Having read your entire post, do you then find it fair for me to characterize the duality you are addressing as a duality between an illusory conscious I-ness and a real somnio-conscious I-ness? And if it is a fair interpretation, that you then interpret the real somio-conscious I-ness to occur while the waking conscious I-ness is also occurring – only that the former is unconsciously occurring relative to the latter? Or is this not quite right? If it’s not correct, then I still don’t quite understand what do you intend to express by “duality” of I-ness. — javra

I think that this is exactly what I meant to express, so you understand well.

To first define “agent”, to me it is any (at least relatively unified) identity which holds agency. In turn, also in keeping with common place notions, “agency” to me is the ability to accomplish (more explicitly to accomplish some end) and hence to do or undergo something - thereby meaning “the capacity, condition, or state of exerting power (“power” here in the strict sense of “ability to do or undergo something”) and, therefore, the capacity, condition, or state of engaging in actions (i.e. in this context, of intentionally doing things)”. — javra

I believe that the qualification of "to accomplish some end" is too restrictive to make a proper definition of "agent" or "agency". It implies that the agent must have some knowledge of what it is doing, before it acts, and acts toward accomplishing something. This would exclude the possibility of an agent which simply does random acts. Further, when something exerts power, in an agential way, I don't believe it is necessary that the thing exerting power must be "intentionally doing things", in the common sense of "intentionally".

I can exemplify this problem in the following way. When a human being, as an agent, acts, we commonly distinguish between effects which are intentional, and effects which are unintentional, the latter being commonly known as accidents. And, I think it is conceivable that there could be an agent which acts, in a trial and error sort of way, a way which we could say is completely accidental, without having any intentional end.

This way of looking at things requires an analysis of the separation between the means and the end. The end is commonly known as "the thing intended", and the means is "the act itself", which is intended to bring about the end. I think we need to consider the possibility of an agent which has as its intention, simply to act. This would mean that in this case the means and the end are one and the same, but there is absolutely no specificity to restrict the act (the intent is to act freely). The agent simply has as its intention, to act, and this allows that the agent acts randomly.

This is why I talk about the separation between the observer and the agent, because this perspective allows for a true model of trial and error, where "the thing intended" is unknown to the agent acting. The agent then acts randomly, without any knowledge of what the effects of its acts might be, and the observer notes the effects. But this produces a very pronounced problem, and that concerns the nature of judgement. If the agent acts, and the observer observes, and we are modeling trial and error, then we need a judge to pass judgement as to success or failure. The need to pass judgement is the reason why we always include "the thing intended", "the end" in our models of agency.

But as Plato explains in "The Republic", the good, as the thing intended, cannot be said to be a feature of knowledge. "The good" itself always escapes the epistemic constraints as to what constitutes "knowledge". This puts the judge in a very difficult position. The judge must assume that there is an end, speculate as to its nature, and pass judgement on the act, based on a comparison between observation and an assumed end which does not obtain the status of known as the end.

In these latter contexts, then, the addressed agent is what William James terms the pure ego (the knower of one’s own total self) – rather than the empirical ego (the total self which is known). — javra

So these two roughly correspond with what I described as the agent, (pure ego), and the observer (empirical ego). My representation has the empirical ego as the knower, and the pure ego as the random acter. The issue is the unity of the two, which is the existence of knowledge, judgement. In my representation, the pure ego would have no knowledge inherent to it, the empirical ego has knowledge in the form of observational memory, but no real principles by which the unity, "the total self" is actually known. This is due to a lack of understanding as to why (the end, or good for which) the pure ego acts. So from the perspective of the empirical ego, the knowing self, the pure ego may just as well be acting in a completely random way, because the good, or end for which it acts is completely hidden.

Having roughly addressed what I reference by the term “agent” (again, that which holds agency as previously defined), I’ll again affirm that I interpret a total human (or else relatively developed; e.g. birds, mammals, etc.) mind to be an almost literal commonwealth of agencies – which are sometimes partly discordant and sometimes fully unified in at the very least that which they intend as agencies. It most certainly won’t sound right due to the connotations which we’ve been habituated to understand by the term “agent” (this being one reason why I find the need for new terminology to address this in my own philosophical endeavors) but, when looking at the definition of “agent” that I previously provided, one could then appraise each and every distinct agency of a total mind to be a distinct – though transiently occurring – agent, replete with its own pure ego of sorts that apprehends and reacts to at least certain phenomena. — javra

You're right, that doesn't seem right to me. You break down the animal, or creature into a multitude of "agencies". By your definition of "agent", an agent works to accomplish something. This means it must have a goal, or end in mind which it is tasking toward. So we cannot divide the animal into distinct agencies because the distinct parts don't really work toward accomplishing anything specific, and known to them. They just act in a way which we describe as purposeful, and we say that they have a function. But that's just us, projecting our perspective on to them, and we cannot really say that there is any specific thing intended, as the goal or end, by those distinct agencies.

This is the difficulty which arises from your definition, which I explained above. To say that a thing has a purpose or function is to place its activity into a larger context, the activity as means, is related to the end, which is a distinctly larger context, a sort of whole. So when a bunch of agents act together toward a common end, we set the end as a property of the collective, making the collective a whole by virtue of having that common end. However, the parts, the individual and distinct agents, may or may not have an individual goal or end which they apprehend as a unique and specific goal which one works toward.

In a collective of people for example, each works toward one's own end apprehended by that person, without necessarily knowing the larger whole of the collective. Then in the group of agencies within a living body, we assign a purpose or function to each part, though the part does not know its own purpose and act toward accomplishing it. And, we do not necessarily know the purpose of the whole by which we assign purpose to the parts, as this may be speculative. That is because we would then have to put the individual living being into the context of a larger whole, the human community, or life in general, to be able to assign to it a specific purpose. But when we take this larger context we lose track of exactly what the individual part's purpose might be, and the person's actions start to look more and more like random choices.

Aye, it can indeed get very complex, agreed. To my mind at least, consciousness and unconsciousness are at all times interconnected, hence never in any way divided, and perpetually influence each other via top-down processes (formal causation in Aristotelian terms) and bottom-up processes (material causation in Aristotelian terms (which is not to be confused with what we today construe to be “mater”, as I so far believe you very well know [Aristotle, for example, gives the example of letters being the material cause of syllables (for syllable are made up of letters) or else the example of parts (say the ideas from which a paradigm is constituted) being the material cause of the whole (here, the paradigm of, say, biological evolution itself]). — javra

So this relates back to the way we make judgements. We can look at bottom-up causation as unconscious, random acts, because we do not fit them into a larger whole, or we can look at them as having a purpose within a larger whole, assume the larger whole to be the conscious whole, and claim that this perspective is top-down. Of course we see purpose in the acts, so we are inclined to judge the the top-down perspective. However, as explained above, the larger purpose remains elusive, and cannot be identified in this way.

