Actually Aristotle's form/matter distinction was a counter to dualism (in this case, Plato's).
— Andrew M

Didn’t know that, thanks. True that form cannot exist without matter and vice versa. Still it is a duality of sorts, like the two sides of the same coin. — Olivier5

OK. I think of dualism as an ontological separation thesis, where each dual has its own nature and principles for understanding them.

We could always marry qualia to universals and really stoke the flames. — Marchesk

You mean like Descartes taking Plato's Forms (the domain of the Intellect) and adding sentience to posit the Cartesian mind?

That debate has been going on for hundreds of years (if not thousands)...

Then your concrete and abstract looks like what I'd call extension and intension, after Frege. — Banno

Yes, that seems to be the case.

I'm still not clear on the distinction between the different senses of "physical contact" and "practical contact" or how the robot example helps to distinguish them. Unless you are just stipulating that people can have "practical contact" with their environment but robots can't? — Luke

No. I'm just saying that phrases can have different senses depending on how they are used. Practical contact is going to be different in some sense for a human than it is for a robot, even though the same phrase might be used for both.

To return to the original issue, an experience is a relation between yourself and the things in your environment (say, the coffee). Experience is a term that applies to humans but not to robots. Not because humans have Cartesian minds (where they have internal experiences), but because humans have different capabilities to robots. A human's practical contact with the world instantiates differently to a robot's.

I don't really see much difference between experience vs. experience in the mind. For there to be "seeing red", there needs to be a subject or a person who sees red. This involves a dichotomy between the subject (or person) and their environment, sometimes called subjective/objective. You pay lip service to dispensing of this dichotomy but you cannot avoid speaking in terms of it. — Luke

No, you're just reading what I say through that dichotomy. I've said that a person experiences the world (i.e., that there is a relation between the person and the world), and you read that as an experience in the mind.

What is the difference between touching and feeling something? Touching is physical, whereas feeling is... what? Conscious? Experiential? This is simply another manifestation of the subjective/objective or mind/matter divide that you seem to want to eliminate in the name of a Cartesian theatre. — Luke

From Lexico, touch means "Come into or be in contact with." while feel (in this context) means "Be aware of (a person or object) through touching or being touched."

If I felt someone touch my shoulder, then I have become aware that someone is there. That's my experience of the world.

What I felt was not "in my mind", it was in the world. It is only the introduction of a Cartesian theater that makes what I felt internal to a container mind.

There.s also the quantic wave-particle duality, and Aristotle’s duality of form and matter. Dualism works just fine. — Olivier5

Actually Aristotle's form/matter distinction was a counter to dualism (in this case, Plato's). Instead of Forms being separate from the material world per Plato, Aristotle regarded observable things as being analyzable in terms of form and matter, but not as ontologically separate. A modern way of putting that would be that physical systems are characterized by state (or information - which derives from the Greek term morphe, or form).

That is, how do we account for change in things but also have those things maintain their identity through that change?
— Andrew M

Kripke? — creativesoul

Rigid designators? For Aristotle, things have essential and accidental characteristics.

We could define "Alice kicked the ball" in extensional terms; Alice is one of the things that kicked the ball. If we do so, is there nothing left that is not concrete? We have Alice, Fred, Jack, the ball, the cat. "Kicked" is defined in terms of relations between these items:

Kicked (Alice, Ball)
Kicked (Fred, Ball)
Kicked (Jack, the cat) — Banno

Yes, those are all concrete. Whereas Kicked as an uninstantiated relation (i.e., without items) would be abstract.

Concrete things here seem to be just individuals. It's a cup and a person, not cups and people. — Banno

:up:

Look like just plain 'ole names to me. — creativesoul

Also fine. We give names to individuals.

Since it's predicated of those concrete things, it is abstract, not concrete.
— Andrew M

That seems weird to me. Physical contact consists in concrete actions and responses. — Janus

I think you're using the term "concrete" in the sense of "definite" (or maybe "real"). That's OK, but it's not how I was using it.

It seems very wrongheaded to me to be saying that there are these concrete objects, but that none of their actions are concrete. Sounds like a Parmenidean world in which change and movement is illusory. — Janus

No, not Parmenides. Though Aristotle could be seen as integrating Parmenides and Heraclitus. That is, how do we account for change in things but also have those things maintain their identity through that change?

Anyway, perhaps an example will help. Suppose we observe Alice kick a ball. If I point in her direction, and ask you what am I pointing to, what do you answer? You might say, "Alice" or you might say "the ball". Those are both concrete things (or individuals). Or you might say "Alice kicking the ball". That's also fine - we observed that. But kicking is an abstract term (a universal) - it doesn't have an independent existence. And kicking is an example of physical contact which is similarly abstract.

So this gets into the issue of universals, which I'm not sure this thread has covered yet... I discuss my position (which is broadly Aristotelian) in more detail here.

Long story short, I think kicking happens out there in the world, not in people's minds (it's a kind of relation, which is part of the physicist's toolkit). However it doesn't follow that it has an independent existence apart from individuals. Which is why it is abstract, not concrete.

What about the hardware and software dichtomy in computers? Do you forgo that dualism in favor of just the hardware? — Marchesk

It's a useful distinction. We understand how hardware and software are related, and there is no cause for disagreement.

However with regards to dualism, I would note that there is no ontological hardware/software difference such that the laws of physics apply to one but not the other, or that one is public and the other intrinsically private, or that the executing software has a separate (or otherwise ineffable) existence in relation to the hardware.

