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.

Just to be sure I'm understanding you: When, for instance, I have an ordinary conversation, and find myself using a sentence to reply to something that was said perhaps half a second ago, is the idea that I had a brain event that preceded this sentence, something in mentalese that contained the thought I then express out loud in English? Is this what is "so highly compressed it would not appear as language at all"? Certainly there hasn't been time to form the words prior to saying them, if "forming words" indeed takes time.

(I do think something like this happens, but I'm not sure how to describe it.)

They are all about truth, but not about the same truth. — Ludwig V

Yes. This invites a couple of responses:

First, are some truths more "natural" or "about the world" than others? It is true, for instance, that several stars, when grouped together, make a constellation. But that is so because of something we humans do. It is not actually a feature of the natural world (using a common sense of what is natural).

Second, how far can this be pushed? See Ted Sider's ideas about "objective structure." His "grue" and "bleen" people divide up the visual world in a bizarre way, yet everything they say about it is true. Sider argues, and I agree, that nonetheless they are missing something important about how the world really is.

The irony enters when those, who generally take science to have only epistemic or epistemological, and not ontological, significance, nonetheless seek to use the results of quantum physics to support ontological claims — Janus

Interesting point. In general, I think scientific realism had better include some truths about the role of consciousness -- it would be drastically incomplete otherwise. But what are these truths? Stay tuned . . .

I don't see a problem here. — Ludwig V

The problem, I think, comes when we ask which of these points of view (if any) reflect how the world really is. Is there any way to make the case that some points of view are ontologically privileged? -- that is, that they describe the world more accurately than their competitors?

The reason is more that it doesn't make sense to think that consciousness can emerge, or arise, or be caused by something physical, so we need another explanation. — Patterner

OK. We're saying similar things: Faced with what seems (to you) a nonsensical demand for an explanation of how consciousness could arise from the physical, we have to postulate its permanent existence. My slant is more like: The demand may or not make sense; all we can say is that, as of now, we don't know how to think about it; our conceptual scheme creates a roadblock that might prove decisive, but we can't say.

I'm underlining the reasons for positing this kind of consciousness (call it Ur-consciousness) because I want to see if there are any other, independent reasons for thinking the thesis might be true. I myself don't see any, but tell me what you think: Is there any evidence for Ur-con? Is there a physical theory that can include it? What would be our research program, to find out if Ur-con did or did not exist? Is it, in short, the result of a transcendental argument alone? Something like the cosmological constant used to be? (And there's a lesson there, because the CC now has new conceptual arguments to back it up, so the transcendental arguers were right all along!)

If we understand the causes of the emergence of consciousness very well, can it be possible that it will not involve the properties of the lower levels? — Patterner

Right, that's the argument. Consciousness can't simply "emerge" like a rabbit out of a hat. So we have to ask what it is about the lower levels of physical reality that might be responsible. Your idea is that proto-consciousness was there all along, and it is this property of all matter that allows what we call mental realities to emerge. (I'm not persuaded that this "mental emergence" is any easier to explain than would be the emergence of consciousness itself, but let that go for now.)

The question I'd want to reflect on is, Are we being too parsimonious in our description of the "lower levels"? Must it be a matter of properties, exclusively? On the analogy with liquidity, then yes, it must be. But what about the analogy of the football game? What is the "property" which, added to the properties of the players and the field, creates the game? Two answers spring to mind: It's the intentions of the players; or, It's the rules that humans have put in place. I'm not sure which of these is right, but they both have the feature of bringing in something from an entirely different category of being, something that really can't be considered a lower-level property. Food for thought, perhaps.

I think consciousness is always present, always giving the entity in question, whether a particle, person, or whatever else, subjective experience of itself. — Patterner

But consciousness does not create those things [such as physical sensory input]. Rather, it is the property by which we subjectively experience them. — Patterner

I think I understand the distinction you're making better than I did before. Am I right that the major reason for proposing this ontology is to avoid needing to have consciousness emerge, or arise, or be caused by something physical?