This forces a second look at the situation. What I am arguing, is that when we take a good, true look, we see that the conscious is just a small part of the larger whole living being, which includes the unconscious. And, the unconscious is really a much larger part, and more representative of the larger whole. This forces us to invert our perspective. The true top-down causation is from the unconscious to the conscious, while the causation of the conscious, as a small part of the larger whole, is actually a bottom up causation, the small part relative to the larger whole.

Ok. No one seems to have noticed this ground-breaking revelation. — Banno

Let's consider the obvious. it's an extremely useful principle. And, the truth or falsity of useful principles is generally not relevant to those who use them. Furthermore, we all know that it is obviously false, and that's why we know that perpetual motion machines are impossible. The totality of the energy involved in any activity is never conserved, there is always some lost and this is accounted for by the second law of thermodynamics. So it's not a ground-breaking revelation, that the law of conservation of energy is false, everyone already knows that this law is false. However, hardly anyone really cares about its falsity, because the principle is so useful.

Conservation of energy is neither falsifiable nor provable, and so not empirical, and yet still a part of physics. — Banno

This is blatant bull shit. Conservation of energy has been completely falsified. It has been experimentally demonstrated over and over again, to be impossible that all of the energy in any activity is conserved. Some energy is always lost, hence the second law of thermodynamics, and the concept of "entropy". The concept of entropy however is extremely deceptive, because it insinuates that "energy" (defined as the capacity to do work) could exist in a form in which it is incapable of doing work.

Therefore the inconsistency between observed reality, and the law of conservation is accounted for by that contradiction. It is assumed that there is some form of energy (the capacity to do work) which does not have the capacity to do work. And all that energy which is lost, contrary to the conservation law, is simply assumed to exist somehow in this contradictory form.

For you, are conservation laws facts?

You can't prove that energy is conserved in every case, since not every case is available for you to check. Nor can you disprove it - if you came across a perpetual motion machine that seemed to be breaking the conservation law, you might hypothesis that it is somehow drawing energy frome elswhere in the universe...

SO, is conservation of energy a fact, or a bit of metaphysics?
an hour ago — Banno

Energy is never conserved. That is why we cannot have a perpetual motion machine, and why there is a need for the second law of thermodynamics. Simply put, the law of conservation of energy is false, because energy is always lost. "Conservation of energy" is a useful principle, but it is disproven with every action at every moment of passing time. Nothing could be more strongly proven to be false, than the law of conservation of energy.

OK. I did however clearly express "the somnio-conscious 'I'". I don't find how consciousness and somnio-consciousness can co-occur to thereby present a duality of I's. I, for example, can still vividly recall certain dreams and nightmares I've had decades ago: to me, I am the same I I was in these dreams and nightmares as a first-person point of view (with differences in my empirical ego, contexts, etc., of course): same first-person perspective regarding otherness, same affinities and aversions, etc. Hence, to me, a continuity rather than a duality of I-ness. — javra

The issue of duality is not a matter of how the conscious I relates to its conscious experience, and how the conscious I remembers a dream. Those ar both part of the wakened experience. It is a duality between the way that the conscious I remembers the dream, and the way that the somnio-conscious I exists, as itself, in the dream.

If we insist that the only true "I" is the conscious I, then we need to account for the appearance of a somnio-conscious I in the dreamworld. We might say that the I in the dream is just an illusion, as we say about the entire dream itself, but as I explained in the other post, it's more logical to designate the I in the dream as the true I, and the conscious I as really the illusion. This is because we cannot maintain two completely distinct I's, and we must designate the I which underlies all our experience, both sleeping and awake, as the true I. As a result, we need to conclude that the conscious I which separates itself from the somnio-conscious I, with thoughts like "that was just a dream", is actually producing an illusion that it is the true I, when in reality the deeper I which is the somnio-conscious I is the true I.

I can see what you mean, but I myself don't subscribe to the unconscious mind being an agent (a unified agency). Again, I find reason to believe that the unconscious mind is constituted of a plurality of sometimes discordant agencies, themselves always changing. As one example, when awake and experiencing a pang of envy one can at the same time likewise experience one's conscience influencing one against becoming envious oneself: here there will then be two distinct agencies that are antagonistic to each other, each emerging from one's unconsciousness, each attempting to influence one's future course of action or of personal being. This as one example of how the unconscious mind can well consist of a plurality of discordant agencies. — javra

Don't you consider the living being itself, as a unified body, with all the organs, heart, lungs, brain, etc., working together in a unified way, to be itself "an agent". If all the parts of the body act together in a unified way, and the body itself acts in a way which can be said to be the act of an agent, shouldn't we conclude that even if the acts of that body are unconscious acts (dreaming for example) they are the acts of "an agent", referring to unified agency.

That the unconscious can consist of discordant agencies does not need to be argued, it is clearly evident from the fact that the consciousness sets itself apart from the unconscious, and claims itself to be the true I, thereby suppressing the feelings and images (dreams) of the unconscious, designating them as not rational and not real. Therefore features of discordance are very real, and we do not adequately understand the reasons for them. The argument which Plato mounted against the theory that the soul is a harmony deals with this issue. If the soul is a harmony then any degree of discordance would negate the harmony leaving the being lifeless. The conclusion was that the soul is more like the cause of harmony, and discordance accounts for illness, as the soul is less than perfect in its attempts to create and maintain the harmony which are the organized parts.

I'm not intending to engage in debates about this. What you here say indeed reminds me well enough of many a Hindu interpretation of atman, "witness consciousness". Yet, myself, I'll heavily lean toward this same consciousness being that which actively judges which alternative is optimally beneficial and should be manifested - this at expense of all other alternatives, i.e. of all other possible courses of action or of manifestation which then become rejected - and thereby chooses. In my own understanding, then, the agent (the conscious mind) always holds responsibility for the choices it itself makes, this in accord to its own judgments. — javra

This leads directly toward the complexity you mentioned. I agree that the conscious mind looks at evidence, ideas, principles, and actually makes judgements. And this, the act of making a judgement, is a sort of act. There is a problem of complexity though, which Plato brought up in his arguments against sophistry, a problem which Augustine much more thoroughly analyzed. In his attack on the sophistic principle that virtue is knowledge, consequently the idea that virtue can be taught, as some sophists claimed, Plato demonstrated that a person can make a rational knowledgeable judgement as to what is good, yet still act in a contrary way. This indicates that the rational conscious mind does not have "the final say". The rational judgement of the conscious mind is not the actual cause of an individual's actions, as is demonstrated by a propensity of some people to act contrary to their conscious judgements.

This is partly the reason why Augustine divided the mind into three parts, memory, reason, and will. And as Aquinas later pointed out, "will" must ultimately be designated as free, even from reasoned judgement, to account for this reality that people act contrary to their better judgement. This is consist with what I present above, that the conscious rational I is not the true "I" of agency. The conscious I deceives itself into believing itself to be the true I by not properly understanding the real evidence and truth that it is just an illusory I created by the true underlying unconscious I. That the conscious I moves toward contradicting the true I, and negating it as unreal, is an indication of discordance, illness.

physics has come a long way since newton. Banno is most probably thinking about QM when he says that. — flannel jesus

So that's the reason for my question. Do you think that QM physics has found a loop hole to avoid Newton's deterministic first law of motion? If the mass of a body (object) is reducible to energy by the famous equation E=MC2, and the "energy" of that equation may be represented as a field of potential energy, then the actual temporal continuity of a body (object), may be replaced with, and represented as the body's potential. This appears to be a way in which the deterministic necessity of Newton's first law of motion can be avoided.

