense. If we were to clone two human beings, they wouldn't feel like two different persons anymore because their thoughts wouldn't be unique anymore?

But that's not how we conceive of an individual, as having a a separate "I", the "I" being something general. The "I" is the complete package of the individual. So you propose a separation of the "I", but it's unrealistic. — Metaphysician Undercover

Which "I" are you referring to? The notion we have when we are completely awake and conscious? The cloudy version of "I" we sometimes have in dreams? What about people with mental illness, their notion of "I" is completely different, imagine people with split personality, or people with schizophrenia who hear voices. Which "I" are they? I don't think you realize how complex this "I" is, we feel like ourselves when we can access our memory, our feelings, things that we normally access to when we're conscious and awake. I mentioned waking up from fainting in my thread, and the first images and sounds were really different from reality, yet I didn't experience any feelings of weirdness or fear. If I had the same notion of "I" as I do when I'm conscious, I would have felt disoriented and scared.

To go back to the thought experiment, imagine we make a computer with the notion of "I", that would be vaguely aware of its components etc, like we do. Do you think that would trigger consciousness, that the computer would experience something as soon as the notion of individual is coded? I don't see why this would happen, what relates this notion to the fact that experiences "light up"?

To propose a fictitious one is to say that things could be otherwise, but since the notion of individual is the true concept what purpose does the fictitious one serve? — Metaphysician Undercover

What do you mean it is the true concept? Again, which "I" is the true concept? And it's not about being true or not, it's about assessing its relation to consciousness. How do we know that the notion of "I" is related to consciousness? Why would that be the best theory? It's the most intuitive one, for sure, hence my topic: "deconstructing our intuitions". If we choose not to trust our intuitions, what rational arguments do we have to say that consciousness is always related to this "I" notion?

It is a reply in that it focuses on the formation of consciousness, or rather the formation of qualia and individuality. That's a dimension that needs to be included if we are to break down our intuitions of consciousness. — Christoffer

It would be needed if I were deconstructing a theory about the formation of consciousness, which I am not. I'm focusing on what consciousness actually is, about explicitly trying to grasp our intuitions about what it is. And you're discussing the how and why, which doesn't make sense in this thread since we didn't even elaborate what it actually is. How can we talk about why and how something was made if we didn't clarify what we're talking about?
Consciousness is an intuitive notion, not a scientific one (it wasn't created by sciences).

You ask what we think about your reasoning, but there's no clear conclusion you make. It reads more as a speculative meditation on the subject than deconstruction down to a conclusion. — Christoffer

The first conclusion is that there are no rational reasons to believe that consciousness always come with the notion of individual. And that therefore, they should be treated as two different matters. The second derives from the first one: there could be several neural networks experiencing consciousness in our brain.

anytime a "ball of energy", supposedly a consciousness, passed from one subject to another, it would find itself completely disoriented, being in a completely different frame of reference, sort of like if you went to sleep in Tokyo and woke up in London, except much more extreme. — Metaphysician Undercover

First of all, thank you for reading and actually replying to my thread, unlike most of the replies here.
Replying to your comment, the "ball of energy" would not be disoriented because it would only carry the energy to "light up" some neural network, to give rise to this "conscious experience". It wouldn't carry the content of the thoughts. It could be like electricity: if you change the charger of your computer, or the battery, the data and programs in the computer stay the same.
If you imagine that "you" are the ball of energy, like a battery, like the electrons travelling throughout the electronics of the computer. If you are taken to a unit that says "You are individual and have been living in his body since 50 years", you can't "think" anything else because these units define your trajectory. And if the battery is taken to another computer, it won't "notice" anything.

This would produce all sorts of irreconcilable confusion for the consciousness because it would not be able to distinguish forces of change coming from the inside, from forces coming from the outside, leaving it incapable of intentional activity. — Metaphysician Undercover

If we didn't have the notion of individual, this would indeed happen. But if the notion of individual is simply a structure that the ball of energy "reads", this wouldn't happen.

But this is just a thought experiment to challenge this notion of "individual" and show that it could be separated from consciousness. It's to emphasize that this sense of individual could just be a concept in our brain, just like time, numbers,... From the point of view of the thought experiment, there's no reason to think that whenever there's a flow of electron through a circuit, there must be a specific electronic circuit coding for the concept of individual. For living beings, it makes a lot of sense to have this notion and it's hard to imagine that a living being would function without it, but that doesn't make it part of the flow of energy, it doesn't make it necessary for the "conscious experience", they're independent.

the question of qualia and our subjective experience as a consciousness is another discussion that fits this thread better. — Christoffer

However this is not a generic thread about qualia and our subjective experience as a consciousness, this is, as the title suggests, a thread about challenging our intuitions of consciousness. How is anything that you wrote a reply to my thread? It seems like you are just expressing your opinion about consciousness.

I understand that my thread is quite long, but I did not expect that level of misunderstanding.

