That position doesn't make sense to me. If what we see is an hallucination or other phantasm, then our eyes must be, also
— Patterner

If you're at the Overlook Hotel and you see people who shouldn't be there, you should question whether you're hallucinating. — frank

I'm not suggesting there is no such thing as hallucination. I'm saying the thought that reality is of a certain nature, but we hallucinate it is of a different nature, and we hallucinate sense organs to perceive that hallucinated reality, doesn't make sense to me.

While I disagree with much of your thinking, I agree with your thought about epiphenomenalism being wrong Here's an article I like along those lines.

You'll get a pushback against "you know it is real because you can see it" from the idealists and solipsists, who will claim that it might be an hallucination or other phantasm. — Banno

That position doesn't make sense to me. If what we see is an hallucination or other phantasm, then our eyes must be, also. Hallucinatory eyes hallucinate the sight of a hallucinatory reality. If reality's nature is not such that eyes can give us valid information about it, then I would expect reality to have evolved some other system to do so.

Why would you feel the need to represent things that you already observe and if some reader/listener doesn't exist yet? The whole point of representing things in the world is to communicate with others. If there are no others, then why would you feel the need to represent things - for who, or for what purpose? — Harry Hindu

Surely, most writing is done to communicate with the living. Mailing letters to people. Leaving notes for people. Emailing people.

People often write for posterity, though. Sometimes to pass on knowledge to later generations, even if the living can also use it. Novels are not usually written for a specific person, even if dedicated to someone specific. These days, the living can read a novel, and authors can make a lot of money because of it. But that's not why people wrote them centuries ago.

Sometimes people write with no intention of anyone reading it.

But I would think most writing is too communicate with other living people.

I've only made a few posts, always saying the letters represent the sounds of words, and the written words represent spoken words. Not sure how I've moved the goalposts. Certainly not my intention. I suspect we are talking about different things. Let me try putting it this way...

Suppose there was no written language. And let's say the idea occurred to me. Why can't we represent the things we talk about visually, instead of audibly? No alphabets exist. How would I go about it? It's possible I would make symbols that represent the things I want to communicate to the reader (not that the word "reader" would exist yet). Simple drawings when possible. Likely also many symbols whose resemblance to what they are supposed to represent is not always terribly obvious.

These drawings would not have anything to do with the spoken words that mean the same things. They are an entirely unrelated representation of the same thing being communicated. Just as the English and Japanese words for "sand" are unrelated to each other, but mean the same thing. Looking at my hypothetical symbol for sand would not give any information about the spoken word. There would be no way of knowing what language the inventor of the symbol speaks, or even that the writer, or writer's culture, speaks any language at all.

Our writing is very different from that scenario. It was intended to represent the spoken words. Sure, so we could communicate visually the things we were communicating audibly. But the approach was entirely different. I took a year of German in college. I remember very few words. But the written language is very phonetic, and I remember the rules of how to pronounce what I see, despite not knowing the meaning. And that was the goal. Of course, there would be no point in written language if it didn't let us communicate the things it and its spoken language are not. But it does so by representing the spoken language. It is useless without knowledge of three spoken languages. At least in my hypothetical scenario you might get an idea of what I'm trying to communicate, because, to the best of my ability, I've made as the symbols resemble what represent.

I agree with everything except this:

The scribbles do not refer to the sounds of a spoken language. — Harry Hindu

Wikipedia says: An alphabet is a standard set of letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language.

Britannica says: alphabet, set of graphs, or characters, used to represent the phonemic structure of a language.

Vocabulary.com says:An alphabet is a set of all the letters in a written language. The letters in an alphabet represent the different sounds in that language.

Google's AI Overview says:. An alphabet is a system of letters that represents the sounds of a language.

I would be surprised if any source said the scribbles don't represent the sounds of the spoken language.

Sure, the strings of scribbles refer to things. But they do so by representing the spoken sounds that refer to the things. It's not a coincidence that sand, sorry, and song all start with the same scribble. It was intentional. Spoken language came first. Then people came up with this particular way to represent the sounds they were speaking. If that was not the case, there would be no reason sand, sorry, and song all start with s, or plod, goad, and mind all end with d. And we wouldn't tell people just learning to read to "sound it out."

I think you edited just before I posted.

