Insuperable in my context here is simple: you can’t know things outside of being cons, so you can’t know yourself outside of being cons, so as long as you persist as yourself, the cons that empowers you to be yourself is, for you, insuperable. — ucarr

Saying "you can't know things outside of being conscious" is like saying "you can't see things without your eyes/walk without legs." "Insuperable" implies an obstacle, but consciousness enable us to know. I simply don't get this.

The Hard Problem acknowledges that what it’s like to be an enduring self is resistant to the objective exam and manipulation of materialist science. — ucarr

That's like complaining that sciences like physics are incapable of explaining chess or that a car can't fly. It was not designed to do that. An enduring self knows perfectly well what-it's-like to be an enduring self in the only sense of "what-it's-like" that assigns any sense to the question. It's not as strange a use of "know" as you might think. "I know Taylor Swift" may be false, but it is true of many people and there's no difficulty establishing that it's true. But it isn't propositional knowledge.

A big part of the reason for the hardness of the problem is the insuperability discussed above. Another problem of materialist science vis-a-vis selfhood is the insuperable selfhood of the scientist thwarting materialist objectivity. — ucarr

What would it be like to thwart materialist objectivity?
Actually, doesn't relativity solve the problem, at least in one sense, by developing and solving equations that cover all possible points of view/observers?

This conversation is an exam of how the the two great modes differ, and The Hard Problem is that difference under a microscope. — ucarr

The Hard Problem was developed in order to disprove materialism and prove dualism. So I doubt it can be solved. Certainly it would be a lot easier (though still not easy) to dissolve it.

Thanks for the Wittgenstein quotations. I had forgotten it. There's a philosophical angle to this, of course.
Perhaps more relevant is that if we are forced to admit that dogs' brains enable them to achieve mathematical results even though they don't speak mathematics, we may be less resistant to the idea that they and other animals are rational even though they don't speak languages like ours.

What's interesting here is that sometimes our 'subconscious' mental calculations are not quick and dirty – they are enormously precise and accurate. A good example might be professional snooker or pool players. They are capable of modelling physics interactions to extraordinary degrees of specificity. Their models are probably superior to purely mathematical models in terms of predictive accuracy. But they do not consciously perform calculations at all. — cherryorchard

I meant "dirty" on in the sense that it won't be like the mathematical version. Which, to be fair, comes in very handy in some of the situations we put ourselves into. Long ocean voyages, navigating in the air and beyond. Calculating the orbits of planets, etc.
Compare how we judge distances by what it takes to focus our two eyes on an objects. It doesn't work at longer distances, so instead we judge by apparent size. The latter is quick and dirty, in the sense I intended.

People who live in crop growing rural areas certainly see more insects than urban dwellers. — BC

I guess I was wrong about in thinking there might be more insects in the suburban area I live in. I see so much about how the countryside is losing all its insects mainly ot pesticides that I made an assumption. There are pesticides here too, but likely less than in crop-growing areas.

Next year may be altogether silent. — Vera Mont

Are you referencing Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring" that started the ecoological movement? The title was a prophecy at the time, but it looks as if it is coming true, and we are at last recognizing it - virtually too late.

How could big fat juicy earthworms be a problem? — BC

How indeed? There are invasive species in the UK too; some of them come from the US, others from the Far East - a legacy of Empire and globalization. The grey squirrel is a good example from the US; there's a European species that is, in my book, even cuter, but it's become marginalized now. There are sanctuaries and a lot of greys are being killed to preserve them. The mink escaped from fur farms and caused a lot of damage. They seem to be on the retreat now. I'm afraid the cause is at least partly endless eradication campaigns.

A mathematician shows that his dog, when fetching a ball thrown into water, appears to be calculating the optimal path from A to B as if using calculus. But, of course, calculus is computationally tricky even for most non-expert human beings. A dog cannot know calculus. Can he?! — cherryorchard

That's fascinating. I don't do any calculus when I'm catching a ball - I "just know" where to put my hands. Some people talk about "judgement". One supposes that my brain is doing the calculations sub- or un-consciously. I guess my brain is doing some work, but doubt that it is doing calculus calculations. But who knows? However I think it is more plausible to suppose that it is using some quick and dirty heuristic, which, no doubt, would give mathematicians a fit; but evolution only cares what works well enough. The same, I would think, for the dog.

Humans will forever fight over morals because adaptation is ruthless and desires are dictatorial. — ucarr

I think it's much more complicated than that. One has to distinguish the proffered reason for the fight and what's actually going on. The interplay between morality and self-interest is very complicated but morality is always a more respectable reason for a fight than self-interest. But self-interest is a more effective motivator.

The social contract is a necessary prerequisite for a peaceable society, so an effort towards moral standards is also necessary. — ucarr

The social contract is not always a contract. Sometimes it is a peace treaty and the stronger imposes the contract.

For me, independence = distinct things running on parallel tracks that don’t intersect. The tracks might converge and diverge at points along the way. — ucarr

OK. .So long as they don't intersect, I suppose.

Regarding “from within,” knowing, i.e., cons, is insuperable. As for the question of the existence (ex) of an external (ext) world, this conversation is deeply concerned not with the question of an ext world , but with the deep interweave connecting the two. This translates to the question of the two great modes: subjective/objective. — ucarr

Fair enough. I'm still not sure what "insuperable" means here. I've already mentioned, I think, that I don't see that as the same problem as the Science/Humanities issue. Fortunately, there's no chair to rule things off topic.

I suspect what QM has done, in essence, is manipulate quantity, i.e., discrete measurement, towards existential ambiguity. That’s fascinating because scientific discovery of discrete particles for seeming continuities like radiation and vice versa for seeming things like elementary particles was a drive toward definitive boundaries, with opposite result of real boundary ambiguity affirmed. — ucarr

Yes. It was a nasty surprise.

Is a purely objective world out there? The answer to this question is ambiguous, and cons plays a central role in the fact of existential ambiguity instead of discrete boundaries being the picture on the scientific view screen. — ucarr

Are you possibly confusing our opportunities to discover things with hindrances to perceiving them? What does "purely" objective mean? (In what ways is the objectivity that we know and love impure?)

Part of the difficulty of The Hard Problem is the global question whether cons is insuperable. If it is, then the “what” of experience is forever compromised by subjectivity who partially contradicts and nuances it. — ucarr

I still can't work out what "insuperable" means, so I can't comment. This problem is not what I understood to be the Hard Problem, except that in some way, it is concerned with the interface between consciousness and it's objects (to put it that way).

This afternoon, a sunny September say, I set a freshly-painted board out on the porch to dry, confident that no insects would stick to it and no bird would crap on it. I haven't had to wash the windshield all summer. — Vera Mont

It's the shortage of birds I'm noticing. Insects are around in fair numbers. I expect they do better in non-agricultural areas.

They don't talk much either and petting them is a bit of a problem.
But I knew a goldfish once that blew a bubble at you when you gave it a crumb of fish food. They called him/her "Professor". There's been work done on the intelligence of goldfish.
Octopuses, now. They'll spit water at you if they don't like you. They can escape from a screw-top jar. OK, they're not fish. But you have to admire them. Perhaps not as pets.
Everywhere you look, when you look closely, there's more to non-humans than humans think.

Yes. I've had dogs and cats and a pony - oh, and some fish long ago. They were fun in a different way.

I don't think either one of us is right, or wrong. I don't know enough about how the brain works to be right or wrong. I'm just guessing and passing on ideas I've picked up here and there. — BC

That makes two of us. Exchanging views sounds a bit pointless to some people, but it is a very good way of learning and passing things on.

'SELF' EXISTS as a durable, cohesive entity. — BC

Yes. With complicatons. See your question below.

