I think of in terms of ‘the collective mind’ - as members of a species, language group and culture then we inhabit a shared reality. Is there a need to posit a mind other than that? — Wayfarer

I think the issue is putting our bodies somewhere. For instance, are our eyes actually what makes possible our seeing ? Or does some divine mind switch off vision when the eyes are injured, so that both are causes.

I say that we have bodies of flesh in a shared world. But I'd also say that we can't make good metaphysical sense of pure mind or pure matter. Instead we have a rough continuum for practical purposes. This or that is closer to mind than matter or the reverse. Consider the real number system as a metaphor, which does not include the infinities often used to represent it. $\Bbb R = (-\infty, \infty).$. (Math itself would be about as mental as we could make things, perhaps along with raw feels.)

And if evolution is nothing more than our perceptions, then it didn't really occur. — Banno

Yes. And the whole notion of perception seems to take organisms with sense organs in a world for granted. Yet this is part of the 'illusion' or 'interface' being used to justify that interface.

Perception also implicitly invokes the self, but the self-other-world distinction depends on the taking interface for truth. Those who think they assume the minimum assume the holy trinity of self-world-others without realizing it.

If everything I experience is eventually forgotten and everything I accomplish is eventually gone, then what is the point of my life? If I find religion’s answers unconvincing, the question may lead me to philosophy. — Art48

I think it's a great hypothesis. The fear of God Time is the beginning of wisdom philosophy.

I remember letting go of God and afterlife at about age 18. Life becomes a dream, a rollercoaster ride.

People work hard and go to college to be this or that honored and wellpaid whatnot, and in general we connect intelligence with prudence and the maximization of long term reward. But our anticipating mind is 'shattered' as it looks too far forward. Is a brief span superior to the long span ? Does not such an assumption convert time into space ? Or time into money ? Death makes havoc of all our certainties, or something like that.

I'll admit to being theatrical and indulgent if you'll admit to being condescending and pompous. — T Clark

I will admit to that, just to be clear. But I sincerely suspect that much of the thrill and joy of philosophy is in the sense it gives us of being elevated. Consider Plato's Cave myth. Consider conspiracy theory in general. Its allure is (seemingly, partially) that those who embrace it see better than those 'lesser' souls who are still caught up in illusion.

Why would a person seek to be more rational, more educated, if this wasn't understood as an improvement, a development, an enrichment ?

I very much appreciate those who make this place possible understanding and forgiving my eccentric comings and goings. It really was as simple as me getting addicted to this site and putting off real world responsibilities, and then being too proud / embarrassed to ask others to manage this for me. In my own view, it was a small thing, since I wasn't (in my eyes) violating the spirit of the rules but only treading equivocally on its letter. But I should have been more sensitive to how it would look to others and have taken more trouble to color very definitely within the lines.

I'm glad. Welcome back green flag. — T Clark

Thanks, T. It's beautiful to see such kindness despite our temporary clash of ideas right before I was banned.

It's a great question to me :) -- but hopefully the above can put the question of consciousness aside as another confusing question rather than an avenue for understanding the confusing question of the sign. — Moliere

For me the questions are entangled. A relatively innocent early version of philosophy (like lots of us start with?) tries to do 'math with words' about God, truth, knowledge, etc. , without noticing much that it takes these signs for granted, as if these words are reliable labels for definite independent entities. Our own role in the creation or maintenance of reality is unnoticed. We are so eager to prove P that we don't notice that we only barely know what we mean by P. We've gone deaf (a metaphor). Call it the forgetfulness of meaning, but maybe it's basically the same as the forgetfulness of being (of the 'hard problem' of the meaning of being ). These token thing begin to sings.

Max Weber, to whom we owe the concept of disenchantment in sociology, had the dialectical idea of re-enchantment via disenchantment, identifiable in a society marked by "incommensurable value-fragmentation into a plurality of alternative metanarratives" (SEP) in the vacuum left by the disenchantment of the Enlightenment.

The fact that these narratives are incommensurable somewhat goes against the thought that because there are so many of them competing, they cannot be incontestable. With the fragmentation of values, ostensibly competing narratives do not compete rationally, judged by the same standards and according to the same logic. They are a matter of personal taste, and nobody can argue you out of what you like. — Jamal

:up:

I like to think of this (esp. in the USA ?) as the meta-religion that governs religion proper. That they are a matter of personal taste is not itself a matter of personal taste. It's the condition for the possibility of pluralism, a sort of matrix of self and freedom in which options hang like ornaments. Of course this is fragile.

