numbers don't exist. — Art48

I agree with you. They exist. But they are ultimately make-believe. Functional tools we have constructed, projected into the natural world as such, and because they are Functional, collectively believe.

In that sense, as 'opposed' to the real and natural world against which we project them, they are ontologically not real. So they exist, but only for humans, and only in that fictional layer which we have imposed upon reality, hiding it only from ourselves. When humans are nowhere to be found, so too will numbers be.*

*assuming that no other organism evolves to adopt them, and that even our AI etc are gone.

I used 'so-called' because, given I am not a brain scientist (etc) I wish to reserve the possibility that I am mistaken/open to tweaking needed for precision.

However, your secondary point, regarding [so called] collective memory, seems to have grasped tge point I was trying to make. A red rose is whatever it is to our organic senses. But our perception of red rose, as 21st C, humans able to converse in English, has been reshaped by our common narratives--eg. romance, beauty, thorny, fragrant, Shakespeare, English history and so on. Because of this collective memory, a red rose is not what it might have been to a prehistoric human animal. Try as we might, we cannot see it with our senses, unmediated by our shared Mind.

My senses can deceive me, — A Realist

I believe your sense don't deceive you. When you hear a loud crash behind you and you jump, your senses were functioning in truth, and effectively.

It is the almost immediate displacement of your senses with a human made construction--perception--which is susceptible to deception.

When a traveler sees a rope in the distance and thinks it's a snake, it's minds displacement which deceived her. Not her eyes.

I would [pardon my presumptiousness] suggest that at the instant that your eyes saw, your body had a/some real feeling(s)--perhaps an organic bonding with Nature (or, your place within that whole). The moment you identified it as a thing, 'beautiful' your real connection with that unnamable thing, became displaced by the conventional concept, thereafter relegated to Mind and History, forever displacing that moment of reality with our construction of it. Real beauty is that organic sensory experience, and not any of this discourse about it.

I submit you will yearn to repeat it, but the yearning belongs to the label, and this discourse. You cannot repeat it. But it can return. When it does, like the moment you described, it will surprise you and make you feel something real...until the nanosecond after, when, again, you acknowledge it with "beautiful."

No need to attribute. Happy to contribute.

that there's the real object which science discerns, then how it appears to us on a sensory level. — Wayfarer

Granted, certain animals may sense differently than humans. But the 'subjective' you are alluding to and discuss in your very interesting paper (offsite) applies to perception--as you say 'experience. The Narratives shaping us (as specifically human) and stored in our so called individual memories 'color' our sensation. That does not mean our sensations are subjective. If there were no Narratives coloring our experience, you and I might 'see' a red rose in exactly the same way. Of course, we would not be able to confirm that without creating and sharing a narrative about it. But that will in turn, bump the vision out of sensation and place it in perception/experience...and so on.

Taoism suggests we remain free and easy about our Narratives so that we can navigate through them without getting caught or trapped.

there is a purpose in life, it's to find what your purpose is and be the best at it as your authentic, genuine self. — MrLiminal

The idea and application in our lives of "purpose" is made-up. If it serves one well, so be it. Often, however, it is distracting, misleading, even blinding or entrapping. I think "Taoism" (if there is such a unified, identifiable, thing), is pointing in a direction away from the conventional attachment to, even fixation with, purpose. Be an uncarved block, it suggests. Have no adherence to any purpose outside of sustaining life--as is the so called purpose of every other living organism. The rest, for humans, is a perpetual flow of stories we construct and project. Given that, "Taoism" suggests we be always free and ready to adapt to the narratives which flow in our direction, and surround us. One popular example is (extremely abridged here) the 'parable' of the aged and deformed tree--not suitable for lumber. Conventional think condemns it as useless and pathetic, Taoism recognizes it as an undisturbed place for shade...and so on. Another (also extremely abridged) is the parable of the man able to survive the rapids of a powerful river. He does so by allowing the flow to carry him, while adapting to it, rather than by trying to oppose or overcome it [with his own purpose/notions about the river and swimming].

shedding the illusion is often rather more traumatic than a snake shedding its skin. — Wayfarer