The accomplishment is that we can communicate without audible speech. We often want or need to be able to do this. Sometimes so others in earshot don't know what we are communicating. Sometimes because we are not able to hear each other, such as when we are too far from each other, or when it's too noisy to hear each other. Sometimes because we want to preserve information so that people in the future will receive it.

Yes, scribbles refer to things. They refer to the sounds of spoken language. Sand, sorry, and song all start with the same scribble because the spoken words they represent all start with the same sound. Obviously, there is not a perfect matchup. Things change. Laugh, Ralph, and sniff all end with the same sound, but different scribbles represent that sound for each. There are multiple reasons for such differences. But we all still agree on things.

Could we manage if we didn't agree on both?

Scribbles are just scribbles unless they refer to something. What makes a scribble a word and not just a scribble?

You can draw any scribbles on this page but what makes some scribble meaningful? You might say it depends on how it is used. And I will ask, "used for what? - to accomplish what?" To use anything means you have a goal in mind. What is your goal in using some scribbles? — Harry Hindu

I'm thinking mutual agreement.

It seemed to me they just couldn't get on the same page. I don't mean agree on their views. I'm mean just talking about the same thing. She's trying to talk about a point where consciousness begins. Matter is not conscious. Then, for whatever reason (maybe something/some process is added to it; maybe the anesthesia wears off of an anesthetized brain; whatever), that matter begins experiencing. He would or could only talk of a spectrum of consciousness, but not of a point where, as she put it, you drop off of the spectrum.

A moot point for me, since I believe there is always subjective experience. An anesthetized brain, or so my hypothesis says, is still experiencing. It's experiencing being an anesthetized brain. It's not experiencing thoughts, memories, sensations, or anything else that has traditionally been thought of as human consciousness. And there's no way for it to report on what it's experiencing, as an awake brain can.

Ah. I gotcha. I thought you meant there are writings about physicals who believe consciousness is fundamental.

It seems to me she's having a hard time accepting the conclusion she's coming to.

Whether you're a physicalist or not, those are still the two options. — flannel jesus

I don't remember hearing it suggested that physicalism and consciousness being fundamental are compatible. Can you expand?

Yes, thought provoking, even fascinating at times. But is like to hear a hypothesis. Of course, she's only been working toward thinking consciousness is fundamental. Maybe now she'll try to work things out.

But then, the physicalist position has a lot to say about brain activity. But the explanation for consciousness is generally just "It's emergent." Which isn't more of an explanation.

I finished Lights On. Thanks again! Very much enjoyed it. Eagleman is my favorite part. This Ted Talk of his is a great extension.

Can't say I understand nearly enough of the time and space stuff. Only listened once so far. We'll see what repeated listens do for me.

She sounds even more convinced that consciousness is fundamental in this podcast. (I cleaned up the typical speech stumbles.)

It's possible that consciousness emerges at some point in the universe. Either in life, or in some sort of complex processing. That's been the assumption of the sciences this whole time. It was actually my assumption for most of my career. I've been convinced that that doesn't make sense.
...
I see consciousness actually as binary, which is one of the reasons why the series is titled Lights On. And I actually, now I just believe there is no off. That there's no such thing as off. I shouldn't even say I believe that. I'm convinced that that makes more sense than the alternate view that we have tended to have in the sciences. Which is that it comes on at a certain point. — Annaka Harris

My guess is that, in some rough categorization of memories, you'd file this under "Time I had a horrible bout of fearful imagining" rather than "Time I saw a blond-haired boy in van." — J

Well, the former is certainly the more powerful and important of the two. But I wouldn't have had the experience, and subsequent memory, of the imaginings if not for the boy, and I wouldn't remember the boy at all if not for the imaginings he inspired. Different aspects of one, big, complex memory.

Well done.

This is a question in phenomenology. We’re able to categorize and discriminate something we (purport to) remember from something we (purport to) have only imagined. — J

I would guess part of the answer is detail. Memories are of experiences that come with much more detail than imaginings come with. Looking at my cell phone as I type this, my peripheral vision sees a lot, even if I'm not usually paying attention to it. I also hear backgrounds noises. Traffic, my wife typing, etc. Smells; my clothes touching me; my body's position on the couch, maybe in need of repositioning. On and on.