Thus a disrespect for power does not lead, as in the days of the socialist movement, to an actual challenge to that power, or even a notion that it could be challenged. Isn't this what we saw in fascism, and more recently in the Trump presidency: the desire instead to see the replacement of "generic bores" with "powerful, awe-inspiring and even terrible individuals"? — Jamal

:up:

are people today enchanted by magic spells? — Jamal

It'd be odd if we weren't. Are magic spells heroic tales ? The return of the king ? The return of the hero who goes under to return ? You left out art (strictly speaking, taste) which can be thought of as one way the ruling class mystifies itself and others. Have you seen Bourdieu's Distinction ? How does an elevated soul interpret the world ? With taste, which may float very high indeed above a world enjoyed as spectacle. Bordieu himself floats even higher, looking down on all this looking down, suggesting tacitly (to me Elvis-suspicious elevated mind) that philosophers too manifest Taste. For they bathe more often even than the soldiers.

Perhaps philosophy 'is' not-necessarily-false conspiracy theory. Whose narrative is most inclusive and plausible ? Whose narrative, probably by incorporating rivals, affords a sustainable enchantment ? Self-devouring criticism (us) is the last god, the last hero. (?) Doesn't 'Taste' come back in now ? The theories are tales of heroes and dragons. Nuanced blah blah blah puts us to sleep, can't cut through the noise of the 'clickbait industrial complex.'

I agree that the potential scope for knowledge within the bounds of human experience and judgement is infinite, but it doesn't follow that there is not also an infinity that will forever remain closed to us. — Janus

It's fine. A harmless idea. But to me it's semantically empty. It's a pile of negations. As a work of art, as an image of God, it is at least interesting enough to have kept people talking about it for centuries.

He's assuming you are a creature similar to him - a fellow human being. And since it is true that both are human beings, he feels confident in saying that his "narrow compass" will also apply to others. — Manuel

What justifies that assumption ? How is he seeing around his own wall of perceptions ?

For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. — Manuel

He is interpreting beingthere in terms of perceptions given to a self. This is not starting without presuppositions. This is picking up a tradition uncritically. This is taken inherited frames as if they are the deepest and truest necessity.

If there is no "inner consciousness" (and I don't know of an alternative), — Manuel

That's why I recommend Brandom. The self is (among other things) a locus of responsibility, a normative entity.

Is it obvious that there is only one self in each body ? Why isn't it "We think, therefore we are" ? I am not saying that people are plural. I am saying that the 'virtuality' of the self (as a way of being a body and a social institution) is probably singular because it's easier to manage a single body in a social structure with a single set of statements to be responsible for. Imagine two souls in one body. The weekend soul only remembers what happens on the weekends and is wildly different than the other. Even here we'd track the weekend soul and only put him in jail on the weekends if he was bad. Responsibility / 'scorekeeping' is maybe the essence.

All what layers? There is an imaginable logical distinction between the world as experienced and the world in itself is all. Would you want to claim that there is nothing beyond what can possibly be experienced and articulated by us? — Janus

The way I'd try to solve that kind of problem is to say that the world seems to offer such richness and complexity that we'll never run out of novelty. I find it implausible (unimaginable?) that humans will ever be a loss for further inquiry. So the world is infinite, one might say.

an influence which can legitimately be seen as largely unfortunate in my view. — Janus

To me that's hilarious. But Wittgenstein's work doesn't need me to keep it in circulation. So go to it. Take the old fraud down a notch.

This reads like an appeal to authority. I don't think Wittgenstein's contributions to philosophy can be compared to Shakespeare's contributions to poetry and theatre or Cantor's contributions to mathematics. — Janus

I think I got you on this one. Who ever said Shakespeare or Cantor were great? That sounds like an appeal to authority to me. Obviously I'm being playful here. And just as obviously I was implying that I find Wittgenstein to be great in his field. That you don't so value him is no surprise, given your metaphysical position, as far as I can make it out. I don't expect Christians to like Dawkins and I don't expect Cartesians / Humeans/ Kantians /etc to like Wittgenstein.

[quote="Manuel a tree, is just as much a construction as an "I" or almost anything else. If you want to be radical about it (as some are), you can say that there only are fields of energy, or strings.[/quote]

Actually I couldn't say that, because (if there are only fields/strings), then I am not here to say it.

I oppose the constructive approach. I claim that it makes much more sense to start with the unity of the lifeworld, including selves and language and norms of rational discussion all together in the one real world (as parts of that world). This unity can be broken up by various abstractions. But perceptions make no sense as a building block.

I ought to be patient with you, because you are talking to a projection. Seriously, though, your theatrics are misdirected. I'm glad for my friend and his happiness. We just lost touch. Such is life. It's just how the world works.

I don't owe you this clarification. It's a belatedly tolerant response to your indulgent misreading.