If there is a reason for the emergence of consciousness, then wouldn't that mean it was intended? — Patterner

Not sure I follow that. Intended by whom? I'm using "reason" here in the sense of "What's the reason the seasons change?" But if that's confusing, we could, if you like, reserve the term "reason" for situations involving rationality and intention, and instead speak here of causes. So: "If this picture of consciousness as emergent turns out to be the case, we will understand the causes of its emergence very well." Is that less objectionable? (And mind you, neither of us is necessarily buying the "if" part. We're looking into what the hypothesis would entail.)

I claim consciousness is an objective fact. — Patterner

Yes, we both start from there. I was noting that your "proto-consciousness" might also be an objective fact, though you're clear that we can't find any physical property with which to identify it.

The subjective experience of a photon is extremely different from the subjective experience of a human. — Patterner

It is a difficult thing to try to imagine what part [of the concept of "experience"] is being "carried over" such that it can be said that a particle has it. However, I think it's what is needed. It has to be there from the beginning. — Patterner

We may have an aporia, then. If it's genuinely needed, and yet nothing can be said to give it content, that suggests to me that the path is closed to further inquiry, at least for now. I can't even posit the idea of a photon's subjective experience -- my mind is blank and the words seem empty. But of course, whenever someone says, "I just can't imagine how . . . " the right response is "Try harder!" So maybe you can!

I don't think anything results in consciousness. It's always there. We just subjectively experience "scaled up" mental abilities. — Patterner

This is perhaps important. Consistent with your idea that consciousness is a sort of irreducible natural kind, or property, we can view it as creating mental abilities of various sorts. What's "created" is not consciousness (it's there all along) but the mental ability. My concern about this picture is that it sounds like a shell game. We've substituted "mental ability" for "consciousness" in its traditional usages, and are now asserting the same mysterious things about mental abilities that were formally asserted about consciousness. How are they created? What are they? How do we know what has them? etc.

yet one day, for no reason whatsoever . . . — Patterner

Well, that couldn't be true. If this picture of consciousness as emergent turns out to be the case, we will understand the reasons for its emergence very well. I don't think anyone is suggesting that consciousness is random or fluky.

Regarding "the same thing", is it possible to think of consciousness as another sense? — Patterner

Hmm. Maybe, at least by analogy. Worth pondering.

Yes, that would be a physicalist causal explanation. To be generous, we could say that the making-sense part is more than coincidental -- that it is what happens, from our 1st person perspective, when the described brain events take place, accounting for the utility of the whole process.

As I think I said somewhere in the OP, if one believes that's the only way in which the idea of causality can be used, then there's really nothing in the OP questions that are worth considering.

this is the closest I've come here.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15877/property-dualism/p1 — Patterner

Thanks. I didn't go on to read all 7 pages of the thread, so this may have been said already (and maybe by me!) but I'll say it anyway, since this is a different thread.

Property dualism, or something very like it, is what supervenience proposes, it seems to me. If brain and mind are to be understood as "the same thing" (and I'll come back to that troublesome terminology), we need to be able to say how they nonetheless (appear to) differ so dramatically. Property dualism says that "the same thing" can have different properties, depending upon the perspective of the perceiver. A brain, viewed from the outside, has physical properties. A brain, viewed or experienced from the inside, has mental properties. Some versions of property dualism (I think including yours) go on to say that these are actual objective properties which can be discovered using 3rd person inquiry.

I like this perspective because it cuts the knot of what-causes-what, and it doesn’t claim that consciousness is forever a mystery, inaccessible to objective investigation. Yes, it requires the postulate of consciousness, and a 1st person perspective, in order to get off the ground, but that’s a postulate I’m happy to accept.

The idea that proto-consciousness may turn out to be a property of matter, supporting a modest version of panpsychism, seems quite possible. It’s sheer speculation at this point. But it’s no more unwarranted than vague references to “emergent properties.”

My objections begin with the attempt to widen the terms “consciousness” and “experience” to include, say, photons. I think Chalmers is way off track when he says that a proton has “a degree” of consciousness. Might it be proto-conscious, in your sense of having a property that, when scaled up, can result in consciousness? Sure. But that just isn’t “a degree of consciousness,” any more than five or ten atoms have “a degree of liquidity.”