The "terrible twos" are a time when young children have come into possession of their self. And then we spend the rest of our lives cultivating 'selfhood'. — BC

Yes. There are milestones in the story. The identity of people is peculiar because they have a say themselves about who and what they are. It gets very complicated because other people also have a say and the views may differ. Take the example of someone elected to be pope. They take a new name, and this is intended to reflect the beginning of a new identity. (There are other examples, but I'm not sure how widespread the practice is.) You make or may not but that. He is the guy who was called X by everybody, but became pope and now is called Y (by some people) But what's the guy's real name?

Some animals seem to have a self and some do not. An alleged test of 'self' is whether the animal recognizes itself in a mirror. 'Elephants do, dogs don't. On the other hand, the dogs I have lived with all seem to have diligently pursued their self-interests and preferences. I don't know any elephants. — BC

It's not unimportant, but it's less than having a self or not. It's not even about whether they are self-conscious or not. Perhaps it's about whether they know how others see them. That's not a small thing.

So, question: How do you think the self is composed? Does DNA play a role? When does the self form--does it arise gradually or suddenly? Can we 'lose our self"? — BC

I hope you don't hate this.

I think it's most likely that it develops over time and never stops developing until we stop living. What is it composed of? Well, partly we decide what it is composed of. But only partly. We can change many things, but not our physical body - though that also changes continuously. But, as I said earlier, other people also have a say in what and who I am. That's my first observation.

My second observation is this. "Identity" is a noun connected to a verb and roughly means the means of identifying whatever. Unlike "table", "chair", "tree" etc. which pick out or refer to objects, "identity" does not pick out or refer to an object. "Ludwig" picks out or refers to me. It does not pick out a part of me or even all the parts of me. It picks out the whole of me, just as "table" picks out or refers to the whole table, not a part or even all the parts. Then think that instead of saying "picks out" or "refers to", I could have said "identifies". Then think that when you identify a table you pick out the whole table. (Pronouns are flexible names. "I", "You", "He, She, It", etc are pronouns. Who or what they refer to is determined by the context. What they identify is not fixed, but varies according to context.)

My third and final observation is that "self" is a kind of pronoun that allows one to talk about self-reference in various ways. So my selt is just me. The idea of self-consciousness cropped up earlier. But it also allows me to explain that a car is a machine that moves itself, or that the computer switches itself off. So it's not just about people.
It is also sometimes used for emphasis. If I send you a birthday present, it is from me whether I bought and dispatched it myself or not; but it will usually go down better if you bought and sent it yourself. Or, there's a big difference between my ordering a boat and paying someone to build it and building it myself. This is really quite elusive and complicated. A good dictionary will give you various examples, which will help more than anything I could say.

I hope that's helpful. I want to stop there for now. If you are interested we can go back to brains and I'll try to explain why I was saying the weird things I was saying.

Does our self survive death? ..... Even if I don't believe in it, I find it difficult to imagine an afterlife of zeroed out souls who are without the selves they possessed in life. — BC

I don't believe it partly because I can't imagine what an after-life without a physical body would be like. No senses! How does that work? Is it like being blind, deaf, dumb? Ugh!

Usually, quite literally and directly rewarding. ...... And some birds just mimic for the same reason they dance to music: it's fun. — Vera Mont

I knew that rewards came into it. I just wondered whether they also did it for fun. Doing it for fun is intrinsically rewarding, but then the handler reinforces the reinforcement?
Doing it for fun. They're almost human, aren't they?

In US academia these days there are internal review boards which proposed research on human subjects must be approved by. ...... I don't know as much about nonacademic human research subjects review, but I doubt there is as little oversight as you suggest in most scientific research. — wonderer1

Yes, I know that. I think it's quite general in the scientific world these days. So things have got better - partly because of the fuss about that project. But I wouldn't dream of denying it. However, the failings of human beings are, let's say, persistent, so we should not get complacent. I'm sure you also agree with that.

These days, probably not. Up until the late 1970's, research wasn't at all well supervised or regulated in most countries. It was probably - just speculating now - government agencies' unconscionable behaviour that prompted legal and professional constraints on the use of human subjects. Other species have not fared as well - ever. — Vera Mont

No, they haven't. They can't fight back. I like to think the glass is half full, but i can never forget that the glass is also half-empty. I'm always getting accused of being too optimistic and too pessimistic.

I am hungry, I will forage/hunt for food" is a rational stepwise train of thought for any animal that supports their survival. — Benj96

Of course it is. WIttgenstein's work, especially on rule and rule-following indicates that, at some point, we act without benefit of articulation and I think that can be extended to understand how animals act rationally when they don't have the benefit of language.

We are still animals. — Benj96

Yes. And they and we are also machines.

I think my reply to you before was a bit hasty.

Mimicry and imitation are not rational thinking -- regardless of how intelligent or useful or mind-blowing they are. Animals and plants can mimic each other to avoid the predators and increase their chances of bringing their offspring to maturity. — L'éléphant

Whether mimicry and imitation are rational or not depends on why it is being done, surely? If it is being done to avoid predators, for example, why is it not rational?
When a parrot mimics speech, there is no doubt that it is the parrot that is doing the mimicking. Quite why I don't know, but it seems most reasonable to suppose that the parrot has some purpose in doing that, because it clearly finds the behaviour rewarding in some way. There a kind of mimicry in which a harmless species has evolved to imitate the warning signals of a harmful species to scare off predators, for example. This is clearly a result of evolution (and I have no problem with the purposive explanation attributed to evolution). It is not the plant's purpose, (except in an extended sense)
BTW Personally, I am quite unsure whether insects have purposes in the way that animals do or their mimicries are the result of evolution's purposes. I think that birds, on the other hand, do have purposes of their own.

The only way that we can distinguishes between coincidental similarities and mimicry is by reference to purposes, whether of the individual entity or of evolution. That means that we are attributing rationality as well, though not the discursive rationality that human beings practice.

A lot of people do not understand that if animals are truly rational animals, they would have the same level of communication as we do. They could consult us in matters of daily survival, and vice versa. — L'éléphant

Everybody agrees that human language is uniquely distinctive and more extensive than animal communication systems (I call them languages) of animals. I'm quite unclear why you want to call how animals communicate anything other than a language and bracket them as not "truly" rational. It seems to me to be simply a question of definition, rather than anything substantial or interesting.

But there is a lot more to be said.

The distinction between knowing how (to do something, in the sense of being able to do it) and knowing that something (is true). The former does not require language, but the latter clearly does. Philosophy has never seriously focused on the latter of each pair, leaving the former aside as trivial or irrelevant.
However, philosophers have long been amazed that people are able to speak coherently without being able to give a definition of the words they use. They have mostly ignored the phenomenon. But it is the most direct and dramatic demonstration that it is possible to do something and follow rules without being able to articulate what one is doing or why one is doing it.
To say that animals are rational is to attribute to them knowing how to do things, without being able to articulate what they are doing. It should not be a conceptually problematic thesis. The difficult, of course, is which interpretations of the behaviour are accurate. Sorting that out takes extended and close observation, but is not impossible.


Sadly, there is nothing to prevent a scientist being a bad scientist and even a racist scientist.

If morals correspond to real things and thus they are objective, then the “what” of life, that is, the facts of life (ha ha!) can generate a type of science, the science of morality. This is what the world religious try to teach. — ucarr

That's big if. I think the real point is that if we are not absolutely sure that they do and which preferences are moral and which are not, we should not pretend we know.
(PS I wrote the above yesterday and forgot to post it!)

Right now I’m going with the notion consciousness independence cannot be certified from within consciousness. — ucarr

It depends a lot what you mean by "independence" and "from within". If you mean something like "Can we know whether our consciousness is independent of a non-conscious world, I think that's just the old question whether we can know whether or not there is an external world. If we can know there is one, I suppose we are dependent on it. If we can't know whether there is one, we can't know whether we are independent of it.

Why do you think cons-embedded language can interact with a non-cons world without perturbing it fatally? — ucarr

I don't thin k language can interact with anything; language is something we do. We can interact with the non-conscious (for the most part) world, so we clearly observe it without undue damage to either side.