This is startlingly condescending. I think it shows your lack of respect for people who, apparently unlike you, find satisfaction in daily life, family, work, and other aspects of our humanity. — T Clark

Take it easy, O defender of the common man. I too work for the general weal. I will give thee tools for to maximize the removal of coal and its transformation into rosycheeked youths.

That can solve problems. But it's also a way of avoiding them — Manuel

:up:

I know what you mean. There are indeed avoidance gimmicks.

But some have taken him to be the solution for all (of most) of the problems in philosophy. It often boils down to, one is using a word incorrectly, hence this word causes your thinking to be wrong. — Manuel

I assure you, FWIW, that I don't truck with solutions so much as being endlessly less wrong, less semantically challenged, less trapped in dead metaphors, ...

I don't deny that there are shallow readings of Wittgenstein.

I can tell that you are well read, and I respect you. So I think we both have seen (maybe in our younger selves even ) the way newish philosophy types ape their heroes or sages. Stealing from psychoanalysis, I call it (positive) transference. It's annoying, but it's probably not skippable. For me (us?) , it's about the ideas, the memes, and not the bins they come in, however handy such bins are in conversation and for the considering how memes can be systematically integrated in ego and therefore (potentially) into the dominant software of the tribe.

Just to remind you:

As I quoted Hume before:

"Let us fix our attention out of ourselves as much as possible; let us chase our imagination to the heavens, or to the utmost limits of the universe; we never really advance a step beyond ourselves, nor can conceive any kind of existence, but those perceptions, which have appeared in that narrow compass."

The fact that we can attribute independent existence to the entities postulated by science is a (reasonable) postulate, subject to further refinement. — Manuel

Hume says we are trapped in a narrow compass, but somehow he can see outside of his narrow compass and determine that I too am trapped in my own narrow compass. Perceptions are seeming understood to be personal (?), but the royal we is used recklessly. He does not even notice the framework of self-transcending rational norms that govern his claims. He assumes the transubjective intelligibly of his language. He assumes the unity of his own voice as a joint unity, a social ego. He speaks about that compass as if from the outside to announce its nature --- that it traps not just him but me and you (who only exist by the grace of conjecture) in a bubble of perceptions.

This might be an ungenerous reading of Hume, but hopefully you see what I'm getting at.

However, I can decide to continue on anyways, because the "reason" (fiction/narrative) is that 'I must do this so that I can make money. Money is this thing to buy the products and services of other people's labor'. However, every one of those conceptualizations and all of that narrative is indeed made up from cultural cues that I have (chosen to?) internalize. — schopenhauer1

Our fear of death and homeless is a 'superstition' you might say. The 'saint' can starve homeless under the bridge. No one interferes. Those who lack the fear of death in 'the impostume of peace' are likely to genetically and memetically recede into the background. Such a pattern does not assert itself, work to get itself replicated. It nibbles on the margins along obscure paraphilias.

Freedom-responsibility is a beautiful ideal. Do people really choose ?

It is something I can freely choose to buy into everyday. — schopenhauer1

This reminds me of Sartre's idea of freedom. Radical responsibility. It has its beauty.

Stay away from this guy. Throw yourself into adventure. — jgill

Zapffe was a climber !

What I'm getting at is that some people can pride themselves on a strange selfhonesty. Contemplating the notion of a hero program might make one cynical, but it's just an aspect of know thyself, right ? In the same way, a person might be honest about the (hopefully relatively) dormant sadism and greed in themselves. This means integrating some uncomfortable truths, living at peace with the fact that we are both beasts and angels, that the enemy, finally seen, turns out to be us. Evil is not externalized but harmonized. Nothing human is alien to me.

It is why we are exiled from the Garden of Eden ("being"). We are always but a virtual self of a self, but never being a self. — schopenhauer1

Yes !

I agree with you that we are fundamentally split or alienated from ourselves, exiled from a Garden we were never in. If we had it at all, it was as an infant whose cry could summon mother, just as God summoned the world with only his voice.

It probably helps us replicate, our angry, restless, lusty curiosity. We hunt for impossible completion. As Becker and Sartre and Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and Hobbes say in their own way, we are a futile passion to be god, a will to life, a will to justice, a will to order, a will to power, a will to assimilate. Call it the will to some everblurry X.

It seems to me that you have both a World and a Programmer who made it. What is the space that contains them both ?

It grants that objects of experience are real, but that their reality is dependent on causes and conditions, and not inherent or intrinsic to them; they are not real 'from their own side' is one way that it is put. — Wayfarer

All I can say is that this is not a wild or strange idea. It's even a mainstream idea. I myself argue that only a unified lifeworld makes sense.