Likewise with “experiences.” We can insist on a reform of how to use that word, so that all material entities can now have them, but that’s arbitrary. If the word is used at all, it refers to events that can be perceived “from the inside,” and the constituents of your rock can’t do this. There are indeed “instantaneous, memory-less moments” involving the rock-particles, but the particles aren’t experiencing them. Or putting it differently: If you want to reform “experience” to include what particles can do, you need to explain what part of the concept of “experience” is being carried over, such that it can justify continuing to use the term.

Lastly . . . we should definitely come up with something better than “the same thing.” It’s a tempting, often useful locution, which I frequently fall back on, but I worry that too often it paints the wrong picture. In one sense, as we’ve already noted, it’s ludicrous to say my mental image of a purple cow and a particular set of neurons firing in my brain are the same thing. That can’t be what we mean when we claim some sort of identity between the two phenomena. What is the same here is what supervenience (and perhaps property dualism) is trying to capture.

We need the concept of “perspective” or “point of view” in order to understand it. From your perspective, having been kept in the dark for two days, a flaring match looks painfully bright. From mine, standing in the sunlight and looking in a window at your match, it’s so dim it’s hard to see. So, does the match have the property of brightness? Obviously, that depends. With 1st and 3rd person, the perspective shift is much more radical. A match, at least, “translates” in visual images and metaphors, but there’s no translation language (yet) between brain and mind. Still, this can help us understand how there might be a “same thing” underlying these two points of view. Or we can use my football-game analogy.

Maybe instead of “the same thing” we should say “the same essent”. I’m not fond of Heideggerian terminology, but this one (I think invented by Mannheim to translate seiend in the lectures on metaphysics) is close to what we want. We could stipulate that an essent is an item that exists, but stripped of perspective. Heidegger might be outraged at putting it this way, but I want a word we can use that acknowledges that there is a level of being beneath or beyond perspective. So brain and mind share the same essent.

Exactly. It's easy to tell a causal story about what happens in the brain. But is that all we're talking about when we say that certain thoughts imply certain conclusions? Going back to the OP -- am I wrong in thinking that the content of my thought about Ann caused the next thought?

Or, the position that I am espousing: that they are one and the same thing. — Mijin

If by "same thing" we mean two phenomena in a supervenience relationship, then yes, though "same thing" probably isn't nuanced enough, given how weirdly different they appear. I was trying to show that the chicken-and-egg questions get us nowhere. To re-quote myself:

if "based in" is supposed to prioritize one level over the other in this way, it doesn't really hold up. But see my previous post. If "based in" merely means that the brain is necessary for subjective experiences to exist, but subjective experiences are not necessary for the brain to exist, then yes, "based in", in that sense, is fine. — J

I feel you are poisoning your own well by beginning with the premise that one must cause the other. — Mijin

Again, I began with that premise (which many people do believe) in order to show what's wrong with it. Sorry if that wasn't clear. The relation of brain and mind is not a cause/effect relation. But the relation of one thought to another may be, and the OP asks, broadly, if there's such a thing as causation in the realm of ideas or propositions -- that sort of mental-to-mental causation, as opposed to brain events.

I suspect consciousness is something very different than what you think it is, — Patterner

Is there a post on TPF where you sketch out your view of consciousness? I'm curious . . .

Sure: both support the position that thoughts, and subjective experience, are based in neurochemistry. — Mijin

I understand what you mean, but "based in" is tricky. If I have a thought of someone I love, and the brain fires up in all the ways we can now observe, was my thought caused by a yet previous piece of neurochemistry? Couldn't we equally say that the chicken of neurochemistry was preceded by the egg of subjective thought? In other words, if "based in" is supposed to prioritize one level over the other in this way, it doesn't really hold up. But see my previous post. If "based in" merely means that the brain is necessary for subjective experiences to exist, but subjective experiences are not necessary for the brain to exist, then yes, "based in", in that sense, is fine.

Of course it's the brain. Nobody's questioning that. — Patterner

Much pithier than my version! Though in fact there are those who question whether brains are necessary for subjective experience; on this forum many people suggest that a nonbiological entity may achieve consciousness. I find this conceivable but unlikely.

But that's where, not how. — Patterner

Right, simply saying "Subjectivity is neurochemical" is like saying "Consciousness is an emergent property" or "The brain is the seat of the mind." It gives the illusion of understanding something but no actual content.