Instead of "a body must continue moving as it has in the past, unless acted upon by a force", we now appear to have "a body's motion is the result of its potential to be moved". A resting body then is simply a sort of 'force field' in a state of equilibrium with other force fields in its environment, the 'force field' representing both the potential to be moved and the potential to move others. Since this is a representation of the potential for bodily movement, no specific bodily movement is actually required for that representation, therefore the necessity of bodily movement described by Newton may be removed from the representation.

Indeed, the presumption that physics is deterministic is almost certainly mistaken. — Banno

If Newton's first law of motion is a feature of physics, then physics certainly is deterministic. So are you suggesting that modern physics, by working with the concept of energy rather than the concept of moving objects, has found a loophole enabling the violation of Newton's first law?

Thus interpreted, for various reasons (some of which I'll try to specify), I don't interpret the unconscious mind as having its own non-manifold unity of a first-person point of view; in other words, its own "I". — javra

Well, I guess I misunderstood you then. But you did say:

I personally believe that in dreams the somio-conscious "I" is constituted of a lesser quantity of yet unconscious awareness-endowed agencies, a sleeping "I" which then interacts with fully unconscious agencies via imaginary phenomena that are mostly intended by these unconscious agencies of mind. — javra

That is what led me to think you were proposing a duality of I's.

I take it that here and what follows you found what is real based on that which is permanent rather than transient. But then I don't find reason to presume that the agencies of awareness of the unconscious mind are themselves in any way permanent either — javra

The unconscious agent can be known to be permanent, because it is there all the time, as the cause of dreams in sleep, and as the cause of the pangs you talked about, along with other emotions, when the person is awake.

If the One ontically is a fixed and unmovalbe end of being, and tf the grand telos to being is therefore to eventually become one with the One, then the evolution of consciousness will be derived from this premise to be a stepping stone toward this very finale. Of course things could get far more complex, but, in short, consciousness can be viewed as a manifestation of a cosmic will toward unity of being. And it's only in this latter type of perspective that I can find any meaningful explanation for consciousness's occurrence and purpose. — javra

I don't think we can draw this conclusion validly. Evolution, and life in general consists of a lot of trial and error. The errors are a sort of dead end process which is not consistent with success. So if we assume that there is an ultimate goal or purpose, we cannot automatically conclude that the way of being which is current is necessarily conducive to the ultimate end. It could be an erroneous 'dead end' way. This lack of necessity, which is involved with teleological relations in general, makes teleology very difficult.

OK, that all briefly outlined, we as consciousnesses do not create the alternatives which we as consciousnesses are aware of. These competing alternatives for what will be are all (at least typically) brought about by our unconscious portions of mind. My further interpretation is that our unconscious mind comes to an uncertainty as to how to travel onward and, so, presents to us as a conscious awareness these alternative courses. In essence, our unconscious volition is no longer unified but fragments into different volitions regarding what should be done - each alternative being in effect what a fragment of the unconscious believes to be the optimal path. We as conscious awareness then vote on which path to take, and our unconscious (typically) then accepts our vote as a determination of which alternative is to be pursued at expense of all others which then become denied. This is (or at least nicely conforms with) the terminology of Romanian Christian Orthodoxy wherein free will is termed "liber arbitru", the free arbiter - such that we as conscious awareness, as the "I", are the free arbiter. — javra

I think, perhaps that the unconscious has actually created the consciousness (through evolution), to help it deal with this uncertainty which you say that it experiences. I think that the conscious I is like a second I, a completely different perspective which the unconscious has created in order to give it another way of looking at things. The essence of this way of looking at things is "the point of view" which you described.

The point of view is the observer, the conscious mind is primarily an observer. The true agent of creativity, and activity in general, is the unconscious. However, the mode of agency of the unconscious is principally trial and error. And, without an observational perspective there is no way to discern failure from success in any particular activities. The point of view is required for judgement. The observational perspective is based in a complex memory capable of taking in all sorts of happenings internal and external. This observational perspective, point of view, or consciousness, has been created to provide what is required to make judgements concerning failure and success.

At any rate, whenever we choose between alternatives, this with or without free will, we necessarily interact with the disparate volitions of our unconscious mind so as to resolved disagreements therein. (Yes, sometimes ultimatums and the like are presented to us from without, but even then we only become aware of, ultimately, what our own unconscious mind makes available to us.) — javra

This supports my proposal that the conscious mind is an observer only. It does not even provide options for judgement, it only observes them, memorizes them, etc.. What actually resolves disagreement within oneself? The conscious mind provides all sorts of information, to facilitate judgement, but what part of the person is actually responsible for judgement?

For example, I awaken from a dream, and after a brief moment of reflection I make the judgement, that was just a dream. Prior to this the dream was judged (in some way) as reality. So my conscious mind has created a sort of narrative, a history, and as soon as I awaken I reflect briefly on these memories, and assure myself it was just a dream. I suggest that it is not the conscious mind which makes this judgement, because it doesn't even need that judgement. The conscious mind was never a part of the dream, and when I wake up not from a dream I have no question of whether this is reality or not. The conscious does not judge whether what it experiences is reality. So in actuality, the unconscious was in the dream, and it gets reassured by the consciousness that it was just a dream, and it makes the judgement that it was just a dream.

1) Free will as a concept arose as a response to the theodicy. AFAIK this is just true. As a concept it was never meant to make sense of the human on its own terms, it was meant to make sense of our relationship with god and the world's evil. — fdrake

I don't agree with this. The fundamentals of the modern concept of free will were developed by St Augustine, from principles derived from Plato and Aristotle. The basic premise is that a person chooses what is apprehended by that person as good, whether or not that good is consistent with the true good in the mind of the divinity. The problem Augustine grappled with was to make this understanding of the human being's freedom of choice, compatible with the idea of God.

So it's not that "free will" is an attempt to make sense of our relationship with God, but rather the contrary. The reality of free will tends to make God incomprehensible. And there is a number of ways that this is demonstrated. For instance, if God is omnibenevolent, why does He allow human beings to choose evil? If God is omnipotent, then He must know what a person will chose prior to the person making the choice, making that person's choice predetermined. These are the types of problems which Augustine had to deal with in his attempt to make the understanding of human choice, as derived from Plato and Aristotle, consistent with the idea of God.

This view of decision is inimicably Christian. The concept of will must be inherently unconstrained so that the horrible crap in the world can be our fault. That's what it's for. Free will gives humanity legislative authority over our own evils. — fdrake

I don't think you understand what you quoted. Notice: "Nevertheless the order of justice belongs to the order of the universe; and this requires that penalty should be dealt out to sinners. And so God is the author of the evil which is penalty..."