If we understood the use of terms like "physical" and "mental" as having naturally arising uses instead of being ontological duals with the above kinds of characteristics, then perhaps there would be little cause for disagreement there as well.

I was probably unclear. You said that an experience "describes your practical contact with things in the environment". Could you clarify whether "practical contact" is the same as "physical contact"? If so, isn't one's physical contact with the environment a concrete (i.e. physical) thing? (This would imply that an experience is a physical thing.) — Luke

In this context (i.e., regarding human experience), "practical contact" and "physical contact" can have different senses, which is why I gave the robot example. And physical contact is still an abstraction over concrete things. A concrete thing is something that is not predicated of anything else. So the cup and the person are examples of concrete things. Whereas physical contact is a relation between concrete things. Since it's predicated of those concrete things, it is abstract, not concrete.

Seeing red is not an experience? To be clear, I'm talking about a person seeing red (e.g. seeing a red object). — Luke

OK, I thought you were saying that "seeing red" was an experience in the mind (but from your qualification, you don't seem to have been intending that). Though even there, I would say that the experience was one of drinking coffee and that seeing the red cup was just an aspect of that broader experience (albeit an aspect that might be commented on at the time or reflected on later).

I'm not sure that I understand. You're saying it's not merely physical contact but it's also no more than physical contact...? How are robots any different in this regard? — Luke

The sense is different. When I touch something, the implication is usually that I felt it (though I need not have), and whatever other human-specific aspects are involved in that event. That's not the case with a robot (though the robot may register it as an event if it has sensors).

And I would add that the practical contact is between the cup/coffee and the person, not between the person's eyes and the photons. The latter is detail about the physical process and operates at a different level of abstraction than what I'm describing here.
— Andrew M

On the one hand, there is practical contact between a person and a coffee. On the other hand, there is practical contact between a person and photons. What's the difference? What other process is there besides "the physical process"? — Luke

They are descriptions at different levels of abstraction. By experience, we're referring to a human-level interaction involving coffee and cups. I don't see photons hitting my eyes (even though photons are hitting my eyes), I see the coffee and the cup.

Also suppose that drinking the coffee was part of a job interview process. Then a description of that high-level interview process would be just as valid as a description of the underlying physical process. The level of abstraction that is relevant depends on one's purposes.

The main issue for me is that a description of a human being at a physical level should not contradict descriptions at other levels of abstraction.
— Andrew M

Ok, it seems you can't agree about the philosophical challenge. You want to settle: for different levels of description, not literally commensurable. Then, unfortunately, I have to dispute your continual claims to have risen above dualism. — bongo fury

I think you misunderstand. I didn't say that different levels of description were incommensurable. I said that they depended on structure and organization. So to understand how to relate different levels of description requires investigating a system's structure and organization.

Of relevance here, organization shares the same root as organism and organ (Greek: organon).

To say "I have a body" instead of "I am a body" is precisely the way of thinking/ speaking that leads to Cartesian dualism. — Janus

It's a conventional way of speaking. We also speak of a person who acts independently as having a mind of their own. But before assuming dualism, we should first investigate the contexts that give rise to those usages.

So, yes, you're right; according to that dualistic way of thinking, the body does not have beliefs, but according to the monistic ways of thinking myself as a body, the body does indeed have beliefs; or perhaps better expressed beliefs are embodied, they are modes or dispositions of the body. — Janus

Suppose that someone shoots and kills Bob. Bob, as we knew him, no longer exists. Yet his body remains.

So that might be one reason to distinguish Bob from his body. A living body and a dead body consist of the same material, but what makes the difference is how that material is structured and organized.

Whereas the Cartesian dualist says that what makes the difference is a separable mind, and it is that separable mind that is the locus of experiences and beliefs.

Anyway, it's an interesting issue to raise. As with the phrase that "the Sun rises in the East", perhaps problems only arise when one draws philosophical or ontological implications that extend beyond the actual use.

Yes. As long as we keep in mind that a human being is not just a body, but how it is organized (just as a university is not just a set of buildings, but how they're organized). That is, we predicate experiences, beliefs, perceptions, actions, etc., of human beings, not bodies (or brains).
— Andrew M

This doesn't seem quite right to me; a body is not a separate thing from "how it is organized"; so there would seem to be no problem involved in saying a human being is a (minded, organized) body, in which case "experiences, beliefs, perceptions, actions etc.," can indeed be coherently predicated of (enbrained) bodies. To say that they cannot is to introduce another, differently nuanced layer of separation which begins (again) to look like dualism. — Janus

Human beings and their bodies are not separate, but we predicate them differently. I have a body (as do other animals). But my body doesn't have beliefs, or experiences. Instead, I do. What a human being is, in contrast, is an animal. In this case an animal that has particular capabilities that distinguish it from other animals (such as the capability for rational thought and language).

Whereas Cartesian dualism does literally separate mind and body. For the Cartesian dualist, experiences and beliefs are in the mind, and "I" is identified with that separable mind.

An experience is not a concrete thing like cups and taste buds are. It instead describes your practical contact with things in the environment, which occurred at some time and location.
— Andrew M

1. Isn't the "practical" (physical?) contact between you and your environment a "concrete thing"? — Luke

No, it's an abstraction over concrete things. It describes something that a person does or has. That is, no person, no experience. (Which we can appreciate if we substituted a robot for the person, since robots don't have experiences.)

2. Isn't there more to an "experience" than this physical contact? E.g. There's not just the "practical contact" experience of light entering the eye, there's also the experience of seeing red. — Luke

Those aren't experiences, at least on an ordinary definition. This is a good example of how we're using language in completely different ways.

