Glad it makes some sense. This is a nice coincidence, because I'm trying to finish up an OP about this very thing. "What X means" is not a straightforward matter in philosophy, and it's so easy for any of us to get pulled into a dispute about terms when we'd rather talk about something more substantive. As you just pointed out, it's a disappointing result when the argument then seems to hinge on "how I use X" vs. "how you use X." Theodore Sider has some excellent things to say about this, which I'll try to lay out.

if you cannot tell the semantic difference between an illusion and reality when discussing them, I don't think the problem is the terms. They are almost always unambiguous. — AmadeusD

Yes, almost always. But philosophy is one context in which they are not. Consider the context of the discussion you quoted: We're trying to decide whether an illusion -- a mirage, say -- ought to be counted as part of "reality," understood as the totality of all that happens to us. In one sense, no, of course not, because the mirage appears to be one thing -- an object in the world -- when in fact it is something utterly different -- a brain glitch. But in another sense, we can't leave it out of the account of our experience of the world. It has to be explained, just as much as any other item of experience. So there is justification for applying this word "real" to all genuine events, regardless of whether they are what they seem to be.

And this is why I'm so down on terms like "real" -- you have to take precious time spelling out in which sense you're using them.

OK, that's better. I didn't realize you wanted the second instrument to be playing something that would be mistaken for an overtone produced by the first instrument.

So my answers would be:
1. Two pitches.
2. One timbre.
3. Trick question. :smile: Let's say there are four relevant overtones being produced by the first instrument. To this we add the false or apparent overtone that is actually a regular pitch being played by the second instrument. How many overtones total? It depends from whose point of view, and what we agree to count as an overtone in this bizarre case. I, the listener, believe I'm hearing a timbre composed of five overtones (though remember, it's unlikely I'd be able to actually hear the overtones as discrete pitches). Out there in the objective world, there is a timbre composed of four overtones plus a new pitch sneaking in and pretending to be one.

Some of this is just convention. We generally don't use the term "timbre" to talk about how multiple instruments sound together -- "the timbre of a chord played by the wind section," for instance. "Timbre" is reserved for single instruments. But I suppose there's no reason we couldn't broaden the usage.

timbre is a subjective quality that you hear. — Pneumenon

Well, yes, but no more subjective than most of the other elements of music. it's not subjective the way loudness, for instance, is subjective. Timbre is also used to refer to the instrument itself, not just to how it sounds to me. As we've already noted, we know how to create various timbres by tweaking the frequencies, and when we talk about timbre in this way, there's nothing subjective about it, anymore than pitch is subjective -- though of course pitch is also something that is heard, and hence part of subjective experience.

I guess I'm not understanding your question. If an oboe plays an A, that is a tone with overtones. If you actually change the overtones, it doesn't sound like an oboe anymore. I don't know what the "real" sound would be that you're referring to -- can you say more? I'm sensing there's a confusion here between "sound" as referring to what an instrument creates, and "sound" as referring to what a listener hears.

I tried reading Nausea once—I wasn't able to get far with it. — Janus

It isn't very good, as a work of art. But it does capture that "draining life of meaning" feeling.

For me, to live fully is to live a life of intense feeling, with the intellectual concerns informed by, not separate to, that life. — Janus

It's a problem for philosophers, isn't it? We tend to overdevelop the intellect, maybe especially in the moral sphere. You can read volumes and volumes about ethics and never find a discussion of what compassion is, and why it's central to our lives.

The overtones of which sound? The one you're hearing or the one played on the first instrument? — Pneumenon

If the actual overtones were changed, that would be a change in the sound played on the first instrument, and it would be objectively measurable. Changes in what I hear, on the other hand, don't actually change any overtones, unless by "change" we want to include "make them more or less audible." But that is necessarily subjective in large part.

That we have the illusion is not itself an illusion. — Janus

That's a great way of putting it. (And we see again how binaries like illusion/reality can rapidly become so equivocal as to be unhelpful. "Are illusions real?" "Well, yes and no . . . stipulate how you want to use the terms!")

I doubt whether a complete account of the world we encounter is possible — Janus

I kind of do too, but it feels important to hold it up as a desideratum. Even unreachable goals can be motivating, and express something aspirational about the overall human project of knowledge.

life is being, but it is not merely being in the sense of sheer mere existence. — Janus

"Life is meaningless" is surely a mood everyone has felt at some time. How can we fall into such a mood? (other than reading Sartre's Nausea :smile: ). Usually by noticing, often with horror, that the values we hold, and organize our lives around, cannot be discovered in the world in the same way we discover what Heidegger called (in Manheim's translation) "essents" -- rocks and birds and math problems and everything else that has being but not being-there-for-us (Dasein, more or less). But as you say, living as a human is more than that, or at least so some of us believe.

Strong arguments. Nicely done.

You perhaps know that this "heaven theodicy" is found in Kant (in the 2nd critique, I believe, though I can't cite the section), and your post prompted me to look back at some old notes and see whether Kant's version can stand up. Rereading, I saw that Kant frames the problem a little differently. For him, what's required of God is not the usual trio of omniscience, omnipotence, and omni-benevolence, but rather that he grant all humans eternal happiness. As long as he does this, he satisfies the requirements for a maximally moral being. And this, for Kant, can be done even if there is temporary suffering. So it's not exactly a traditional theodicy. And it raises interesting questions about what "heavenly happiness" would be. If it's meant to be a perfection, a state than which there is no better, then quite possibly I might agree, once I experience it, that I couldn't possibly be any happier even if I hadn't suffered on Earth. So the amnesia postulate may not even be necessary.

Do you think it makes a difference, then, if "perfect happiness" is substituted for "no suffering"? And can you accept the idea that such a perfect happiness might be consistent with having previously suffered? I guess part of the perfection would involve a realization that the past no longer matters, not just subjectively, but ethically.

Yes, good analysis. As you point out, it comes down to 1) whether you think suffering can be anything other than subjective, and 2) whether my identity largely consists of being the same person I was in the past.