To ask it another way, why do you think an unknown world can persist as unknown once you’ve observed it? — ucarr

I don't think an unknown world can persist as unknown once it is observed, since once it is observed, it is not unknown.

I'll go along with that, but want to be generous and widen the scope of "need" to include benevolent aims and simple curiosity, as well as practical applications, and maybe, tentatively, forgive the social ignorance and complacency of the academics who made the early tests. (No, not the voting rights literacy tests of 1879 Kentucky!) — Vera Mont

Well, maybe you are better balanced than me. I'm thinking, though, that good motives do not excuse everything. You probably know about the Tuskegee Syphilis Research Study, 1932 - 1972. It was only terminated because of a press leak - i.e. by public opinion - so you can't excuse by historical context. Anyway, the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1964 and 1968 had been passed by then.

It's a general theme of mine that environmental do-gooding generally results in disaster and misery. — fishfry

Well, change usually brings disaster and misery to the most vulnerable people, and the rich are mostly not the most vulnerable, so you're not wrong. Some environmental do-gooders claim to be trying not to inflict any additional disaster and misery on the poor and vulnerable and claim also to be succeeding to at least some extent. But of course many people approach the whole business on the basis that it's a profit opportunity and act on their priorities. (Did you notice all the reports a while ago about how China has more or less cornered the market for rare metals, and looks like dominating the market for electric cars - which it makes with power from coal?) That's my the-glass-has-a-drop-of-whisky-left message for today.

Your response was interesting. Clearly you're getting more and better info about his tragedy over where you are. I have to depend on my alt-right sources. — fishfry

Well, it did happen here. The full report is over 1,500 pages long. Only fanatics and people paid to read it will plough through that. But I haven't heard a single complaint that it is prejudiced, thought the government is trying to defend itself the best way it can - it makes things easier for the politicians that every government since Thatcher is blamed. The commission's own summary is probably more than you want, but it is at Grenfell tower report executive summary and recommendations
The Telegraph is Conservative aligned. The (London) Times and Financial Times are not too bad, but are Conservative-leaning. The Guardian is liberal. The Independent is not reckoned to be aligned to a political party, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have a view. All of them are reasonably reliable. The BBC tries hard to be impartial so everyone thinks it is opposed to them, which is a good sign, I think. I tend to use that. My reaction was based on their reports. Here's their outline:-

* The inquiry's chairman says that all deaths in the fire were avoidable
* The inquiry blames "decades of failures" from governments, firms and the fire service for the disaster that unfolded in west London
* Grenfell residents were badly let down by those responsible for fire safety and there was a "failure on the part of the council"
* Manufacturers of cladding products – which were "by far the largest contributor" to the fire – are found to have engaged in "systematic dishonesty"
* The report also says that "incompetent" companies involved in the 2011 refurbishment of the tower – Studio E and Harley Facades – bear "significant" responsibility for the disaster
* The report said there was a "chronic lack of leadership" and an "attitude of complacency" at the London Fire Brigade
* The victims of the Grenfell Tower disaster were killed by toxic gases, not the fire itself. — BBC News at 17:06 BST 4th Sept

There's also a lot of comment on the slow progress of remediation - seven years after the actual fire. 4,630 residential buildings are involved. 29% have completed remediation. 20% have started remediation. 50% have not started remediation. Tens of thousands of tenants. That puts all the stuff about it not ever happening again into perspective, don't you think?

There doesn't seem to be anything about the races for the Senate and the House. But isn't it just as important as the Presidency? I have the impression that unless the President and Congress are the same party, the President is pretty much hog-tied. What's happening there? Is it as tight as the Presidency?

We have reached an impasse. — BC

Yes. That's sadly common, isn't it? But we do have a choice, if we can set aside the question who is right and who is wrong. There is some risk, if one tries simply to explain oneself, one may realize that one understands one's own position less thoroughly than one thought, but that would be a bonus, wouldn't it?
So instead of arguing with you, I shall simply ask you a question.
In return, I will try to explain my own position on a particular point to you
Perhaps you may want to ask me a question?
OK?

I think it's because we've become accustomed, through the 20th century, to evaluate human mental capability according to a standard, easily quantifiable set of responses. — Vera Mont

It's more accurate to say that we thought we needed a standard, quantifiable set of responses and decided to develop whatever we had to hand. "We need something, this is something." One can see this, because the development of personality tests (somewhat less conceptually incoherent, but, in my view nearly as vicious) when it was realized that intelligence tests didn't tell the story we needed (i.e. correlate with what we were looking for in our officers.) Essentially, the driver is our increasingly massified society, which is, at best, a double-edged sword.

The earliest IQ test, if I recall correctly, was intended to identify learning difficulties in school children, but the army soon adapted one to make recruitment more efficient, eliminating those applicants who were deemed unfit for service and identifying candidates for officer training. — Vera Mont

Correct. The first is a humane impulse, the second not wrong, but not particularly humane.

Nothing sinister about those limited applications... — Vera Mont

Well, they thought intelligence was culture-free - It isn't - and not affected by training and education - actually, it is, but to a limited extent. If that had been true, the test could have helped remove racism and classism from those decisions. They are still trying to deal with that, but using them when it hasn't been sorted out is morally very dubious, to put it politely.

but, like all handy tools, people came to depend too heavily on the concept of IQ and on tests (more recently, personality tests) to measure intelligence, it's been widely misapplied and abused. — Vera Mont

Too right. Mind you, there have been moments when people have resisted the impulse.

mice and rats that have been bred in captivity - often for a specific purpose - for many generations. — Vera Mont

Yes. People think that makes what they do to them OK. But I find it really ghoulish. I'm really ambivalent about the morality of this.

These highly controlled laboratory environments, as well as close observation of domestic species in what has become their adopted habitat, yields indicators of what to look for; they don't provide definitive answers. We have a beginning, not yet a conclusion. — Vera Mont

Quite so.

A lot of people do not understand that if animals are truly rational animals, they would have the same level of communication as we do. They could consult us in matters of daily survival, and vice versa. — L'éléphant

Do we really need us to tell them what they think about daily survival?
Your definition of rationality is no more than a stipulation. Anyone who is rational enough to read their behaviour (which we can do, in the same way that we can read the non-vernal behaviour of human beings) knows that they experience pain and pleasure and respond rationally to both.

I’ve been wrong in claiming existence and consciousness are biconditional.
They are linked, but they remain distinct. They are not interchangeable. — ucarr

I think that's right. But the links are complicated. Language is our clue (in philosophy), but it is our only clue and it itself tells us when something is consciousness-independent and when it isn't. Unfortunately, sometimes it is ambiguous, so sometimes the question is undecideable. Even more unfortunately, sometimes its clues are misleading. But there you go, that's life.

It isn't that 'I' or 'you' don't exist; rather, the identity that I have doesn't occupy a specific region of the brain called "the self" -- at least they haven't been able to find it, and they've been looking, — BC

I think that you and they badly need a deeper understanding of the concepts of identity and the self. Then they wouldn't waste their time on obviously futile searches.
The classic place for this is the paradox of Theseus' ship. Have you encountered it? It demonstrates quite clearly that the identity of anything is not a constituent element of any part of that thing. There are difficult cases, but that much is clear.

What seems to be the case is that various facilities in the brain maintain our identity as a seemingly solid self. — BC

I don't know what that means.

So, once the sentence is ready, the motor centers are in charge of the typing. — BC

Yes. This is a version of Chomsky's theory. But it doesn't fit with what happens. Sometimes, typing out text is like unspooling a sentence. But not always. Sometimes one pauses in the middle of a sentence to work out how to end it. Sometimes one types out a sentence as a trial or draft, not because it is finished. Or consider what is going on when I work out a calculation with pencil and paper.

Obviously Broca's area, (language production) is involved; thought creation areas are involved; memory, etc. None of these areas control motor functions (like typing). — BC

Yes, yes, you know all those areas are "involved". But you don't know what they are doing beyond the roughest outline. But they must control motor functions - through the relevant department. If they did not they could not send their completed sentences to be typed.