Experience isn't merely physical contact. A robot can do physical contact. But it isn't therefore something separate from physical contact either (which would be dualism). It's an abstraction over that physical contact in a manner applicable to human beings.

And I would add that the practical contact is between the cup/coffee and the person, not between the person's eyes and the photons. The latter is detail about the physical process and operates at a different level of abstraction than what I'm describing here.

I think there's a pretty strong alliance between that perspective and embodied cognition approaches, though there's a rabbit hole to go down regarding how much of embodiment is the brain's doing. Do you think the role of the brain can be emphasised without falling into the Cartesian trap?

I think it can, so long as the image of the brain producing output mind states as distinct phenomena from their production is discarded. Body patterns as environmental patterns. Refusing to put events involving an agent not a privileged ontological stratum - like as a separate substance (a "res cogitans") or aspect of substance (an "infinite mode" or "attribute"). — fdrake

Yes, agreed.

Pretty much. The use of those terms reinforce the Cartesian theater such that its difficult to understand that there can even be an alternative. Per Ryle's ghost in the machine metaphor the materialist, in rejecting the ghost, simply endorses the machine (where physical things are external, third-person, objective). But that still accepts the underlying Cartesian framing and so doesn't resolve anything.
— Andrew M

This makes a lot of sense to me (maybe). In what way do you believe conceptualising things in terms of mental and physical phenomena can propagate or reinforce a Cartesian perspective? — fdrake

Thoughts, feelings, perceptions, etc., are embodied - they aren't non-physical. So the mental and physical aren't opposing duals. But neither is the mental eliminable, or reducible to some lowest-common-denominator set of physical characteristics that we might share with other things (say, lower animals or machines).

The root of the problem is that the mental-physical division is a philosophical idealization, not a naturally arising distinction. It's as if some philosophers have found the world too unwieldy for their tastes, so have decided to split it into two parts and categorize everything as one or the other. (Different philosophers do this differently, but the principle is the same.)

From an earlier example, suppose you were playing a game of football where you scored a goal. It was clearly a physical activity. Yet it was also an activity that required intelligence and purpose. You can't separate your experience into physical and mental phenomena, nor separate your thinking from your bodily movements. To suppose one can is to create a (dualist) puzzle where none previously existed.

Instead we can describe the activity from a particular point-of-view, and at a particular level of abstraction. For example, we can note that the ball curled into the net (a physical description), or that it was a deliberate strike rather than an accidental deflection (a description of one's purpose), or that the score is now 2-1 (a logical consequence of the rules of the game). So categorical terms like physical, mental, psychological, biological, mechanical, logical, etc., arise as natural distinctions depending on the scenario and what one wishes to say.

Duals like subject/object, internal/external, physical/mental, mind/body, are assumptions that frame the analysis for dualists and materialists alike. Yet these terms do have natural uses when understood apart from dualism, as suggested above.

Dialog, by definition, is a conversation between two or more people. Inner dialog extends this idea in a metaphorical way.
— Andrew M

But the philosophical challenge is to then get literal again. Lest your poetry be seized on.

Inner dialog (and music) is a good place to be literal about thinking, as it is relatively easy to recognise as being supported, even if not utterly constituted, by neural shivering. In the extreme, we might catch our lips (fingers) moving; but plenty of more central neural/neuro-muscular twitching is also noticeable.

Such recognition may not threaten anyone's intuition of purely phenomenal "sound" events, even if they begin to notice that shivering at some level always accompanies them. After all, perhaps the alleged theatrics are something weird emerging from the bio-physics of the more central shivering.

But it's a good place to start. — bongo fury

Sounds good. (Goodman referenced noted.)

The main issue for me is that a description of a human being at a physical level should not contradict descriptions at other levels of abstraction. What differentiates a human being (and other living creatures) from the rest of the universe is not the fundamental material they are composed of (say, atoms, etc.), but their structure and organization. And it is this structure that gives rise to the predicates we use at different levels of abstraction. For example, that we absorb and reflect light as physical systems. That we perceive things, feel pain, etc., as sentient creatures. And that we have thoughts, desires, and purposes, etc., as human beings.

So the point there is that thoughts, desires, perceptions, etc., are not something in addition to, or separate from, the physical. They are instead characteristics that are specific to certain kinds of physical systems - in our case, as human beings. So to seek to understand these characteristics is to seek to understand our physical structure and organization (as compared to and differentiated from other physical systems).

No... ...I'm just trying to make sense of your earlier comments which are still unclear to me:

"Internal, external, that which consists of both. Conscious experience being of the third; part physical, part non physical; part internal, part external, part neither."
— Andrew M

Fair enough.

Conscious experience of tasting bitter Maxwell House coffee from a red cup...

So, the red cups are external, the biological machinery is internal, and conscious experience of drinking bitter Maxwell House coffee from red cups consists entirely of correlations drawn between the bitterness(which results from the biological machinery) and the Maxwell House coffee by a creature capable of doing so.

The content of the conscious experience is the content of the correlations... that includes both internal things and external things, however the correlation drawn between those things is neither for it consists of both. — creativesoul

While I agree that the red cup is external to you, and your taste buds (etc.) are internal to you, I don't think it follows that those predicates are applicable to the experience itself. An experience is not a concrete thing like cups and taste buds are. It instead describes your practical contact with things in the environment, which occurred at some time and location.

Anyway, either way, no Cartesian issues there!

