Sure, the models change. But this is unproblematic for the realist. Because, the models, be they theoretic or phenomenal, are not reality. So the fact that they change is not particularly puzzling.

But for the idealist, there is no such remove between the phenomenal and reality. So, when the rose colored glasses are worn, the idealist is committed to say that reality itself changes. When such a result is arrived at, it is time to discard the theory.

he point about the rose colored glasses is particularly apt. That IS the argument against physicalism. Just reframe it: "if you assume you have an abstract thought model that explains reality, and you interpret all experience using that model, does that mean your model is actually a reflection of reality?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

Except, your models of the world do not change when you put on and take off rose colored glasses. But your perceptions do. How do you consistently model a world where esse is percepi and rose colored glasses exist?

Models are reflections of reality. Perceptions are also models, and they also reflect reality. But they are perfectly pragmatic, without any commitment to accuracy beyond pragmatism. The physicalist models are the products of very hard work deducing what it is perceptions reflect. As direct contact between minds and reality is impossible, models are all we have. They are not reality. But they may model it more it less faithfully, and capture features more faithfully that what our built in models, perceptions, provide.

If you are a bat, or if you take a hallucinogen, is the world then radically altered? Obvious nonsense, not worth serious consideration.

The mind is essentially a function that maps sensory data to the virtual world of qualia. There is no other reasonable way to understand our place in the world.

If so and if, however, it doesn't make sense to say "perceiving is perceived", then "perceiving" cannot be; therefore "to be" has to be other (more) than "to be perceived". :eyes: — 180 Proof

"Being" and "perception" are categories, there is nothing wrong with claiming that these categories are in fact coincident.

There's a theory that Putin and Trump express obvious lies as a means of domination. The relentless bullshit creates a fog of abuse. — frank

I think this is why right wingers gravitate to obvious liars: it is a sign of strength and status, to be able to tell such lies. The stronger one is, the bolder the lies one is able to tell.

One problem with this whole way of setting up the issue, however, is that it presupposes we can make sense of the very notion of a single, canonical, physicalist description of the world, which is highly doubtful, and that in arriving (or at any rate approaching) such a description, we are attaining a viewpoint that does not in any way presuppose our own cognition and lived experience. — Joshs

It feels like you are reading way too much into the "precise" verbosity favored by professional philosophers. He is merely covering is bases. Would anything essential be lost rephrasing that quote as:

"Does a complete physical description and understanding of the brain imply consciousness? If it does not, consciousness must be aphysical."

There are no high metaphysical claims about realism here.

Would you similarly object to the statement:

"Does a complete physical description and understanding of biology imply life? If not, life must be aphysical."

I grant you that the with consciousness we are attempting to examining the very same process or entity by which we examine that process or entity. However, there are two sides of this equation, the third-person examination, and the first person phenomenon we are trying to explain. A third person scientific elucidation of the brain is no more problematic than any other subject. The problem is the bridge between the third person understanding and the first person phenomenon of consciousness.

If it were uncontroversial then how us it you are questioning how it happens? I'm with you on the questioning it, just not with you in saying it's uncontroversial. — Harry Hindu

It is uncontroversial that it happens from physical processes. Those who dispute that are properly marginalized.

The controversial part is how.

Consciousness is a word with Cartesian dualism baked into it. And that is why those who bang on about "consciousness" find that its usage leads to a feeling there is some unbridged explanatory gap. — apokrisis

Only by rejecting Cartesian dualism does the explanatory gap even arise. I also reject the Cartesian Theater, I believe we as conscious beings are the "images", and that the images arise from the physical brain. There is a dualism, between conscious and unconscious processes in the brain. We are aware, by definition, only of the conscious parts, the parts which have representation as "images".

And yet, I cannot account for how these images arise from physical processes, despite knowing that they do. The explanatory gap results from the collapse of Cartesian dualism as a respectable philosophical position.. If Cartesian Dualism were allowed, there would be no gap, matter would be one kind of thing, mind another.

The fact that consciousness arises from brain processes is utterly uncontroversial. The philosophically interesting question that remains is how can it be that such a thing can arise from brain processes... A question to which science remains largely silent.

Eyes in the back of your head is it? — unenlightened

we are riding in the back of a pickup truck, trying to guess where we are going by looking behind.

[

Time does move backwards; or rather we move backwards through time. You can tell because we can see where we've been, but not where we're going. — unenlightened

Rather, from our perspective, we are moving forward while able only to look backward.

It is causality, not time, that has a direction. Time is the space in which causality evolves. If time "ran backwards", we wouldn't notice, because our memories would still be consequent of causally prior events.

we intellectually add in our minds more than is actually there? — TiredThinker

Of course we do. Our appraisal of something as beautiful is a property of our minds, not the thing. But we project this into the thing.

What about fractals? These are infinite spaces that you can explore on a computer. Their instantiation in a computer realizes what was an abstract infinity.

