As if that is the sum total of our achievements…. — Wayfarer

I am not really sure what you're trying to to get at here. What counts as intuitive might be debated, but certain statements like "a line of points cannot be simultaneously continuous and discrete," or "2+2=4," can largely be agreed upon. Are you claiming we lack good warrant for believing these sorts of things?

Eliminativism, in its most extreme form, does violate these sorts of intuitions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This would be the claim that "you don't actually experience anything, see blue, hear sounds, etc." But does anyone actually advocate this? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Dennett himself calls this type of eliminitivism "ridiculous," in "Conciousness Explained." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Something is intuitive, a noetic "first principle," if we cannot conceive of it being otherwise. 2+2 is intuitively 4. It is intuitive that a straight line cannot also be a curved line, that a triangle cannot have four sides, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But "things are only extension in space and motion," or "all that exists can be explained in terms of mathematics and computation," are not basic intuitions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

If our core intuitions can be this wrong, and there is "nothing to explain," then I have no idea why we should be referring to neuroscience for explanations in the first place. We only have a good reason to think science tells us anything about the world if our basic intuitions have some sort of merit. — Count Timothy von Icarus

And I'd would say that at the very least, higher order animals certainly experience fear as they attack when cornered. That is "self preservation" and as the term would suggest it would seem to necessitate a "self" in which to defend. A certain expectation or demand to survive. An "I" that wishes to live on. — Benj96

MUI theory states that "perceptual experiences do not match or approximate properties of the objective world, but instead provide a simplified, species-specific, user interface to that world." Hoffman argues that conscious beings have not evolved to perceive the world as it actually is but have evolved to perceive the world in a way that maximizes "fitness payoffs". — flannel jesus

The experience I call "blue", the qualia if you will, doesn't have to be assigned to the things I assign it to. The qualia you experience as blue, I could experience as green. My whole colour wheel could be rotated with respect to yours, and I would still have a fully in tact, self-consistent and useful sensory experience regardless. — flannel jesus

We can't both be experiencing smells "as they are" considering how viscerally different our experiences are. — flannel jesus

Ok, with this aside, let us define Direct Realism, the thesis that do indeed have direct access to the external world.

Now let me propose a few arguments for Indirect Realism that I run. Note that all the names I'm giving these are non-standard. — Ashriel

I would add that there are important ways in which consciousness is not an illusion. Emotional, experiential, rational, doxastic content, means something, points toward something true, is important. — NotAristotle

A lie is an illusion is it not? Well, what misleads more, the lie or the liar? — NotAristotle

Would you define the "consciousness" you say is not an illusion? (...) Maybe that is an unfair question because consciousness may be undefinable. — NotAristotle

why defend consciousness as not an illusion; what's at stake? Why is consciousness not being an illusion important to you? — NotAristotle

And the viewer of the illusion is the illusion itself. An illusion is fooled into thinking itself to be real. That's a heck of a magic trick! — Patterner

Negative thinking, patterns of thought, insofar as we identify these things with consciousness, it is easier to see how consciousness is an illusion; it is an illusion just as negative thinking and patterns of thought are an illusion, they are part of a script so to speak. — NotAristotle

if that's all there is to it, do you mean consciousness is functionality? — Patterner

I'm thinking the "what it is like to be..." is due to subjective experience. Kind of the same thing. If I did not have subjective experience, there would be nothing it is like to be me. — Patterner

Do you think consciousness is subjective experience, but it doesn't lead to "what it is like to be..."? If not, if you don't think consciousness is subjective experience, and you don't think it is the concept of self, then what do you think consciousness is? — Patterner

Apologies if you've told me this before. — Patterner

I agree. I like Nagel’s definition in What is it like to be a bat? — Patterner

I assume you mean taught while interacting with others, which i agree with. I doubt someone raised without the slightest human contact, or interaction from whatever machines kept it alive, would develop a sense of self. Perhaps hearing ideas from outside our own heads is key to noticing self. The idea that there is no self without other. — Patterner

A rock is moved only by external forces. But a living organism is self-moving and self-sustaining to various degrees. — Gnomon

You're asking the wrong person because I have the same question; I don't think consciousness is an illusion. — NotAristotle

