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  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    you haven't even offered any argument for why you think meaning cannot be divorced from use, but just repeated claims that it's wrong, whatever that might mean.Janus

    I believe I have offered various arguments, and I constantly allude to philosophers who are famous for making just that kind of case.
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    You keep saying that the idea that meaning can be divorced from use is like believing in a flat Earth.Janus

    The analogy is meant to emphasize how initially reasonable Aristotle's assumption is. It's 'obvious.' It's also obvious there are 'more' rational numbers than natural numbers, but that is not the case.
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    Husserl also criticized Descartes for relying on the language of subject and object, which he believed reinforced a dualistic view of the world.Wayfarer

    Exactly ! and Heidegger took this all the way to primordial unity. That's why talking about the 'subject of experience' looks like a Cartesian distortion.

    Yes, I requested one last name change. Our benevolent forum lord smiled upon that request. (Thanks again!) Think of me as the zombie bot version of @green flag.
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    The self as subject of experience is never the object of cognition but that to whom they appear.Wayfarer

    I'm saying : that's not radical enough. The self you can talk about is an object. Yes. But the self you seem to want to talk about, as I see it, is not even a self. Descartes assumed too much. He took the tribal language and its tradition of selfhood for granted. He never questioned whether his monologue was a monologue. The unity of the voice (the givenness of a selfoverhearing discursive self) is difficult but not impossible to question.
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism

    Thanks! I followed the link. I found some weird stuff !

    The human mind is predisposed from early childhood to assume object permanence, to assume that objects have shapes and positions in space even when the objects and space are unperceived. It is reasonable to ask whether this assumption is a genuine insight into the nature of objective reality, or simply a habit that is perhaps useful but not necessarily insightful.

    Does the human mind have object permanence ? Is the nature of objective reality sufficiently fixed or permanent for us to tell the truth about it ? Clearly we know that most objects are fragile, don't last forever. So is a denial of objecthood altogether ? Also, this dude should read Nietzsche. It's not a new idea that cognition tells us lies without which creatures like us could not survive. But one must be careful not to call oneself a liar.

    Evaluating object permanence on evolutionary grounds might seem quixotic, or at least unfair, given that we just noted that evolutionary theory, as it's standardly described, assumes object permanence (e.g., of DNA and the physical bodies of organisms). How then could one possibly use evolutionary theory to test what it assumes to be true?

    However, Richard Dawkins and others have observed that the core of evolution by natural selection is an abstract algorithm with three key components: variation, selection, and retention (Dennett, 1995; Blackmore, 1999). This abstract algorithm constitutes a “universal Darwinism” that need not assume object permanence and can be profitably applied in many contexts beyond biological evolution.


    How can one make sense of variation, selection, and retention without objects ? And it's silly to require that they last foreverandever.

    The argument, roughly, is that those of our predecessors whose perceptions were more veridical had a competitive advantage over those whose perceptions were less veridical. Thus, the genes that coded for more veridical perceptions were more likely to propagate to the next generation. We are, with good probability, the offspring of those who, in each succeeding generation, perceived more truly, and thus we can be confident that our own perceptions are, in the normal case, veridical.

    How can prearticulate perceptions be veridical ? Claims are true or false. I don't think we can say much about animal qualia, so it's a matter of this wavelength of light hitting that retina and what does or does not regularly follow. <frustrated growl>

    When Gerald Edelman claimed, for instance, that “There is now a vast amount of empirical evidence to support the idea that consciousness emerges from the organization and operation of the brain” he assumed that the brain exists when unperceived (Edelman, 2004). When Francis Crick asserted the “astonishing hypothesis” that “You're nothing but a pack of neurons” he assumed that neurons exist when unperceived (Crick, 1994).