Yes, we are to blame for our own bad choices, but obviously it's God, not us, who has legislative authority over our evils. If we had authority over ourselves, we would never punish ourselves, always seeing what we choose, as good. And so the difficulty of making "free will" compatible with "God".

To conjoin this with what I was previously mentioning, my own interpretation is that dreaming is a form of sheer imagining, only that in dreams the unconscious mind agentially determines most of what is being imagined, this rather than the conscious mind's volition as is typically the case when we are awake and willfully imagine things (things which in common speech are said to be seen by us with the mind's eye). When we willfully imagine a house while awake, we do it with a conscious intention. I personally believe that in dreams the somio-conscious "I" is constituted of a lesser quantity of yet unconscious awareness-endowed agencies, a sleeping "I" which then interacts with fully unconscious agencies via imaginary phenomena that are mostly intended by these unconscious agencies of mind. In contrast, a typical awake "I" would then be a non-manifold unity of agential awareness which is itself constituted from far more otherwise unconscious agencies of mind. It gets difficult in succinctly explain but it does coherently tie in with the view I presented to Patterner here - this regarding how the conscious mind is a convergence of certain aspects of the otherwise unconscious mind. — javra

What occurs to me, is that you have effectively divided the mind into two distinct sources of agency, the conscious I and the unconscious I. I take this as two distinct I's. And this is compatible with Plato's mind/body dualism, if the unconscious I is the source of bodily desires. Plato describes a thirsty man as being driven by the bodily (unconscious) desire to drink, but the rational (conscious) mind overrules this desire, knowing that the water is not fit for consumption. So there are two competing I's, as described by the op, the bodily I which is fully active in sleep, and the conscious I which is active when awake.

Plato posits a medium between the body (unconscious) and the mind (conscious), which he describes as passion, spirit, or emotion. In his description, in waking life, the ill-tempered person has the bodily (unconscious) desires to rule over the rational (conscious) mind through the means of the passions, while the virtuous person uses the rational (conscious) mind to rule over the bodily (unconscious) desires through the means of the passions. I assume that what you call "agencies of mind" is analogous with Plato's medium, the "passions". These are the emotive forces which produce what the mind creates. Notice that in Plato's description these so-called agencies are the same agencies operating in two different directions. This is the commonly made distinction between top-down and bottom-up.

Maybe tangential, but to me it also accounts for the how and why of the waking "I" dissolving into non-occurrence when falling asleep and then re-manifesting as a somnio-consciousness when we dream: Basically, the waking "I" dissolves, or if one prefers fragments, into its constituent unconscious agencies which are otherwise unified, and thereby transiently vanishes; then, in dreams, the sleeping "I" reemerges but in what most often is a qualitatively lesser form; upon awakening, the waking "I" then is reunited from its constituent unconscious aspects. Because of this the waking "I" can sometimes remember what the sleeping "I" experienced during dreams, but the sleeping "I" most always doesn't have memories of waking "I"'s experiences. — javra

I really think that we must look at these as two distinct I's. These are both sources of agency, each with its own sense of self, or "I", and also very much incompatible and inconsistent with each other. So, the question is what happens to the conscious I when you say that it "dissolves", when the person falls asleep. All the agencies remain, yet they are no longer united and directed by the conscious self, they are released into the power of the subconscious I.

This implies that the conscious I is not the real I. It dissolves, and disappears for extended periods of time. That presents a further, very perplexing problem. What is the purpose of the conscious I? The conscious I must itself be a creation of the unconscious I, yet the conscious I is opposed to, and resists the inclinations of the unconscious I, designating the imaginary dreaming activities of the unconscious as not real, when in reality the entire conscious I is itself not the real I. Why has the true (unconscious) I created an elaborate consciousness which understands itself as "I", and actually deceives itself into believing itself to be the real I, thereby suppressing the true (unconscious) I and only allowing it to reign at night? It's as if the true (unconscious) I knows itself to be deficient in its capacity to act, so much so that it creates a false (conscious) I, which lives in an illusory world, its own dream, which is supposed to be the real world, where it has causal power to exercise free will, when it's really only the true (unconscious) I which has an power to exercise free will in the world. And, the unconscious I recognizes that power to be extremely deficient.

Want to draw attention to this typically being so only upon our awakening. When we are experiencing the dream first hand, we don't typically at that juncture hold an awareness of the dream being irrational. It merely is; and we find ourselves doing what we do in it.

It could be the case that the reasoning of most dreams is fully metaphorical with meanings understood by at least certain aspects of our unconscious mind but not by our awakened state of rationality. This, for one example, as the surrealists of a century past more or less maintained. — javra

Now we have to question directly, the rationality of the awakened self. The awakened self self-designates itself as the real self, with the real experience, when the sleeping, unconscious self is actually the true self. The awakened self justifies this self-designation through reference to rationality, but its entire logical structure is, at its base, a creation of the unconscious self, and it is essentially a self-deceiving structure created by the unconscious, designed specifically to create a false illusory self. Since the entire conscious self is a self-deceiving structure, created by the true unconscious self, for that very purpose of self-deception, then the validity of all its logic and so-called rationality is called into question as part of that elaborate scheme of self-deception.

Most definitely. The visual appearance of an imagined or daydreamed house, for example. Imaginings and daydreams are typically under the full sway of conscious volition, but in cases of hallucination, for a different example, a person can see a hallucinated house - difference from the former being that here the unconscious mind controls the imagining without any sway from consciousness's volition. Such that in more extreme mental disorders the consciousness will presume the hallucination to in fact be an integral aspect of the external world. And everthing just stated can readily apply to sensory experiences other than that of vision (smell, taste, touch, or sounds (such as that of hearing voices)). — javra

We can look at hallucinations as a breaking down of the self-deception. Notice, that the structure of self-deception which creates the conscious I, is so elaborate, and delicately balanced, that just a slight chemical imbalance, either from drugs or mental illness destabilizes it. These situations undermine that self-deception which constitutes the conscious I, and the person is thrust back toward supporting oneself on the real I, the unconscious, which is totally inconsistent with the created self-deceptive conscious I.

To add to this muddle of views and information - and as much as materialists will snide and scoff at this - there also are notions such as that of Jung's collective unconscious. When entertaining such notions, not only can one obtain things such as meaningful synchronicities, but it can also allow for the possibility that at least some dreams in at least some people are influenced by the collective unconscious.

Anecdotal but true: one of my grandmas repeatedly had premonitions via her vivid dreams. Hard to explain even one of them in succinct manners, but the point is she would inform us of what will be, and it would then occur as she predicted from her interpretation of here dreams. One can question or deny the verity of this, but for me, who grew up with her, to claim that all her dreams and predictions were mere coincidence would verge on absurdity.

Maybe this is too far off topic. But I did want to draw attention to the possibility that some dreams might be more than merely the 'irrational activities of one's own physical and fully autonomous brain,' or some such. — javra

I believe, that once we break down the entire conscious experience as an exercise in self-deception, we have almost nothing to start on as a solid, concrete foundation for rationality. This allows for virtually any possibility as the true reality. I would think that the only true approach to reality is to determine the fundamental elements out of which the illusion of the conscious self is produced. This would be found in the activity of dreaming. The entire conscious I, and the supposed reality of being awake, is like an elaborate dream, which has produced its own rules of coherency allowing for its persistence.

