Built into your model of reality is an ‘in-itself. You wouldn’t call it reality otherwise. How else does what happens negate or correct if not by the effect of something that persists or endures as what it ‘is’, independent of the context of your expectations and background of undersranding , and independent of social context of use? — Joshs

No, that is a supposed identity of the object. If the object crumbles into pieces the identity is lost. The identity certainly does not lie in the thing.

If we try to point to what it supposedly ‘is’ in itself , it vanishes, because it isn’t anything ‘in itself’. — Joshs

You are missing the point. The "in-itself" is a speculation. The "thing" will negate any phantasm you might have about it by itself. This is what is called reality. For example, if you mistake a table decoration for a real apple you will recognize it when it really matters.

It is only what it is as a comparison, and we need both sides of the comparison in order to have the event, the construct. — Joshs

There is no construct, that is the real thing. If there is no reality preventing you from upholding a belief about it then the description, in fact, matches the subject. Propagating a general doubt "just because" is not backed by any reality, irrational, destructive and dishonest.

I would argue it isn’t ‘being’ that is the abstraction , it is the idea of a thing in itself as static state, — Joshs

Yes, "in itself" - you got it.

There is a more fundamental thinking that penetrates beneath the idea of a world as a container with ‘parts’(existing beings) of which we are just one more. Rather than the world being just object beings that are presented before a subject being ( who is also an object within that world), the world ( including the subject) is enacted , produced , synthesized rather than just mirrored and represented. From this vantage , ‘being’ isn’t the existing parts, it’s the synthesizing, enacting , producing activity that creates and recreates the subject and object poles. The being of this world is in its becoming, and our own indissociable becoming. ( Is that obscure enough for ya?) — Joshs

The interesting question: If the world, the things, just everything is the real production of "being", why should we not concern ourselves with them? The mysticism is of a kind that says "Okay, these things _are_ but beyond those, if you try hard, there is the world of being." But being "mediates" itself towards itself by those things. When shifting view away from the things as they _are_ towards "being", you are hunting a mere abstraction. The absolute nothingness.

The reason that this is not logical is that it presumes 'we know how things are' — Wayfarer

Which is a statement about the present. The non-logical part is about what things will be. You give account of this by saying "Then there is". So the problem is not "being" anymore but "becoming". It would be an antinomy to say things were not what they are. More than this, it is purely speculative that things will become something else.

If there is a tree in your way, you just cannot walk further. What is rationally undenyable lies in what cannot be case. The best positive statements can achieve is to not be wrong obviously.
Maybe we have to see things as what they essentially are: sources of pure negativity, footprints of nothingness, phantastic structures of pure chaos.

Being-there comes from being in the world. The central focus for Heidegger has always been Being. That is, a questioning of the word ‘is’ that we stick between subject and predicate as some sort of neutral glue. — Joshs

My point remains that you are treating ‘self’ here as an object in the world. — Joshs

Dasein has to be what it is. Whenever you determine something, it is and can only be an "object".
Heidegger said something about the very term "existence" meaning something like "standing out into being". You are right with Heidegger's focus: He is not primarily concerned with the being of Dasein, but asks more or less, why it is the way it is. Being has given itself the form of innerworldy Dasein. Why?

PS: The appropriate reply, for you, is of course: Because it _is_ innerworldy Dasein.

A huge difference , when you add what else he says about Dasein. — Joshs

But who was talking about that? We talked about the intention for chosing that term.

So, are there beings other than human beings whose existence can be described in terms of 'dasein'? — Wayfarer

What do you mean? Heidegger describes human existence. It is purely speculative if such experience applies to other "things" (can apes lie?)
Hegel uses the term in the sense of undetermined matter, I guess, so this could be used for anything.

When you look in a mirror in order to reflect on yourself you are studying an object ( the image of yourself) and comparing it with your memory of another object( your recollection of your sense of your self. — Joshs

Honestly, I do not see why you come up with memory in this context. If you say my intent to move, reflected by the mirror as movement, is just a memory of itself, then what is not memory? Do you mean to say I would not know where I am without memory? Maybe. But when I move my hand along the mirror and it's reflection also moves, where is memory involved? I see both things move simultanously.

That’s Hegel , not Heidegger. Big difference between the two here. Nothing undetermined about Heidegger’s Dasein. — Joshs

So... Heidegger says "We need to get rid of predeterminations and hence use the term 'Dasein'" that is a difference to Hegel?

Is that wrong? Ought we to edit it? — Wayfarer

Why? I'd say that is correct. Heidegger uses the term throughout the book in the way he does. I just pointed out that he chose that term because it does not have any conrete determinations and not because he wanted it determined as human existence, if you understand.

He was nevertheless obliged to call it out. — Wayfarer

Correct.
In german, "Dasein" wrt to "human existence" has a strong connotation towards "poor"/"pittyful". Think "a human" losing all human qualities.