We can reliably, and precisely, induce subjective experiences with chemical, electrical or mechanical effects on the brain. — Mijin

Yes, but the opposite is also the case: We can reliably induce chemical and electrical effects on the brain by subjective experiences.

if mind and brain supervene, no given brain event should be said to cause the subjective event. — J

Thinking more about this, I realize that it's important to emphasize the difference between a single, given brain event -- a firing of neurons that occurs at a particular time -- and the entire physical system we call the brain (and nervous system). I believe it's true that, without my brain, I would not be conscious. And the opposite is, trivially, false: "Without my consciousness, I wouldn't have a brain." This demonstrates a grounding or priority that we don't need to contest because we fear it leads to physicalism.

What happens at time T1 is different. Neurons fire = I picture a purple cow. Why? There is no necessarily correct temporal order. We could say, "The neurons fire and so I picture the cow." Or we could say, "I decide to picture the cow and so the neurons fire." Which causes which? To me, the answer is clearly "Neither one," hence supervenience.

I recommend you check out De Anima. It's totally worth it given your interest/question. — Sirius

Yes, it's been a while, probably time for a reread. But if I may: To say "one thought does follow another thought" is only to restate the observation we began with. The OP question is about explanation: Why does one thought follow another thought? It's what you're calling the "qualified sense" that interests me (and my passive, destructible and limited mind!).

This answers your question. — Sirius

Thank you, but I don't quite see how. Would Aristotle say that a thought does, or does not, cause another thought?

when trying to find an analogy for anything dealing with consciousness the differences are hard to get past. — Patterner

Yes. The football-game analogy captures one point of similarity -- that a mere physical description must be incomplete -- and perhaps hints at another -- that different levels of description can apply to the same set of phenomena. But here we are with "same set" again. With football, we can more or less see how the game requires a first-level description of "the same" set of events, but with consciousness, all we can do is assert that it's somehow the case, without being able to understand it in the least.

Yes we don't have a good understanding yet of how the brain makes subjective experiences.
--------------------
We don't yet understand how the brain creates subjective experiences like "redness".
— Mijin
We don't have a hint of understanding how the brain makes subjective experiences. — Patterner

The problem goes the other way too: We don't know how subjective experiences, such as thoughts, create changes in the brain (and then the nervous system, and then the body). In any case, if mind and brain supervene, no given brain event should be said to cause the subjective event.

The closest analogy I can think of for brain/mind would be to ask: Do the players and the field cause the football game? Not really. Are they identical with the football game? Sort of, but not really. Can the football game be described only in terms of what the players do, physically? No. Can the game be played without the players and the field? No. Etc. Like subjectivity, it's obvious there's a football game going on, but it's extremely difficult to explain its ontology. But even this analogy falls short, since subjectivity is way more different from the brain than a football game is from its constituent physical parts.

I can't help, but I hope you get some answers. It's an interesting point you're inquiring into.

While we're waiting, here's another question: Can you think of an aural example that would be the equivalent of colors and shapes in regard to "mutual exclusivity at a point"? Trying to home in on whether this is a phenomenology of vision alone.

I think I get the point. Our imaginations are giving us different pictures of what might result from non-standard speech, that's all.

There really is no "stern consequences" for common misuse of language. — Metaphysician Undercover

To me, they look stern. Not to you. That's OK. We're both just speculating.

If you can summarize one or two of the main points of controversy I would appreciate it, as my understanding is there is no issue with that description (though no-one would say it is complete either). — Mijin

Neuronal events are nothing like thoughts, so the question is, how can they be the same thing? And if they are co-dependent in some way, does one cause the other? How does that happen? Why should physical experiences such as neurons firing give rise to conscious experience? Are thoughts "really" just brain events?

If you look into the so-called "hard problem of consciousness" as described by Chalmers and others, it will give you a good sense of what the controversy is.

If I'm actually looking at the TV, it's not a belief that there's a TV there. If I hear it from the other room, it's not a belief that the TV is on. — Patterner

Yet, in ordinary language, if someone asks you, "Do you believe the TV is on?" you'll answer yes. You might also point out that it's a rather strange question: "Why would I not believe it? It's on; see for yourself!" This highlights one of the uses of "believe". We tend to emphasize believing something when there could be doubt.