Brain injuries and brain manipulation (during surgery) reveal that different areas of the brain control different aspects of our whole behavior. — BC

Yes. That is well known.

No matter what you say, what you think, what you do, it issues from the brain labeled "Ludwig V". — BC

But you do admit that I do say things and think things and do things. "Issues" is pretty vague, so I don't have to take issue with that. No, the brain does not make me do anything, unless you can describe it as making me do what I have decided to do - which is a very peculiar notion.

What the neurological researcher is saying is that the "representation called the self of Ludwig V" is not doing the thinking, — BC

There is no self apart from me, Ludwig V. A representation of me would be a picture or model of me. Why would it do any thinking? It doesn't even have a brain.

It feels like "we" are doing the thinking, but that's part of the fiction of the self. — BC

But you just said that we do think. I think it would be better to talk of constructions rather than fictions. I can recognize that in some sense, I am a construction - there are lots of bits and pieces working (mostly) together.

it's just that "your thinking" happens in your brain below your radar. — BC

I do realize that there's a lot going on in my brain when I think &c. We do know a bit about what is going on. But you could only describe it as thinking if you are prepared to say that a computer thinks. The brain is, after all, a machine.

Why don't you claim the task of keeping yourself upright when walking; blinking regularly to keep your eyeballs moist; keeping track of your temperature, blood pressure, heart beat, and breathing; waking up every morning (rather than not waking up); registering a patch of itchy skin; and hundreds of other services going on all the time? — BC

How do you know what I claim and what I don't claim? If you had asked me, I would have told you. But I think you are going off the rails in this and the next paragraph.

Thinking is just one of many things that we are not 'personally' responsible for. — BC

It is true that consciousness is the tip of an iceberg, and there is indeed a lot going on in our bodies that we are not aware of. We know a bit about the brain, but not very much. It is always tempting to get ahead of oneself and posit things because they "must" be so. That has led us into many blind alleys and idiocies, so it is best to be cautious.
Thinking does seem to go on automatically. But I find that I do have some control over it. I guess it is a bit like breathing.
You are aware that anyone who is convicted for many crimes is found guilty because they intended to do what they did?

— Vera Mont

Probably the reverse. I didn't say better, just more. (Yes, I realize that many humans consider more/bigger/faster the ultimate in good.) But that doesn't come under a comparison with the rational thought of other species. — Vera Mont

I think I agree with you.

Many of the intelligence tests are really about "How much like us are they?" That business with the yellow dot, for example. Dogs don't identify individuals by sight but by smell and don't seem at all interested in their own appearance. I'm not surprised if they show no interest in their reflection in a mirror, which smells of nothing but glass, metal and the handler who put it there. — Vera Mont

Yes. I would value them more if they weren't called "intelligence tests". The very idea of intelligence makes not sense to me. It seems to comprise a wide variety of skills, some of which are highly transferable. We all possess many of them, some more and to a higher degree than others. It's about as sensible as trying to develop a single test for the nutritional value of food.

OTOH, tests of spatial orientation (mazes) do mimic the actual life experience of mice and challenging rats to obtain food in a human-made environment is certainly realistic. The experiments with plastic boxes, sticks and stones don't seem to give crows any trouble, though the props might be too foreign for most birds. It's hard for humans to devise tests that objectively measure the performance of species with very different interests and attitudes and perception from ourselves. — Vera Mont

Yes, but complaint is that behaviour in a mimicry is not necessarily the same as behaviour in their real life. Being caged in the lab at all is what disrupts everything - even if they are enjoying the holiday from real life.

The least obtrusive and most reliable way to discover how other animals think is to observe them in their natural habitat, solving the problems nature throws at them. We have an increasing ability to do that now. Without special equipment, though, we can observe domestic animals as they go about the business of living, overcoming obstacles and devising means to obtain what they desire. It's not The Scientific Method; it's common sense. — Vera Mont

Quite so. But "true" scientists are obsessed with controlling all the variables. Experiments are thought to be better science than observations, (and, in inanimate matter, they are). Interpreting observations in their natural habitat is very tricky and there's always the issue that the observer might affect the behaviour - even the presence of a camera/microphone can do that. It's not "just" common sense. Better to think of it as organized and disciplined common sense.

Reflection (mind that is minding, or “I” that is “I-ing”), is the interruption. Reflection has its own motion, but it is an interruption of the motion of that which it is reflecting on. So the movement of reflection creates a stillness in the thing someone is reflecting on. — Fire Ologist

I don't understand that.

My sense is that animals don’t waste any of this time - they don’t interrupt the motion by creating a still reflection (of a moving thing) that they can reflect upon. — Fire Ologist

Sometimes cats and dogs sit and stare into space, quite still. One wonders what they are thinking about and whether they are thinking at all but, perhaps, meditating, or maybe just sitting without anything going on in their heads at all (but perhaps that is meditation - I don't know about that). If not for that, I would agree with you.

Perhaps the two are always paired. That would mean matter is always consciousness-bearing, and consciousness is always matter- bearing. The relationship is a biconditional. — ucarr

No, I don't buy that. We know that consciousness evolved long after the inanimate formed. We know that causation was working perfectly well during all that time, even though consciousness did not yet exist.

But I have to concede that we only know that because we've been able to assemble the evidence and formulate hypotheses and theories.

If you adopt a strong definition of existence, such as "to be is to be perceived" or, more gently "to be is to conceived", then your thesis would follow. But you have a big problem explained where we came from. Berkeley supplied that by positing God. How would you do it?

I do accept that anything that exists can be known, conceived, perceived and that there will always be more to know, conceive, perceive than we have discovered, conceived, perceived. (I think).

The pair are indeed closely linked. Consciousness or awareness is always consciousness or awareness of something - subject and object. The object can (usually) exist without a subject. I don't think that consciousness can exist without an object, but I'm not dogmatic about it.

No, because you can have observations at multiple different scales and independently apply the abstract concept of design to each scale. It has nothing necessarily to do with the relationship between different scales in a way that is different from how the observations at different scales relate to each other. — Apustimelogist

OK. I'll accept that you are right about that. But you are OK with the relationship between part and whole, I think. So do you say that relationship is hierarchical up to down or down to up or just mutual. I can make sense of any of those.

So can I try a last example on you?

A rainbow is a very different from a sandy beach. It has parts, but not separable parts. There is the shape, the bands of colour, but that’s more or less it. So is it a physical object? In a sense, yes, but it would be less misleading to describe it as a physical phenomenon.

To see a rainbow, your back must be to the sun as you look at an approximately 40 degree angle above the ground into a region of the atmosphere with suspended droplets of water or a light mist. Each individual droplet of water acts as a tiny prism that both disperses the light and reflects it back to your eye. As you look into the sky, wavelengths of light associated with a specific color arrive at your eye from the collection of droplets.

I’m sure you know the story. I looked this up to make sure I got it right and discovered, what should have been obvious that there is a very complex step about the explanation why we see a single large arc instead of multiple small ones. I've gathered that it involves fractals, so it is likely beyond me, though I would love to understand it. But it is very relevant because it is a holistic effect, not a compound of the individual reflections from the individual rain-drops.

One might say that this is an explanation of the cause of the rainbow, but that generates a huge metaphysical issue about what the rainbow is, and a distinct temptation to say that it is not a physical object, but a mental one. Unless one wishes to embrace dualism, we need to say that the explanation in physics is an analysis of the rainbow, not a cause.

The molecules of the grain of sand, suitably arranged, constitute the grain. The grains, suitably arranged, constitute the beach. It is the water next to the beach that make it a beach, but that's a question of context, not constitution of anything. Does our picture of pictures/maps at large and small scales - and there's nothing wrong with it - or a piece of furniture with parts that constitute the whole, make sense of the rainbow? I think they are all different from each other. That's all I'm saying. — Ludwig V

The Arts vs The Humanities.

Why” is basic to both modes, and this conversation is about their differences, so I haven’t dwelt on it. — ucarr

That explains it.