What conditions are required to make philosophy possible ? I ask because the denial of any of these conditions, when presented by a philosopher, is absurd. Suggested answers : a shared world we can be right or wrong about (or at least less wrong about), a language in which we can successfully if not perfectly communicate, and norms for the making and integration of claims into a set of beliefs. Roughly these norms are a second order tradition...a critical, synthetic practice with respect to first-order mythic-metaphysical creativity. The subject is not some radically simple synonym of being. The subject is a locus of responsibility which is kept track of by other such subjects, all of them holding one another to standards.

I totally don't understand this question. — Eugen

How do you determine whether something has consciousness ?

If AI gains eminence we will all find out. — jgill

:up:

Or, if we are lucky, we'll be pets. Maybe some of them will slum and take us for lovers.

Just curious: what dataset were you trained on ? [joking, I will respond more seriously after a walk in the sun]

I haven't said it is a fake world. The real world independent of human experience produces the real world of human experience is how I would characterize it. — Janus

Please forgive the rhetorical mischief.

Still, all these layers are confusing.

Ah, you are a follower or fan of Wittgenstein. Then we will probably disagree. Words get meanings in several ways- it’s context dependent. I don’t see any problem with the idea of a private mental state. — Manuel

Of course I like Wittgenstein. But that's like liking Shakespeare. To me it doesn't make sense as a polemical thing. One disagrees with this or that, but denying the quality altogether ? That'd be bold. Sort of like denying Cantor.

I have heard of him, but have been warned by a very good philosopher - Susan Haack - to steer clear of him. — Manuel

To me that's a reason to read him. I like what I know of Haack, but even smart people develop intellectual allergies.

Besides, what's a thinker but a bag of memes that we can do with as we see fit ? Just as they did to put that bag together in the first place ?

You say that it is misleading or confused somehow to believe in these things? Why? — Manuel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

The motte in this case is the practical use of 'consciousness' and 'inner lives.' It'd be absurd to deny this kind of consciousness. We have and use blurry and imperfect but goodenoughsofar criteria for its presence and absence.

The bailey is the Metaphysical version that gets smuggled in. It's a parasite on the everyday concept. Instead of something like an informal continuum between unreachable negative and positive infinities, as suggested in the motte version, we a Dualism with the bailey version -- which tends to collapse into a confused false monism.

if our perception and understanding of the empirical world were at odds with the underlying real nature of things it seems reasonable to think we would not do well. — Janus

Respectfully, why ? Are you not reasoning from analogy from the fake world to the hidden real world ?

In our fake world, you bump your shins when you walk with your eyes closed.

Consciousness = subjective experience, i.e. the way it is like to be something. — Eugen

What is it like to be a cockroach ? Or a wrench on its first visit to Vienna ?

Perhaps there is a different kind of (non-discursive) fullness in that emptiness. In any case it is a matter of personal predilection, not something that could ever be settled by argument. — Janus

Fair enough.

But there is something apart from, beyond, outside the ambit of, human experience that produces the world of human experience, and we don't and cannot know what it is. This seems incontrovertible to me. — Janus

Isn't it weird though to believe so passionately in something so methodically empty?

In this context, I'd say, against that idea, that the envelope is the letter. We are already in the real world.

The idea of something behind it all is akin to 'pure' matter infinitely hidden from its shadow 'pure' mind.

To me it's easier to say that the world will never cease to surprise us, that it's infinite or something.

I don't see any reason to think that chatbots are conscious. They don't act on their own accord or report caring about anything. They act only in accordance with how the algorithms they are programmed with allow them to act. — Janus

I'm not yet tempted to call them conscious, but I'm not sure I'd call ants conscious. I'd say we are dealing with a continuum and that humans are about to aim their noses at a mirror that'll raise some questions. We older fuckers think it's silly to fall in love with toys. But the youths of 2050 will criminalize talking that way about their synthetic lovers, and this is not quite a joke.

It's not clear what position you are saying has been refuted. — Janus

I consider the idea a 'purely' mental space refuted or shown to be senseless ( via indirect 'proof').

I'm not sure if you're referring to the idea that the empirical world is a collective representation or something else. If the former i would say that it is only within that representation that we can have discursive certainty and truth. — Janus

My position is that we see and touch and describe the world but can still say something wrong about it. The world is not constructed from private images of the world. Appealing initially, it makes no sense upon closer investigation. So how does it stay so popular ? Its tempting feature is perhaps The Given.

I can't be wrong about how things seem to me, right ? But can I not be wrong about the assumption of that framework itself ? That I am an essentially isolated ghost who of course can decide that the shadows of my cave wall probably correspond with something outside my cave ?

You seem to say at times that reality is the overlap of our illusions.

Perhaps I've misunderstood you. Could you correct me and explain what 'consciousness' means for you ? Another question : How do we know it when we see it ?