    Gee whiz, what can be meant by perception if there are no brains ? I guess immaterial souls ? It's hard to imagine how the soul concept could have been invented if not by intelligent life sharing a world, keeping score, predicting one another, impressing one another, describing one another.
  • Problems studying the Subjective
    it takes a social space for meaning to tangoBaden

    :up:

    I think the temptation is to think that we all meet in our depths, in some kind of shared immaterial-internal space, where the same 'pure' pain ('under' the concept) is right there for the labelling. Even if one denies this shared internal immaterial space, Aristotle's assumption, stressed by Derrida, seems equivalent: Just as all men have not the same writing, so all men have not the same speech sounds, but the mental experiences, which these directly symbolize, are the same for all, as also are those things of which our experiences are the images.

    It seems more plausible to me that we make such an assumption is a 'logical illusion' that's based on just how good we've become at organizing cooperation with public concepts.
  • Reasons to call Jesus God
    This sounds like Paul. It claims that the Law and the laws of Kosher are not important. Jesus' disciples split with him over this. They reached a compromise in which Paul would go away and preach elsewhere.Fooloso4

    Actually, it's put in the mouth of the Jesus. I do remember talk of this stuff by Paul as well, and maybe that affected what got written ? Christ is the end of the law. I find that moving.
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism


    This is not unlike Aristotle's articulation of 'common sense' that I quoted in another thread. We are shrewder now. We have asked after the nature of this 'he.' And you more than others have surely studied thinkers who doubted this traditional vision of the self ?

    The tautological unity of the self, the singularity of the ghost presumed to steer the machine, is a worthy theme.
  • Pop Philosophy and Its Usefulness
    It serves them on both ends, paying students who become exploited as TA's and adjuncts.Fooloso4

    :up:
  • Neuroscience is of no relevance to the problem of consciousness
    I don't know what you mean by "logical sloppiness"Janus

    It's the motte/bailey point I made earlier. Ordinary mentalistic talk is fine, but something weird happens as it's made absolute. An 'impossible' semantics gets taken for granted, all the way back to Aristotle, who just took it as obvious (like the flatness of the earth) and therefore gave no justification. This is what my 'being of meaning' thread is about. But it's also what some of Witt's work is about. Did you ever look into the lesser known blue and brown books ? I think they are great. But for you or anyone, here's a link (it used to be hard to find online):
    https://www.wittgensteinproject.org/w/index.php?title=Blue_Book

    Can you give some more detail about how you think a Cartesian bias could transform the problem of the meaning of being into the Hard Problem?Janus

    Sure. What does it mean to say 'something is here' or 'something is there.' What is it to posit indeterminately ? If I take something like the unity of the ego for granted (as Descartes seemed to), then I might call the 'thereness' of the candle in my field of vision 'absolute.' Maybe it's an hallucination, but seeming is being in this case. Something is given. Es gibt. The 'feeling' of its warmth is there beneath or above the public concept of warmth. The orangeness of its flame is not just a token in a system of differences. This pure orangeness, that which exceeds the sign, overflows conceptuality altogether. It is there. But I cannot refer to it except negatively as that to which I cannot refer.

    So this looks like the problem of consciousness. But the Cartesian ego is taken for granted. Methodological solipsism and its endlessly dubious seems-to-me is taken for granted, because the nature of that 'me' is taken for granted. The unity of the voice that doubts and hears itself doubting at the same time is taken for granted. If you think of existence as being-in-a-world ('prior' to subject and object), then you can talk about (or try to talk about, without speaking nonsense) the same transconceptual or subconceptual thereness without subjectivistic bias, without the sediment or plaque of the Cartesian tradition. Back to Parmenides ?
  • Neuroscience is of no relevance to the problem of consciousness
    I imagine you mean that we are fated to be held to all of our acts in relation to our (one) self. So when you say we “can’t disagree with ourselves” you are underlining that who we are is subject to all our acts in our, or others’, desire to put us together as a coherent self.Antony Nickles
    :up:

    Yes, one is one around here. Our deepest piece of software is perhaps this enacted 'myth' or 'software' of the ghost (singular) at the controls of the machine. One speaks a monologue. One is held responsible. One does not eat salad with that fork. One does not touch silly in the parking lot.