The two great modes have an important difference WRT focal range: “understanding “ has a well-defined focal range coupled with a well-defined goal, where as experience, potentially drawing from all of existence, has a focal range and pallet of goals unspecifiable. — ucarr

I'm taking you to mean by "focal range" because there is always an object of understanding - the "what" that I'm seeking to understand. Sometimes, I agree, there is a well-defined goal (answer). But is that true of understanding of Heidegger or Wittgenstein or even my dog? I don't think so.
Experience, on the other hand also has an object, which can be quite narrow or very wide-ranging. Experience of life is the latter, experience of frying an egg is the former. So I agree that it's focal range is unspecified. But that's because sometimes it is wide and sometimes it is narrow. So I see no difference here. I'm not at all sure that there is a goal at stake here. What would it mean to say, "I reached my goal in that experience". (Unless just having the experience is the goal, which, I think, is not what you mean).

Experience always holds the potential to explode understanding. The two modes, being in creative conflict, animate each other. New experience drives understanding forward and new understanding drives new experience forward. — ucarr

I can agree with that, at least as a generalization. But I would want to add that sometimes understanding drives itself forward, by asking questions. Is that wrong?

“What it’s like to be a bat.” What it’s like to be something is the great question that links consciousness with matter. — ucarr

Well, I've told you what I think about the question. To be honest, I couldn't give you a straight answer right now. One day I need to write something about it. Still, I don't think you need that question, because matter is inherently defined as "not mind" and "mind" is inherently defined as "not matter". There's no need for any other link, is there?

As we answer the question “What is matter?” do we discover that our deeper questions on the subject require that we answer the question what is consciousness, thereby suggesting all material road maps lead to consciousness? — ucarr

It would be very satisfying if it did. "Return of the Repressed" springs to mind. The talk of the observer as a necessary part of theories in physics promises much.

Can there be an existence not known to be existence? — ucarr

Well, there are certainly many things that exist even though they are not known to exist. So I would have though that the answer to your question is clearly Yes. Or have I misunderstood?

Does causality persist in a world without consciousness? If consciousness must filter reality to a small sample of what’s there, then an unfiltered reality might have an unparsed version of relativity that features unlimited temporal differentials super-animated beyond cause and effect into simultaneous everything. That might play as a beyond-sequencing explosion of uncontainable potential. An unspeakable fullness of possibilities. — ucarr

Off hand, I would have thought that it must. We would not exist if it didn't. But I don't know if that's relevant because I don't understand the rest.

We can’t answer this question, but it lends a hand with answering the question: Why is there not nothing? — ucarr

Do you mean "Does causality persist in a world without consciousness?" I wouldn't have thought so. How do you think it lends a hand?
BTW I don't think "Why is there not nothing?" is answerable, because there insufficient implied context to indicate what might count as an answer.

It’s because you ask the question.
You can’t ask “Why existence?” if existence isn’t known. — ucarr

Your answer is a good one, because it appears to be an answer, but isn't one.
I don't think the reason why one cannot answer either version of the question is that "existence isn't known". After all the existence very many things is known, yet the question is still unanswerable.

Perhaps the greatest dialog between the “What” and the “How” is the “What” of the “How” and the “How” of the “What”? — ucarr

Which nicely illustrates why I can't understand your enthusiasm for "What?" and "How?"

The first question in our jingling duet is What is the good life? The second question is “What is the status of narrative? — ucarr

The first question is certainly a good candidate for its place. I don't see why the second is there. It has its place, but surely not this high up the ranking. Perhaps it's because you think the personal history is so important - which it is, in a way.

There’s experience, but what experience is worthy, and how do you make it your own? — ucarr

Worthy of what, by what criteria? You make experiences your own by being there, awake and attentive. Or have I missed the point?

Is narrative merely descriptive, or is it also generative? — ucarr

I can't answer that because I don't know what you mean by "generative". Narrative, on the face of it, always includes description, but no description is "merely" descriptive. For example, what's left out just as significant as what's included. How things are described are just as important as what is described. "Spade", "Bloody shovel", "Agricultural implement",

I did happen to run across something yesterday. The British government put out a big report on the Grenfell disaster. — fishfry

Yes. There's been a lot about it in the media in advance.

The Spectator put out a summary blaming the incident on "complacency." — fishfry

H'm. The author says that's his view, that's true. But if only it was just complacency. There was a lot worse than that. Gaming the already lax building regulations - next door to fraud. Ignoring tenants complaints. And on and on. But thanks for the link.

Spiked-Online noted that the reason the tower burned was that it was wrapped in flammable cladding that had been installed for environmental reasons. In other words the building itself would not have burned but for the cladding that had been wrapped around it as insulation. — fishfry

If you look a bit closer, it was partly for environmental reasons and partly for economic reasons. Insulation saves money. When they talk about sustainability in these contexts, they often don't distinguish between something that pays back in the long term and something that is needed for climate control. Insulation ticks both boxes, so it can be hard to discern which they mean. But I would bet it was not climate control what was uppermost in their minds.

And now the government is busy removing the flammable cladding from other buildings. — fishfry

If only it was. Progress is glacially slow because everybody is arguing about who should pay. The Government thinks that the industry should pay; the industry thinks the Government should pay. Meanwhile, the companies that designed and manufactured the cladding and sold it on the basis that it wasn't flammable are in deep trouble, but paying to put right what they've done would almost certainly bankrupt them - i.e. they can't pay. Some landlords of long-lease flats (their tenants are responsible for maintenance) are trying to make their lease-holders pay.
The police will take until the end of next year to decide whether there will be any criminal prosecutions and nobody will accept liability until that's settled. Then there may be civil suits for damages, which will take more years. Don't hold your breath. (Yes, some building have been done, but very few compared to the number affected.) Government (both parties - the seeds of this were sown in the 1980's under Thatcher and subsequent governments never put it right), the Local Council, the building industry generally, the companies that manufactured, sold, and installed the stuff, and even the fire brigade are all blamed in the report.
The fire itself was spectacularly awful. 72 people died, which is surprisingly low - thanks to the fire service. But the aftermath - if you don't laugh, you'll have to cry. No-one seems to have a shred of decency - always excepting the tenants.

So the loss of life was attributable to liberal do-gooding. Needless to say the official report did not make this point. Thought I'd pass this on. — fishfry

Oh, please! If there had been any do-gooding at all involved, it wouldn't have happened. It was greed and laziness. Complacency, if you like, in that Government trusted the builders to do the right thing.

Thanks for the opportunity for a good rant. I hope I haven't bored you.

And who are you? Where did you come from? Who do you think you are? — BC

I realize that you are asking those questions to get me puzzled, not because you think they don't have answers. But perhaps we should start from the fact that those questions have perfectly good answers and frame what neurologists are doing in more sensible ways.

So, some neurological researchers and thinkers propose that the 'self' -- you, I -- is a convenient fiction. — BC

That has some plausibility if you mean "fiction" in the sense that mathematics is (maybe) a fiction, and physical objects and everything else. But the suggestion that I and you don't exist is absurd. It would be much better to say that the self is a holistic phenomenon. The brain process that you say cause my action are an analysis of the action, not a cause of it. Compare the analysis of a rainbow in terms of physics. People used to complain that physics abolishes the rainbow, but of course it doesn't; physics analyzes the rainbow, and it is normal for a holistic phenomenon to apparently disappear under analysis.

The composer is a mental facility composed of various brain circuits. This facility outputs the text to the motor facility which causes my fingers to move in just the right way to produce this text. — BC

Why do you separate composing from typing? The idea that saying something is somehow unspooling what the brain has already done just pushes the issue back a stage into an infinite regress. That representation of what is going on is an analysis. (The clue is in the term "analysis".)