Sideline question: could you give a checklist for a position not to count as Cartesian? Just to be clear, I'm not trying to "gotcha" question you into "lol the term is meaningless", since non-Cartesians are good company, but I'd struggle to write a list. — fdrake

Yes, if the term mind is understood as it is used in everyday experience then it's probably fine. That is:

Talk of the mind, one might say, is merely a convenient facon de parler, a way of speaking about certain human faculties and their exercise. Of course that does not mean that people do not have minds of their own, which would be true only if they were pathologically indecisive. Nor does it mean that people are mindless, which would be true only if they were stupid or thoughtless. For a creature to have a mind is for it to have a distinctive range of capacities of intellect and will, in particular the conceptual powers of a language-user that make self-awareness and self-reflection possible. — Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience - Bennett and Hacker

Whereas the Cartesian considers mind as a container or theater where "internal" experiences occur. This is not just a dualist tendency. Materialists sometimes talk about what the brain produces. But this is just the flipside of dualism. For the materialist, there is no ghostly mind so therefore the brain must be producing the illusion of a ghostly mind. But this is just the Cartesian theater all over again in a materialist guise.

The right approach is to reject the entire Cartesian framing. The human being (interacting in the world) is the relevant agent here, not minds or brains. We see things because we have eyes (and brains), not because our brain projects things on a virtual screen for us.

I have some more questions in that direction:

Does Cartesian = adhering to subject/object and the attendant distinctions (internal/external, mental/physical)? — fdrake

Pretty much. The use of those terms reinforce the Cartesian theater such that its difficult to understand that there can even be an alternative. Per Ryle's ghost in the machine metaphor the materialist, in rejecting the ghost, simply endorses the machine (where physical things are external, third-person, objective). But that still accepts the underlying Cartesian framing and so doesn't resolve anything.

Would you throw a doctrine like "environmental patterns are represented by mental patterns + mental pattern = neural pattern" in the Cartesian bin because what it's trying to reduce (mental patterns) still adheres to a Cartesian model? — fdrake

As far as I can tell, yes. It seems to be adding an unnecessary middle-man (mental patterns).

Can you do an "in the body/in the environment" distinction without being a Cartesian? — fdrake

Yes. As long as we keep in mind that a human being is not just a body, but how it is organized (just as a university is not just a set of buildings, but how they're organized). That is, we predicate experiences, beliefs, perceptions, actions, etc., of human beings, not bodies (or brains).

↪fdrake I'd also add questions about non-perceptual experiences and how those avoid some sort of movie in the head. Dreams being the number one concern, but things like inner dialog sound like a stream of consciousness podcast is running in your skull. Or when a song gets "stuck in your mind". — Marchesk

The main issue for me there is to recognize dreams and inner dialog as distinct from perception. So the first step is understanding perception in a natural (non-Cartesian) way.

Dialog, by definition, is a conversation between two or more people. Inner dialog extends this idea in a metaphorical way. It's like dialog, except it is conducted in a way that bypasses the normal perceptual channels. Similarly with dreams. An analogy here might be with software that is designed to communicate with some other device on the network. The program could be enhanced to communicate with a virtual device that runs on the same computer as itself, or even as a module within the same program. Human beings similarly have the capability to do that kind of self-referential thing. But that self-reference presupposes a prior capability for reference (and language) generally, which perception provides.

Are you claiming that red cups are not external, or that biological machinery is not internal? — creativesoul

No, and I already gave a similar example here (with internal and external house walls). I'm just trying to make sense of your earlier comments which are still unclear to me:

Internal, external, that which consists of both. Conscious experience being of the third; part physical, part non physical; part internal, part external, part neither. — creativesoul

I've offered nothing but. I'd be more than happy to unpack something I've already said should it seem like it implies such a linguistic framework. I can assure you that I reject mind/body dualism. — creativesoul

You seemed to want to defend the use of internal/external and physical/non-physical qualifiers as meaningful when talking about experiences. If not, all fine and good - we agree. But if you think there is a use for them, can you give a concrete example that doesn't assume Cartesian thinking?

I'm not at all understanding what reason there is for any one of us to believe that the terms "internal", "external", "physical", "non-physical" have no use unless they are being used within a Cartesian influenced framework.

Yeah, I'm not following that at all, Andrew. — creativesoul

Well, internal and external are useful when talking about a house (or a theater). They can refer to the internal and external walls of the house, for example. But I'm not seeing their applicability when talking about experience. Their use in that context instead implies a Cartesian theater model.

If you disagree, perhaps you could give a non-Cartesian example.

Perception involves the minimisation of prediction error simultaneously across many levels of processing within the brain’s sensory systems, by continuously updating the brain’s predictions. In this view, which is often called ‘predictive coding’ or ‘predictive processing’, perception is a controlled hallucination, in which the brain’s hypotheses are continually reined in by sensory signals arriving from the world and the body. ‘A fantasy that coincides with reality,’ as the psychologist Chris Frith eloquently put it in Making Up the Mind (2007)
— https://aeon.co/essays/the-hard-problem-of-consciousness-is-a-distraction-from-the-real-one

Hoo-boy! That will drive some of direct realists on here battty. — Marchesk

:smile: And is sanity a controlled form of battiness? Slogans and metaphors are all good fun and might be useful to illustrate a point. But to actually be coherent, a model needs to be defined without equivocation or circularity. Otherwise it's Cartesian theaters all the way down.

In this case, one might ask how "controlled" is defined. That's what is doing all the work here.

So the model is of entities interacting in a relational sense, rather than a model where the world is divided in a physical/mental sense.
— Andrew M

There's a misunderstanding somewhere. I do not divide the world in a physical/mental sense, or a physical/non physical sense. — creativesoul

I'm not saying you do. That would be the Cartesian dualism model.