As long as you think reality is something that has to be ‘matched to knowledge’ you’re screwed from the get-go — Joshs

That is not my opinion, all I said is that knowledge doesn't perfectly match reality... How did you go from that to "reality has to be matched to knowledge"? They're two completely different sentences...

There is no conceptual space for the role of the subject in that method — Wayfarer

Saying this is ignoring philosophy of sciences. And even if we put philosophy aside, there is and there was a place for the subject in sciences long before quantum physics. This is why so many papers get criticized and rejected (and this process is part of the scientific method), we're only humans applying a method that we created, we're biased and make mistakes, and science takes that into account.

Individuation is indeed a fundamental part of human being, but mystics have long pointed to states of consciousness beyond that of 'me and mine'. — Wayfarer

I think you misunderstood, my opinion is that the notion of subject isn't tied to the notion of consciousness.

That it's very jumbled. It's full of mixed metaphors and partially-grasped ideas. — Wayfarer

What do you mean partially-grasped ideas? Who's ideas?

I think neither of these really reflect the problem of explaining phenomenal experiences — Apustimelogist

Indeed, they do not, this is why I said they aren't specific to the hard problem of consciousness.

"Consciousness" is an empirical problem yet to be solved (i.e. testably explained) and not merely, or even principally, a speculative question ... unless by "consciousness", Skalidris, you mean a 'supernatural' (i.e. non-empirical) entity. :chin: — 180 Proof

Okay, let me understand what you mean by empirical. Is anything "non-empirical" supernatural? What about love for example, is it empirical or supernatural?

And if by empirical you mean scientific, well this is a philosophy forum, not a scientific one. If science is the only field that is allowed to deal with the topic of consciousness, should it be banned from this forum?

Its just a very visual example of creatures not recognizing 'Themselves". — Philosophim

Yes, I always thought the mirror test was really reductive, we are animals that rely heavily on visuals so this test makes sense to us but it doesn't make sense for a lot of other animals. Dogs can recognize their own smell but not themselves in a mirror.

Several of your quick answers to my questions from the OP imply that a "perfect" knowledge is possible, and desirable. And that anything that doesn't reach that perfection causes pain. Is that really what you think?

In sciences, we constantly test our hypothesis to see how well it matches reality. And since we keep on doing that, it becomes closer and closer to reality, and we're willing to replace old theories with new ones that are a better match. But with psychology, they don't touch intuitive concepts that are deeply rooted in the society, like love. They do a top down approach, and don't touch the top. It's the same with philosophy: they discuss all the problems there might be with a term like "selfish" but don't do anything about it, its aim isn't to replace terms like that but observe them. It's as if we were only making hypothesis in sciences and never coming up with a method to test them...

So inherently, people learning psychology or philosophy will be disappointed that the intuitive terms are so misleading.

You even suggested it had no benefits — Hanover

No, I asked what the benefits could be:

I don’t believe this is just a random trait that stayed within us while having no advantages, so what could it be? — Skalidris

Of course some of it is related to genetics, so? Almost everything about us is driven by both genetics and the environment. But the ratio can vary a lot. The way we're driven to be disgusted by certain smells is mostly genetics and there isn't much we can do about it. So my question to you is: do you think that it is the case for alcohol? That it is mostly genetics and there isn't much we can do about it.

Don't we already have such fields, though, including those of sociology, anthropology, and cognitive sciences? — javra

If these fields were trying to replace the intuitive concepts that are misleading about human nature, we wouldn't spend hours on this forum pointing out how they don't make sense. "Are humans selfish?", "Does freewill exist?", "What's the meaning of life?". We still use these poorly defined concepts that, when you think about it, are contradicting our knowledge of reality.

but this doesn't come close to defining what "human nature" in fact is — javra

Why make it binary? There is no such thing as "perfect knowledge", knowledge is always evolving. What I mean is that what we currently know, in more scientific fields, not personal opinions or cultural believes, is in contradiction with a lot of intuitive everyday concepts. I just don't understand why no one fixes it.

To give you another example, the expectations we have of romantic love, the way it is painted in movies, is honestly closer to expecting being love bombed by narcissists than actually wanting to be close and spend your life with someone because you truly love who they are. And I believe so many relationships fail because people still hold on to these expectations and never reach it.

What is your point exactly? That society and education are mostly helpless about alcohol consumption and that it's mostly genetic and there isn't much we can do about it?

do you really feel like you're "in control of your thoughts" when you're not drunk? — flannel jesus

More than when I'm drunk, absolutely.