I can imagine. So would actually turning the other cheek. And, anyway, what really is ethics? Yet if decisions were made in the direction of these ideals, might not they be tending towards the ethical?

the concept of the 'middle way' is a blurry one in application to ethical dilemmas — Jack Cummins

I think of the Middle Way, even in its ethical application, as not so much a behavioural/choices path of moderation, as a 'place' or 'state' or 'perspective' which exists in the 'gap' 'between' the extremes; or where there is no thing such as extremes, because there are no opposites period; that is, differences are dissolved (whether that is a psychological, metaphysical or epistemological 'place' or concern, let the experts decide). I.e., the path to insight is neither one of overindulging the Subject nor depriving It; but rather shedding the illusion that there is a Subject to overindulge or deprive.

How this path translates into ethics is now more clear. For the sake of brevity, at least as a starting point, Ethical behavior is not driven by the desires of the illusory Subject. Or, in more conventional terms, ethical decisions are egoless.

feelings are central. — GrahamJ

Yes, but my own thoughts may not align fully with either yours or Lett's (based on my extremely limited exposure here). While not wishing to put any of them into identifiable boxes, my thinking may be a strange hybrid.

I will explain super-briefly and in the context of this discussion about AI and my original reply to the OP.

I think emotions are a painting over of direct sensation; the paint being meaning.

I think feelings are a direct sensation, they regulate the body's mood but in a much broader way than conventionally thought of. To keep it brief, even that which triggers belief is a sensation.

The 'code' which Mind writes and projects into the world to give meaning to these direct feelings is emotion.

The emotion is available to AI because it is just code/meaning.

It's the feelings which are unique to living beings like us and therefore not accessible to AI. And I would speculate never will be.

To give an overly simplistic illustration.

I hold my newborn child fresh out of the womb and instantly feel [a bond]. That is an organic and real sensation the AI cannot have.

Within 'a second' Mind constructs from history, meaning to attach to the feeling (because I am human and blessed/burdened with Mind) 'love' to displace that initial feeling. Now I have the emotion, subjective, "I love my baby." That emotion is a construction and can be programmed into AI.

But just as for us, the emotion is not Consciousness. It is not even real. It is programmed code. Triggered by the same feedback loop that makes me nervous when I hear a siren and call upon History to attach meaning.

I'm saying the AI cannot have consciousness not because it cannot have emotions which only we humans construct; but because it cannot have feelings, the real source of our drives, moods, etc., and that which we share with many other species in the real world.

Anyway this may have been to brief and simple, but for what it's worth...

Your information by the way was fascinating. I sense that I might unwittingly align with Hofstadter. I'm not sure about terminology, 'cognition' etc. But for me real 'experience' for humans is like that nanosecond before the sensation gets flooded with constructions from History and displaced by perception or emotion or desire etc. etc.

Suicide is necessarily a settlement of the Mind, imposed upon the Body. If you think, as I do, that the Mind constructs and projects Fictions, to support the Body in its drive to live, then the Mind has no business imposing a glitch or pathology so permanently upon the Body. Rather, it must fulfill its 'fiduciary' role and repair the glitch. Of course, the Body suffers real pain because ot the glitch, which only exasperates the glitch ultimately leading to the fatal but clearly false settlement. So there must be compassion in the meantime, people in that condition need others to care about their suffering. But to me without a doubt suicide is a mistake and Mind has no business imposing it on a Body with a drive to live.

This, to me, is the 'insight', which only human consciousness and intelligence can possess. — L'éléphant

Your good points aside, in case my thought needs clarifying. I'm suggesting that only a living organism has (among other things which might apply) feelings; and by thar I mean what the brain, neurons, and I guess for e.g. the limbic system produce. And it is therd that experience is real, as it is for other creatures. In Mind, which presumably AI is at least currently focusing on replicating, there is only the script which uniquely for humans, gives meaning (usually I'm narrative form) to the feelings. But it is empty code without the feelings. It's one thing to know what love is, its another thing to feel it.

languages of art and of faith — J

I think also tools. If it is knowledge you're after, perhaps effective only after the philosophical prerequisites have been satisfied.