Internal, external, that which consists of both. Conscious experience being of the third; part physical, part non physical; part internal, part external, part neither. — creativesoul

Those predicates are inapplicable if Cartesian dualism is rejected. One might kick a football either purposefully or aimlessly. Nothing meaningful is added by characterizing those experiences with physical/non-physical, or internal/external qualifiers.

Added to which, in Descartes there is the tendency to objectify the mind. 'Res cogitans' means 'thinking thing'. It was from that, that the self-contradictory concept of 'thinking substance' developed. Whereas pre-Cartesian philosophy didn't conceive of it in those terms. — Wayfarer

Yes. It is the human being (a living, sentient organism) that has the capacity to think, not brains or Cartesian minds.

BTW- excellent passage from Phil. of Mind. :up: — Wayfarer

Yes, Jaworski knows his stuff. Perhaps of interest, he also presents and compares hylomorphism to the standard physicalist and dualist theories.

A hylomorphic approach to mental phenomena differs in a fundamental way from many of the mind-body theories considered so far. Most of those theories are committed in some way to the idea that mental phenomena are inner states, ones that occur "in the head," so to speak, in an interior domain such as a brain or Cartesian mind.
...
Hylomorphists' commitment to externalism is closely related to their rejection of the inner experience thesis. Hylomorphists deny that our experiences are things that occur "in our heads" so to speak. Instead, they say, our experiences occur in the world. Consider an example: perception. Exponents of the inner mind picture often suggest that our perceptual experiences consist in having internal representations of the external world, but hylomorphists reject the idea that our experiences are internal states that mirror external things. They claim instead that our experiences are patterns of interaction involving individuals, properties, and events in the real world itself. — Philosophy of Mind: A Comprehensive Introduction p314, p321 - William Jaworski

Yes. Erring on the side of neither dispenses with the inherently inadequate dichotomies altogether. — creativesoul

:up:

I think the divisions themselves, as understood in their Cartesian sense, are misleading and unnecessary. They don't arise in normal communication
— Andrew M

However, I'm hesitant if all experience has internal and external components, physical and non physical components; something to be connected and a creature capable of making connections, where the connections are the neither part but that which is being connected is one or the other(or both in the case of metacognitive endeavors).

So, while the subjective/objective dichotomy can be thrown out simply by granting subjectivism in it's entirety, I'm wondering about whether or not the internal/external and physical/non physical dichotomies can be equally dispensed with. — creativesoul

Supposing experience to have internal and external components still implies the Cartesian theater metaphor. Say you were playing a game of football where you scored a goal. Did this involve internal thinking and external kicking? Or did it involve kicking the ball intelligently and purposefully (as opposed to unthinkingly and aimlessly)? The latter description doesn't depend on an internal/external division. It instead applies everyday predicates to particular types of entities as appropriate (in this case, intelligent and purposeful behavior to you - or, where warranted, random and aimless behavior).

Also we can describe the football game in physical terms (say, in terms of the energy expended by the players or the distance they travelled), or in purposeful terms (say, in terms of who won the game). But those descriptions don't imply physical and non-physical components, or physical and non-physical activity. We simply predicate entities in particular ways depending on the kind of entities they are, whether they be humans or inanimate objects.

So the model is of entities interacting in a relational sense, rather than a model where the world is divided in a physical/mental sense.

I discussed this previously here. Cartesian dualism has no practical application in everyday life or in scientific inquiry. Concepts like qualia, p-zombies and the hard problem are purely philosophical inventions that derive from Cartesian dualism.
— Andrew M

That's not entirely true, since ancient skepticism and idealism proposed similar issues based on the problem of perception. — Marchesk

Certainly the antecedents for Cartesian dualism can be found in ancient thinking. As it happens, the textbook I quoted earlier links substance dualism with Plato.

Substance dualism has a venerable history. It was endorsed in the ancient world by the Greek philosopher Plato (427-347 BCE) and his followers, and by Neoplatonists during the middle ages. From the seventeenth century until the twentieth, moreover, it was probably the most popular mind-body theory. — Philosophy of Mind: A Comprehensive Introduction, p35 - William Jaworski

But note that Descartes posited a conception of mind which included not just the intellect, as with Plato, but also pain and perception (see the above quote to Frank). So it lends itself to a concept of qualia that Plato's idealism doesn't (who regarded the entire natural world as dependent on Ideas, or Forms).

It lingers in the discomfort we might feel when we affirm phenomenal consciousness and then realize what that means about the universe. — frank

What does it mean, on your view?

IOW, yes, the concept of qualia is partly rooted in Descartes, but so is the notion that there is no qualia.

What i think we're looking for is some kind of synthesis. — frank

Maybe. Or even a dissolving of the dichotomy.

Before Descartes many philosophers did not approach the universe with a mental-physical dichotomy in mind. In particular, they had a much narrower picture of the mental domain, and a broader, more differentiated picture of the rest of the universe. Mental capacities were associated with what they called intellect: the ability to understand universal principles and make judgments of the sort we express in language. Descartes expanded the definition of the mental domain to include things that philosophers had previously not considered mental at all such as the experience of pain. The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BCE) and his medieval followers, for instance, took pain, perception, action, and related phenomena to be neither mental nor physical in Descartes' sense, and they did not take the physical universe to be a vast, undifferentiated sea of physical material. The universe instead consisted of physical materials that were structured or organized in various ways, and although living things were made out of the same materials as everything else, those materials were structured or organized in ways that conferred on them capacities not had by inanimate objects. These include capacities that could be described and explained using a mental vocabulary, but also capacities that could be described and explained using a nonmental vocabulary - not the vocabulary of fundamental physics, but a vocabulary that occupied a position between fundamental physics and psychological discourse. — Philosophy of Mind: A Comprehensive Introduction, p24 - William Jaworski

The connection between this "internal" experience and the "external" world is consequently mysterious.
— Andrew M

Loosely speaking, 'the connection' is the experience, on my view.