Even more cumbersome to classify become intersubjectively held fictions, like unicorns, which are not intersubjective realities in the same sense that moneys and cultures are - yet are still actual/real as culturally present fictions: unicorns then being a real, rather than an untrue, fictional notion within the cultures we partake of — javra

I would still classify unicorns as imaginary. It is just that they are intersubjectively imaginary. But they are not forces in the world, in the same sense that money nations and religions are. The latter is what interests me: things which are imaginary in their nature, but take on a kind of reality as quasi objective entities.

It will be a historical curiosity, and interesting, not because it is a piece of paper but because it was money. What significance would it have then, or would it have had in the past, as a piece of paper? Imagine the museum exhibit: "Piece of paper." — Ciceronianus

The point is, it was money, but no longer is, despite being physically identical at both times. The money is not the paper.

Right, but why not revise what we understand of the real, rather than create new categories because they do not fit tradition? — StreetlightX

is there something at stake is excluding money from the real? — StreetlightX

I am not excluding them from the real. I am refining the overbroad category of real: things that are ontologically real, vs. things that are ontologically imaginary but manifest as real. If categories are useful, it is because they pick apart relevant qualitative differences. If we lump these differences under the same term, these differences become obscured, and our thinking becomes muddled as a result, and you get money as simultaneously real and imaginary. In my opinion, there are few things that have muddled philosophy more than the real vs. imaginary divide.

Plato — bongo fury

This seems to be your favorite rhetorical gun, too bad you can't seem to hit anything with it.

it seems as if our existence occurs fundamentally in the encounter between the two. Everything else becomes objectification of that universal reality. — Melanie

Even if this were so, the components of this synthesis seem worthy of discussion.

If a ten dollar note (money) isn't a ten dollar note (money), what is it? Something else, which we merely treat as if it were a ten dollar note (money)? — Ciceronianus

The fact that a ten dollar note is money is not a property of the physical paper. In 5000 years whatever nation backs it will have long since collapsed, the piece of paper will only have the historical curiosity of once having been money. No matter how well preserved it is.

What do you think about this framework? — Hermeticus

Everyone is simultaneously mental and physical subject. Your personal identity is simultaneously mental subject and object, when you reflect on it. Money is simultaneously mental and physical object.


They don't seem to neatly cut across reality.

Hence the ontology of money requires one to step outside the ontological categories of real or imaginary or physical or mental, and to recognises that there is a wider social world that transcends these limited categories. — Banno

Yes, but this is my point. The categories of "real" and "imaginary" are inadequate to describe social realities. I am attempting to amend them by expanding upon them.

It seems funny to me that what is at stake in the OP is that money fails the expectation of what reality somehow ought to be — StreetlightX

No ought. I was starting from the commonplace dichotomy of real/imaginary, where what is real exists "in the world", and what is imaginary is "in the head" (note, both are part of reality). And showed that that money, for instance, is neither: while its origin and nature is in the head, it is a force in the world.

I'm simply saying that the idea that there are abstract reals is not a novel idea. — Wayfarer

Not abstract reals. Imaginary reals. Would numbers, qualities, logical principles, scientific laws, and so on, disappear if we collectively stopped believing in them, or if humanity was annihilated? Probably not. Would money, religions, institutions, ideologies, nations? Absolutely they would.

Is that a novel idea? Probably not. Is this way dividing the world into 4 categories the definitive way to conceptually cleave the world? Probably not, I don't think there is any such way. But it is probably useful.

Rather than seeing the world as 'things projected into our imaginations" our experiences can be seen as our imaginations projected into or onto things. — Melanie

Either way you see it, my point remains the same. Things live in the world, but cross over into the mental world in the form of sensations, and appraisals, as you point out. In the same way, a category of mental things, money among them, cross over into the physical world. .

So hate to dissappoint you, but it's not a new category, rather you've discovered or re-discovered the basic idea behind universals. — Wayfarer

Hate to disappoint you, but you can't give a meaningful reply after randomly half-reading a few sentences. Does money or any of the other examples I cited (and you quoted) sound anything like universals?

But if you consider the experience of the world to comprise sensations and ideas (as idealist philosophy claims) then the division is by no means neat. — Wayfarer

Again if you had bothered to read you would have seen this is exactly my point.

This sounds awfully close to Lacan's conception on the subject. You'd only be missing what he calls "the symbolic", the other two are as stated. — Manuel

I'm not familiar, his division is into the Real, Imaginary, and Symbolic?

We could call money a useful fiction. Something which is considered valuable solely by our considering pieces of paper to be of worth. — Manuel

But since money is a collective fiction, it is resistant to our individual thoughts about them. It has properties of both mental and physical objects.

I think that your distinction between real imaginary and imaginary real is not needed. You can use one term to encompass both ideas. — Manuel

They are opposites. Mental objects which cast a shadow into the physical world, vs physical objects which cast a shadow into the mental world.