First, a clarification: The idea I’m referring to doesn’t denigrate poetry, or fiction, or prayer, or paying compliments, or any other non-discursive uses of language. Whether such uses represent anything “higher” than philosophical discourse is a separate question, though of course a related one, and interesting in its own right. Here I’m sticking to the discourses of rational inquiry. — J

Subject to the caveat that I am weighing in on the strength of structures I have stored in my memory up to this moment, and without delving deeper, 1. I understand and appreciate your clarification; 2. I tend to think that of the paths currently available to 'leading us to that door we have to open by other means', not only is it the highest, but perhaps the only such path which is essential if we want a decent chance at arriving at the door.

Thanks for clarifying

there is no single, coherent, agreed upon concept 'Christian' or teaching regarding Christianity. Odd as it may sound, Jesus was not a Christian. There is much in Christianity that I think he would not have approved of. The religion is the invention of Paul for the Gentiles and developed in ways that I think Paul would not have approved of through the influence of paganism. — Fooloso4

When we back up and stop 'playing', that's probably the healthier of starting points if we're willing to think in terms of assessing not just the principles of the founder, but those principles within the context of its postmortem promoters; i.e., those, like Paul who I suspect, really brought us, 'no Christianity without the ressurection; no salvation without Christ.

Fair enough. Then if the essence of Christianity is strict adherence to its rules, I suppose any claim to membership requires acceptance of the ressurection.

I suppose also that nothing in that precludes me from, like members, acting as though I were a Christian, just from claiming to be one; and from that small matter of my own ressurection, if membership is in fact the exclusive means.

In the end, I think the strings attached end up twisting and strangling the thing being promoted. But that is admittedly me

Philosophy is fit for purpose.
But if ever it claims to provide direct access to ultimate or eternal truths, it has engaged in a dysfunctional misrepresentation. Thankfully, most often it doesn't.

But in many cases outside the NT the spirit of the law seems elevated above the letter, and so Jesus is not unique in this. And this goes along with the claim of misunderstanding the Scriptures at John 5:39 — — Count Timothy von Icarus

What I find perplexing is that we all know this: scriptures are riddled with contradictions; and yet we toil, even the least fanatical and fundamentalist among us, at proving, at determining, etc., as if there is any word ever spoken or inscribed that we can say with unconditional certainty can withstand time as an eternal truth.

Not Descartes, and certainly not St. Paul, though both can still be venerated for their contributions, followed to edifying, even so called spiritually beneficial degrees.

Addendum: Its not fair Paul gets his stamped "must read as eternally true," and poor Descartes doesnt.

Are you still playing christianity if there is no ressurection?
If not, but you are still playing, why does the modification matter? Because you have no 'right' to modify the rules and still call it christianity? Under what authority but its own?
Is the essence of Christianity the salvation of the individual or the strict adherence to its rules?
If it's the former, then what if one rejected the resurrection and yet was saved?
Since we cant truly establish the ressurection outside of the claims of the game, hence, we question it;
Unless we can establish the necessity of belief in the ressurection outside of the claims, we ought to be open to questioning it.
I think if it's open for question, let me play christianity without the ressurection if playing that way is effective. There's nothing stopping me.
If the players association determines that only the classical version can be called christianity, let them. It's not trade marked.
Yes I can be a Christian and reject or find irelevant, the ressurection--as a historical fact.
And lest this seem offensive with the reference to 'playing,' I think one can not only play without need of the ressurection (ultimately a self-based 'goal,' providing us with the hope of the same, as if the goal in football were not actually the points, but by calling it a 'slice', the promise of a slice of pizza at the after party), but can play just as passionately and with all of one's might, garnering all of the same benefits both psycho-spiritual and socio-political.

The large majority of philosophers do not subscribe to the idea of most if not all of the concepts you mention, so this can't be the source of their reasoning at all. — Outlander

You are correct and I was hasty. I believe that notwithstanding most philosophers rejecting the issues I raised, they are still dragged by them. But I am not prepared to provide evidence currently. So, i will happily defer to your point.