It consists of both internal and external, physical and non physical, subjective and objective. The problem I seem to see is that both sides miss this. Experience is neither objective, nor subjective; neither internal nor external; neither physical nor non physical...

It is both. — creativesoul

Or neither. I think the divisions themselves, as understood in their Cartesian sense, are misleading and unnecessary. They don't arise in normal communication.

Concepts like qualia, p-zombies and the hard problem are purely philosophical inventions that derive from Cartesian dualism.
— Andrew M

Is non-reductive physicalism a form if Cartesian dualism? — frank

To the extent it endorses a private theater conception of mind, yes. (Though it might not do so - see the third quote below.)

As some support for my initial claim above, I came across the following interesting passage about the history of qualia:

Skepticism about the existence of qualia derives from several sources. One source is historical. Prior to the seventeenth century, people did not endorse a private conception of mental phenomena. Most philosophers claimed that psychological discourse was expressive of the ways animals like us interact with each other and the environment. So entrenched was this idea in the philosophical culture of the time that Descartes felt compelled to argue for a different, private conception of mental phenomena. Descartes' audience did not believe the existence of qualia was too obvious to require argument, and neither did Descartes. He came to endorse a private conception of mental phenomena not because of its alleged obviousness, but because it played a central role in his broader project. He was concerned with establishing an indubitable foundation for the natural sciences. As a first step, he sought to establish that the contents of his mind were better known than anything else, and argued on behalf of that claim. Historical considerations of this sort raise questions about whether the existence of qualia is really too obvious to require any argument. — Philosophy of Mind: A Comprehensive Introduction, p216-218 - William Jaworski

And also as a theory-laden commitment:

Another source of qualia skepticism derives from a competing explanation for the alleged obviousness of qualia. It claims that the existence of qualia only seems obvious to exponents of qualia because they have been indoctrinated in post-Cartesian ways of thinking - they have been trained to see mental phenomena through the lens of a post-Cartesian theory. On this skeptical view, our intuitions are theory-laden: what seems obvious to us is shaped in part by the kinds of theories we endorse. If intuitions are theory-laden, this suggests that qualia are not pre-theoretical data that a theory of mind must try to explain; they instead represent a particular kind of theoretical commitment; they are entities postulated by a private conception of mental phenomena. But if the existence of qualia seems obvious to people who endorse a private conception of mental phenomena, this does not automatically imply that a private conception of mental phenomena is true. It seems true to the people who endorse it, but it does not seem true to people who reject it - it would not have seemed true to philosophers prior to the seventeenth century, for instance, or to Descartes' contemporaries. In that case, however, it will not do for exponents of qualia to claim that their ideas are too obvious to require argument. If qualia represent a particular kind of theoretical commitment, then exponents of qualia must argue for their theory, and that means they have to argue that qualia exist. — Philosophy of Mind: A Comprehensive Introduction, p216-218 - William Jaworski

With respect to physicalism, emergentism and hylomorphism (which is my own position):

A fourth source of qualia skepticism derives from the failure of a private conception of mental phenomena to cohere with a naturalistic picture of human mental life. This argument stands the epiphenomenalist argument on its head: if Premise (2) of the argument is true [*], say qualia skeptics, if it is true that qualia cannot be explained in physical terms, then there must be something wrong with the very idea of qualia. Nor are physicalists the only ones inclined to argue this way. Emergentists, hylomorphists, and anyone else who demands a naturalistic or scientifically respectable account of human psychological capacities might be skeptical of qualia for the same reason: the alleged disconnect between qualia and physical explanation. — Philosophy of Mind: A Comprehensive Introduction, p216-218 - William Jaworski

--

[*] The argument for epiphenomenalism:
1. There are qualia
2. Qualia cannot be physically described or explained

There's no need to introduce an artificial "phenomenal layer" to account for that difference.
— Andrew M

I keep hearing this argument by all the Quiners here. I want to instead ask, what's the problem with introducing that layer anyways, even if we don't need to (not that I'm convinced of that)? What are y'all afraid might happen? What confusion have you been trying to avoid? — khaled

We're trying to avoid Cartesian dualism. That's the position of positing a container mind (the Cartesian theater), and then redefining ordinary words in terms of that container mind. For example, in everyday life watching a sunset, or kicking a football around with your kids, are experiences. Whereas for the dualist, an experience is instead the sense of redness, or the feeling of pain, confined to the mind and intrinsically private to a person. The connection between this "internal" experience and the "external" world is consequently mysterious.

I discussed this previously here. Cartesian dualism has no practical application in everyday life or in scientific inquiry. Concepts like qualia, p-zombies and the hard problem are purely philosophical inventions that derive from Cartesian dualism.

Understanding the difference between dualism and non-dualism is like understanding the difference between geocentrism and heliocentrism. People can look at the same world, but conceptualize it very differently.

Side note: for your last few replies to me, I haven't received a notification. I'm not sure if that's on your end or mine. I'll try signing out and in again to see if that helps.