So what about the phenomenology? I'm actually looking at the TV; do I simultaneously believe that it's on? If belief is reduced to linguistic belief, then clearly not. No such sentence enters my mind. But we've been considering the other, non-linguistic senses of "belief". Is there some mental event that occurs while I watch TV, that's the equivalent of giving credence to the existence of the TV? This seems far-fetched. More likely is the opposite case, when we're watching, say, a pack of elves. The mental event "I don't believe this" is probably present, wouldn't you say? Or least "I don't know whether to believe this or not."

With the TV, we're thrown back on belief understood as analytical philosophy usually does: an attitude, a disposition, not a mental event and not linguistic. To say "I believe the TV is on" is to claim that my experience is factual, and that I am the one having it. It is all but the same as "I assert."

If I say "Julius Caesar is a prime number", the penalty is that I haven't said anything. — Ludwig V

Or, as I suggested to @Metaphysician Undercover, if you continue to say such things you may well be institutionalized.

We can't help eating and drinking in a sense, but there is a huge super-structure of activity at the conscious level. — Ludwig V

Sure. The evolutionary thesis isn't usually applied to the stuff that's biologically obligatory, like breathing or digesting. There, it's just taken for granted that we have no choice, as organisms. It becomes inadequate when applied to most of the rest of our behavior. Our status as Homo sapiens gives us certain drives, certain tendencies to behave, but they rarely -- or so I hope -- determine my behavior unthinkingly. Schopenhauer and Nietzsche were making what I regard as polemical points, in opposition to the rationalizing tendency of the philosophy that was current. I find it difficult to think they really believed it, about themselves.

In the case of the signs, I was imagining dying in a crash because of not following the speed rules. In the case of language, someone who didn't follow the rules of their language would likely be ostracized or oppressed -- at least it they did it a lot. Anyway, the severity of the consequences isn't the point. Rather, it's that there is no automatic enforcement of these rules. Compare, for instance, using a passport. There are rules and you have to follow them or else you can't use a passport. No one is ever in a position of being told, "Fine, don't present a valid passport, you'll be sorry." They're simply prohibited from playing the passport game.

Perhaps every assertion is a belief, but not every belief is an assertion. So an assertion is something in addition to a belief. — Patterner

That would be my answer too. And how, exactly, does an assertion add something to a belief? (Neither of us means, I assume, that an assertion has to be spoken. I can mentally assert something, and mentally believe something, and they're still two different things in the way you describe.)

And what about, "The TV was on when I left the room five seconds ago"? Can I know that without having the belief, even unexpressed, even unthought, that the TV is still on? — Patterner

I think not, but what about the opposite?: Can I have the belief that the TV is still on without knowing it? I'd say yes (if "knowledge" is set at a high bar), pointing again to the difference among these terms.

So yes, thoughts cause thoughts, almost all of our conscious experience relies on it. — Mijin

You're not missing the point; our conscious experience certainly seems to rely on something like causation. But the OP question focuses on whether it's the content of a thought that causes another thought, or whether, as you describe, it's the neurons firing. Of course it's tempting to say, "They're the same thing," but as you probably know, that thesis has generated a lot of philosophical controversy.

The further question is whether, if I have a series of thoughts that represent, say, a logical entailment, I am then caused to think the conclusion. This depends on how far we're willing to extend the concept of causation into the rational sphere. I have reasons for concluding X, but am I also caused to do so?

"the rules" implies principles which people are obliged to follow. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't quite see this. By "obliged," do you mean "forced"? Not many sets of rules come with their own enforcement. Or, if it's merely a matter of "Either follow them or face the consequences," then this applies equally well to ordinary language, which exacts stern consequences for the non-followers. In this, they're no different from road signs.

Life's quite bleak from the evolutionary point of view. — Ludwig V

I suppose some might find it a kind of comfort -- the idea that we can't help doing what our biology (or unconscious, if you prefer) insists on. But this is so manifestly untrue that I've never really understood the appeal.