When I run the thought experiment on myself, try as I may, I can't make myself believe that forgotten (and consequence-less) suffering matters. To whom? But then I'm stopping at the subjective, as you clearly are not. I think different people will have different intuitions about this.

Not being a mathematician, I may be missing some of the nuances of what you're bringing up, but it reminds me of translation problems in general. Is it fair to say that working in binary could be considered a different language, one that you don't really speak but know how to use in a pinch? (If that's wrong, ignore the next paragraphs.)

Consider reading and writing for a transposing instrument, in musical notation. Perhaps I need to write out a flute part, a non-transposing instrument, for an alto sax, playing in Eb. I'm fluent in "concert C," as the non-transposing notation is called, whereas in Eb I'm translating as I go along. So it can easily happen that I "calculate the right note" in Eb without knowing what that note would be called in concert C. This speaks to this point:

I multiplied it correctly in binary. But I had no idea what the numbers were.
— Patterner
You did know what the numbers were since you had the answer. You just didn't know the base-10 representation of that answer. — noAxioms

[So I can correctly calculate/represent the note in alto clef, and hear it mentally -- in that sense, I "know what the note is" -- but since I don't have perfect pitch (which is learned in concert C), I don't automatically know what its treble-clef representation would be.]

EDIT:
Sorry, that last paragraph should read:


So I can correctly calculate/represent the note in Eb, and hear it mentally -- in that sense, I "know what the note is" -- but since I don't have perfect pitch (which is learned in concert C), I don't automatically know what its concert-C representation would be.

The subject–object distinction is therefore not just a quirk of how narrowly we define certain words; it is assumed by logic itself. It was implicit throughout much of traditional philosophy, but made explicit in phenomenology in particular. — Wayfarer

This is a good point. You're right to question whether "subject-object" might not, in some cases, capture a genuine metaphysical structure.

And yes, we can “understand subjectivity.” But we can only ever be one subject; the only instance of subjectivity we directly know is our own, and that by being it, not by knowing it objectively. — Wayfarer

Well, then I think we're on the same page. I agree, and my suggestion is that all we can require of scientific inquiry is to (eventually) understand subjectivity. I could quibble a little, using Nagel's point about self-reflection as "a kind of objectivity," but that's a somewhat different issue. Again, it all comes down to the difference between experience and understanding. To my mind, science (and other similar, rational practices) can give us understanding without needing to experience the impossible. And of course, where you and I and Nagel are all in accord is in the tremendous importance of including subjectivity in the world of what is, without reduction or waving-away.

As for Frank’ book, it is a philosophy of science book. It isn’t aimed at Kuhn, Feyerabend, or Polanyi—or likely even at readers who take those figures seriously. Its target is metaphysical realism, which presumably those you are speaking too don't hold to. — Wayfarer

Fair enough.

Would you say that you can pick out a tone from a timbre while listening? — Moliere

You mean, a tone other than the root pitch? I would say, sometimes but not often. It's easier or harder depending on the instrument/timbre in question.

I cannot pick out red/green from a brown I'm seeing even though, conceptually, I know that's a way to make a brown/grey. — Moliere

Me neither.

Here I'm thinking that the rules of quantification might differ in describing color and sound perception — Moliere

Maybe a place to start would be to ask, is there some obvious parallel between the orthogonality of shape and color, and the orthogonality of some two sound elements. Which might those elements be? One candidate might be pitch and rhythm. We know we can vary pitch while holding rhythm steady, and vice versa, just like shape and color. But what's the parallel with the visual dictum that we (as far as we know) don't see two colors at the same time, in the same place? I think the analogy is in trouble here, because we can surely hear polyrhythms, and more than one pitch at a time. We need an entirely different construal of "at the same time and place" that would exclude polyrhythms and intervals/chords. And I don't know what that would be. We can't even say that a single rhythmic pattern can only be heard as one thing, unlike, say, a color. As for pitch, it's probably true that you can't simultaneously hear an A as a B, but you can hear a chord as two different musical objects. In both these cases, it's the musical context that makes the difference, in a way that doesn't see to come up for visual experiences. Or does it? Optical illusions?

Your use of 'primitive', even with scare quotes, implies that this, too, will somehow be unravelled by the inexorable march of science. But there's a logical contradiction which you're not seeing. — Wayfarer

With respect, what you're not seeing is that this is only a logical contradiction if we define the terms in such a way that it is. Logic tells us nothing about the world; it only tells us what terms can be sensibly used together, given their definitions. Sure, if "subjective" and "objective" can only mean what you say they mean, then they can't be used in certain ways to say certain things without contradiction. But I'm questioning that use as too narrow. Specifically, I'm suggesting that understanding a number-theoretical statement, for instance, is not a subjective experience in the same way that eating a chocolate is. In such a case, the apparent bipolarity of subjective and objective starts to break down, it seems to me. This is a deep problem in how to understand the role of rationality (or call it hermeneutics, perhaps) in human experience. I think the possibility remains open that we can understand subjectivity without requiring that everyone have the same subjective experience, or that we somehow simultaneously inhabit objectivity and subjectivity, as defined in this way.

"Subject-object relations are fundamental to embodied existence" -- yes, they are, but that doesn't mean we understand them, or understand what we mean when we create this bipolarity, whether it is mere appearance or reflects something more. Do you believe it reflects a genuine metaphysical fact? I don't know if it does. I'm asking for more humility in the face of what we don't know. As philosophers, we should be suspicious of any position that says, "We know it to be the case that something is either A or B."

And actually, I don't think the march of science, by itself, will change how we understand subjectivity. It seems to me that what usually happens is a kind of two-step between scientific inquiry and philosophical analysis. As we learn more about what science discovers, we find we require new ways to talk about it (science tends to talk in math). So our concepts broaden, and innovate.