I'm not sure I understand the question; I guess I take it as given that an illusion is necessarily differentiable from non-illusion . — NotAristotle

And, if consciousness really is an illusion, why the illusion? Wouldn't we be better equipped evolutionarily speaking to see the truth; reality as it really is. — NotAristotle

Take an example by analogy: Imagine I gave you a bucket of colored blocks and asked you separate them into piles by color. You pick up a red one, put it in the red pile; blue, in the blue pile; etc. — Bob Ross

The core of this theory is that ‘the good’ and ‘the bad’ are not determined by mind-independent states-of-affairs or arrangements of entities in reality but, rather, are abstract categories, or forms, of conduct. The (mind-independent) states-of-affairs, or arrangements of entities, in reality inform us of what is right or wrong in virtue of being classified under either category. — Bob Ross

Just like how I can separate triangles into one pile and squares into another, and more generally shapes into one pile and non-shapes into another, I, too, can put generous acts into one pile and respectful acts into another, and more generally good acts into one pile and bad acts into another. — Bob Ross

Physicalism/materialism is in massive trouble if it can't find a way to get out of p-zombie open-mindedness. — RogueAI

Indeed, and yet a necessary condition for denying the existence of my mind is the existence of my mind. — RogueAI

I cannot be wrong about not being a zombie. — RogueAI

Do you think you're a zombie? — RogueAI

It would be wrong in doing so, since I'm not a p-zombie. — RogueAI

Possibly, but only if it doesn't have mental states of its own. If the alien is not a zombie, it would know mental states cannot be expressed in purely physical terms. — RogueAI

Could the alien figure out, from that purely physical description of my rage-induced red-light running behavior, that I am not a p-zombie? — RogueAI

Justification is for suckers, and if someone hassles you over it just give them my name. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

That's what they deserve. — Banno

Yet one cannot wait until our ethical considerations are all settled and our morality derived from a foundation of certainty before one acts; That you choose not to eat babies - to return to your example - shows that you act ethically, and this despite not having the firm foundation you crave.

Not at all. But this is where Wittgenstein was heading - that at some stage the justifications have to end, and we say: "This is what we do!"

How are such tokens (historically contingent black glyphs on a white background) even invented or exchanged by the non-inferentially blind (by us, I mean, as opposed to the traditionally blind ) ? — plaque flag

Can you live your life as normal with your eyes closed ? — plaque flag

Are you committed to a p-zombie approach to human existence? So that the meaning of your own claims doesn't exist for you first-person ?

As far as we can say from experience, the world is only given perspectively to different sentient creatures. Denying subjectivity is just denying the being of the world.

I say this as a direct realist who doesn't think consciousness is more than awareness of this world. I see the world and not the inside of a private bubble. — plaque flag

But like I said before this topic is a waste of time. — Darkneos

But what I was trying to clarify here is whether you grant (basically) that life/experience involves a 'nonconceptual surplus.' — plaque flag

I think red functions structurally and inferentially in a way that makes knowledge of red possible for those born blind, but I don't think the referent of red is exhausted by or as its role in this structure. — plaque flag

I hope I haven't been rude. — plaque flag

I'm challenging what I see as your psychologism (rationality is just rationalization) — plaque flag

and your functionalism (your version seems to deny the qualitative aspect of experience) — plaque flag

You mention your curiosity. Is that something you feel ? And do you not see color or feel pain ? — plaque flag

Overall you seem to be saying that you are an unfree-irresponsible meatbot or the algorithm inside it. You basically claim that pain don't hurt. You also reject the founding claim-constraining normativity of rational conversation.

Try to see this pose you are offering from the outside. Why should one trust an amoral robot programmed by its environment when 'it' claims to be such an amoral robot ? 'I am a liar.' ' I don't care about truth.' — plaque flag

I don't mean to be rude. I'm just pointing out the strangeness of you offering your opinions with a certain confidence while eroding any possible authority or interest they are likely to have. Like a drunk at a bar, satisfying with something that sounds edgy, 'unsentimentally' numb to the lack of coherence. — plaque flag

To be clear, I think you do care about truth, which is to your credit. And you are just trying to see around your culture to that transcendent truth by avoiding sentimental attachment to norms that might get in the way of that truth-seeing project. Nietzchean stuff. — plaque flag