The strange magic of evolutionary theory is that it creates a sense of purpose, of intent, that does not depend on any conscious activity. — Ludwig V

I'm reminded of this, from Schopenhauer (I don't know if he was aware of evolutionary theory):

Nature can attain her end only by implanting in the individual a certain delusion, and by virtue of this, that which is merely in truth a good thing for the species seems to him to be a good thing for himself, so that he serves the species, whereas he is under the delusion that he is serving himself. — The World as Will and Representation, 538

This expands the "sense of [unconscious] purpose, of intent" into the moral sphere as well, as so many contemporary exponents of evolutionary explanations do.

Depends on what we agree a belief to be. I've changed my tune on that, and now allow that a belief can be non-linguistic. But I think it's still helpful to keep "belief" separate from merely being certain of a fact. The question we'd probably need to address is this: Are "I believe the TV is on" and "I assert that the TV is on" saying the same thing? Conventionally, loosely, they usually are, but does that settle it?

I don't think I believe there's a television in my living room. It's a fact that there's a tv in the living room. What's the difference between belief and certainty of facts? — Patterner

One reply would be: "Oh, so you don't believe there's a TV in your living room?" But I think your point is rather that belief doesn't enter into it at all.

If I go in and the tv isn't there - that is, there isn't a tv in the living room...? Was it only a belief? Is that what being mistaken of the facts is? — Patterner

Sort of, yes. "There is a TV in the living room" doesn't assert the same thing as "I believe there's a TV in the living room." The first statement can be false while the second remains true. But . . . if you assert both statements, then, conventionally, they do mean the same thing; they both express something you claim to be true. This isn't really mysterious, just a matter of equivocal usages.

All belief is meaningful to the creature forming, having, and/or holding the belief.<----That seems like an undeniable basic tenet.

Would you agree? — creativesoul

Long answer: We'd need to be sure we're on the same page about what "meaningful" is supposed to represent. Short answer: But yes, probably.

All good questions. I agree that the instinctual practice precedes any actual mice. And the story you're telling seems plausible: At a certain point, a cat "gets it" and discovers a purpose for all that kitteny stuff. When that happens, when a mouse appears, what does the cat believe? As you say, the behaviors she's practiced are always available; she doesn't have to rethink them, or give them any thought at all. But when she stalks a mouse, waiting patiently outside its mouse-hole, I think she does have a belief of sorts. In other words, she's not just along for the ride: "Oh, how interesting what my body is doing now!" Her mind, harboring the beliefs it does, can control her body towards a purpose. At any rate, if you grant her an intention or purpose -- to catch the mouse -- then a (non-linguistic) belief doesn't seem such a stretch.

What would be an example of a belief that you wonder if a cat might have? — Patterner

The one @Dawnstorm offered would be a good example:

for the cat to want to catch that mouse over there she would have to believe there's a mouse over there. — Dawnstorm

And see my somewhat chagrined response below!

This is persuasive. You've done what I asked, which was to paint a convincing picture of how we might think about, and use, the concept of a non-linguistic belief. You've helped me realize that what I called "our current analyses of belief" don't have to commandeer the conversation simply because a robust philosophical tradition -- analytic/language philosophy -- has adopted these analyses. This is ironic, because I'm the one who so often warns against being beguiled by a certain word or term, and believing we can find the Correct Definition.

So: I would still say that propositional or linguistic or "belief that" beliefs are probably not accessible to most non-human animals. The interesting discussion instead focuses on the other kind, about which I was skeptical but now see as a legitimate way of thinking about what a belief is. What should we understand, and say, about the cat's beliefs concerning the mouse, or about your own beliefs concerning the traffic-light situation?

I make all these decisions without words. I just look. It's all thought habits. — Dawnstorm

Yes. What you describe (very well) is similar to the idea of background beliefs, which have always given trouble to the analysis of belief as a mental event. But in your case, the necessary beliefs you hold in order to act as you do are not exactly "in the background"; they come into play in this actual situation, and are probably mental events. This contrasts with "I believe the Earth revolves around the Sun" as a background belief, which is merely available to the mind.

In terms of behavioural implicature, you could say that I believe "green means go", even though I never think this. — Dawnstorm

Again, this could be understood as a background belief, one which you hold at all times. But the traffic-light situation is a little different. When preparing to cross, you don't think "green means go" in words, but aren't you proposing that the belief is activated and present for you, as your behavior demonstrates? I want to say that therefore you do think it, in the same way the cat thinks that the mouse is present. So I'm agreeing with you about non-linguistic beliefs but going even further.