What would be an alternative to Frank's 'dated historical account'? — Wayfarer

What I find a bit dated is statements like this, as a description of what a scientific materialist must believe: "The scientific method enables us to get outside of experience and grasp the world as it is in itself." My reference would be to Kuhn, who I think shook this up pretty definitively, mid-20th century. I'd also reference my conversations with two scientist friends, but that's merely anecdotal. For what it's worth, they're both interested in philosophy of science, and enjoy chewing these things over with me, and I've asked them about the God's-eye view. It makes them smile. I've never heard either of them claim they were trying to grasp the world as it is. As best I can tell, they're trying to solve equations and make reliable predictions. Perhaps if I pressed them, they'd own to wanting something more . . . but as they're both physicists, they're hyper-aware of the role of the observer.

That passage you quoted above from Thomas Nagel's 'View from Nowhere' is from his chapter on Mind, and the difficulty of framing an objective view of consciousness, given its first-person nature. — Wayfarer

Yes. And as I understand him, Nagel is acknowledging the difficulty but arguing that it's possible, at least in part. That's because, when he uses the term "view," he's making the distinction I described earlier, which Frank does not, between understanding and experience. To my mind, this definitely puts the two men at odds, though they do share a number of common concerns.

This is not 'science has reached a dead end', or that 'silence is the end of the story'. The point is polemical: to illustrate how these fundamental elements of experience are outside the scope of science. — Wayfarer

Maybe polemical is the right word. I agree, Frank isn't giving an interim report on what science has learned so far. I was saying that that's what he should be doing -- but he (and you) believe that we can demonstrate why science will never, on principle, be able to say anything about those elements of experience.

If one conceives of science in the way he does (based on what I regard as a somewhat dated historical account), then sure, science is limited in that way. But I'm not at all convinced that such a definition really captures the essence of scientific inquiry. There's way more to say about that, and probably more than you'd want to hear from me, but I'll just add that the pressure point lies here: "Science is grounded in objective analysis, that is, analysis of those things, states, processes that can be made objects of analysis." You're stipulating that subjective experience can never be made into such an object, and I'm saying that it probably can be -- that we shouldn't leap from our current (primitive) understanding of the concepts of "subjective" and "objective" to conclude that our concepts are not only adequate, but force a philosophical conclusion.

the other category being whatever is amenable to experience, which is thought of as being real for us. — Janus

And we can even put a highly skeptical slant on "real for us" and insist that this is a kind of bastard child of true Reality, consisting of illusions and "perspectives," without changing Nagel's point. Illusions actually happen; if we see something illusory and believe it is (deeply) Real, this is an experience we have. It has to be explained, just as much as anything else, if we want to give a complete account of the world we encounter. Of course, when we start parsing "real" in a way that requires a capital R, we start to confuse ourselves.

"Real" is being used outside or beyond the structure that it usually carries with it.
But sometimes there does seem to be a meaning to it. — Ludwig V

Yes. I strongly dislike using "real" in serious philosophy, but we can't simply erase hundreds of years of usage. We need it, or something like it, for some of the important things we talk about. Just make sure you define it as "according to X . . ."!

I don't think that "metaphysically fundamental" helps much. I'm trying to suggest we should pay attention to different kinds of case. — Ludwig V

But notice that, if one says, "There is little that's helpful in the term 'metaphysically fundamental'; we should instead look at things case by case," one has nonetheless said something metaphysically fundamental! -- indeed, something of great importance. This is what Sider means when he says, "If nothing else, the choice of what notions are fundamental remains. There’s no detour around the entirety of fundamental metaphysics."

So here we go - three different metaphors in two lines — Ludwig V

:grin: I wonder if it's possible to write about metaphysics at all without using metaphors. Better not to mix them, though, I agree.

In order to understand the experience, one has to be the being experiencing it. — Punshhh

This is what is in question, I think. Nagel, in the passage I quoted in response to @Wayfarer, doesn't think this follows. And I don't see why it must, though no one would deny that we learn more about an experience if we're the ones having it.

And by being, I’m not talking of the mind*, I’m talking of a living creature. — Punshhh

This is good. We equate mind with subjective experience much too facilely.

[The tree] is there, is reacting to, is growing through all these events and circumstances. These are events being experienced by a living being. — Punshhh

Or at least they may be. Unless we stipulate a certain meaning for "experience" which we're not entitled to ("everything that happens to an entity is an experience"), I don't think we can know whether a tree has them.

Structure and grounding are not the same thing. — Ludwig V

Sorry, forgot to respond to this. Sider doesn't mean grounding in any physical sense. Rather, it's a question of what must be metaphysically fundamental -- what concepts give rise to, or secure, other concepts. Jonathan Schaffer's excellent essay, "On What Grounds What," gives a clear picture of these issues, influenced by both Sider and Aristotle.

Presupposing that the question can be meaningfully asked is not the same as knowing how to answer it. Perhaps you are thinking that we can work out what will count as an answer and go on from there. It may be possible, but it doesn't exclude the possibility that it cannot be answered because nothing would count as an answer. On the other hand we can answer lots of questions about the world and, for me, these count as telling us how the world really is. What is puzzling is why you think those answers do not count. — Ludwig V

I don't think we're that far apart on this question. There may, as you say, be no answer at all to the question, which, just to jog our memories, was:

The problem, I think, comes when we ask which of these points of view (if any) reflect how the world really is. — J

The "if any" was meant to acknowledge your point: No answers may be forthcoming, and that could be for (at least) two reasons: We can't find the answer, or the question is badly put because it implies that "how the world really is" is meaningful when in fact it isn't. I'm not sure I know how we would "work out what will count as an answer," exactly, though I rather like putting it that way because it's a reminder that there's probably no way to simply discover the answer.

As for the kinds of answers we do have about the world, I certainly think they count, but it's not obvious what they count for. If we decide that "how the world is" is a matter of semantics, and we ought to just go ahead and allow that our current best objective knowledge is about how the world really is, then that knowledge counts for a lot, maybe everything. But I'm arguing that it's an open question whether we need to do that.