If I was imagining myself typing on my cell one, that's all it would be about. Yes, I could imagine a lot of extraneous details, but, unless I'm intentionally doing so, like if I'm experimenting for purposes of this topic, I rarely do.

So maybe we recognize memories of actual events because they have more "weight" than imaginings have.

Also, it's often said we remember things that have an emotional component. The tricks of this one very much applies to me. I was often told I worried about my children more than was "normal" or "healthy" when they were little. Nobody would say keeping a close eye on them in a store was wrong in any way. Child snatching does happen. But it could be argued that I imagined specific scenarios more often and in greater detail than I should have. :rofl: I would see something, imagine what could happen, and son have an elaborate story in my head. My heart would be racing, and it would take deliberate effort to get out of it. I had to remind myself that it was not happening, and I'd have to force myself to think of entirely other things. I remember one day in particular, about 25 years ago. I saw a young boy with blond hair in a van. I thought, "What if that was Dan? What if he had been kidnapped, and, months or years later, I happened to spot him in a van?" The emotion of it burned it into my memory.

Fortunately, the memory is of the imagining, not an actual kidnapping. Maybe for the first thing. I didn't imagine too much detail of a kidnapping before forcing my thoughts away.

I have a vivid memory of something that happened when my older son was 12 and my younger son was 7. We had left them home alone for an hour or so. My daughter, who is three years older than my older son, often babysat for them both when she was 12. I vividly remember that, when we came home, my younger son was chasing my older one around the dining room table with a butcher knife. It turns out I wasn't actually there, I just remember from being told after the fact. — T Clark

This kind of thing is very interesting. How do you know you werent't there? Has it been proven to you beyond doubt?

What if you fall while walking alone. You hit your head and lose consciousness. What if you regain consciousness, it is snowing, and see that you are covered in a dusting of snow.

if time is genuinely a fundamental dimension of our universe, why does it cease to exist the moment consciousness fades away? — ArtM

It doesn't. When you wake up from any of those scenarios, your body has undergone changes due to the passage of time. Not subjectively experiencing, or having memories of, the passages of time doesn't mean timer didn't pass.

Could we say "will" describes a situation where there are conflicting/competing wants, and only one can be satisfied?

Of course, the want for what you're addicted to often wins out over the want for life/health/family. So your will was weak. But if you resist it, your will was strong.

Exercising for desired greater health and strength is loathsome to some. When they battle their laziness and do some exercise, their will was strong.

But if that is "will", then, insignificant as it may seem, choosing chocolate cake over pecan pie, or a Beethoven string quartet over a Bach cantata, is an act of will.

That's the kind of thing I was wondering about when asking three difference between will and want. Is willing to do, or not do, something different than wanting?

Well of course they'd take it, but they can't spend their lives just daydreaming about a miracle — flannel jesus

Right. But they wouldn't refuse it, or be conflicted about accepting it. An addict might do either. And if the addict happily gives in after a time without, they'll eventually wish they hadn't.

Still, I think we think if "will" for positive things, too. My thinking when I first responded to you was that we only thought about will for things we wanted to resist. But it takes a lot of will to be an Olympic athlete, among any number of other things.

But I'm still not clear on whether or not we need to use that word instead of "want".

Yeah, that's true. But they don't not want better health. They just don't want to be tortured by wanting this important, objectively good thing that they can't have. If they managed to never think about their health again, then were offered the new medical cure...?

Without looking into the deep deep library of philosophical writings, I would say "want" is something kinda passive, and "will" is when you have a want and you actually do something about it.

Passively wanting to stop smoking is one thing, but actively taking steps to counter your addiction is another. That's the difference between want and will, to me, speaking semi-casually. — flannel jesus

That makes sense.

I can <kinda> probably think of a counter example, and would bet that my counter-example exists in reality. You want to hear it? — flannel jesus

Well what else am I here for?!? :grin:

I guess I'm just not sure of how you're using the word "will". If you don't use the word, does it change the meaning?
"You want to not want something."
"You will to not want something."

Maybe this discussion doesn't come up about things we only want, and don't also not want? Like health. We only want health. We don't want to not want health. The wanting to not want is only for the thing we're addicted to that prevents health, which we never don't want.

Is "will" better than "want" anywhere in that paragraph?

You said "you can want something, but also will not to want it". It's competing wants, and one overrides the other.