Thanks for clearing that up ENOAH. Now I understand. However, I prefer to think of the real being as a unity of the two, the living body, and the "I" which thinks and has feelings. It may be the case that it is more difficult and complicated to conceive of the living being as a unity of two completely different aspects, but I think it's the only realistic way.

There is a so called real so called I. The body. Although that is affected by the creativity, feeling a positive bond with the "I", the feeling is real, but the object of the bond, the "I" is a small-c creation. — ENOAH

I don't see how you reduce the "I" to the body. In my dreams I do things that a body could not do, randomly jump from one location or situation to another. That "I" in my dreams cannot be a body. So why do you insist that the I is a body?

If you assert that both the waking and sleeping I are the very same I, then you have to allow the reality of both. The I in the dreams is not constrained by the limitations of the body. You might argue that this is simply imaginative creativity, but the very essence of creativity is that it allows us to extend ourselves beyond the limitations of our bodies. Therefore "I" is something more than just my body.

1. Dream X is caused by physical event Y. (the full-bladder explanation)
2. Physical event Y is caused by dream X. (the kicking explanation)
3. Neither dream X nor event Y can be said to cause the other. The relation between X and Y is not a causal one, but rather one of supervenience or grounding.

As is now apparent, this is a little microcosm of the whole mental-causation problem. But I offer it because it’s curiously amenable to analysis, and makes me wonder whether any sleep researchers have actually used brain scans to look into this. — J

You could consider the case of sleep apnea. Suppose a person is asleep, and quits breathing. At the same time, that person is dreaming that they are sinking in a pool of water, and is holding their breath.

Since a person who quits breathing in one's sleep doesn't necessarily have a corresponding dream, we can conclude that the dream is not the cause of the cessation of breathing. And, it may well be the case, that the cessation of breathing triggers the dream of being under water, as the cause of that dream. However, there may be a sort of feedback relation where the dream causes the person to hold their breath, and increase the length of time that the stoppage lasts for. A feedback relation is not straightforward causation, nor is it a relation of supervenience.

If I said dreams are autonomously moving signifiers called out of a
storage in memory, with no central agent, you would consider the arguments against that, but generally, you'd accept the possibility. — ENOAH

I don't think that this explanation properly allows for the creative capacity of dreams, and waking life for that matter. It cannot be that all experience consists of signifiers called from memory, because there must be a first experience, and the first cannot consist of any memory. Therefore I believe that the creative capacity, which is defined by being in the moment, living at the present, rather than by memories of the past, is just as important to the dreaming (and waking) experience, as the memories which you describe. And this is where we find the real being of "I", which you end up denying.

I agree; "universal subjective field" is something we can say, but we don't really know what we are talking about, and so it has no explanatory power. It's a kind of confabulation, hand-waving. — Janus

Likewise, we say "quantum field" but it's just "a kind of confabulation, hand-waving". And, because we don't really know what we're talking about, it has little if any explanatory power, as evidenced from the fundamental self-contradictory principle of "wave-particle duality". "Quantum field" is an incoherent description. And, depending on which model is referred to, the total number of fields assumed to be in existence varies dramatically, as described below.

In modern physics theory, one can picture all subatomic particles as beginning with a field. Then the particles we see are just localized vibrations in the field. So, according to quantum field theory, the right way to think of the subatomic world is that everywhere- and I mean everywhere- there are a myriad of fields. Up quark fields, down quark fields, electron fields, etc. And the particles are just localized vibrations of the fields that are moving around. Theoretical physics simply imagines that ordinary space is full of fields for all known subatomic particles and that localized vibrations can be found everywhere. These fields can interact with one another, like two adjacent tuning forks. These interactions explain how particles are created and destroyed – basically the energy of some vibrations move from one field and set up vibrations in another kind of field.
So, here’s a possible tally for the number of quantum fields:

2 (quantum electrodynamics [QED]) – the electron field and the electromagnetic aka photon field
17 (Standard Model [above])
24 (Standard Model including all gluon colors) — 12 fermion fields and 12 boson fields
25 (24 + Graviton)
Even more if include anti-particles?
Even more if include handedness?

https://www.physicssayswhat.com/2019/06/05/qft-how-many-fields-are-there/

I don't really understand what you mean by "fitness to surface", but your post doesn't resolve the problem. The question is why do I at sometimes use my imagination to create things which are ft to surface, and at other times I do not have regard for fitness to surface. If these are both the same me, as you claim, why does my imagination behave in these two completely distinct and inconsistent ways.

If there is a question to be asked as to "is that person real", then how would we answer "no" unless we said it was actually two distinct people? But it's not two distinct people because the awake person has memories from the dreaming condition. And the awake person rejects the dreaming condition as "not real", but the dreaming person does not even remember the awake condition to be able to reject the awake condition.

And tariffs are off again, partially, until April, maybe.

This seems to be a good way to drive away any kind of investment since no long-term planning is possible. — Echarmion

An up and down market may not be good for investors, but it is a perfect environment for a trader to make lots of money.

You are welcome to produce an alternative definition of "field" that does not invovle a value at every point in a space.

But if you do, you will not be able to claim that your field is anything like an electric, gravitational or other physical field. — Banno

This may not be relevant to your discussion with Wayfarer, but you are still confusing the map with the terrain.

The physical field is represented mathematically in quantum field theory, as having a changing value at every point. The points and values are a representation, of the thing which is known to physicists as a field. The physical field does not consist of points with a value at each point, the representation has points which have values assigned to them. The field appears to be more like a wave action.

The problem with your argument is that as points with values is one way of representing a physical field, but that does not exclude the possibility of representing the very same field in a completely different way. So it may be the case that Wayfarer has a different way of representing physical fields, which does not involve points with values. This simply would not be the conventional way of representing fields, which is commonly used by physicists.

For example, the classical way of representing an electromagnetic field is as an activity of waves. However, since there is no known medium (aether) therefore no way for the wave activity to be represented as interacting with physical objects, many features of the electromagnetic field cannot be accurately represented as wave activity. So quantum field theory uses the representation of points with changing values at each point. Therefore as active waves, and as points with changing values, is two different ways of representing the same electromagnetic field.

So far as explanations go, saying that something is an example of a field exactly becasue it does not meet the criteria for being a filed is... odd. — Banno

You limit "field" to "a physical quantity", then complain because Wayfarer's proposed "field" doesn't meet the criteria of your definition. But your definition is incoherent because "physical quantity" is self-contradicting.

Sometimes I wonder if there is even any actual visual images in a dream. I'll wake up from a dream and think that the thing in the dream which was my house, or my home didn't look at all like my home. Or, the person in my dream who was supposed to be my brother didn't look at all like my brother. Then, when I start to think about it, I realize that I can't really say what these things, or people actually looked like in the dream. So I start to think that maybe there wasn't even any actual visual images, I was just thinking that I was with my brother, or in my home, but I never really saw any of that in the dream, and that's why I can't describe what they looked like.