Odd here: You speak of innate moral intuitions, then deride ethical Realism with a capital R — Astrophel

For me this is as real as it gets. But capital R types usually want more, as you did in the previous post. You want to justify these intuitions, not realizing that any possible justification must take place within the framework of these intuitions.

In fact, the idea is so obvious than I cannot even imagine seriously dismissing — Astrophel

What follows is so far from obvious as to be incomprehensible.

This doesn't just tell us what the subject of ethics is, but states a thesis about what ethics is (emphasis in the original). — SophistiCat

But the question, unless I misunderstood, is not "what is ethics definitionally", but rather "what is ethics ontologically?".

There are only two parties in American democracy for the simple reason that those who created it realized, much to our benefit, that given any issue, only two voices matter - those for and those against. — TheMadFool

:rofl:

Gun ownership, like the right to be unvaccinated/unmasked, is of the family of purported rights, favored by right wingers, which come at the expense of the rights of everyone else.

The gun owner may feel more safe with their gun, but this safety comes at the expense of everyone else's, as they now must contend with one additional rando running around with a gun.

We aren't as clever as we think we are. But we can talk. This is what separates us from the other animals. No other animal can communicate with remotely the same power and flexibility as we can. This is why we can sidestep evolution and progress over generations, overrun the planet, and remake it in our image.

But those inborn concepts and feelings, how inborn are they? — Astrophel

To the extent that we see them expressed in even 'unintelligent' and very nonhuman species, such as fish, we can guess: quite.

what is the separation between what is acculturated and what is "natural"? — Astrophel

The innate ethical tendencies are shaped and directed by culture in very varied ways. The same as with our innate linguistic tendencies, sexual tendencies, etc.

That is, if I have a feeling, a pang of conscience, isn't this to be brought up under review to see if it's right? — Astrophel

Except, our innate moral intuitions already underlie any such review. Reason here can only rationalize what we already feel to be true.

I think ethics is Real, not just a construct. All constructs are constructs OF something. All meaningful affairs are meaningful only to the extent that there is a material basis for them. — Astrophel

You are one of many who feels compelled to believe that ethics is Real with a capital R. I don't sympathize. Do you seriously think there is a material basis for ethics? This is
philosophically naive.

This answer seeks to smuggle a specific position on metaethics into the very definition of the subject matter — SophistiCat

And this specific position is?

What it is is a codification, elaboration, ossification, (and in some cases, perversion),of innate concepts and feelings of fairness and justice that are inborn in most of us, and in most social species.

Consider, after all, the first moral utterance of every child: "It's not fair!" This is an untaught appeal to fairness and justice.

The winner takes all system is the fatal flaw of American democracy, we are observing it's resultant collapse in real time.

It creates the perverse outcome that ideologically allied parties are each other's GREATEST ENEMIES, simply because they will steal votes from each other. Which means the entrenched party will do everything it can to crush the upstart. While the voting public understand the risk of choosing the less powerful of the two ideologically aligned parties.

This inevitably leads to two entrenched and increasingly dysfunctional zombie parties. Because no matter how toxic and diseased they become, there is no redress, they cannot be killed.

Interestingly, the Trump era, culminating in Jan 6, gave the Democrats the perfect opportunity to destroy their nominal enemy once and for all. But they chose not to, and as a result they and America has a real monster on its hands. The decent of America into outright fascism is now very much on the table.

I'm not an expert on these matters. That is why I wrote my post as I did. So you say the information content of the universe is not equal to the information required to reproduce it? That makes intuitive sense. But you have to wonder, if two non-identical universes were informationally identical, in what sense their differences would matter. In the scope of the op, I would say they are irrelevant.

But anyway, this is not relevant to the larger point. I was saying, even if the universe could be represented merely by an integer, the op still would not hold . I have zero stake in the interesting but here irrelevant question of whether the universe can actually be represented by an integer, real, or whatnot.

You are assuming another possible universe is simply an extension of the one we are in, adding features here and there. — jgill

I don't even know who you are arguing with anymore. Again, where am I assuming this?

I made an argument that the number of possible universes is infinite, that if U is possible then there is U` with an additional particle somewhere. But this in no way limits the scope of possible universes.


Not sensitive, its just amusing that you expect your mere declaration that something is "nonsense" to carry even a scintilla of weight.

Which is nonsense. — Raymond

Raymond has declared it to be nonsense. The matter is settled then, nothing more need be said.

Exactly how do you do this encoding? Is it arbitrary? — jgill

Of course its arbitrary, its an encoding. The only requirement is that it be reversible.

Hence, you assert the "number" of possible universes is countable. That's a big "if". — jgill

I am asserting:

*if* the information content of the universe is finite, *then* the number of possible universes is countable.

Alexandre made that assumption also.

If there are other universes the principles of probability we have assembled may not be the same. — jgill

Exactly what am I assuming? And exactly where am I relying on probability?