But again, Neurological research shows that the decision to act is made BEFORE we are aware that we want to act. The "I" editor operates a couple of beats behind the brain circuits that actually made the decision. — BC

No, my fingers operate a couple of beats behind the brain circuits. What you call the decision is simply the initiation and control of my typing. To put it in a misleading way, "I" is the entire process. We are misled into thinking that decision is separate from action is just a result of the fact that we can interrupt the process of action part way through - aborting a process, not completing one process and starting the next. If you think of decision as an action distinct from execution, you end up with an infinite regress.

And then eventually, socrates put forwards the notion that we should have conscious rational deliberation prior to the act as the golden standard.... rational thinking instead of instinct. — ChatteringMonkey

Yes, and one can see why. There's reason to think that planning ahead pays off. But the model always suffered from not recognizing that planning isn't doing and being unable to understand the difference. Hence, for example, the puzzle of weakness of will. It turns out that non-reflective action is always crucial. One just cannot plan every action.

No, but what I'm saying is that "reasons" are not necessarily the result of conscious rational deliberation either. Instincts are obviously prior to all of that, and instincts are to some extend already reasonable. — ChatteringMonkey

I have some reservations about instinct. It's supposed to be used for unlearned behaviour. But instincts get modified, because, paradoxically, we have an instinct to learn. So actual behaviour is, paradoxically, learned. Birds seem to have an instinct to build nests in specific ways. Yet this cannot be a simple response, since they have to adapt to the circumstances they are actually in. What I'm getting at here is the we need a concept of non-reflective behaviour to explain, for example, how people manage to fight without the articulate deliberation in advance and why they do not need to deliberate about deliberating, though they can. The idea that they do something like articulate deliberation but at lightening speed is pure hand-waving.

Two tricky points: (1) the extent to which and the ways in which the two related; and, perhaps as a particular case of (1) but perhaps not, (2) whether internalizing the patterns of reason as justification and argumentation (i.e., sense 2) genuinely contributes to belief formation at all, and perhaps to adaptive belief formation, or simply makes us more facile at producing justifications for beliefs arrived at we know not how. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, they are indeed tricky. Sadly, I have nothing useful to contribute. I do have faith one day someone will come up with something.

It's pretty deeply engrained into my way of thinking, to see causality as a lot more complex than that. — wonderer1

I know there's a lot going on around causality, because there are so many anomalous phenomena that seem to escape it. Just as the pre-scientific (Aristotelian) concept of causation had to go to enable the new science to develop. What I'm trying to suggest is that some phenomena that appear to be "secret" are just the result of asking the wrong (because unanswerable) question.

I don't say humans are not the smartest and most linguistic; only that they are not unique in the ability to solve problems, and that setting problems to solve is the only way that I know of to test this ability. — Vera Mont

I dunno. There's evidence around that being smart and linguistic may turn out not to be entirely beneficial. In this context "better together" means together with the entire planet.
Setting problems is probably the only way. But I worry that all we are testing is whether they are as smart as we are by our standards. Which are not necessarily the best standards. Lab work has to be a bit suspect.

What I object to is starting from a conclusion that should have been put to rest decades ago. — Vera Mont

I don't disagree. But there has been a lot of progress in the last few hundred years. We are no longer the centre of the entire universe, a special species chosen by God. We've recognized equality in a way that never even crossed Aristotle's mind. It's no wonder that some people are anxious and defensive.

When it comes to our power of thought, it's still hidden. We don't know at this point how the brain thinks BECAUSE we do not have access to enough of the brain's processing to figure it out. — BC

Yes, it's fascinating to watch people wrestling with it. BTW, I don't think the brain thinks. I'm the one who does the thinking. In other words, thinking is a holistic phenomenon, like a rainbow.
A big problem is that "thinking" along with "understanding" are probably the two most protean concepts we have. I'm pretty sure that we'll have to modify those concepts to fit with the science we come up with, rather than the other way round.
People think that there's a way of sorting the problem out according to the model of information processing that we already have in our thinking machines. So it's worth noting that not everyone thinks that they are thinking machines. Then there is the fact that the brain is not just an information processing machine. It also controls action and reaction, and it may not need anything we could recognize as language to do that.

Will it be solved? I don't know. Depends on the stability of civilization over the next century or two. — BC

It will be solved. But I'm pretty sure it will take conceptual change, perhaps as big as the change that solved the solar system.
What's a century or two? There was nearly two thousand years between Ptolemy and Copernicus. There's no rush.

I just finished reading it, so I have a better understanding of the context in which he was using "powers". — wonderer1

So you should also have a better understanding of what empiricism was/is all about. The debate between empiricists and rationalists (the orthodox background for empiricism in philosophy to-day) is a whole other issue. That debate was about innate ideas - a quite different problem.
You may find it interesting to read Section V and VII for more about causation and Section XII for more about scepticism.

It's interesting to consider how much less secret and hidden these days, is the power of bread to nourish. These days if I go buy a loaf of bread many of the bread's nutritive 'secrets' are likely to be listed on the packaging. :smile: — wonderer1

Yes. One could argue that the powers are less secret than they seemed to be back then. We describe what happens in terms of a condition - if and when the first billiard ball hits the second, the second will move. It makes no difference if you know the molecular analysis of the balls - the causal relation has no more to it than "if and when p, then q will follow".

I guess you'll have better things to do that hang around here!

I want to add that I do not at all deny that animals (including humans) do have purely mechanical responses. Examples in humans are the reflex breath as you come back to the top of the water, which is clearly evolved and rational, as contrasted with the jerk of your lower leg as your old-fashioned doctor tap just below your knee, which (so far as I know) has no evolutionary purpose. You may know that if you scratch a dog at just the right place, their back leg comes up as if to scratch themselves; they can also do the same thing when they want to scratch themselves; that response can be mechanical and irrational and can be voluntary and rational.

Often, this involves altering the meaning of words and twisting familiar concepts, and may include denial of the audience's practical experience. — Vera Mont

You're not wrong. But, along with all the similarities, there must be differences. The same applies to chimps and horses and whales. So there is legitimate enquiry to be had here, surely?

However, based on my considerations of neuroscience, calling our subconscious recognition of patterns "a power" doesn't seem inappropriate. — wonderer1

That's a different case. Our recognition is revealed when we recognize it. These powers, as Hume keeps emphasizing, are "secret", "hidden".

I'd be interested in hearing more about Hume's disagreement with Aristotle, if it isn't too much trouble. — wonderer1

I recommend reading what he actually says, and only reading secondary sources with that in mind. The argument against induction is routinely misunderstood, and so they cannot be altogether trusted.

Bear in mind also that when I say "Aristotelian" I mean it. Hume might have been arguing with Aristotle, but he doesn't say that who he's disagreeing. It's "the schools" that he is targeting.

His discussion is in the "Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" Section IV, Part II. It begins on page 33 in my edition. It begins:-

I shall content myself, in this section, with an easy task, and shall pretend only to give a negative answer to the question here proposed. I say then, that, even after we have experience of the operations of cause and effect, our conclusions from that experience are not founded on reasoning, or any process of the understanding. This answer we must endeavour both to explain and to defend.

If you have an electronic text, search for "power". It'll come back with over 100 entries, but you can click through them quite quickly. In my search, it was number 15 of 129. It comes quite early, in the first page or two.

quote]He (sc. Hume) presents an argument in the form of a dilemma which appears to rule out the possibility of any reasoning from the premises to the conclusion of an inductive inference.[/quote]
People often forget that he also says that, in spite of the fact that inductive reasoning is deductively invalid, we will continue to act on that basis, but not from reason, from custom or habit. He also says that inductive reasoning is all the proof you will ever get and provides a basis that is "as good as a proof". (In the context of his discussion of miracles, he slips up, or gets over-enthusiastic, and says that induction reasoning (against miracles) is a proof. He excoriates radical scepticism, which he calls "Pyrrhonism" even though he acknowledges that he cannot refute it. He recommends a month in the country as a cure. All he wanted to disprove was the Aristotelian idea of a "power" hidden behind the phenomena.