I wonder in what cases any want is actually destroyed. I often hear ex-smokers say they miss it every day. It's the want to be healthier overriding the want of the cigarette, every single day. And multiple times every day. The want for the cigarette is never gone.

Pretty much what I'm saying. One want overpowering another want. I wasn't sure how you meant it.

↪Truth Seeker I like this, and agree with the spirit of it, but it's not necessarily literally true - you can want something, but also will not to want it, and turn that will into reality. People who, for example, fight their own addictions can be argued to be doing that. — flannel jesus

It seems to me that's not willing not to want the addiction. It seems like choosing one or more wants (to be healthy; to be strong; to not have your life destroyed, and eventually ended, by a drug/gambling/whatever) over another want (the addicting)?

Yes, a galaxy has mass just like a star does, so it can be treated as a body in its proximity, but 60 GLY is not in proximity. The mass of a galaxy makes zero difference at that distance compared to the same mass that didn't form a galaxy, despite the fact that the galaxy masses somewhat less just like our sun masses less than the material from which it was composed. Those local differences in the gravitational field simply cannot propagate FTL. — noAxioms

I gotcha. But does 2nd hand count? If 60 GLY influences a galaxy that's right between us, and 30 GLY influences us...?

Why must any of them buy a cake?

The average mass density of the universe sets a sort of fixed curvature. Changes to that curvature, say the formation of a concentration of mass like a star, cannot effect something beyond its event horizon, ever. That would require gravitational waves (the carriers of the changes to the gravitational field) to move locally faster than c. A new star as close as 20 GLY similarly cannot make any gravitational difference to us (ever) compared to if that star had not formed. We will never see it. But it's within the visible universe this time, so the mass from which it is composed has had a causal effect on us, not true of the one 60 GLY away. — noAxioms

Not sure I'll say this right... I thought a galaxy could be treated as one body when calculating it's gravitational influence. That one body being the sum of all the stars, and everything else, in it. So each star is part of that sum, and the galaxy would have a weaker gravitational influence without it. No? Or were you thinking of a lone start in intergalactic space?

We share the same big bang perhaps. For a star 60 GLY away, they can see the same galaxy the we do, even if we can't see each other. Those are relations, just not direct causal ones. — noAxioms

Doesn't the gravity of each affect the other?

Why do philosophers on this forum tend to put language up on this pedestal as if it is somehow separate from the shared world we live in - as if we access language differently than we do the rest of the world. We don't. Any skepticism of how we experience the world would be logically applied to the way we hear and see words because we access words the same way we access everything else - via our senses. If we question what words mean, we question what words are, or even if they exist the same way apples on tables do. — Harry Hindu

While what you say is true. Language is expressed in physical ways, so we perceive it the way we perceive everything else. Everything is party of the danger works.

Still, language is different from anything else in ways. The physical means of its expression are irrelevant to, and separate from, the meaning of what is being expressed. We can see an apple. It never means anything, and is always the physical object. We can see written words. They always mean something other than the physical marks we see.

Waves crashing on the beach cause vibrations in the air that we hear. But the sound doesn't mean anything. It doesn't even mean waves crashing on the beach. It's just an effect of the physical interaction of waves and beach. Air passing through vocal cords that are manipulated in certain ways cause vibrations in the air that we hear as words. Those words mean something beyond just the effect of the physical interaction of the air and vocal chords.

So no, not separate from the shared world we live in. But different from most things in that shared world.

And I presume when you say “subjective experience” this may be demonstrated by saying this food you gave me is too spicy while I may feel it is rather mild. — Richard B

I think it is demonstrated by the fact that we can study things like the pain receptors in our mouths, and the TRPV1 gene, and explain why we have different opinions of how spicy something is in purely physical, objective terms. But we cannot explain the experience of the spiciness in any terms that will let someone who can't feel it know what it feels like.

Although that's not the best example, assuming they can feel burning on their skin, and we could compare it with that. A better example is you and I can have different opinions of how's sweet something is, but we cannot give someone who does not have taste buds any hint of an idea what sweetness is.