Because you seem to be invoking privacy even between normally-sighted people.
— Andrew M

I await your distinction between practical privacy and philosophical privacy. — Luke

The Cartesian Theater metaphor shows the difference. If what we perceive is in the mind then it is inaccessible to others. If what we perceive is in the world then it is, in principle, accessible to others. (Even if, for some reason or another, it's not accessible right now.)

Either way, I don't think you've addressed the privacy issue that I noted previously:

"You can't perceive or experience another person's perceptions and experiences. That's just a fact of being you and not them." — Luke

Obviously if I stub my toe, then it is me that feels the pain, not you. It is my pain, not yours. But, all else being equal, if you stub your toe then you will feel the same pain that I do when I stub mine. Similarly with looking at a red apple. All else being equal, you will have the same experience as I do.

The Wikipedia article on Qualia gives the following definition of privacy: "all interpersonal comparisons of qualia are systematically impossible." — Luke

Yes, that's the Cartesian viewpoint. Which has no use in ordinary discourse. We talk about pains and colors because we know that we can compare and communicate our experiences with others.

If the difference between a normal-sighted person and a colour-blind person is not in their supposed "phenomenal layer", then how are they different? Why does colour-blindness involve a practical privacy but normal-sightedness doesn't? — Luke

Because color-blind people can't make the color distinctions that normally-sighted people can. But, in turn, normally-sighted people can't make some of the color distinctions that certain animals can (and vice-versa). That's just a difference in perceptual capability, which has a physically identifiable basis. There's no need to introduce an artificial "phenomenal layer" to account for that difference.

But at that point the word "Physical" becomes meaningless and redundant, as it should, and so will "Idealism". We'll just have "thingism"
— khaled

Hooray for thingism! (In other words, I agree.) — f64

As it happens, that was Aristotle's position. His term was ousia, which has been variously interpreted as being, thing, thinghood, and substance. Ousia refers to things that aren't predicated of anything else (i.e., are independent and foundational) but can themselves be predicated. Such things are composed of form (from which both information and ideas etymologically derive) and matter:

Aristotle famously contends that every physical object is a compound of matter and form. This doctrine has been dubbed “hylomorphism”, a portmanteau of the Greek words for matter (hulê) and form (eidos or morphê). — Form vs. Matter - SEP

So .... the mind is a Matrix? We need to take the red pill of philosophy to get to the desert of the real? Then we can go back inside the mind and kick some ass? — Marchesk

Sure, once we've made up our minds to.

Part of the Cartesian error is to categorize unlike things together based on superficial similarities instead of making natural and functional distinctions. So visualizing, dreaming, imagining, hallucinating, etc., are considered by the Cartesian to be a kind of seeing and perception, when they are not.
— Andrew M

But they are kinds of conscious experiences. And the thing about them is you can't just dismiss dreams, hallucinations, etc. as properties in relation to the objects being perceived, since there are no objects, and thus no such relations. — Marchesk

Yes, that's just the point in distinguishing those activities from perception. You are having a dream - there's nothing being perceived, only dreamt.

But there are still experiences.

I dream of a red apple, and that red apple is a visual experience. — Marchesk

Metaphorically perhaps, but nothing is being seen, only dreamt. Paraphrasing:

Spoon boy: Do not try and bend the inner spoon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Spoon boy: There is no inner spoon.
Neo: There is no inner spoon?
Spoon boy: Then you'll see, that it is not the inner spoon that bends, it is only yourself.

When we ask “is this dress blue and black or gold and white” we ask what experience you are having. It is a fact that some people saw a white and gold dress, even though the dress was blue and black. It is furthermore a fact that you cannot tell if someone is actually seeing gold and white or only lying about it. That’s what it means that you can’t “read minds”. — khaled

People's experiences sometimes differ in certain situations (reflecting differences either in the environment or in their physical characteristics). And that's a valid question to investigate. But in many situations we can predict what other people's experience will be like. I assume you and other readers would agree that the dress color looks blue and black in the image I posted. We learn which situations are like that and which aren't.

I don’t understand how there can be no intermediary layer, but there can be an experience. Isn’t the experience the intermediary layer? Or else what does “experience” mean. — khaled

From Lexico, experience is "practical contact with and observation of facts or events." Note that there is nothing there about intermediary layers, phenomenalism, or minds. Watching a sunset is an experience. And so is kicking around a football with your kids.

Also what is imagination without the intermediary phenomenological layer? — khaled

It's a separate issue. To perceive things is not at all the same as to imagine things. They are different kinds of activities.

Part of the Cartesian error is to categorize unlike things together based on superficial similarities instead of making natural and functional distinctions. So visualizing, dreaming, imagining, hallucinating, etc., are considered by the Cartesian to be a kind of seeing and perception, when they are not.

The Cartesian dualist conceptualizes the world very differently to the way people ordinarily conceptualize things. Discussions like this help to bring those philosophical premises to the surface where they can be analyzed and compared.

So how does this model deal with disagreements about what is perceived? Via norms that function much like the standard meter length bar that used to be held in Paris. If you want to check whether the apple is red, find a normally-sighted person and ask them.
— Andrew M

Like that blue/gold dress? — Marchesk

The dress itself was confirmed as a royal blue "Lace Bodycon Dress" from the retailer Roman Originals, which was actually black and blue in colour; — Real colours of dress confirmed - Wikipedia

Because you're describing your perceptions and experiences as private and inaccessible to others. That's the Cartesian theater model of perception.
— Andrew M

That our perceptions and experiences are private and inaccessible to others is a fact, which empiricists should respect I think. I cannot read your mind and you cannot read mine. René Descartes did not invent this fact. — Olivier5

It seems the dress retailers are not familiar with the Cartesian "facts".