That's not quite what I mean by a point of view. — Ludwig V

I know, but I deliberately chose an outrageous example so I can illustrate the idea that "point of view" is uncomfortably ambiguous, though it gets invoked constantly in these discussions. As you say, my deluded self has "most likely . . . adopted a way of interpreting the information that you have, so let's allow that it is a point of view." But is a point of view merely a perspective, any perspective? How is what I do when I take a deluded point of view different from what any non-insane, objective, scientifically respectable point of view does? I think it's a lot different, myself, but why? What makes objectivity different from "just what I think"? Surely it has something to do with the way the world is . . . and maybe we should just leave out the "really" part.

So for me it is meaningless to say that our experience gives us no true picture of the real. It doesn't give us a complete picture, but that is a different consideration.
— Janus
I can buy that. — Ludwig V

Me too. As Nagel says, how the world appears to us is part of what is real.

I have no real argument with what Frank says about the God’s-eye view and “unvarnished reality.” I only point out that this isn’t what we mean when we talk about objectivity.
— J

Who is this "we?" — Wayfarer

The "we" is aspirational, I guess: I'm addressing those of us who think there is a problem about objectivity, but aren't willing to say that either it doesn't exist at all, or that it has to be synonymous with a God's-eye view. You're right that this "we" has not cleared the field of other viewpoints, but I suggest that in many ways it's the standard fallback position for non-technical thinkers (and non-arrogant scientists).

“Objectivist ontology became king as scientists grew accustomed to assuming that the creations of their mathematical physics could be treated as timeless laws held in the “mind of God” and viewable from a perfectly objective, perfectly perspectiveless perspective—a “view from nowhere.” Thus, when quantum mechanics appeared from the same experimental workshop that had created the triumph of classical physics, many scientists believed their job was to defend the ontological heights and equate reality with the abstract formalism." So, no, I don't believe their interpretation is at odds with Nagel's, in fact Nagel is cited repeatedly in the text. I think they're converging on a similar point. — Wayfarer

Here my question is about your "they" (though I may just be misreading you). Do you mean Frank and Gleiser, or the scientists referred to in the quote? I think you mean F&G, in which case I'd ask you to expand on this. Yes, I see that F&G disagree with the "ontological heights" scientists who try to save the appearances of perspectiveless classical physics. But how is this not at odds with Nagel?

I don't know which texts of Nagel's F&G may be citing, but in the passage I quoted from View from Nowhere, Nagel describes a project of "forming objective concepts that reach beyond our current capacity to apply them. The aim of reaching a conception of the world which does not put us at the center in any way requires the formation of such concepts." He doesn't then come out and say that such a project will bear fruit, but I read him as suggesting that it will, and that we ought to pursue it. Otherwise, why write the book? Similarly, "we should also be able to apply the same general idea to ourselves, and thus to analyze our experiences in ways that can be understood without having had such experiences. That would constitute a kind of objective standpoint toward our own minds."

"Kind of" is murky, but wouldn't F&G have to deny that even this modest version of an objective standpoint is not only impossible but misleading?

The question comes down to what a "perspectiveless viewpoint" could mean. Frank thinks it's a contradiction in terms -- that because everything is experience, then everything is subjective. Nagel (and I) think it's both possible and appropriate, once we sort out how to understand the difference between an experience and a piece of knowledge. Or to be more precise, Nagel wants it to be possible, and insists there is no structural and/or transcendental argument against its possibility.

Whether the simultaneous experience of red/green perception can happen depends on how we understand "simultaneous," I think. I've had some very mild experiences of synesthesia, and the dual-mode perception is simultaneous in the sense that, when I heard a particular tone, I also saw a particular visual field: color, but also brightness. I've heard others -- probably deeper synesthetists -- describe it as actually seeing the note as having a color, which would be another sense of simultaneity.

Red/green simultaneity doesn't seem to fit either of those models. What I picture is: A person sees the color brown, and is able, at the same time, to see both red and green "within" the brown. And no, I don't know what "within" means, exactly. If anyone reading this has had something like this happen, speak up!

So here are some reflections on “The Blind Spot”:

Frank focuses on two “intractable problems,” scientific objectivism and physicalism. He’s very good on physicalism, giving us (as many others have) the philosophical reasons we should not be physicalists. What’s interesting is that one of his main arguments against physicalism ought to give him pause when he talks about objectivism and experience. He say, “If ‛physical reality’ means reality according to some future and complete physics, then the claim that there is nothing but physical reality is empty, because we have no idea what such a future physics will look like . . .”

I think much the same thing can be said concerning Frank’s conception of “experience” -- that it is an empty claim, because on his usage we have no idea what “non-experience” would be.

We need to look carefully at what Frank means when he talks about “experience.” He never quite gives a precise definition, but consider this: “Scientific investigations . . . occur only in the field of our experience. . . Experience is present at every step,” including the abstract: We experience models and theories and ideas just as we experience sense perceptions.

This seems tendentious to me. Generally speaking, that is not how we use the word. I don’t say, “I experienced a theory last night.” We usually divide our conscious life into what we personally experience, and what we might know or theorize that is beyond that experience. To understand is, in a trivial sense, to have an experience, but the tension lies in the fact that the very concept of “understand” is supposed to transcend that experience. If it doesn’t, then we haven’t actually understood. Are there perspectives on the Pythagorean theorem, in the same way there are perspectives on sunlight?

So we need to be able to say that we can understand things we can’t experience, that understanding is not a form of experience except by fiat. Now it is possible to stipulate that “experience” needs to cover absolutely everything, but then Frank’s point becomes merely a linguistic one. Yes, if experience means everything we know, then we can’t know anything we don’t experience. But we want a metaphysical conclusion, not a linguistic one. Is it in fact the case that we can’t know anything that isn’t experienced? Is knowledge itself an experience? My having such knowledge, perhaps, but the knowledge itself? Is “objective knowledge” really the same thing as “knowledge I don’t experience”?