There are two ideas that may help with the issue of animal ratonal thinking.
One is the idea of "embedded" beliefs. These are believes which it is necessary to posit to make sense of the action. You walk towards your car, reach in to your pocket for the key to open it, and fail to find it. You believed that you had the key even though you didn't. You just didn't think. So there was no reasoning process behind your walk to the car and yet you believed it. The same is clearly true of animals. They do not have language, so they cannot go through what we call a reasoning process, though they can clearly learn from experience and remember what they learn and so act rationally.

The other idea is the distinction between knowing how to do something and being able to articulate that knowledge, or between tacit and articulate knowledge. (Even philosophers have to acknowledge that it is perfectly possible to use a word correctly without being able to define it. They quarrel about whether that means that you know what the word means only because (unsurprisingly) they are fixated on articulate knowledge and don't take knowing how seriously. Given that knowing-how and knowing-that are two distinct abilities, it should be no surprise that animals know how to do things without knowing how to articulate them.

Please let's try to get over the idea that only humans have language. There are many language-like communication systems, of varying degrees of sophistication. It's a matter of degree, not of kind.

The reaction happened before the thinking could begin. — Athena

That doesn't mean that it wasn't rational. He thought that his son was an intruder. An embedded belief.

This is the stimulus, this is the reaction. Not rational thinking. — Athena

But you are leaving out all the interesting bits. Stimulus/response is Pavlov's idea. The stimulus, for him, is something external and the response is the animal's. It's the feedback that does the work. In the case of his dogs, the bell announces the food and the animal salivating is the response, because the dog has learnt that the bell is followed by food. It's perfectly rational. Skinner introduced what he called "operant conditioning", where the stimulus is something the animal does and the response is what the environment does. If the response is a reward, the animal's action is reinforced; if the response is unpleasant, the animal's action is inhibited. It's called trial and error and it's perfectly rational.

I agree that the baby waving its arms and legs about is. let's say, purely mechanical. Evolution sees to it that we are born with a basis for learning what we need to know. Whether it is mechanical or not, it will be rational. But the baby quickly finds out that some movements are rewarded and some are not - and off we go. They have a mechanical seeking movement - probably based on pheremones - that is rewarded when the milk is found - and off we go. Horses and cows and others have a more complicated problem - they have to learn to stand up and walk before they feed - but they manage it. I'm not clear whether the squirming caterpillar is yelling in pain or trying to escape, by the way - possibly both. They could be blind, mechanical movements, but I doubt it. Evolution would favour squirming caterpillars because they are more likely to escape.

True, though this could apply to any scale of description I think. — Apustimelogist

Yes, it could. But that's what links the different scales together, as different representations of the same thing.

We can also extend the format from things that have a purpose and are created by human beings, by saying that the design gives the (internal) structure of the object - relationships between the components at a lower (smaller) level.

Does a pile of sand have an internal structure? In one sense, no. But in another sense, yes. Each grain of sand has a relationship to each other grain of sand in the pile, and that's what makes it a pile.

So now we can see that the "bottom up" relationship between levels that you identified is matched by a "top down" relationship. So the hierarchy goes in both directions. You can call it a hierarchy from both perspectives, but "objectively" it is not two hierarchies, but one structure of a collection of pictures/maps...

Yes?

You asked about slaves without masters and masters without slaves. If a master is not isolated from slaves then he is not without slaves, and vice versa. — Leontiskos

That's true, but doesn't answer my question. What if a (natural) master is isolated from slaves and vice versa?

Isn't it just that "slave" and "servant" have become dirty words? But they were not dirty for Aristotle ("doúlos"). — Leontiskos

But he does think that slaves are vicious and bestial and should be treated as animals. I think that's a pretty dirty, don't you?
The issues get very complicated. Simpson has made me realize that Aristotle's argument is not nearly as simple as I thought. But at the heart of this one is the question when it is moral to deprive another human being of liberty and to compel them to obey your wishes - for life? Closely related is the question is when we can morally treat another human being as (just) an animal?

Aristotle thinks (I think) that there is a fact of the matter that justifies that. In fact, as I showed last time, it is not altogether clear exactly what his argument proves, because he distinguishes between natural and legal slavery without explaining what the difference amounts to. So it isn't clear what the argument is about. It's certainly not about the actual practice of slavery. So we are left with a fog, only slightly illuminated by his comparison of slaves with tame animals.

Does not the substantive question come down to whether a distinction is relevant or real? — Leontiskos

Yes, that's exactly what I think. Though I've qualified that below.

When someone opposes him they are arguing that such a distinction is either not real or not relevant. — Leontiskos

Yes. As it happens, I think that his distinction is neither real nor relevant. But I've shelved the question whether it is real for the sake of the argument.

We could say that those who favor "universal equality" are those who see fewer real and relevant distinctions between humans. — Leontiskos

Well, I don't know how we would count them. But certainly the argument is about which distinctions are real and relevant.
But there are two different issues going on here. (This is slightly different from what I said in my last post). One issue is about the common elements that all human beings share - and there must be some if the classification as human or not is to work - and the rights that "follow" from those common elements. The other is about what differences among human beings allow or require different treatments of them in various situations.

Thank you very much. I can get my teeth into this. I won't complain that you've sent me too much. I just hope that my reply isn't too much and that we don't lose too much in the course of discussion.

The present state of my general descriptions of the two great modes: science/humanities goes as follows: science asks: what is existence? Humanities asks: how is human? — ucarr

So that's why you posited "What" and "How" at the beginning! (I'm still wondering where "Why?" fits in).

For science the focal point is on measurement. For humanities the focal point is on consciousness. — ucarr

I like the first sentence, because it explains why mathematics is so necessary to science. It is the methodological decision at the start of what we now call science.
I'm less happy with the second sentence, for reasons that may appear later.

When you measure something you contain it. Containment of existing things drives toward understanding. — ucarr

H'm.

When you experience something you assemble a continuity of knowing-what-it’s-like into a narrative of an enduring point of view, your personal history. — ucarr

That's true. But is it relevant? I suppose we'll see.
I may be naive, but I thought the whole point of "knowing-what-it's-like" is that it can't be turned into propositional knowledge and hence not into a narrative.
I would have thought that if you were going to ask this kind of question, you would have looked at the existentialists. That's exactly their point - that the start of understanding is the lived world into which we are thrown. But I hope you are not going to turn the Humanities into a matter of personal history.

Every human individual is both scientist and artist. The human individual needs both the understanding of measurement and the knowing-what-it’s-like of a personal history in order to live. No understanding? No personal history? No life. — ucarr

In a sense, that's true. As a matter of history, it can't be. Or are you saying that no-one before the Egyptians invented arithmetic had a personal history? I don't think so. So it needs a bit more explanation.

The scientist measures, i.e., she sounds the dimensions of a thing, thereby revealing the what of a mysterious thing that mystifies her own knowledge of the what of her being until she finally surrenders her understanding to a radically new picture of the what of the state of being of herself. — ucarr

So if you assemble enough measurements, you'll develop a new understanding of yourself? I would have thought you need more than that.
Why and how did you start measuring in the first place?
Where did your pre-measurement picture of the what of the state of your own being come from?

The artist assembles a continuity of knowing-what-it’s-like into an arc of change and discovery that is a personal history through the start of adventures, the middle section assessing battles won/lost and finally reaching the summit/plateau of a new state of the how of her being. — ucarr

I can see how you are developing your starting-point. But this is perilously close to a stipulated definition. I have a feeling that it would not correspond to the actual life and practice of actual artists, never mind what they might say if you ask them.

Logic and math cover the two great modes thus: scientifically they mark and track the what of the position of the state of being; artistically they narrate a continuity of the direction of the how of being towards a conclusion of the what-it’s-like to reside in validity-as-truth, or not. — ucarr

I'm glad you are locating logic and math as an exception in the what/how dualism and sad that you're just combining the two. I think that what you say boils down to the idea that logic and math underpin both "what" and "how", defining the permanent framework of possibility for both. Is that what you are saying?