    Brandom is great on the conceptual aspect of this (we can't disagree with ourselves, or, because we can't help doing so, we must try to disagree with ourselves less.)
    The responsibility one undertakes by applying a concept is a task responsibility: a commitment to do something. On the theoretical side, what one is committed to doing, what one becomes liable to assessment as to one’s success at doing, is integrating one’s judgments into a whole that exhibits a distinctive kind of unity: the synthetic unity of apperception. It is a systematic, rational unity, dynamically created and sustained by drawing inferential consequences from and finding reasons for one’s judgments, and rejecting commitments incompatible with those one has undertaken. Apperceiving, the characteristically sapient sort of awareness, is discursive (that is, conceptual) awareness. For it consists in integrating judgments into a unity structured by relations of what judgments provide reasons for and against what others.
  • Neuroscience is of no relevance to the problem of consciousness
    I agree; it is weird that people seem to be able to convince themselves on some imagined "objective" basis, that their inner experience is illusory. I think it's also kind of sad.Janus

    That's a misunderstanding though, of my own case anyhow. The point is an awareness of a certain logical sloppiness that's difficult to point out or to have pointed out. I suspect that one way to get there is to try very hard for a final clarity and come up against the limit, which isn't a definite limit but more like a vision of fog. I think this is something of what Heidegger was trying for with 'the forgetfulness of being.'

    A Cartesian bias might be transforming the problem of the meaning of being into the hard problem of consciousness.
  • Neuroscience is of no relevance to the problem of consciousness
    I guess the “costume” would be the hats we wear in pushing an agenda (of predetermined universality, overlooking our ordinary criteria).Antony Nickles

    Becker's The Denial of Death quotes William James on the world being (existentially) a stage for heroism. What I'm aiming at is something like the ego-ideal, that which one prides oneself on. G B Shaw joked that a man was lucky to have even one 'inflexible point of honor.' If I pretend to philosophy (wear that title proudly), then I'd better face up to criticism of my ideas. I'd better make a case. In some other age, a man of a different kind of honor might have to fight a duel. Or refuse to bow to a statue of Nero and be fed to lions. A person's hero myth is roughly the thing they can't easily put in question. It's close to what Rorty calls a 'final vocabulary.'
  • Neuroscience is of no relevance to the problem of consciousness
    My claim would be that both philosophers and scientists are prone to the desire for certainty.Antony Nickles
    :up:
    That sounds right. We might make exceptions for those who identity more with creativity and courage even in these fields. Where do we fit in ? How certain would you like to be about your theory about the desire for certainty ? How certain am I about the appropriateness of my 'hero myth' approach ?
    Perhaps it's not just certainty but just as much (and very related) timelessness. 'True' knowledge is imperishable. So we philosophers might say. Thinkers try to find the 'deepest' structure they can, skeleton rather than flesh, perhaps (for instance) the atemporal shape of all possible experience.
  • Pop Philosophy and Its Usefulness

    It's wise to be grateful, so it was good that you reminded us of the good. :smile:
  • Problems studying the Subjective
    if you have a locked box that I can’t look inside, the phrase “the hidden contents of your box” refers to the hidden contents of your box.Michael

    To me the problem is we don't have a semantic grip here. It's not that I don't relate to what you and those in your camp are saying. I get it. But I've been convinced by certain books to rethink what seemed so obvious back then. We 'are' our past in the sense of taking for common sense now what was once an invention.
  • Problems studying the Subjective
    It is as if you think what's in your box somehow can define what's in everyone else's box.Baden
    :up:

    This might be the unjustified (yet automatic?) assumption that causes all the trouble.