Yes, I find this question of how the brain operates, relative to the conscious understanding of self, and how the sense of "I" as an agent, is related to this relation, to be very interesting.

Also something less than opinion: When one sees a house in a dream, one does not see the house due to photons being picked up by the retina and thereby due to retinal input. — javra

So this would constitute a big difference between "seeing" in your sleep, and "seeing" when you are awake. How do you think that the house is caused to appear to the person in a dream, without the photons being picked up by the retina?

Suppose that this creation of "the house" in a dream, is an aspect of "procedural memory". How is this any sort of real memory, when the brain seems to be just creating random things rather than consciously remembering things? Rather than a type of memory, which is what the conscious awake mind is doing all the time, remembering things, dreaming seems to be a completely different sort of activity, where the brain is just exploring all sorts of weird things, maybe like a trial and error activity.

I have no way to prove this opinion, but I find it likely in part on grounds that people who do not sleep for long periods of time don't only become extremely exhausted but also tend to have psychotic breaks, i.e. go insane, which seems plausible if procedural memory is not properly processed. I also don't personally know of a more plausible evolutionary explanation for why REM dreaming evolved to begin with given that mammals at large as well as birds exhibit REM sleep. — javra

So if dreaming is allowing the brain freedom to go off on exploratory adventures, without be pent up by the rational inclination of the conscious mind to process sense information in relation to memories, as is what the conscious mind does, then maybe it is the case that we need this sort of release in order to prevent ourselves from going insane. It could be sort of like too much work causes severe stress and anxiety, so we need a vacation to let the brain relax and do its own thing to maintain mental health. If this is the case, then the question is, what exactly is this, what is called "its own thing", when the brain is free from the constraints of the conscious mind forcing it to be what it believes constitutes "rationality".

We all experience our dreams uniquely in many a way, but I've certainly heard of cases wherein the dreams of a sleeping person were affected by that which surrounded them in the external world, including sounds and smells, even though they were not at the time in any way conscious of what was taking place in the external world. Then, also, there's the alarm clock, which at first unconsciously wakes you up into consciousness from sleep and the dreams therein had. (A good shove can also due — javra

I agree. In my experience, the senses other than sight are more likely to cross the boundary of being asleep, and the input can enter into the dream, and have great influence over the dream. Since a dream is only truly remembered when I awaken, it appears from my memory of the dream, that the sound, smell, or even taste which enters into the dream actually causes me to awaken, because I come to notice the sensation when I do awaken. However, it may be the case that these senses commonly influence my dreams without me even knowing it, because I do not awaken to notice it.

These instances, when sensations influence the dream, would be cases of the brain receiving, and dealing with sense information, in a way which is totally inconsistent with the awake (what I called "rational" way). This implies that the brain actually has different ways of processing sense input. The conscious way is to channel the energy through some recognition process, but the sleeping way is to channel the energy off somewhere else, to be absorbed into the brain with minimum affect on its working activity. This is sort of like the difference between paying attention to something, and not paying attention. I think that since so much energy is entering the brain through the eyes, the best way to maximize "not paying attention" is to have eyelids. Eyelids seem to be a feature quite low on the evolutionary scale, and whether their primary function is to keep things like dust out of the eyes, or to maximize "not paying attention", I think is debatable.

That said, we do all experience dreams differently. It is not utterly uncommon for some humans to have dreams in which they fly through air at will. I too have had such dreams growing up. I remember them being rather serene and euphoric for the most part. And I distinctly remember being therein endowed with a supra-human capacity of will, hence volition, to travel through the air as I wanted simply by so willing it. In dreams such as these, there is certainly found a free will (or at least a sense of free will for the free will deniers) in which one chooses as one pleases between alternatives. In this case, alternative paths of motion and different destinations. — javra

OK, I see the point. There definitely is something within the dream which constitutes the self, "I", and the self is clearly doing things, therefore agential. But the self is doing things which appear to be irrational, and the things which are happening to the self are equally impossible to make sense of.

We can ask, then, what is creating these imaginary scenarios. It is a sort of "self", which knows little if any bounds of rational thought. Above, I distinguished between conscious, rational thinking, as the activity of the mind, and I was careful to describe the dreaming as the activity of the brain. This was done with the intention of separating the conscious "mind" from the unconscious activity of the brain in sleep. The brain in sleep would be a brain free from the influence of "the self" which is a product of the conscious mind. However, I now see that the self cannot be excluded from the brain activity in that way. I think, that even if we tried to totally exclude the trained habits of conscious rational thinking, from the brain, and allow the brain freedom to do what it wants (notice I can't even exclude the agential self in speaking because something has to guide that activity), it still produces a mental "self", and does not seem to be able to avoid this, even if allowed to act in the most random way.

Indeed. It's not our conscious mind that makes us sleep. Our conscious mind often fights it in any way it can. Eventually failing. — Patterner

Perhaps it is as I describe above, the brain gets tired from having to adhere to the restrictions of the conscious mind forcing it to be "rational". The brain needs periodic "vacations", to do its own thing, in order to maintain the mental health of the individual.

I don't think this is the case, not when one regards seeing as necessarily consisting of input from the retina. I think the way we see things in dreams is often a more vivid form of the way we see things when daydreaming or imagining. Only that when dreaming the unconscious mind assumes far greater agential control over what is in thus manner seen. — javra

You don't think that there is input from the retina in dreams? What do you think the so-called rapid eye movement is all about?

It gets tricky here, in part due to often numerous ways in which terms can get understood. But, in principle, though we are not of a waking state consciousness while dreaming, we as a first-person point of view (as consciousness in this sense) are yet present in our dreams. Not only that but, as a somnio-consciousness (a term which I coined that I think nicely enough expresses our dreaming consciousness), we almost always yet have some degree of agential power (i.e., ability to accomplish) - hence, some degree of voluntary, rather than involuntary, volition. With one possible extreme of this degree of dreaming volition being that of lucidly dreaming. — javra

I don't think I agree with assigning agential power to the somnio-consciousness. I agree that there is such in the case of lucid dreaming, but this is done through an intentional act which I believe degrades the dreaming. In other words I look at lucid dreaming as an act of intentionally converting one's dreams into something which isn't really a dream.

When I dream I find that the experience is one of having something happen to me which I am powerless to control. This is why, when it is a nightmare, the overwhelming anxiety of not being able to do anything about it, forces me to wake up. So in my dreams, I am doing things, but I am not at all in control over what I am doing. I am really not deciding where to go, or what to do, in my dreams, or anything like that, I am just finding myself in situations which draw me into them like a curiosity or something like that.

ou are not the person to be giving out physics lessons. — Banno

I was not giving a physics lesson, only pointing out your equivocation with the word "field".