Now I have no real argument with what Frank says about the God’s-eye view and “unvarnished reality.” I only point out that this isn’t what we mean when we talk about objectivity. Trivially, we can’t know what things look like when there’s no one to look at them except God (and even God can be left out, so no one at all is looking). But that is not because our experience somehow changes them. It’s because the concept is empty, since it lacks any intuitions. At least since Kant, we’ve had to acknowledge that “how things really are” in that sense is unknowable and/or meaningless. But when a chemist shows me the molecular structure of water, I don’t for a moment believe she is talking about that kind of objectivity. I suppose we could add a footnote to every single statement of objective fact which said something like, “But this of course depends on whether there are really atoms and fields and . . .” but again, this strikes me as way beside the scientific point.

Frank’s position leads him to say, “‛Objective’ simply means something that’s true to the observations agreed upon by a community of investigators using certain tools.” Why? Because “science is essentially a highly refined form of human experience.” But that can’t be the whole story. Even leaving aside my objections to Frank’s totalizing use of “experience,” we’re asked to accept that, were the observations and tools of our community of investigators different, we would have a different set of objective facts. This is surely wrong. The scientific project is a two-way, up-and-down street. Scientists begin with their tools and observations, yes, but then compare their experimental results and theoretical postulates, and revise accordingly. Something is not “objective” because everyone currently agrees about it. Pushing back hard on this is central to what science does.

I’d like to quote Thomas Nagel here, because as usual I find his take on this problem to be closer to how I understand it. This is from The View from Nowhere:

Only a dogmatic verificationist would deny the possibility of forming objective concepts that reach beyond our current capacity to apply them. The aim of reaching a conception of the world which does not put us at the center in any way requires the formation of such concepts. We are supported in such an aim by a kind of intellectual optimism: the belief that we possess an open-ended capacity for understanding what we have not yet conceived, and that it can be called into operation by detaching from our present understanding and trying to reach a higher-order view which explains it as part of the world. . . .

It is the same with the mind. To accept the general idea of a perspective without limiting it to the forms with which one is familiar, subjectively or otherwise, is the precondition of seeking ways to conceive of particular types of experience that do not depend on the ability either to have those experiences or to imagine them subjectively. It should be possible to investigate in this way the quality-structure of some sense we do not have, for example, by observing creatures who do have it – even though the understanding we can reach is only partial.

But if we could do that, we should also be able to apply the same general idea to ourselves, and thus to analyze our experiences in ways that can be understood without having had such experiences. That would constitute a kind of objective standpoint toward our own minds. — The View from Nowhere, 24-5

We should note that Nagel qualifies this in an important way. “Something will inevitably be lost,” he says – namely, what it is like to have the subjective experience. “No objective conception of the mental world can include it all.” But do we ask the objective viewpoint to include everything, or only (only!) to understand everything? This is where I think Frank goes wrong. He conceives of “experience” in such a way that there is no differentiation between these two modes of grasping reality.

Lastly, I think Frank is biasing the case when he speaks about science as if it’s a finished project. He says things like “Science has no answer to this question” and “Science is silent on this question” as if we should then conclude than ignorance and silence are the end of the story. Why? Why would anyone think we were anywhere near the end of scientific inquiry? We’ve all noticed this tendency in loose talk about Modern Science and its supposed pinnacles, but I’m surprised Frank indulges in it.

Well, that’s a lot, but I wanted you to know that I read the piece carefully, and I appreciate your pointing it out to me.

The question in the first sentence presupposes that there is some way we can know how the world really is. But there isn't. Or rather, how the world really is depends on your point of view. — Ludwig V

I think the question presupposes not so much that there is some way, but that the question can be meaningfully asked, and is important. We want to know whether any point of view can be said to describe the way the world really is. You may be right that there is not. But we both know there's a lot more to say than just "depends on your point of view." If my point of view is such that aliens have secretly replaced my family, that is not how the world really is.

If you say "There are no fundamental notions," you have nonetheless made an important statement about what is and isn't fundamental.
— J
I haven't said that there are no fundamental notions. In some cases, there clearly are. In other, there don't seem to me. Much turns on what you mean by fundamental. — Ludwig V

Sorry, I didn't mean "you" but rather the British "one." There are those who argue against the idea of fundamental notions.

Yes, the meaning of "fundamental" is in play here. For Sider, what's fundamental is structure, grounding. Maybe we should have a new thread focusing on his ideas.

that our usual construals of how the world is are useful because they're true, not vice versa -- but the problem is, truth isn't enough.
— J
No, truth isn't enough. But the truths we recognize reflect our interests and our way of life. That's the something more you are looking for. — Ludwig V

Perhaps. That's the standard quasi-pragmatic or perspectival response. If we compare a "bizarre truth" such as the grue-and-bleen people say, with "The sum of the angles of a triangle is 180 degrees", we're supposed to conclude that the only reason the latter truth is more important than the former is because it reflects our interests and our way of life. Sider would disagree. So would I, in many but not all cases.

Hypothetically, I could play a frequency on another instrument that would be experienced as a change in timbre on the first. — Pneumenon

Yes, and that's different from actually changing the characteristic overtones. As you perhaps know, both pitch and timbre have objective and subjective (listener-dependent) aspects. If I'm recording a track and want to change an instrument's pitch, I can do that by "pressing buttons" (that is, digital manipulation) and be confident that the pitch will have changed, without needing to hear it. (One can do the same thing by de-tuning a guitar.) Similarly, if I want to change the timbre of a tone, I know which buttons to press that will accentuate or de-emphasize the relevant overtones. All these manipulations are objective, though in the case of timbre, since there are infinite degrees of timbre, as contrasted with only 12 pitches in the well-tempered scale, I'm going to have to use my ears at some point to see whether I've got what I wanted. (This actually applies to pitch as well, sometimes, but that's another story, involving the relative inaccuracy of conventional pitch-measurement software.)