    The blind can talk about things just fine.Michael

    But doesn't the fact that the bornblind can talk about color support the thesis that meaning is public ? They don't need an 'internal' referent for 'red.' Meaning looks to be 'out there' with stopsigns and handshakes.
  • Pop Philosophy and Its Usefulness

    :up:
    I feel you. I love my university's library, and I have benefited very much from many scholars who work for universities.
  • Reasons to call Jesus God
    I'm not sure how much of this is interpretation/projection after the fact (though I can find some quotes to support it), but I tend to understand a purer strain of Christianity in terms of the internalization of virtue.

    Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man. https://biblehub.com/matthew/15-11.htm

    You can break yesterday's food taboos, but your heart must be pure, as manifested here by what you say. But the essence is behind or beyond every external demonstration,

    For they are actions that a man might play;
    But I have that within which passes show,
    These but the trappings and the suits of woe virtue

    https://www.enotes.com/shakespeare-quotes/that-within-which-passes-show

    Was this move from Jesus to Hamlet necessary ? Did Christianity contribute to a tradition of radical interiority? Infinite space in a nutshell ? God is love. God is a feeling. God becomes indeterminate. Supremely immaterial. Transconceptual. Music.

    The true, albeit hidden, sense of the saying “Feeling is the organ of the divine” is that feeling is the noblest, the most excellent, i.e., the divine, in man. How could you perceive the divine through feeling if feeling itself were not divine? The divine can be known only through that which is itself divine – “God can be known only through himself.” The Divine Being perceived by feeling is in reality nothing but the being of feeling itself which is enraptured and fascinated by itself – feeling that is blissful in itself, intoxicated with joy.

    This goes to explain that where feeling is made the organ of the infinite, the subjective essence of religion, the object of religion loses its objective value.
    — Feuerbach
    https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/essence/ec01_1.htm

  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    I’d say that my first person experience is the most self-evident thing there is to me.Michael
    Is this synthetic or analytic knowledge ? A discovery or a paraphrase ? What is the nature of this self-given self ? Is this person itself given ? Are you a 'pure witness' before which there stands an empirical ego which is transparent to itself ?

    Whence the unity of the voice that speaks I can doubt therefore I am. What is this 'I'? Why not an 'it' or a 'we' ? What does it mean to say 'I am' or 'there is something'?
  • Neuroscience is of no relevance to the problem of consciousness
    to try to have control over who we think we are and what we say—philosophy created the idea of "consciousness"Antony Nickles

    Taking "me" as given and special and building our understanding around that desire is an attempt to remove the unpredictability of people, the vagueries of communication, and our ongoing responsibility to make ourselves intelligible and to respond to the claims of others.Antony Nickles

    :up:

    Certainty might be the peculiar obsession of those who wear an associated costume. Others might prioritize taste or courage or kindness. But responsibility, a synonym of the freedom to which we are condemned, thrown as we have been into this civilization, is the masterword here.

    A self is something like the training of a body into a [temporally stretched] thing that can make and keep promises, generate and modify and criticize claims about the world it shares with other such bodies. The unity of the self (which is tautological for our kind) is the expected (ideal) coherence of all its sayings and doings. We all keep score, like a sloppy version of blockchain. You can disagree with me, within limits set by the tribe, but you (as a [singular] you) can't disagree with yourself, for that way madness lies.
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    The thing that provides the very foundations of knowing, seems to be itself elusive.schopenhauer1
    :up:

    'We don't know what we are talking about.' Of course we know practically well enough, but it's like fog that we mostly don't notice is fog. We repeat the party line. We ourselves are bots, who mostly don't notice it, spitting out a blend of what we've gathered -- sure that we 'really exist,' without being able to say what that means.
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    this would raise questions about what is meant by "feeling" in this context and how it is related to the physical processes that occur in the universe.schopenhauer1

    :up:

    Yes. And if someone methodically designates an elusive entity that cannot, even in principle, be plugged into the rest of the causal nexus, then it's no surprise that science can't help us with it. It's been defined as exactly what concepts can't address.
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    Certainly a logical possibility. Maybe not a physical possibility. It could be that first-person experiences are an unavoidable, deterministic consequence of a sufficiently advanced responsive organism.Michael

    How could something like this be checked or falsified ? What kinds of things do we in fact take for possessors of 'firstperson experience'? Talking primates like ourselves. Soon though we'll have the situation present in Her. The trans controversy today may be nothing compared to the synth controversy tomorrow. The coming androids, ambiguous digital mirrors, as they are given more of a body, including sense organs, are going to freak us the fuck out.