These things by the aforementioned descriptors are but illusions too. Yet they drive men to madness, war, and on the opposite end provide comfort, purpose, and belonging. These things are regarded as substantial entities in and of themself, regardless if they be "facades" of biological workings or mere social constructs, — Outlander

It may be true that these things affect us; but I think your 'hint' that they might be facades is closer to the truth. While I realize you are not subscribing to that theory, I think, neither can it just be brushed away. Yes, we are permitted to recognize our differences from other animals because of these facades; but I think if we leap further and conclude that we are not animals because of these appearances, we are just being conceited.

Why is the idea that we are animals seemingly unpopular among philosophers? — NOS4A2

We are animals. It is unpopular because the minute we accept that we are animals, dualism, ego/spirit, anamnesis, eternal truths, heaven, hell, and immortality all vanish into the illusions that they are

You cannot see it of course. It is conceptual and functional — Corvus

Ok. Yah. Splice that sentence from our entire exchange, and you and I agree generally on what Mind is and how it's different from Body, though it emerges therefrom.

EDIT: if I am incapable of leaving well enough alone, which, to wit, I am incapable, then the potential locus of our divergence is I say that emergence which is conceptual and functional does not share one and the same claim to reality as the body--unless it is a Spirit, which you seem to be saying. While your position is not only reasonable, but seems to be conventional, even to those who claim to be rejecting duality, I just am convinced of a different conclusion, I.e. that it exists, is not body, but is not spirit either, is just the imagination having emerged into something we both utilize and are tricked by.

Your problem seems to stem from conflating mind and body at times, and then looking at mind and body separate entities as you go along — Corvus

I agree it appears that way. That’s because Mind requires Body as its infrastructure and response; there is a seeming grey area with an apparent overlap. But there is no overlap, the appearance is owing to the limitations of Mind in both discerning where one ends and tge other begins, and, insisting upon such discernment.

If you look at the mind as one of the organs of the body, then things get clearer. — Corvus

I'd like to. Please show me, where is that organ Mind?

Saying that they are the same sounds over simplification — Corvus

I recognize the empirical differences, by the same, to stick with the religious, I mean, we think our minds, aka souls, make us more valuable to nature/God. But I hypothesize that that is what alienates us from nature/god; in n/g eyes what makes as valuable is tge same as what makes a squirrel valuable, that we are living.

But at the same time you deny the existence of souls and spirits, and brush aside death as the final page of the chapter for the beings. — Corvus

I understand why the two seem to go hand in hand--God and spirit--but I do not see why it is necessary, or why, other than desire for immortality of a narrative the spirit is necessary

after life, — Corvus

Mind craves an afterlife because the mechanism of the subject creates the illusion of continuing. I think, harsh as it is a pill to swallow, the so called subject doesn't really exist, and as for we tge body, it dies and is reborn in tge incessant present. If we want to put it into religious terms, There's God's gift to us, the eternal present, life, our fall is ignoring life and opting for knowledge and our own world that we built with it.

knows, observes, feels, predicts and feels. — Corvus

Knows=mind constructing, and settling on what fits by triggering body to feel 'good' [about it]
Observes=the aware-ing body observes, attaching no words to the observation; mind constructs perceptions to layer over the observations
Feels=body feels, attaches no word to the feelings; mind constructs emotions using words to layer over the feelings
Predicts=mind constructing, and settling on what fits by triggering body to feel 'good;'

The body has a head, arms, feet and hands etc etc.  The mind can feel, know, observe, recall, predict, reason ... etc etc. — Corvus

curiosity — Corvus

The body is plainly real in every sense of the word real. You're offering that in your statement.

All of the enumerated things mind can do are what we (mind) ascribes to itself as proof of its reality 'beyond' the physical body. But these are just functions being carried out by a system of stimulus and response. Just happens the functions have evolved to act in such a richly complex and sophisticated way, with a narrative form, mechanisms like the ones we call logic, grammar, reason, etc., that the body observing these functions and responding, triggers good feelings when tge system classifies itself as "real"

arrogance — Corvus

We are a conceited ape. The conceit is the illusion that our imaginations are special beyond their function (yes, that is impressive) but somehow as an eternal truth

Remember, just hypothetical.