What a note sounds like, to me, is a different matter. You're pointing out that simultaneous sounding of other tones will affect how the target tone sounds to me. That's right; it will affect timbre for sure, and also loudness (which is subjective, as opposed to dBs), and even pitch, somewhat. But when we say "affect timbre," we don't mean the objectively analyzable group of fundamental-plus-overtones that makes an oboe sound oboe-ish. We mean whether, and how much of, that group is audible to me at a given moment.

But, certainly, as you say, the accounting is not the same as physical accounting. It's not the same as the way micro properties account for liquids and solids. — Patterner

Yes, glad you agree that this is crucial.

Should we expand the way we think of "accounts for"? Should we use a different phrase, since it's a different kind of accounting? "Conscious accounting"? "Variable accounting"? — Patterner

Good questions. I think it's partially a matter of terminology, as is often the case when we're dealing with philosophical usages that are either shopworn or unclear. It may go deeper than that, though. I'm not convinced we even have the right concepts yet, to which we could then seek to apply helpful terminology. This is the "way we think of 'accounts for'" that you reference.

It's easier to point out what's wrong with the physical-accounting analogies than to replace them. My only possibly useful suggestion is to stick with simple analogies, such as the baseball game, where we're pretty sure some "conscious accounting" is going on, and try to carefully tease out what happens and why. Are we sure this will reveal anything about consciousness itself? No, but in the absence of a traditional scientific apparatus of inquiry, we need to be open-minded and optimistic about what we can learn.

Meanwhile, I would add (though you probably don't agree) that the scientists should go full steam ahead in their efforts to explain consciousness from a biological perspective. If it keeps failing, that will be informative.

I still recommend The Blind Spot. — Wayfarer

Thanks. I'm reading it now. So far, there are a number of important insights offered, and I can see why you value it. I also see a number of weak arguments and unquestioned assumptions. I'll say more after I finish and reflect.

Timbre, then, just is a subjective quality that arises from multiple frequencies being heard as a single pitch. — Pneumenon

Right, but are you saying that the overtones themselves are affected by other frequencies being sounded by other instruments at the same time? Could you point to me to the evidence for this? I'm wondering whether it's the overtones themselves that change, or my ability to perceive them. (Perhaps that's what you mean, since you define "timbre" as subjective. It isn't, entirely.) In other words, are the particular overtones that give a clarinet its characteristic timbre literally changed if an oboe sounds the same pitch at the same time? This would be objectively measurable, not a matter of perception by the human ear.

"I think the rest of your questions will self-resolve once you give this some careful consideration. :-)"

Not quite. :smile:

Water still boils at 100c at sea level. COVID vaccination is effective. — Wayfarer

Yes, and this is why we still need a term to use that can refer to such facts, and differentiate them from opinions and mistakes. But how does "objective" square with this?

the idea of universal objectivity had been undermined by physics itself. The problem that quantum physics threw up was precisely that it threw into question the clear separstion of observer from observed. — Wayfarer

The catch, presumably, lies in "universal". Some things remain objective, according to this account, but others are undermined because there is an observer/observed problem. OK -- how does one draw the line? At what point does the involvement of the observer undermine objectivity? And when that line is crossed, what is the "proper description" for truth?

BTW, I substantially agree with the thrust of this, but we need to be really clear on what we're committing to.

Yes, good precis. So what do you think -- can we speak about "objective facts" in the post-Heisenberg world?

I'm fine with all of this, except I'm not sure that consciousness "accounts for" the higher level properties in the same way that micro properties and chemical properties do. Those seem like genuine bottom-up structures. Or maybe it's just that we're used to this kind of metaphorical image, so it appears clear to us. But consciousness doesn't seem to "account for" rules and math in the sense that these higher-level structures somehow are supported by consciousness. This, perhaps, is where consciousness really reveals itself as unique, and uniquely unlike any physical structures. You just can't draw a 3D map of the structures and say, This is how they connect. If consciousness does support, or account for, higher-level structures, we don't yet know how, or in what mode we ought to think about a term like "support".

What I see in your response, and also in @Janus's, is what I was hoping to see, namely an agreement that consciousness is not by definition something utterly apart from the rest of the world we inhabit. How we get a common perspective on it is a matter of differences in degree. So when you say:

We are outside of or apart from the subjects of the natural sciences. As Frank says, 'billiard balls' - and a whole bunch more, up to and including space telescopes - all of these are matters of objective fact. Less so for the social sciences and psychology. — Wayfarer

. . . you (or Frank) are pointing to this continuum, as it moves from hard science to social science to, perhaps, philosophy through phenomenology. The provocative question is, Can you justify drawing a line where you do, at "matters of objective fact"? I'm pretty sure I understand why you want to do this, since scientific realism does seem to have earned the title of "being objective" in some important sense. And yet . . . doesn't this whole discussion remind us that the line may not be that clear? Maybe we need a terminology tweak, some other way to talk about this crucial difference that doesn't invoke "objective fact."

we're thinking about something that can't be treated in an objective manner, because we're not outside or apart from what we're thinking about. — Wayfarer

Yes and no. As I suggested to Janus, we are in one sense outside of consciousness, in that we are self-reflective, and can observe our own minds and subjectivity, and seek agreement from others. Is that "outside enough"? You would say no. This is the infinite regress problem. If I am observing my consciousness, I must be leaving something out, namely the observer's stance. Very well; I take a step back and include the observer; I observe myself observing my consciousness, and I also continue to observe my consciousness. But that leaves out the observer who's observing the observer who's . . . etc. ad infinitum.

I don't find that persuasive. I would need to know what is being left out of an account that stops at the first step. One of the features of consciousness is self-consciousness, and self-consciousness is iterative. End of story. Do we deepen our understanding of this feature by trying to push further and further into it?