In each mode, one of the greatest mysteries is the location of the inflection point linking the immaterial and the material. This linkage and its circumambient mystery establish the wholely picture of life: substance grounding immanent form endlessly variable, albeit grounded within the ambiguity that animates the what and the how. — ucarr

Not quite the hard problem, but close.
The urgent questions here are:-
Are these mysteries soluble or not?
If not, how are we to live with them? (There's no question of understanding them, is there?)
If they are, is it the artist or the scientist or both who will "solve" them? Or do we each solve them for ourselves when we construct our personal histories?

The idea that science and art are both necessary for what Aristotle would call a good human life is fine by me. ("No life" is a bit extreme, don't you think?)

My big trouble with this is that you seem to be pursuing a quite different project from the one in the title. The Humanities are not pursuing a personal project. They don't have and they don't pursue what you might call scientific objectivity. How could they? Why should they? But they do have their methods and their standards. You don't recognize that and so confuse the Humanities disciplines with the practices of the arts, which the Humanities study, but do not perform.

The idea that each of constructs a personal history based on our experience has a lot to be said for it.
But it doesn't touch any of the Humanities disciplines.
Historians would likely not call that history, but memoir - because it does not even try to be objective; nor should it. It's fine as it is. An objective personal history would be a biography, and that's a different enterprise. Memoir is a literary form and so is open to study by Literature, but it isn't the study of Literature. You seem to have forgotten that philosophy belongs here, and I'm sure you don't think that is a matter of constructing a memoir.

To be sure, the Sciences start from measurement, but measurement on its own is just data. The sciences develop theories to enable us to understand the data and it is no more than stamp-collecting without it. (Stamp-collecting isn't just gathering stamps into albums either - or at least it can become more, but that's another story).

I think you are being misled by the binary distinction between objective (science) and subjective (everything else) and by the rhetorical effect of ("What is it like to be a bat?"). That question is genius. It manages to persuade us that it can be answered yet cannot be at the same time.

Speaking of looking through lenses, someone who studies humanities would likely disagree with the idea that science deals with "what" and humanities deal with "how". From a certain perspective, if humanities is the focal point, then it is the what, and science is just about understanding the universe in which events happen. — Igitur

I do like the lens metaphor - it seems to me to be very useful and I shall use it at every opportunity.

There are clearly hidden depths to the definition that @ucarr gave. Whether it is somehow about self-reference or formalisms, there are interesting and important issues at play. But I have a sense that this is a definition from the perspective of science. So here is a perspective from someone who studies humanities (if the term can be applied to at least some of philosophy).

Our sense that science and the humanities are different arises from the fact that there are different ontologies (which are defined by their practices and languages) in play. However, ontologies and practices don't necessarily line up neatly with the standard catalogue of subjects - or even with each other. Academic departments are, presumably, formed on the assumption that each subject/discipline is an interest group and/or a collegial group. That is not false, but it is well to remember that each subject/discipline/academic group is itself riven with battles of all sorts, in which the definition of the group itself may be at stake.
It's an intellectual mess - but then, that's a field of special interest to philosophy. From my point of view, we do well to ask, before getting embroiled in this marsh, what, in Wittgenstein's terms, our real needs are. To understand that, we need to go back to the historical (and legendary) time when the distinction was formulated, when the intellectual and framework and space for what we now call "science" was developed. This was also, at the same time, an intellectual and social battle.
Since then science has become dominant in our lives, and it is the intellectual and social space for the humanities that is at stake. (I won't mention cuckoos and eggs). The issue has not changed much. But I wonder if we would find it easier to make progress if we stopped amalgamating a complicated and multi-dimensional issue into one, and treated the various sub-issues piecemeal, leaving the grand distinction to fall into place (or to fall into disuse) as it may. That may seem boringly familiar, but I would have thought that analytic philosophers would find it of interest.

Science is about understanding the universe, humanities are about understanding our past (generally) and philosophy is about understanding where we, either as individuals or as a larger group, fit into that universe. — Igitur

It would, surely, be more accurate to say the science is about understanding the universe conceived of as a machine, or the universe insofar as mathematics can be applied to it. Philosophy certainly includes how we fit in, but also includes the question how far the scientific project fits in to the universe. Are you assuming that the study of literature and history are essentially philosophical? That's an interesting thought. I think there's a case to be made.

There are discussions that don't aim to answer that question, but I feel as though that particular "Why" is the main reason people try to create or improve philosophies, or feel drawn to it. — Igitur

You may be right. But, surely, in the end, the question why people are drawn to philosophy is empirical.

Formalisms measure regularities of nature. You say (above) regularities of nature are concrete matters of fact. Since formalisms measure regularities of nature, and regularities of nature are concrete matters of fact, formalisms measure concrete matters of fact. — ucarr

No they don't. As I wrote: formalisms ARE USED to measure or describe the regularities of nature (e.g. arithmetic IS USED to count apples in a barrel). — 180 Proof

Are you both sure that the difference between you is not just a question of language. I can't see what is at stake here.

Yes, true; though they still have a correspondence to the same area of reality, which injects redundancy. — Apustimelogist

Well, yes. It is redundancy in one sense, but it has a point, which makes it not entirely redundant. There has to be something that the picture/map have in common, to establish that they are different pictures/maps/models of the same thing. So we seem to be agreed.

If I may, I would like to try another example. When your flat-pack arrives, it is not a bookcase, but a set of parts for a bookcase. We can lay them all out on the floor, count them, check them. Now, what needs to happen to make it a bookcase? All the parts are there. Nothing needs to be added. What’s the problem? Easy, the parts need to be put together as designed.

So the list of parts of the bookcase is complete, but leaves out something. But it doesn't leave out another part. It leaves out the design. The design is not a physical object; it is an abstract object - it belongs in a different category from the parts. Yet it is not less basic or more fundamental than the parts.

Well I don't want to take this example too seriously but surely these distinctions are more or less at the same scale or granularity? At the same time, the mapping of a whole grain is mapping to the same part of reality as mappings to different parts of the grain so there is a redundancy. The parts mapping is mapping to the same part only it makes more distinctions, more information. The coarser grain mapping ignores distinctions that exist. — Apustimelogist

Yes, but the coarser grain mapping enables you to supply what the fine grain mapping leaves out - the whole that the fine grain mapping can't present. Think seeing the wood (coarse grain) and seeing the trees (fine grain). The two mappings are interdependent and both necessary for a comprehensive understanding.

You're trolling me now. — fishfry

Not intentionally. If I've upset you, I apologize.

You could post something on the public area, at least that way we'd get some fresh meat once in a while. — fishfry

Yes, that would be good. But maybe other people prefer something noisier - more exciting.

I used to be a liberal too. Something happened over the years. — fishfry

That's what happened to me.

My vote literally doesn't count. — fishfry

True. I still vote, but my expectations are low. It's more of a ritual than anything real. And yet...

Now we're into building regulations? — fishfry

It's just that I'm so angry about the total mess and the expectation it won't be solved.

I can sum it up in a cartoon I saw the other day. — fishfry

Here's my most depressing thought. Tyranny and freedom are not opposites. What's tyranny to you is freedom to someone else. What's freedom to you is tyranny to someone else. Oversimplified, I know - there's always compromise. Which is not a solution, just a way of making do.

You are justifying evil by saying there's always been evil. Fine. — fishfry

NOT justifying, I'm trying to work out how to live with omnipresent evil, without indulging in cop-out evasions - blaming Government or Capital or Original Sin. I think I'm closest to Voltaire's "Candide"? Or Kurt Vonnegut's "so it goes" - or perhaps Hamlet's "The rest is silence". Yet obstinately and stupidly, life goes on. It's better than the alternative, I suppose.

I haven't anything better to do!! LOL. Am I leaving too soon for your taste? I don't mean to be short. I just haven't got anything else to say. — fishfry

You've been saying that for a while now. I'm in the same boat. So now we're talking about the fact that neither of us has anything else to say. Absurd, and yet, here we are.