    If p-zombies are a logical possibility, then there's something wrong with firstperson experience as a metaphysical concept. It's as elusive as the meaning of being. The 'hard problem' might be semantic, a thrust against language. Any given objective criterion for Experience or Consciousness 'feels wrong.'
  • Neuroscience is of no relevance to the problem of consciousness
    This language is only possible on account of the commonalities of private experience as I see it.Janus
    I agree with you about using language to express thoughts and feelings that are otherwise hard to express. On the point quoted though, I think we can just as easily explain in the other direction. We can think of mentalistic language evolving within a larger system of signs exchanged by cooperative and competitive organisms. For instance, it's more efficient to be lenient on those who harm the tribe 'accidentally.'
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    I’m saying that the colours they see and talk about are private to them.Michael

    One problem with this privacy talk is the implied possibility of a p-zombie. You insist that some locked door exist which can never be opened, and then you tell me what's behind it.

    Your justification is that you seem to find yourself in such a locked room ? If AI gets good at reading your mind, will that change your mind ? Or will there always be an ineffable 'surplus' ? As if the public sign system is 'bathed' in Being which cannot be truly named ?
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    , how would one know that the posited creature was seeing green, and not seeing quantity? The critter would say "the water is green" when there is the right amount of water, and "the water is red" otherwise; so a better account would be simply that for the critter, "red" means the wrong quantity of water in that creature's language, while "green" just means "the right quantity of water". That is, one cannot divorce the meaning from the use.Banno

    :up:

    Right. And note what seems to the unquestioned dominance of the 'label' metaphor. 'Green' is thought of as labeling some immaterial Experience. This is flat earth semantics, in that makes sense at first but turns out to be more wrong than right.

    More generally, it looks like the rhetorical crowbar of fancy math is used against the boundary of science and metaphysics / religion. The flight from death looks to be a motive, and the theory seems to try to make belief in an afterlife more respectable among 'intellectuals.'


    ***
    I want a scientific spirituality in which we begin to explore a world beyond space and time. But we do it with mathematically precise models, and we start to address the big questions about why are we here and what is human consciousness about? Where did it come from? What's the meaning of life? And so forth. Topics that scientists have in many cases said we don’t need to address. But in fact, they did address them. From the physicalist framework, the answer was, there is no life after death. There is no deep meaning to life, because once your brain dissolves, that's it. And so they really did have a theory of life and transcendence: there is no such thing, there is no transcendence. But now all sorts of possibilities open up for exploration. And I'm pretty excited about it. So science and spirituality, I think, could really start to collaborate. But scientists have to let go of spacetime and spiritual traditions have to let go of dogmatism. Not easy.

    https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/consciousness-self-organization-and-neuroscience/201912/what-is-reality-interview-donald

    Scientists have to let go of spacetime ?
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    I wonder where? What a waste of time.jgill

    :up:

    Right. To me this looks like a metaphysical interpretation of QM. One can be more informal in an interview, but he's being hilariously reckless.
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    He's playing on the word "real".Banno

    :up:

    He seems to be making quite a few of the classic mistakes.
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    He can only reach a much less impressive conclusion, one that will not appeal to the boys quite so much.Banno

    :up:

    I don't like the metaphysical wrapping paper, but it's probably cool to study some of this on the level of detail. I've programmed worlds with little creatures myself.