“the proof is in the pudding: rape happens in the world and always has”. This genetically determined aspect of human nature is so called “reality” as they see it. — javra

Just because some humans do some things doesn't mean everyone should do it, that has nothing to do with being closer to human nature. When I mentioned making concepts that are closer to reality, I meant it in a scientific way, gather the best knowledge we have about human nature and try to change concepts that are misleading like those I mentioned. How is considering rape as a crime distorting human nature?

but rather a method by which we can dispel the bullshit and prop up truths - especially those truths that have utility or are impactful. — ToothyMaw

Yes, it would come with a method. And about having a use, the problem is that we don't always know what's going to be useful and what's not. It's like doing fundamental scientific research, you may find things but not all of them will have a direct use, and you can't judge their use if you don't even know what the findings will be. But unlike sciences, doing research in the field of digging into human nature can have destructive consequences.
Imagine if there was such a discipline, it could have the power to destroy everything we rely on, it could even have the power to destroy most of our language. Will we say "I love you" anymore? Will we still say "you're selfish"? There are so many concepts we use everyday that seem absurd considering what we know about human nature. How would such a discipline emerge if it's like a dangerous bomb over which you have no control? It's not like we can say "don't use the method for everything", once people understand it, they will be tempted to analyse everything around them with it.

In fact, those things are required for a human to navigate the world socially and otherwise, I would argue. — ToothyMaw

But to what extend? I never implied it to be black and white, and to completely destroy all intuitive concepts, but to make it more and more rational, and more in harmony with our knowledge of human nature.

we catalogue human nature and teach it so as to avoid Weltschmertz? — ToothyMaw

Yes, that's what I'm suggesting.

Point being it really boggles the mind how such small little gestures or even inaction can literally change the world and lives of countless people — Outlander

Doesn't it boggle the mind specifically because we've been mislead about how much we can do to make things "better"? For example, in my opinion, wishing for peace in the world is completely unrealistic, but that doesn't mean we can't do things to avoid violent and deadly wars. And if someone struggles with drug abuse, expecting them to get better if you say "it's bad for you, it's destroying your life" is unrealistic too. If you're more aware about the problem and the changes that are possible, it might seem more depressing at first but at least you won't keep on being frustrated and you won't expect them to quit after one conversation.

It's not as if Native Americans, for example, who have extremely high rates of alcoholism, are just weak willed. It's part of their genetic response to the substance. — Hanover

Some people with mental disorders can be considered as "weak willed", and some studies showed that some mental disorders have a higher risk of substance abuse. Mental disorders are the result of both genetics and the environment. But for the case of native Americans, it's not necessarily because of mental disorders but it could be because of their culture, their lack of information about the dangers of alcohol, or because what happened to them is pretty terrible...

My point is that the psychological state of an individual and their habits play a crucial role in their appreciation of alcohol. If you raise your kids telling them they should drink alcohol if they feel bad, or that alcohol is a holy beverage that brings them closer to God, there will be more prone to liking it. And we live in a society where alcohol is a must for socialisation so inherently, it's the norm and a lot of people enjoy it. Almost everyone who tries alcohol for the first time finds it disgusting, and the first time being drunk is also not necessarily pleasant. But social pressure makes you do it more and more, and allow it to become a pleasurable habit.

My thread was mostly about why we keep on feeding these habits as it promotes escapism and gives less importance to meaningful social interactions.

Some people just don't have the genetic disposition to react to chemical substances as others, which also explains the alcoholic who seems compelled to drink. — Hanover

I seriously doubt that someone can be resistant to all kinds of drugs. It's not just about alcohol but about any mind altering drug. Some people just like to remain in control and most just prefer to lose it and forget. I believe alcohol reacts in a similar way on me as it does in everybody else, I just don't like it. Just like when watching a movie: people see and hear the same things but some will like it and some will hate it. It's doesn't necessarily mean that they don't see the same things or don't understand it.

There's the idea that one doesn't need religion in order to be moral. — baker

I had a similar thoughts about morals being tied to religion/spirituality.
I made these concept to explain their relation:
Dogmatic intuition: The extension of an intuition that becomes a reference principle.
Reference principle (value): Intuitive categories that serve as guideline for an individual.

So basically, morals, faith and believes are all dogmatic intuitions: they are intuitions that emerged in our life and that we somehow decided to "strongly believe in", that became part of us and that are hard to change. And in my opinion, spirituality and religions build stories around it and reinforce them.
If you strongly feel that something is bad, it's easy to be attracted to spiritual or religious thoughts that reinforce that you're "right" to feel this way, and that people who don't agree will go to hell or whatever.

So I'd say religions and spirituality are a way to maintain strong morals, but that it's not the only way. Some people just don't need to think about why they want to be loyal for example, they just are, because that's what they've been told they should do. I know some people who have strong morals but aren't spiritual or religious at all.

However, if you don't have strong dogmatic intuitions, I don't think you'll be likely to be religious or spiritual. It's my case, I don't have strong moral principles and I've never been attracted to spirituality or religion.

What do you think?

Well, it's not a tautology according to them since the new element is that they call certain phenomena "selection" because it would be similar to the "selection" in the evolution theory, which, to me, isn't similar at all. So all that's left is a tautology.

That phrasing borders on tautological. "X will tend to happen in a system when the environment around that system is favourable for X". Replace x with literally just about anything and that sentence structure holds. Right? — flannel jesus

Yes absolutely! To me, what they call "selection" has nothing to do with evolutionary selection, they created similar words to state the obvious, unless of course, I'm missing something!