Now of course, if you define "objective manner" as "not from my subjective point of view," then it's true that we can never observe consciousness objectively. But why do this? Every single thing a scientist observes is from their subjective point of view. The goal of science is to find ways of negating the idiosyncratic or incorrect observations that may occur, and finding intersubjective agreement. I don't see how observing consciousness is any different. If it's different, it's because of what is observed, not the nature of the observation. The phenomenon of consciousness is subjective, in that it only appears from a point of view. There wouldn't be any consciousnesses if their weren't any conscious beings. That is not true of trees or stars, presumably. But how significant is this difference, in terms of problems or methodology?

whether or not it is conceivable that there could be a completely satisfying explanation as to how the brain produces consciousness (if it does). — Janus

Right, we don't have such a thing, and no one can say for certain whether we ever will. As you know, I'm a cautious optimist in that regard, though I'm pretty sure that "produces" will turn out to be the wrong term.

we say we know how consciousness seems, and give accounts of that, but how can we tell whether language itself is somehow distorting the picture via reification? How would consciousness seem to us if we were prelinguistic beings? That's obviously a rhetorical question. — Janus

A fair point. Maybe this is a good place to remind ourselves that there are other ways of "observing consciousness" than doing phenomenology. Deep meditation is also a type of experience that pares down subjectivity to some sort of essence that is surely prelinguistic. So I don't think your question is merely rhetorical. It's very hard to answer, though! My cat knows the answer, but is unable to tell me.

The reason is that if we are standing in front of a tree we can point to its features and we will necessarily agree. — Janus

I understand what you're saying . . . but is it really so different? We are both "standing in front of" consciousness. We can point to its features. We may not necessarily agree, but I think that's too strong anyway, when it comes to trees. We're likely to agree that the bark is smooth, but maybe not. We're much more likely to agree about something measurable, such as the tree's diameter. But again, compare with consciousness: We'll probably agree that each of us conscious at the moment. I'll describe what happens when I imagine something; you'll compare and contrast. I describe how I tell the difference between a memory and a fiction, and you may well agree. We may find that perceptual experiences are necessarily the same. Etc. Is it really so unlike talking about a tree? We seek a common perspective.

Ah, but surely the big difference is that it's the same tree for you and me, but not the same consciousness. Hmm. Are we sure about that? Or to put it another way: If I have a sample of substance X before me, and describe its features, and you have a sample that may well be substance X as well, and you describe its features, and the descriptions match up -- are we going to end the discussion by saying, "But of course we can't be sure we're both really talking about the same thing"? I don't think so. Surely the burden of argument would go the other way: If my subjectivity is indeed not the same thing as yours (other than numerically), explain why not. What might cause such an odd circumstance to arise, given that we're both human beings who understand each other quite well, when it comes to consciousness-talk?

The difficulty will be to explain why mind or consciousness seems intuitively to be the way it seems, and how could we ever demonstrate whether or not that "seeming" is veridical or not? — Janus

Yes, this is important. A genuine explanation of consciousness has to do more than explain how it coincides with brain activity, and why such activity is required -- thought that's a hard enough task. It also needs to explain why subjectivity is the way it is, or (as you prefer) the way it seems to us. And yes, the fact that we can put the question either way leads to your puzzle of whether, in this case, it makes any sense to even separate what seems from what is veridical.

But . . . couldn't we raise all the same questions about any phenomenon? The trees seem a certain way to us; but are they really that way? It's not clear what sense to make of such a question. Similarly, conscious experience tout court seems a certain way to us; but is subjectivity really that way? I don't know where to take that. All I know is that the question appears, to me, the same one we could ask about any of our experiences. The fact that it's about consciousness itself doesn't change that -- or at least I don't see how.

Fair enough. Perhaps it's possible. I think synesthesia refers to experiencing a sensation in two different sensory modes, rather than two versions of the same mode, like red and green. But maybe simultaneous red/green perception can happen, which would be relevant to the OP's question.

Physicists are in love with the idea of objective reality. I like to say that we physicists have a mania for ontology. We want to know what the furniture of the world is, independent of us. — Adam Frank, Astrophysicist and Zen Practitioner

This is a good point. But doesn't it apply to any attempt at an objective viewpoint, not to viewing consciousness especially? If I understand the point that @Janus and yourself and others are making, there's supposed to be something different and special about the problem when it comes to consciousness. Frank seems to be saying that all objective reality is "kind of a meaningless concept" -- that we delude ourselves about attaining God's perspective. That may be. But I want to understand why there's a special problem about subjectivity, viewed as a phenomenon we all know to be as real as anything else, and therefore want to understand.

But people can talk about their minds―we do it all the time. But we do so from the perspective of how things seem to us. And how all things in that context seem to me may not be how they seem to you―even though there will likely be commonalities due to the fact that we are both human. — Janus

My response here is similar: Yes, there is a problem about perspective, and whether how things seem to me will be the same as how things seem to you. But why isn't this just as much of a problem for understanding trees as it is for understanding consciousness? We'll always struggle to find commonality of perspective. The result may be called objective, or intersubjective, or merely agreed-upon, but we recognize that it is very different from "J's opinion" about something. Don't we want something similar, in the end, as we inquire into consciousness?

It seems, again, to come down to a difference between experience and explanation. I can never experience your subjectivity, but why would that mean I can't explain how it comes about?

Not pitch, per se, because two pitches can sound at the same time. But the timbre, the quality of a note, is made up of overtones. As soon as you change those overtones, you change the timbre. — Pneumenon

Interesting. If two pitches can sound at the same time, that would be the aural equivalent of two colors appearing in the same space. What the colors can't do is appear in exactly the same space, as you point out. Now, can the pitches sound at exactly the same time? You say yes (and I agree), so that seems to make audition different from vision, but you also say that two timbres can't. Are you suggesting, then, that the timbre of a pitch is affected by what happens when another pitch is sounded simultaneously? There will be a variety of masking and distorting effects, but will the overtones actually be changed?

I remark that sounding another tone on top of the first does not change its timbre if they are still heard as distinct tones. — Pneumenon

So, if I understand you, we have an issue about whether and to what extent two instruments sounding the same pitch will be heard as two distinct tones, given the different timbres of the instruments. Isn't that a subjective response? It seems different from whether I can see something as both red and green, which clearly I cannot. But maybe I haven't quite got your thought yet.