Why is the emergent mind not real? What do you mean by "real" and "not real"? — Corvus

Very simplified:

Obviously speaking hypothetically from what I have gathered and without any authority nor claim thereto, that is exactly the point I am following in the OP. Not necessarily adhering to Merleau-Ponty's reasoning, I agree that we have gotten it all wrong. We have privileged the Mind (unique to humans), unwittingly giving it lofty designations like spirit and soul, imbuing it not just with reality, but a higher reality, eternity; relegating the flesh to a category shared with 'animals' as if we are superior to 'them', and worse, relegating it as the source of evil. Yet, prima facie, any animal born into this world has no 'cause' to question it's reality nor that of the natural Universe. Then why do we question reality? Because the 'we' doing the questioning is not our bodies, but this process of constructing and projecting (emerging out of our real imaginations--a thing we presumably share with primates, elephants, and sea mammals for e.g.) which has developed over generations, is transmitted with socialization, and has displaced our natures with--admittedly very functional--fictions. The subject, arising out of the need to unify the 'stories' arising from a single locus or embodiment, stands in for the body; but we have displaced the body with this mechanism. This 'illusion' though it has created another world, layered for humans, on top of the real one, has also caused much suffering, due primarily to the attachment to the world which is fictional, and ignorance about the one which is natural. A simplified solution is not to call for the extinguishing of mind, which would mean tge same for history, but a recognition that when we speak of I or Mind, we are referring to an excellent tool, our true nature remains that animal which God created/Nature evolved.

Therefore, body is you. Mind emerged from body — Corvus

Yes. I believe that too. Only the emergent mind is not real like the body is.

So you must be an atheist and materialist, is it correct? — Corvus

I consider myself religious; however, I suspect that unlike science which requires empirical or mathematical proof to support fact claims, religion has no business in facts or proof, but is rather, related to being [whatever it is God/Nature/Reality 'designed/evolved' us to be] and not knowing. Tree of Life, not of knowledge (of good and evil).

As a metaphorical recap of tge Hypothesis, think of cats and dogs, how we imagine them with personalities, dogs are loving and loyal, cats are aloof and selfish, and so on individually; but thats not what they are. Theyre dogs, dogging and cats catting, whatever it is tgeir bodies and species do. it's possible for us to see, though not easy, that the personalities are superimposed from our 'world' and that they're not real. But that's obviously what we are, our so called world, just a superimposition onto our bodies and our species. I think my point being we can't know what body is, but it's not that personality having imposed itself. Just like a dog is just dogging. A human is just is-ing. Our only access to the truth of what we are is not by proving it and knowing it--that's where the distraction lies; the one creating the illusion of duality--it is just being it, the human body.

Which brings us to MP and this OP.

You'd have to show how this could be possible. That's the problem. And it's far from trivial — Manuel

You are absolutely right. Admittedly, I'm still at the stage of working out hypotheses.
A problem, I suspect, is that we have become so sophisticated in our accumulation and methods, that if the Hypothesis were simply--mind consists of signifiers operating autonomously by an evolved law and dynamic, it would involve many disciplines over many decades to prove/disprove, with the likely conclusion that it is inconclusive.

You're points have been guiding. Many of which; I need to revisit.

I think we just don't know enough about the nature of matter in general to say conclusively if there is a difference in kind between our ideas and physics or not. — Manuel

Interesting. An admirable open pov, but if I needed that hurdle resolved to proceed, I'd say matter is matter, mind is Mind, and never the twain shall meet.

If your body has lost all the contents of your memory let us suppose, but it still functions biologically. Would you be able to know then, your body is you? — Corvus

That is exactly my point; there is no real "you" and "your" body is not "yours". The question dualists need to consider is why a human body wouldn't be itself without the constructions and projections we classify as a separate entity and call mind. Why is a lizard still a lizard without thought and language, but only humans have a soul? Sure, we claim that God prefers us and gave us a soul. But I think we've grown up enough to stop clinging to that.

I'd say that "concrete things", things that can be touched with our hands, are almost absent in the universe, especially if you consider how many things exists which we cannot touch, which is almost everything. — Manuel

You're definitely challenging my, beyond complacent, settlements, which is good.