Particles are the excitations of electromagnetic fields. — Wayfarer

Photons are the excitations of the electromagnetic field. Each different type of particle has its own type of field. The real difficulty for quantum physics is in establishing the relations between one field and another. For instance, quarks and gluons are supposed to be distinct fields, essentially massless, yet through the strong nuclear force they make up hadrons which are massive. And due to the nature of the strong nuclear force they cannot actually be separated in practise.

After a limiting distance (about the size of a hadron) has been reached, it remains at a strength of about 10000 N, no matter how much farther the distance between the quarks.[7]: 164  As the separation between the quarks grows, the energy added to the pair creates new pairs of matching quarks between the original two; hence it is impossible to isolate quarks. — Wikipedia

So the gluon "field" actually represents the strong nuclear force which is responsible for creating massive hadrons from quarks which are almost massless.

The interaction between quarks and gluons is responsible for almost all the perceived mass of protons and neutrons and is therefore where we get our mass.

https://www.energy.gov/science/doe-explainsquarks-and-gluons

Moreover, if it has no units, how does one get from the field of subjectivity to the measurable values of the electromagnetic field? Where do they come from? — Banno

Since fields are massless, the real question is where does mass come from.

Of course all comparison needs criteria for what is norm. If not, how can you compare anything? — Corvus

So the point is that the ability to recognize a piece of music as at a speed other than the norm, is not an innate ability. It requires the criteria of the example which serves as the norm, and this example is not provided innately.

Well, if you played the above 2x recordings to someone (a indigenous tribe man in a jungle or someone who doesn't like western classic rock music) who never listened the song in his life or a tone deaf, then he won't be able to tell the difference. In that case, where is the general capacity? — Corvus

The general capacity is not demonstrated here, because that capacity is the ability to compare, and there is nothing being compared in this example.

If you still cannot tell the difference, either you have never listened to Led Zepps in your life, or you are a tone deaf. — Corvus

You are comparing it to the norm.

A general capacity for what? It sounds vague and unclear. — Corvus

The general capacity to compare something to a norm. You don't seem to be paying attention to my post.

Keeping one's eyes open is, generally speaking, fully voluntary - meaning that it is subject to our conscious volition. — javra

This is the point then. If keeping one's eyes open is "generally" a matter of conscious volition, why would we conclude that the sense perception of seeing is unconscious? It would seem like "seeing" is something controlled by the voluntary act of keeping one's eyes open.

Do you think that it would be the case that the neurological system is "seeing" all the time, unconsciously, regardless of whether the eyes are open or not? And, the volitionary act of keeping one's eyes open is a sort of conscious control over this activity? This might provide an explanation of dreaming as the unconscious continuing in its activity of seeing, after conscious volition has shut down, and the eyes are closed. Where do you think that the images which are "seen" in the act of dreaming derive from? Do they come from the eyes?

How do you know slowed or fastened reproduction of the music is not normal? I was pointing out, it is a priori concept of temporality in our minds which can tell they are not normal, rather than the music itself.
Hence human mind has innate temporal knowledge of time? Would you agree? — Corvus

No, I do not agree with this. If the music is sped up or slowed down only a miniscule amount, I cannot tell the difference without comparison to a designated "normal". If given two different samples, of the same piece, one altered slightly, I would not be able to tell which one, I would be guessing.

In fact, fifty or sixty years ago it was common practise for recording artists to alter the speed a little bit, in some songs they released. As a listener you would never know that a song was altered, until you tried to play along, and found out that you had to change the tuning of your instrument.

So I do not believe it is an innate ability to recognize that the speed of a recording has been altered. I believe that to recognize that the speed has been altered requires comparison with some designated "normal". So this ability is a feature of learning how to compare a sample with a "normal". This itself, the ability to compare a sample with a normal, may be an innate knowledge, but it is a general capacity, and doesn't amount to the specific "temporal knowledge" which you are talking about.

When are you going to wake up to the fact that I understand Kastrup's 'arguments' perfectly well, and yet do not agree, in fact find them nonsensical. — Janus

You ought to consider that if an author's arguments appear nonsensical to you, you in fact, do not understand the author. This is because to understand requires acknowledging what the author intends, and no author intends to argue nonsense. So if you find an author's arguments to be nonsensical it implies that you do not understand the author.

A field is a mathematical function assigning a value to every point in the given space. — Banno

That's becasue in physics a field is a space with a value at every point. — Banno

The question is not apt because the notion of a field of subjective experience fails to match with what is meant by "field" in physics. It has no values. — Banno

You are clearly not distinguishing between "field" in mathematics, and "field" in physics. In physics, "the field" is the thing represented by the mathematical field. Here, you are insisting that the mathematical function called "field", is the field in physics. That is incorrect.

This is explained quite well by physicist Richard Feynman for example, when he explains how an electrical charge moves through the electromagnetic "field" which surrounds a copper wire, rather than moving through the copper wire itself. This is the principle which drives the induction motor for example.

Now, the field is active, and this activity is represented by the changing values of the mathematical representation. What "a field" actually is, is not well understood by physicists. The field is active, and the activity of the field is understood, and represented as if it is a wave activity. That wave representation allows for predictive capacity. However, since the medium of these waves (the aether) has not been identified, the supposed "field" itself, within which the apparent waves are active, remains elusive to the human intellect.

Since "a field" in physics refers to a thing (not a mathematical construct but what is represented by that construct), and the existence of this thing has not been supported by principles which are logically coherent, its essence (what it is) remains a matter of speculation. This allows many different metaphysical theories, (such as the one Wayfarer proposes) to propagate.

Barring exceptions such as those of sleep paralysis and sleepwalking wherein the individual can be asleep in part or in whole with eyes wide open, such that they actively take in visual information of the external world, I’m at a loss as to the significance of the question. — javra

The question is, if visual sensing is really part of the unconscious mind, rather than the conscious, why do we need to close our eyes to go to sleep? You would think that visual sensing could continue along, just fine, when the person is a sleep, if it is a feature of the subconscious mind.

Hence, we will willfully close our eyes when we intend to fall asleep to assist in so doing. — javra

Yes, I agree that when we intend to fall asleep we close our eyes, to aid this. However, I think that this is because we know that having eyes closed is necessary for sleeping. So for example, when a person does not intend to fall asleep, yet starts falling asleep, one cannot keep one's eye's open. It appears like the eyes are forced to close by some unconscious process. Or, does keeping the eyes open, in general, anytime, require conscious effort?

I wasn't talking about difference in perception of live music performance and reproduction of the music from the records. I was only talking about the perceptual differences and the judgement of the listener on the same music reproduced in different speeds. Please listen to the recordings of the same music played in different speeds. — Corvus

Of course we're going to notice the difference, it changes the pitch. It's like Alvin and The Chipmunks. They take a recording and speed it up. It's noticeably not normal.

A person listening to an artist playing an instrument rapidly (decreased time between particular notes), will hear something completely different from a person listening to a recording which is speeded up.