(PS -- It may be relevant that, in recording, you can't double a part by simply duplicating it, and then placing it in two different places in the stereo pan. That will be heard as a single tone, in the center. In order to get two distinct tones, you have to do something to the duplicate -- maybe change the Eq or, as you say, run it through a different software to change the timbre, in which case a "new" tone will magically appear. Better yet, record two different performances!)

The problem with trying to model consciousness itself is that it is the thing doing the modeling, and we cannot "get outside of it", so we seem to be stuck with making inferences about what it might be from studying the brain being the best we can do, or going with what our intuitions "from inside" tell us about its nature. — Janus

I always feel somewhat dimwitted when I read this objection. It's clearly cogent and important for many who think about consciousness. Yet I can't see the force of it. Why can't a conscious mind model consciousness? Why would it be necessary to "get outside of" our own mind in order to do it? Perhaps even more significantly, why is "modeling" even necessary? Why do we need "intuitions from the inside"? Why can't we just explain it, without worrying about whether we can somehow experience our explanation at the same time? We explain many things that are inaccessible to us. We don't need the experience of being a planet in motion in order to explain planetary motion. Why is consciousness different?

To summarize my questions: Why can't subjectivity be explained objectively? Why conflate explanation with experience? You can't experience your subjectivity objectively, true, but why would that be necessary in order to explain subjectivity in general?

As I say, there must be something obvious here I'm not seeing.

Really interesting OP. All the questions you raise are good ones.

Let me push back on one point:

A wheelchair user is not incapacitated by ramps, but by stairs. — Banno

This is true, if the capacity in question is to ascend or descend from level to level. But that's a convenient choice of capacity, because it can be ameliorated. The wheelchair user is also incapacitated by being unable to dance, and that can not be ameliorated. I'm doubtful whether wheelchair dancing could be said to overcome the incapacity. It resembles dancing with the body, certainly, but is far from the same thing, whereas "going up a level" is literally the same, no matter how you accomplish it. So, is there a way of thinking of this incapacity as also social in nature? I don't see it, at first glance, but what do you think?

I'm not sure what you mean by "scientific realism", but the study of consciousness seems to be irrelevant to most of the hard sciences — Janus

By "scientific realism," I meant to denote the common-or-garden-variety conception of science. It may be flawed or dead wrong at the quantum level, but we all know it works at most other levels. And by "works," I only mean that it generates predictions that prove remarkably accurate, and at the same time provides us with a powerful measure for what it means to be right or wrong about the physical world.

So, could there be such a practice that, taken all in all, didn't include a theory of consciousness? I don't see how. You're right that, in any given hard science, we may not need that theory; we can assume the fact of consciousness. But if our goal is to give a complete account of what there is, then to leave consciousness out would be laughable. This tells me that we're still in early days of forming such an account. You say that we have cognitive science and psychology to deal with consciousness, and in a way we do, but neither field provides a grounding theory of what consciousness is, or why it occurs. Like the hard sciences, consciousness is accepted as a given (or, for some, deflated or reduced or denied).

So, one of the most extraordinary and omnipresent facts about the world -- that many of its denizens have an "inside," a subjectivity -- still awaits a unified theory. I know many on TPF doubt that science can provide this. I'm agnostic; let's wait and see.

Football's lower level is consciousness, — Patterner

Kind of. Since there are players, and the players are conscious, then yes. But I meant to include that in saying that the lower levels include players and the field. There's still something missing from the description: What makes it a game? What makes it something with rules that we can articulate no matter who the individual players are, and which field they're playing on? I agree that it's human consciousness which does this, but not by virtue of what the players may be thinking about. That would be true bottom-up emergence, but we know that's not how it happens. Rather, something seems to be added to all this activity (and thinking) which comes from a different category; it's not the same as putting enough molecules together in the right way so as to get liquidity.

. . . an actual feature of the world. ("natural" just makes additional complexity). — Ludwig V

It's the familiar problem of trying to find terminology that isn't hopelessly vague and/or controversial. "Actual feature" is fine with me, though "actual" has some of the same issues as "natural." But short of coining new terms and defining them precisely, what's to be done?

My first stab at identifying what is missing is that this notion of truth is very thin. It is neither use nor ornament. It consequently doesn't have a future in our everyday language. — Ludwig V

I agree, we can mount a pragmatic case for why certain uses of "truth" are to be preferred. Sider is coming at it slightly differently; he wants to say that our usual construals of how the world is are useful because they're true, not vice versa -- but the problem is, truth isn't enough. What the grue and bleen people say is also true. Your idea about "thin truth" is on this wavelength too, I think. Sider brings in the idea of fundamental truths, truths that are about "objective structure" -- the latter phrase I find problematic, but surely he's right that there are orders of truth, some more fundamental than others to understanding. It's not enough just to say something true -- we want the true things we say to create a picture we can also understand.

I'm a bit doubtful whether "how the world really is" is a useful or usable criterion for what we are trying to talk about. — Ludwig V

Sure, same point as above. What the hell do we call it? An approximation would be "the world without perspectives or observers" but that description is starting to sound almost quaint. But are we ready to abandon the difference between "making a mistake" and "getting it right"? If these two possibilities still make sense, then whatever marks the difference is what we mean by "how the world really is" -- not much help, is it.

the choice of what notions are fundamental remains. There’s no detour around the entirety of fundamental metaphysics. — 'Ontological Realism' - Theodore Sider

This seems particularly important to me. If you say "There are no fundamental notions," you have nonetheless made an important statement about what is and isn't fundamental.

What it destabilises is the very framework in which “mind” and “matter” appear as separable ontological kinds in the first place. — Wayfarer

Yes. If we can find a way to re-stabilize this so that "mind" and "matter" still refer, but not to irreconcilable ontological kinds in the ways that now seem unavoidable, we'll have come far.