    Suppose in reality there’s a resource, like water, and you can quantify how much of it there is in an objective order — very little water, medium amount of water, a lot of water. Now suppose your fitness function is linear, so a little water gives you a little fitness, medium water gives you medium fitness, and lots of water gives you lots of fitness — in that case, the organism that sees the truth about the water in the world can win, but only because the fitness function happens to align with the true structure in reality. Generically, in the real world, that will never be the case. Something much more natural is a bell curve — say, too little water you die of thirst, but too much water you drown, and only somewhere in between is good for survival. Now the fitness function doesn’t match the structure in the real world. And that’s enough to send truth to extinction. For example, an organism tuned to fitness might see small and large quantities of some resource as, say, red, to indicate low fitness, whereas they might see intermediate quantities as green, to indicate high fitness. Its perceptions will be tuned to fitness, but not to truth. It won’t see any distinction between small and large — it only sees red — even though such a distinction exists in reality.

    Perceptions aren't (typically understood as ) judgments. Concepts aren't being applied.What would it mean for them to be tuned to truth ? A one-one function from colors to types of objects ? That'd be a silly expectation. This looks like all kinds of tacit belief interpretation projection on eyes without mouths or even discursive minds.
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    I recon one could give a decent defence of scientific realism as an outcome of instrumentalism; where realism is just holding that sentences about electrons are either true or false. Might think on that a bit.Banno

    :up:

    I happened on a strong paper once that minimized the difference. I'd be glad to hear what you come up with.
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    For that matter - is the Interface Theory of Perception falsifiable, in Popper's sense. It's hard to see how any empirical facts could be used to falsify a theory about the nature of empirical cognition.Wayfarer

    It seems like a metaphysics and therefore subject to other tests, like consistency and meaningfulness. Both criteria are entangled and difficult, though, since new concepts/metaphors basically change the rules as they are introduced.
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    And yet, if the snake bites, you die. So "The snakebite is poisonous" is true even if the snake is not real? How's that?Banno

    He made some interesting and plausible points about perceiving quantities of water that might be worth something. But it's all dressed up in bad metaphysics. As you imply, what hurts us is real for that reason. I know you hate pragmatism, but it is inoculation against stuff like this.
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    Hoffman :

    The idea that what we’re doing is measuring publicly accessible objects, the idea that objectivity results from the fact that you and I can measure the same object in the exact same situation and get the same results — it’s very clear from quantum mechanics that that idea has to go. Physics tells us that there are no public physical objects. So what’s going on? Here’s how I think about it. I can talk to you about my headache and believe that I am communicating effectively with you, because you’ve had your own headaches. The same thing is true as apples and the moon and the sun and the universe. Just like you have your own headache, you have your own moon. But I assume it’s relevantly similar to mine. That’s an assumption that could be false, but that’s the source of my communication, and that’s the best we can do in terms of public physical objects and objective science.

    The first bolded claim seems bold indeed. Above there is talk of measurement, presumably using publicly accessible objects : measuring devices.

    The second bolded claim is common enough in philosophy but a favorite target of criticism since the 20th century. Like the theory the earth is flat. Commonsense until you look closely.
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    Boring, maybe, but also pretty decisive.Banno

    Maybe someone could call electrons useful fictions if they left ordinary stuff like microwaves alone. Personally I go with Popper's critical realism or something like that. But I understand why Mach was reluctant to embrace atomism. But what's the difference between instrumentalism and just entities as part of theories that might be falsified / modified ?
  • Neuroscience is of no relevance to the problem of consciousness
    I know my "box' contains something, and I assume that you know yours does, even though I cannot know that for sure. So, there is private experience, and we all know that, because we can entertain thoughts and feelings that others cannot know about.Janus

    In the ordinary way of speaking, I basically agree. That's what makes this issue so tough to discuss. Our mentalistic language of private experience evolved because it was and is useful. So on that usual and undeniably useful level, I agree.