Sure. But my point is that it was necessary for him to introduce such a term, to distinguish the mode of being for the human from mere existence, in my view. — Wayfarer

But that is the point I do not buy exactly. As I read Hegel "Dasein" is just some "completely undetermined something" (for lack of better words). In my oppinion, the (only) thing that makes human Dasein special is that it determnines it's own being. Because of this, so I read his argument, we can not simply say "what Dasein is" but have to resort to such an "empty" "existantial title".

Reflection is considered to be a turning back of consciousness to draw an experience from memory in order to examine it. — Joshs

Or it can be what you see in a mirror. For me reflection is more like self-description, self-observation or anything where you are "your own object". You cannot write about yourself without reflecting.

It is generally distinguished from intentional acts that deal with present objects rather than objects from memory. — Joshs

If you put aside the mirror....

“The Dasein does not need a special kind of observation, nor does it need to conduct a sort of espionage on the ego in order to have the self; rather, as the Dasein gives itself over immediately and passionately to the world itself, its own self is reflected to it from things.” — Joshs

So, which things, do you think, told Heidegger that about his Dasein?

How do you think the concept of reflection differs for Heidegger from the ordinary understanding of it , or from a Kantian understanding of it? — Joshs

The reflective element is embedded to Dasein as it bears the concept of self. It is the "being that I am". Therefor it is "seiend" or ontic. Heidegger did not put forth any further ground-laying designations but continues to analyze the "way it is". If that is not a reflection, then what is?

Dasein doesn’t ‘reflect’ back to itself as a pre-existing subject, it It is always beyond or ahead of itself. — Joshs

Which was to be shown. The subject reflects on itself as Dasein, therefor the reflection is never appropriate.

But the way that I put it is that secular-scientific thought tends to 'objectify' human beings, and in so doing looses what makes human beings different from any other object of rational analysis; that's the sense in which I'm saying that 'beings' are different from 'objects'.
....
which is why I believe the Heidegger adopted the term 'dasein' to compensate for the loss of that sense of being in modern lexicons. — Wayfarer

Heidegger calls "Dasein" an "existential title" - it is an objectivized form of the subject with strong connotations to Hegel. It is literally a "being there" and at it's core a reflection.

So only that which is labeled "is"? — Xtrix

I am sorry you didn't get the joke about formal logic.
There are no objects without properties.

This is why existence is not treated as a predicate in logic. That is, there is no simple way to parse. "Xtrix exists". — Banno

Correct. "Being" means "being labeled".

The mind creates thought, not the brain. — EnPassant

Thought as such seems to be a reflection. The determination of the content seems to be outside the mental form.

Depends - identifying a thing often requires movement - or when you are close to a colored surface or in the case of a looking into a flashlight you might not really see a "thing" as such.
The point I was trying to make is that the statements "I see a red lighter" and "I see a lighter in the 600nm spectrum" are different in that the second one is more precise and much more complex. It remains to be shown that the first does actually name something else. A single individual is as unlikely to come up with the understood-by-others word "red" as with the frequency-spectrum of light by himself.
Also I fear we do not really have the same picture of the whole process. A popular concept is that light causes an effect on the nervous system which causes the experience of red, which implies a dualism. I doubt the cause-effect relation of the second part - I think the effect of light _is_ the experience.

Bear in mind that I said "consciously experienced"; I already allowed that there is a sense in which we could say that reflected electromagnetic radiation is (pre-consciously) experienced by the body. giving rise to the (possibly) conscious experience of coloured things. — Janus

But how do you _know_ it not just a matter of words? You see light and dark. If we had called those radiation then radiation would be experienced?

If you are a piece of cloth with a shadow cast onto it one cannot say the light or absence thereof was not experienced even if the idea of a shadow-casting object is manifest.

In any case in your example what distinction are you making between content and meaning? If I'm reading text in an unfamiliar language I would surmise that there is a content or meaning there, but I don't know what it is. How then could I be said to have experienced it? — Janus

Exactly. The "meaning" here would be the "thing" that you try to put in first place.

All I was saying was that wavelengths of electromagnetic energy are not consciously experienced; meaning that we don't see wavelengths, we see coloured things. To put it another way, prior to scientific investigations people had no idea that colour was the result of different electromagnetic.wavelengths. — Janus

But that is the same as saying when looking on a piece of paper (form) with a text written on it (content), the content was not experienced. It doesn't matter if you are able or unable to translate the text as we are not dealing with it's meaning.

I think I understand what you are saying but I don't see how it relates to
what what you were responding to here:

According to our investigations there are electromagnetic wavelengths that give rise to seeing coloured things in suitably equipped percipients, but those wavelengths are not themselves consciously experienced, obviously. — Janus — Janus

Okay, another try: You take the synthesis of form and content and say the content was not experienced, as if we were talking cause-and-effect. But that is not the relation between form and content.

I think I understand what you are saying but I'm not seeing how it relates to what you originally were responding to, here:

According to our investigations there are electromagnetic wavelengths that give rise to seeing coloured things in suitably equipped percipients, but those wavelengths are not themselves consciously experienced, obviously. — Janus — Janus

You were - in consequence - saying that, when I play guitar, that I am not hearing my play. That is what I deemed objectionable. The form of hearing what I play has the activity of my fingers, the vibration of the strings and the sound-waves as content.