Yes, I do consider it as a possibility. Do you consider it a possibility that there could be differences in our colour vision (yours and mine), however slight? — Luke

Yes. And such differences would be potentially discoverable as we've seen with color-blindness, etc.

But, again, if how the colour of the apple appears to a normally-sighted person was public (and not private), then we shouldn't need to ask them in order to find out. — Luke

So color-blindness implies a kind of privacy in practice - they can't make the color distinctions that normally-sighted people can. But that is a practical problem, not a philosophical problem.

The philosophical problem (which leads to the hard problem) is the Cartesian Theater and the radical privacy it entails. That is, that everyone's experiences are intrinsically private including the experiences of normally-sighted people.

Whereas ordinary perception starts with the ordinary distinctions that normally-sighted people make in normal conditions (e.g., between red and green apples). That's the paradigm context - the norm - which grounds color language.

When those physical conditions change - when the context is not normal in the relevant respect - then those ordinary distinctions may no longer be obvious. So there is a need to qualify one's statements in those contexts. Terms such as "seems", "appears" and "looks" have that role. For example, a red apple looks green when I wear filtered glasses. The condition that is different here is that I'm wearing filtered glasses.

The physical conditions for color-blindness are also outside the paradigmatic norm. As with the filtered-glasses example, those conditions can potentially be identified, investigated and explained (and, ultimately, changed in the cases where a person's vision is restored through surgery or technology).

Your reference to "how the colour...appears to a...person" is all that I mean by qualia, so why do you get to avoid "the Cartesian theatre model of perception" but I don't? — Luke

Because you seem to be invoking privacy even between normally-sighted people. That would be true if there were an intermediary (phenomenal) layer between the person and the world that they are perceiving. That intermediary layer is what I'm rejecting.

Now a color-blind person's experience is different to a normal-sighted person. But there is no intermediary layer for them either. Their options are to develop their own color terms or, as actually happens, use the color terms that derive from normal-sighted people's experience.

...as Davidson said

In giving up the dualism of scheme and world, we do not give up the world, but reestablish unmediated touch with the tfamiliarobjects whose antics make our sentences and opinions true or false. — Banno

:up:

I can't directly show you my perceptions or sensations, and neither can anyone else.
— Luke

That's a Cartesian view of perception and experience.
— Andrew M

Why must it be? — Luke

Because you're describing your perceptions and experiences as private and inaccessible to others. That's the Cartesian theater model of perception.

I don't disagree, but that's not showing me your perceptions or sensations. Maybe you're colour-blind and you perceive it differently to me. You can show me the object you are looking at, but that's not showing me how it looks to you. — Luke

Or maybe you have normal color vision and perceive it the same as me. Do you agree that that is a possibility?

If you do, then we have a case where not only are we both seeing a red apple, but the apple also appears red to both of us.

If that condition is met, we have a common reference point in the world that we can use language to talk about.

I agree, it is potentially discoverable and comparable - I'm not trying to argue for anything supernatural. However, it remains private until then. Anyway, it's not really the privacy that's at issue here, but whether there is, in fact, some way that things seem to a person, i.e. some "inner" phenomenal experience. That's the definition of qualia given by Dennett, and what I understand eliminative materialists consider as somehow unreal. — Luke

If the Cartesian theater model of perception is rejected, there is no "inner" phenomenal experience. There is only our experience understood as practical contact with the world. So on an ordinary perceptual model, the 'inner' egg is eliminated (as a ghost that serves no useful purpose), and we simply perceive the egg in the world. Or, more precisely, on an ordinary perceptual model there is no implication of an "inner" egg to begin with.

So how does this model deal with disagreements about what is perceived? Via norms that function much like the standard meter length bar that used to be held in Paris. If you want to check whether the apple is red, find a normally-sighted person and ask them.

I have long considerd the hard problem to be a question of why, rather than how. Namely: why do we have phenomenal experiences at all? That question would not seem to be answered by a complete "map" of how all phenomenal experience corresponds to the body/brain. — Luke

The first step is to properly articulate the problem. If the Cartesian perceptual model is rejected, then the simple answer is that we don't have "phenomenal" experiences at all (i.e., there is no experience of an "inner" egg), we just have ordinary, everyday experiences involving ordinary, everyday things like red apples.

Every now and then, as with the bent-stick-in-water example, things aren't always as they seem. So that becomes a point of difference that can be investigated further.

The Cartesian dualist turns this around and says that all we can know for certain are how things seem to us. And, further, no-one can know how things seem to someone else, since those "seemings" are private. This is then described as "phenomenal" experience (or qualia) which is separate from the things in the world that people naively supposed they were experiencing. The hard problem is then to explain why we have this mysterious "phenomenal" experience at all, and how it could have arisen.

A problem with this might be that a perceptual difference needs to be noticeable in order to...get noticed, and therefore some perceptual differences could remain undiscovered and private. — Luke

That's not a philosophical problem though. It's just a matter of not having discovered something. Since there is a physical difference it is something that can, at least in principle, be noticed, investigated and explained.

I'd add that the 'view form nowhere' argument seems to me to be non more than sophistry. Consider instead that third person speech is the view from anywhere... that it is phrased so that perspective is irrelevant.

That's pretty much how the Principle of Relativity insists we phrase things. — Banno

Yes, when we represent the world in language, we generalize and abstract from our experience in the world, not in separation from our experience. The former is natural (and is useful in everyday life and scientific investigation), the latter is dualist (and is useful for creating interminable philosophical discussion).