    But when I put my technical-metaphysical hat on, I emphasize how I think this mentalistic language obscures how meaning works between cooperative and competitive bodies on the surface of a planet. As I see it, it's an accidental motte-bailey blending. But it has very little practical significance.
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    OK, so he doesn't believe in brains ?

    Neurons, brains, space … these are just symbols we use, they’re not real. It’s not that there’s a classical brain that does some quantum magic. It’s that there’s no brain! Quantum mechanics says that classical objects — including brains — don’t exist. So this is a far more radical claim about the nature of reality and does not involve the brain pulling off some tricky quantum computation. So even Penrose hasn’t taken it far enough. But most of us, you know, we’re born realists. We’re born physicalists. This is a really, really hard one to let go of.
    ...
    The formal theory of conscious agents I’ve been developing is computationally universal — in that sense, it’s a machine theory. And it’s because the theory is computationally universal that I can get all of cognitive science and neural networks back out of it. Nevertheless, for now I don’t think we are machines — in part because I distinguish between the mathematical representation and the thing being represented. As a conscious realist, I am postulating conscious experiences as ontological primitives, the most basic ingredients of the world. I’m claiming that experiences are the real coin of the realm. The experiences of everyday life — my real feeling of a headache, my real taste of chocolate — that really is the ultimate nature of reality.

    So he makes most real precisely what is typically understood as most scientifically elusive ? The ghost in the machine ! Nothing else ever. How almost true it sometimes almost rings. His headache, his enjoyment of chocolate. This is a baby's understanding of reality, the coin of the nursery.
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    Here's a piece of an interview w/ Hoffman found here : https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-evolutionary-argument-against-reality-20160421/

    Q : So everything we see is one big illusion?
    A : We’ve been shaped to have perceptions that keep us alive, so we have to take them seriously. If I see something that I think of as a snake, I don’t pick it up. If I see a train, I don’t step in front of it. I’ve evolved these symbols to keep me alive, so I have to take them seriously. But it’s a logical flaw to think that if we have to take it seriously, we also have to take it literally.

    Q: If snakes aren’t snakes and trains aren’t trains, what are they?
    A : Snakes and trains, like the particles of physics, have no objective, observer-independent features. The snake I see is a description created by my sensory system to inform me of the fitness consequences of my actions. Evolution shapes acceptable solutions, not optimal ones. A snake is an acceptable solution to the problem of telling me how to act in a situation. My snakes and trains are my mental representations; your snakes and trains are your mental representations.

    **************************
    Why aren't our sensory systems also lacking objective, independent features ? Why is my nose more real than the fart it smells ? Why isn't my skull a 'mental representation' ? But that crashes the whole system ! Brains are the dream of brains are the dream of brains... The notion of the mental depends on seeing the outside of an organism with sense organs in an environment with us. I model its awareness for solid, practical reasons (it might eat me or I it.) This same case can be made against all reductions of everything to mentality or perception or sensation. Such claims seem to need a skull in an actual ('non-mental') world somewhere or another.

    We can also question just how significant the difference is between taking something 'seriously' as opposed to 'literally' (akin to instrumentalism versus realism, which turns out to be a sort of boring issue).
  • Fear of Death
    I found that essay very moving.Tom Storm
    :up:
    I'm glad you reminded me of it.



    PMN is beautifully written. CIS is maybe even better, because more existential and less technical. The essays tend to be great too. I just happened on Rorty about 9 years ago at the public library and found him terribly readable. So I've read most of his work and a sociological biography. Here's a snippet and a link to one of the last essays:
    I now wish that I had spent somewhat more of my life with verse. This is not because I fear having missed out on truths that are incapable of statement in prose. There are no such truths; there is nothing about death that Swinburne and Landor knew but Epicurus and Heidegger failed to grasp. Rather, it is because I would have lived more fully if I had been able to rattle off more old chestnuts – just as I would have if I had made more close friends. — Rorty

    https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/68949/the-fire-of-life