Are you suggesting that we experience the effects of things prior to cognitive experience. If so, that would not be conscious experience, though. Sorry, beyond that guess, I'm not sure what you're getting at; can you explain a little? — Janus

I am thinking about the experience as form of recognition. As with all forms it cannot really be separated from it's content. Therefor I think it is too lax to take the form as content for it's own when talking about such topics.
Take music as an example - there are different aspects to it:
- When listening there are judgements like "I like that song", "It reminds of another song" and so on.
These are judgements about the music.
- Then there is the aspect of the musicians who make the music who might have another view on it which is concerned with how to make it. Those are thoughts about their doings or activity.
- Then there is the physical side of things, e.g. sound waves. This plays a big role when reproducing or transporting the music.

Now, when talking about music you cannot subtract the sound-waves easily as this is what the musicians(or record) produces. In a certain way the subjective judgements about the music in the first point are the most distant from what the music _is_ - they are dealing with an effect they have on the subject.

But they refer to a real aspect of Nature. — GraveItty

But one point of quantum mechanics is that nature does not seem to be that continuous.
Perfect space is still an idea.

According to our investigations there are electromagnetic wavelengths that give rise to seeing coloured things in suitably equipped percipients, but those wavelengths are not themselves consciously experienced, obviously. — Janus

Dunno - if the experience is thought as some kind of "detector", does that notion make sense? Given: the vocabulary is obviously different.

The rational numbers stand far enough back from the fray that it seems quite easy to treat a continuous line as an ordered series of points. As an object, it can paradoxically be the two things at once. But then as mathematicians go deeper, they have to keep expanding the notion of continuity to come up with a transcendent hierarchy of infinities. Likewise, the ability to cut the number line ever finer leads to a hierarchy of divisions. We encounter the infinite decimal expansions of the irrationals. — apokrisis

Well, 1/3 is rational and has an infinite decimal expansion. Thinking about it, it is questionable if the idea of the number line is even justified: A line is a spatial object as opposed to a number (i.e. a "count of things"). Writing the "1" somewhere on the line tries to synthesize two very different things and "flaws" the pure space with the pitfalls of "counting".

:up:

According to the functionalist, anything that satisfies certain functional criteria of being conscious just is conscious. — SophistiCat

That reminds me on "Neuromancer"
"Are you sentient?"
"Well, if you ask me, then: yeah, I am! But I guess that is one of those philosophical problems."

Which is totally right: It just doesn't matter. Case will switch off the deck and he is gone.

Before asking for a criterion one would have to justify the distinction. How do you prove that there is a difference at all? — Heiko

PS: I guess a promising approach would be:
We cannot create intelligent robot-slaves while maintaining a good picture of ourselves if we would take that possibility for real, so they cannot be conscious. In principle. Problem solved.
That has worked a few times in history and will work a few times more, wouldn't it?

Along those lines, I might ask for a criterion to distinguish information-processing systems in general from conscious information-processing systems. — Cabbage Farmer

Before asking for a criterion one would have to justify the distinction. How do you prove that there is a difference at all?

"Free will" is will in relations of repression. The individual finds freedom in the execution of it's duty.
It is the fate.

"Pain is the firing of C fibers", pointing out that while it might be valid in a physiological sense, it does not help us to understand how pain feels. — Wayfarer

If it was that simple - "Pain feels like firing of the C fiber." Now what?
To me such problems seem to be made up. It doesn't matter which viewpoint one takes on this. Whether working with a "reflection of mind in itself" or with a "reflection of matter in itself" - it is still _just_ a reflection.

This would be more compelling if materialists had some idea of what consciousness is and how brains produce it. Let me ask you: suppose science is still stumped on consciousness 1,000 years from now. Would you still think all there is is matter? — RogueAI

If you are, then you are. It surely is not the fault of some neuroscientist, that most of philosophy were unable to reach a synthesis on ontological difference.

We don't get to study (non-mental) matter anywhere, unless we could literally get out of our bodies. We just have to postulate its existence. — Manuel

We do not postulate anything. If you can see and touch a thing you have to be far off to even think about the possibility that it might not "exist". That is the problem with undirected reflections and witty, but mindless, efforts. If e.g. social constructivism tells us that we can construct the "reality" of things it is clear that we can construct an idea of things that makes it impossible to say anything about
it. Given we can - why should we do it?
Where is step B? Where is the negation of the negation? What should be the difference between empirical science and philosophy be, if it loses itself to it's objects (e.g. "truth")?

History has ended obviously despite efforts to puke up itself.
An alternate timeline of history has - of course - begun; though it seems to be merely a compilation of short-stories completely missing the ability to really catch anyone's attention: it has completely adopted the mode of watching, switching TV-stations and maybe having bored-educated discussions. It's characters are eiher short-lived or boring, same as general subjects. History is not real.

I posit you won't be able to dismiss my query which thus proves my theorum, and to this I conclude this post. — Varde

Why do you think so? Prove to me that it cannot be understood, _then_ I may believe you.
Nonetheless I'll make a try: Mind is the form of ideas.