This is because increasing the speed at which you play an instrument does not change the way that the notes are created so it does not effect the frequency of the individual notes. But increasing the speed at which a recording is played does change the way that the notes are produced from the recording medium, therefore the frequency of the individual notes is altered.

https://www.analog.com/media/en/technical-documentation/dsp-book/dsp_book_Ch10.pdf

Music played faster or slower speed than the original version will sound not right. Nothing is different than the speed of the playing in the music implies that human mind has perceptual ability to detect the correct speed of music just by listening to them? — Corvus

Time and frequency are directly related, the basis of the Fourier transform. Increasing or decreasing the speed actually changes the pitch, ask Alvin and the Chipmunks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_time_stretching_and_pitch_scaling
So changing the speed of a recording is a completely different thing from changing the speed at which a person plays the particular notes.

These details aside, (maybe as you yourself imply (?)) I so far don’t find all this much mattering though when it comes to basic appraisals of the unconscious mind and consciousness’s dependence on it. — javra

If the activity of the eye is part of the unconscious, why, in your opinion, do we need to close our eyes when we sleep?

I would be surprised if there were a proof to the contrary. Isn't all of non-analytic philosophy speculation? — jgill

But your example is not a speculation, it's an arbitrary designation: 'this photo represents an instant'. If you said that a real instant in time might look like a photo, that would be speculation. But we really do not have any idea what a real instant would look like, because we haven't determined any parameters yet. Our models of time represent it as an infinitely divisible continuity.

I think I see where you're going with this. A sound engineer could say (quite correctly), "Well, we hear a range of frequencies between A430 and A450 as an 'A', so even though this range includes mostly pitches that are technically sharp or flat, for all practical purposes we can specify this range as 'A'; just about no one can hear the difference." Is that what you mean? — J

Yes, that's what I mean, there would be a range which would qualify for any given pitch. But remember we are talking about a machine using software to detect distinct tones, not a human ear. With human hearing, the issue is much more complicated, as you note, with your reply to Banno.

The whole issue is much more complicated than it seems, because it's extremely difficult to produce a pure tone. It's always contaminated with overtones etc.. This is the subject of the Fourier transform. But the shorter the time period, the less certainty there can be about the frequency, and this problem manifests as the uncertainty principle.

https://tomrocksmaths.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/unravelling-the-secrets-of-musical-tones-with-fourier_s-methods-lai-yuk-chiu.pdf

Ideas are faint copies of the matching impressions. — Corvus

That looks like an arbitrary distinction. Faint/clear?

Your saying "we sense motions" sounds like contingent acts of guessing. Not accurate perception. Your visual sensation can never capture the motion of a flying bullet. You would be just guessing it. That is not perception. What does it tell you? Continuity is an illusion created by your mind, and it is a concept. It doesn't exist in reality. — Corvus

Perception is not accurate, that's the point. We create accuracy with conception, and that is why we need proper principles to distinguish between perception and conception. This allows us to understand how conception obtains such a higher degree of accuracy. Kant for instance, proposes the a priori intuitions of space and time, as the condition for sense impressions.

Trump is being used as a patsy to carry through some harsh but necessary foreign policy decisions. An exit from Ukraine is one of them, just like Trump facilitated the ugly but much-needed exit from Afghanistan.

I see a lot of Americans putting all the blame on Trump, and then on Putin who must have blackmailed him, trying to exculpate their country from this utterly blatant act of Machiavallianism. — Tzeentch

I believe Trump sees himself and Putin, united, as capable of creating one superpower of world dominance. However, they both know, that ultimately there's only room for one at the top, so even within their partnership they are each strategizing and maneuvering to gain the upper hand.

The way I read it is that Putin has something disgusting on Trump and when he realised that he was going to have to push harder against Putin if he’s going to get a deal. He immediately went to the plausible deniability that it was a set up orchestrated by the Biden’s and that he isn’t as depraved as he appears in the video. He might even claim it’s a deepfake. — Punshhh

Russia put a significant amount of effort, over a long period of time, into providing for Trump, the presidency, in the first place. There was most likely significant strategizing and collaboration, much of which is probably documented somewhere (the proverbial "laptop"). On the other hand, many MAGAs refuse to believe that the movement which they are a part of, is nothing more than a plot hatched by some wily Russians. Disillusionment can be devastating, so is is resisted as long as possible. Release of that information ("laptop") at the appropriate time, could be devasting to MAGA, as well as Trump himself, and possibly the US in general. So Trump is in a position where he needs to ensure that Putin still needs him for as long as possible, to avoid that devastation, and Putin seeks the time of highest impact.

What I see on that page is the following:
"In 2023, just over 50 percent of Americans had an annual household income that was less than 75,000 U.S. dollars. The median household income was 80,610 U.S. dollars in 2023."

It then says:
"Preliminary estimates show that the average poverty threshold for a family of four people was 26,500 U.S. dollars in 2021, which is around 100 U.S. dollars less than the previous year. There were an estimated 37.9 million people in poverty across the United States in 2021, which was around 11.6 percent of the population."

There is simply nothing there to support your claim that the average American is struggling to make ends meet. It appears like you are trying to create that illusion with disinformation. Why would you be doing this? Having to budget one's finances is basic household economics, it is not struggling to make ends meet.

"Well, if 'a frequency passing into a designated range' is not a standard understanding of what pitch is . . . then what would you suggest?" — J

I noticed in your reply to Banno, that you accept the idea that the wave would have to hold that frequency for a period of time to be recognizable as the designated pitch. So, wouldn't it be necessary that the source maintain a spcified frequency of vibration for a duration of time, in order for us to have a "pitch"?

Now take the example of the slide. Suppose that throughout the duration of the slide, there is an even, and continuous changing of frequency. From this premise we wouldn't have any pitches at all, because each moment would provide a new frequency, and there would be no duration of any specific frequency, therefore no "pitches" as defined.

However, notice that I spoke of a "designated range". Having a range of frequency which provide the criteria for any specific "pitch", adds another parameter. This allows that the machine could detect some pitches, because the frequency of vibration could be within the designated "range" for the designated period of time. Then, the breadth of the range, and the speed of the slide, become important factors.

So we have three very important factors, the specified range, the required length of time within the range, and the speed of the slide. Two of these are very clearly completely arbitrary, the range, and the required duration within the range. These would be programed into the machine through some arbitrary choice. The third factor, the speed of the slide, appears to be somewhat objective, because it is the object being analyzed, but it's really not. The described slide is simply artificially created from the purpose of the thought experiment, and not representative of anything real. We assumed something unrealistic in the first place, a perfectly even, continuous slide.

Isn't sensing via impressions, and the matching ideas for thoughts, reasoning and reflective analysis in Hume? So, there is a clear division between the live sensation and knowing, thinking, reflecting, remembering in Hume. The former are via impressions, and the latter by the matching ideas. — Corvus

The point being that ideas and perceptions are not properly separated or distinguished.

Doesn't it depend on how fast the movement was? — Corvus

No I don't think so. The fact that some motions are too fast to sense doesn't affect the fact that we sense motions.

How to isolate an instant? Take a photo. — jgill

As I've explained above, that is an arbitrarily created "instant". So it provides nothing toward proving that real time consists of a succession of instants.