But what exactly is "the same way"? What actually happens in the cat's mind, in your mind? The only clue I have is a common experience (for me) that I've alluded to earlier in this thread (I think). I am often aware that I've formed a thought or an idea much more quickly than I could form the corresponding language, assuming there is any. I then backtrack, as it were, and "say it to myself" (often, as you point out, having trouble finding the right words). So I'm claiming to have had an extremely rapid thought that is non-linguistic yet contentful, something to which words can then be put. Is this how the cat thinks? She can't find the words, of course, but she may very well think in this same rapid manner. I would add that it's not a matter of thinking in images either, thought that sometimes happens. The non-verbal thought I'm trying to describe is also non-visual or non-imagistic.

Now to claim all this is to explain nothing. But it leads me to agree that we shouldn't insist on narrowing "belief" to its linguistic uses. We can corral such uses into a pen and call them Beliefs1 or whatever, and go on to say very interesting and significant things about how they work. The challenge is to better understand what we can say, philosophically, about the other kind(s).

puzzling out what the difference between language-accompanied and language-less thought is seems at the core of this thread. — Dawnstorm

I agree, that's central to a lot of what's been discussed on the thread.

As the referential piece of reality the human and the cat may have, under a theory of comparison, similar believes: compatible ones. Their tied together in a situation: both the human and the cat might like for the cat to catch the mouse. — Dawnstorm

But this already presumes a tentative answer to the question. I'm trying to inquire into something even more basic: Does a cat even have a belief? To sharpen the question: A cat has a desire, arguably even an intention, but can she have beliefs that accompany either desire or intention?

humans and cats have comparable "thoughts" — Dawnstorm

The scare-quotes around "thoughts" are meant to indicate, I presume, that a thought in this sense is not linguistic. You agree that some thoughts depend on language. So here we're talking about the other kind, the kind that don't. Since we know very little about this kind of thought in ourselves -- or I, at any rate, find it mysterious -- and nothing about this kind of thought in cats, we're speculating at this point. But my speculation is that you're right, there is something cognate in my (instantaneous, language-less) thought "Mouse!" when I see one, and the cat's thought. In such a case, the language?/non-language? division isn't so important, as you suggest. My "Mouse!" thought is not couched in terms of the word "mouse," though usually it's instantly followed or categorized by the word, since I'm a very language-oriented person. This doesn't happen for the cat, presumably.

the putative difference between a langauge-having and a language-less creature is mostly that a language-less creature cannot and does not have to think about language. — Dawnstorm

Here I would take issue. Yes, thinking about language is one of the things that a language-using creature can do, that a language-less creature can't. But the more central difference concerns language as symbol, as a potential designator of universals. A dog unquestionably understands how the sounds I make refer to his world, and what he's supposed to do about them. But I find it very unlikely that he understands what "toy" means. He knows what that sound means for him. But he doesn't see that the word "toy" could be uttered in any other context (unless I've taught him another association) and with any other purpose. He can't, quite literally, think about "toy," because "toy" doesn't exist for him as a symbol. Can he, in his doggish non-linguistic way, have an image of a toy, or a desire for one? I'm sure he can. But he doesn't know it's a toy!

Circling back to the question of beliefs, I would say this: We ought to keep an open mind. If you can illustrate what a non-linguistic belief would be like, perhaps I'll come around to believing (sorry!) that it's possible. It would of course involve a major reform of our current analyses of "belief," which emphasize that a belief requires an object of belief, and that one cannot set out a belief without language. But I'm game to try!

that it might be relevant that I grew up bilingually. — Dawnstorm

Yes! I'm sure that helped you recognize that what we do with words is quite arbitrary, in a way. We try to match them with the important stuff -- the concepts, the ideas, the perceptions, the events -- but which words we pick for the job aren't the point. Also, of course, that different languages emphasize different conceptual nuances. I'm always astonished, for instance, when intelligent Christians don't seem to care what New Testament Greek meant to its readers. They accept an English translation of, say, logos or agape, and build theological worlds on what they would have meant, had they been translated that way into English!