I understand what you mean when you describe a sunset and how it makes you feel, but I'm also making a lot of assumptions to derive meaning from what you say
— RogueAI

Is this sort of like when someone watching the same sunset next to you says it makes them feel "happy" and "at peace", despite the two concepts being universally known and recognizable, there may still be intricacies and subtleties that can vary greatly to the point of changing one's definition or idea of either quite significantly? — Outlander

I don't think we even have to worry about not being able to compare our experiences to see if they match. We don't need to know if my red is the same as your red. I think the idea is demonstrated more easily. We cannot make a blind person understand red, or sight in general. We cannot make a deaf person understand hearing. No physical description will give them any understanding whatsoever. Even someone who can see, but only in black and white, or even every color but red, will be unable to understand red. They know what green, blue, and yellow are, and can know that red is yet another color, but literally cannot imagine what it looks like.

We cannot explain "happy" and "at peace" to ChatGPT so that it feels those things. We can't even explain them to each other. Let's say Bach's music makes me happy, and I have heard you say it makes you happy. If you ask me how something you haven't experienced makes me feel, and it makes me feel happy, I might tell you it makes me feel the way Bach's music makes me feel. That might give you an idea of how it would make you feel. But I haven't described happiness, nor could I.

We talk like we know what we refer to when Nagel talks about “what it is like to be a bat” or when Hoffman talks about “the taste of mint”, but it could be nothing, something, or somethings, all of which are irrelevant to the meaning of our expressions. — Richard B

I think the point is that, even if we can't understand or express what the taste of mint is, we know we taste it. We know we have various, and various kinds of, subjective experiences. Every waking moment is filled with them. And they are everything. Who would give up their subjective experiences, and exist as a p-zombie or robot, receiving all of the same input, but having no experience of them? That would be the equivalent of suicide.

The only one we can really consider is taste. We don't need tastebuds at this point, I don't think. We can buy food that we know is edible and nutritious. We don't need to rely on taste to keep us safe. Or someone could prepare all of our food for us. But who would agree to have their tastebuds removed, or made non-functional? Such preferences have no pactical bake.

Removing any of our other senses would make us less safe.

I assume there are people who don't think bats are conscious. But, assuming they are, Nagel means there's something it's like to be a bat, for the bat. There's nothing it's like to be a rock, for the rock. A rock doesn't have a pov. A bat does. We can't really imagine what it's like to be as bat, because they are so different from us. Flight, echolocation, etc. But we don't need to know what it's like to be a bat to consider that there is something it's like for the bat; that it has a pov. It is subjectively experiencing, whatever that feels like to the bat.

Do you think that '2+2 = 4' is a mind-independent truth? I actually think it is. But I can't be sure of it. That's why I lean toward some form of matematical platonism. It seems that mathematical truths are discovered, not 'invented', at least in part. But I guess that I can't give compelling arguments about it. — boundless

If they are invented, not objective, then wouldn't 2+2=5 be an equally valid invention?

I don't care what I know, I care about a model of what is that doesn't depend on mind, which makes empirical evidence take a secondary role. — noAxioms

Can you just assume there is such a model that you don't know about? If so, and you don't care what you know, then your quest is over.
:grin:


I really don't understand what you're after. You want a way to prove that there is a reality that doesn't depend on mind. But the mind can't know what that model is, because that defeats the purpose. Is that right?

That would be evidence of not-solipsism... — noAxioms

How so? I can't know that the other person describing the same thing I saw and the thing I saw are not both products of my imagination.

but the fact said place is said to exist because it is being described by one or more observers makes its designation as such pretty dependent on the observation. — noAxioms

I say it does not exist because it is being observed. I say observing it is the means by which we know it exists, but it would exist if it was never observed.


Regarding the casual power of integers, 7 + 3. What caused "10" to exist in the mind of probably everybody who read that sentence?

In a topic such as this one, I think not. — noAxioms

Fair enough.

Do I relate to all those worlds I don't see? I think I do, because they're necessary for explaining what I see. — noAxioms

Again, i really don't know what you mean. In what way is any world you don't see explaining what you do see?

I can talk about the fork I used at dinner without meaning it's the only, or the preferred, fork.
— Patterner
But you've measured many forks, but measured only one world. This leads some (not all) to conclude there is but 'the' one world, and if 'what there is' is defined as what is observed, then there is indeed but the one world, but that definition isn't a mind-independent one. — noAxioms

If two minds that don't know each other, and don't know what the other is doing, independently go to the same place, and described it the same way, does that not mean there is something independent of either mind?