But OK, please let me know what you think of this baby step. Even if so called concrete things turn out to be other than as they appear, perhaps also evasive, etc. Are they not yet, all of them together, bodies, trees, oceans, and rocks, something physics explores differently than it does the ideas which appear to shape our experiences and are not constructed out of matter. I get that we have dreamed that they might be, but if we are being fair, a thought might require matter to generate it, but once projected and gone, it is gone. Because it never really was.

Isn't body the precondition for being conscious? — Corvus

This I agree with. It's just that I go further than what is implied. I think Body is the only condition for being conscious. Mind are the projections which emerged/evolved and now operate out of that Consciousness, displacing the organic system of, more or less stimulus and response, with stimuli which have been so over produced (maybe kickstarted/driven by language), that an autonomous process takes place which we take to be our experience; assuming an agent/experienced, and from there, concluding a real and separate being (even those who insist they aren't dualistic yet speak of mind as if it has a reality distinct from the body's--forgive the non-technical language).

the very fact that it even points to something is already an activity the mind has — Manuel

Because there is no language accessible to precisely express the point, these metaphors might be helpful, although also tricky.

In my metaphor Mind doesn't point, it's the finger (body) which points. Mind isn't even the thing it is pointing to. Mind is the direction in which it is pointing. That is how mind is empty. And in that sense is the body 'more' real. The finger is more real than the direction in which it is pointing.

I suppose the question to ask would be, what are you attempting to prove or what would be advanced or made clearer by supposing that body and mind are so different? — Manuel

To answer that question, because the others require more focused attention, I'm trying to get at the fallacy we have trapped ourselves in because mind emerged, with 'unique' structures etc., which is, that it is the 'seat' of our being/reality/truth, at the expense of what is already a prima facie given. Not I think therefore I am, but rather it thinks therefore it exists...but what is it? Whereas body lives, therefore it is. The latter can at least be shared with the rest of the universe. It is this oddity, Mind, that only humans seem to have, and that has 'fooled' us 'narcissistically, into wanting it to be special, more real, the being within the being etc

Could it be because body is temporal? As we all know, bodies get old, die and becomes dust. Bodies don't last too long. — Corvus

I'd say, it is because of the structure of our "thinking" that we even "desire" eternity/immortality. Of course our bodies are "temporal" in their lived forms. That, to me, doesn't prohibit them from being our only "reality"

Bodies get old and die through time. Minds die too. But souls supposed to survive after death to be identified for what the being had done — Corvus

The first, I agree without reason to disagree; the second, I agree, with the qualifier that I go a step further and doubt that Mind ever lived in the first place; the third I have no reason to believe.

Why is the body not enough. I don't approach these things religiously (as in conventional religions), but even if I did, God created the natural universe, we created the spiritual to answer questions which from God's perspective we have no business asking. For so called Abrahamic religions, these questions are humans eating knowledge not life. For so called Vedic-Buddhist religions these questions are us consumed by the fruits of our works, rather than just doing our works because it is within our natures to do.

That sounds like souls / spirits are illusions. — Corvus

In my opinion, not just illusions (that's ultimately what I would call the spin which human mind superimposes onto reality) but 'soul/spirit' are misunderstandings: illusions within the illusion, about what the illusion might be.

What should be done is to say which are properties unique to bodies and how these properties cannot be mental in any way. Then you could have an argument. — Manuel

That is excellent. Granted that the mental (for humans) 'uses' matter/energy (whatever it's called, currently) to 'generate'. But, simply put, that which is generated--Signifiers--is not matter/energy. To classify it objectively is the challenge, given it is really classifying itself. But the mental is more like the direction in which a finger is pointing (rather than the finger, or what it is pointing to (unless it happens to be pointing to another direction--which is often the case)); so as opposed to the body (including the nervous system, synapses etc.; including mood, sensation, drives--all presumably material processes) the mental is empty, a 'thing' totally other, yet not real in the way we prima facie receive the material, I.e., the body, as real.

I realize that my loose terminology may need tightening. I can see you've been doing that. Hopefully, you can read my question for what it is really asking, rather than what it might accidentally appear to be asking, given terms (mis)used.