One could argue that Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia are more secure inside NATO than outside of it. — Olivier5

Go on then.

I didn't say the decision is already made. I said that we don't know our final decision until we make it. — Tzeentch

What's you knowing it got to do with causality?

It's never in a state that the house can be built. I fear you've conflated causation with potentiality.

Let me ask you this, are you responsible for all the harm "caused" by every possible action you could take, but didn't? — Tzeentch

It's nothing to do with causing the harm itself. Parents don't cause harm to their children do they? The argument is that they create the conditions in which harm is going to happen (note the future tense).

The equivalent situation would only require that by your decision to not interfere (do something else instead) you create the conditions in which harm is going to happen.

You keep changing this to your non-interference having to directly cause harm.

But parents don't directly cause harm to their children, so it's not comparing apples to apples.


The conditions in which harm is going to happen (future tense - same as procreation) is that the house cannot be built. That is going to cause harm.

That condition, that state of affairs, came about when you decided not to help. The conditions is about a state of affairs regarding future events (just like the procreation on is). So it necessarily involves potentiality. As does procreation. Your objection is about the potentiality of harm, not direct causality. Parents don't directly harm their children.

With a geiger counter. — Tzeentch

So radiation was harmless before the invention of the Geiger counter? Shame we invented it really.

I would not be harming the employer for not showing up to work, let alone be responsible for it! — Tzeentch

No one even mentioned harm. You claimed you didn't know if you were available until the time of the actual event. This is clearly just a misuse of the word 'available'. If your boss asks you if you're available next Thursday you know perfectly well what he means. Apply that understanding to the question I asked. Don't dodge it by pretending available means something else.

Why would they ever do that? — Olivier5

I realise this will come as a surprise to someone who think civilian casualties are just like extras in a film, but some people actually care about peace and are willing to take pragmatic steps to maintain it.

Such as not being part of a military alliance your massive, very militaristic neighbour considers a threat.

My preferred approach is to shoot them. Kill them now and safe future generations later. Unfortunately, that approach doesn't have much support. — Benkei

I can't think why it doesn't have any support. More united action on climate change, and less resource use. Win win.

That's just another way of saying you didn't know. — Tzeentch

So how could prospective parents possibly change their minds about having children when such a decision is already made?

Where is the causation in this story?

Condition A: No house.

> "Neurons fire"

Condition B: Still no house. — Tzeentch

Condition A: world is in a state such that a house can be built.

Neurons fire, cause some action other than building a house.

Condition B: world is in a state such that a house cannot be built.

not only are you entitled to decide for me whether I am potentially available, but I also need to decide now? — Tzeentch

No one's deciding or forcing. It's just a statement about the state of affairs in the world.

You can detect radiation. — Tzeentch

How?

For the sake of argument, I have a contract with my boss. I don't have a contract with the child that I will not have. — Tzeentch

That changes whether you understand what 'available' means?

you divorce the biological machinery from the experience of seeing red when you claim that the machinery "mediates" the experience. — creativesoul

You might have to unpack that a little. I'm not really sure what you might mean by 'divorce'. Is mediating something not 'part of'? The mediator in a discussion is part of the discussion, no?

Perhaps we can agree that in general theoretical empirical orientations do impact on metaphysical
positions. While quantum physics doesn’t necessarily threaten realism as a whole , it does seem to be incompatible with naive (direct) realism. — Joshs

Yes, we can agree there. I think the empirical observations from cognitive science also support that view (though with the caveat that I'm still not sure I've understood what a direct realist really wants to say).

That there are steps in the process of perception seems obvious, without any more science than just everyday experience. Cognitive science has confirmed the extent and the method.

Where I think cognitive science has produced surprising results for the metaphysics of conscious experience, is in showing that, if we accept a disconnect between object and internal response (be that representational or enactive continual re-creation), then we have to similarly accept a disconnect between the impression we now have of what happened (why I said "cup" when I saw that cup), and what actually just happened.

To be consistent, the indirect realist cannot claim stages represent indirectness when creating the model/enacting the narrative, but then deny they do that when talking about one's memory of such an experience.

What else would you conclude if you believe to be available but ultimately it turns out you're not? Only that you apparently didn't know whether you were available or not. — Tzeentch

That you changed your mind?

Deliberating causes a lack of a house? Explain, please. — Tzeentch

Neurons fire, cause some action other than building a house. No house. Is there something about that account that puzzles you?

So in your view, while I'm deliberating the possibility of a house flashes in and out of existence, and thereby causing harm? — Tzeentch

You're unaware of the concept of passing time? Everything that happens, happens concurrently?

An outsider couldn't even detect the nature of the deliberations, let alone suffer harm from them. — Tzeentch

I can't detect radiation either. So it's harmless, yes?

There's no way to tell. — Tzeentch

Brilliant. I'd love to be a fly on the wall at your work.

Boss: "are you available for night shift on Thursday?"

You: "how could I possibly know, we'll just have to wait until Thursday and find out, won't we?"

Just thought I'd do everyone a favor and delineate how all of this ties back to the subject of the thread. — Tzeentch

I assume anyone who's interested would be sensible enough not to trust a summary of an argument by someone looking to dismiss it.

Turns out I prefer the copy paste.

Your view on Gallagher and Feldman-Barrett's relative merits is noted. Not sure what to do with it... but noted anyway.

from what I understand it’s just Clark’s/Friston’s/Wilkinson’s theory and not something that has been scientifically demonstrated? — Michael

Active inference or Bayesing qualia?

The former is probably the leading theory in perception, it's standard in most cognitive science departments. Tons of experimental data confirming the utility of the model.

The latter, not so much. I haven't heard it talked about outside that paper. Other models are certainly out there (Bayesing qualia is not my favorite either, though I perhaps found it more persuasive than you did). None have qualia as real though, nor the subject of perception. None that I know of, that is, I don't know every theory out there, of course. The work coming out of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science at Sussex is the closest I know of to a substantial body of actual experimental evidence on conscious awareness (qualia-like experiences). The work is still based on Friston's free energy model though.

I thought I would be available and turn out not to be, then clearly I didn't know if I was available in the first place. — Tzeentch

So you're not in control of your own decisions, you just 'find out' what they are when you get there?

Can you point to the harm done as a result of my deliberation? I think not. — Tzeentch

The suffering from the lack of a house.

I'm deliberating, changing my mind several times. Am I now causing harm with every deliberation? — Tzeentch

Some, yeah.

Whether a condition is formed is decided when I express my conclusion to the builders. — Tzeentch

So before you say anything, were you available or not?

Where is the magical suffering that's caused by my deliberation? — Tzeentch

I've just said. The lack of house.

This is an erroneous representation of cause and effect, since doing nothing causes nothing. It has no physical effects nor does it create conditions. — Tzeentch

That's begging the question.


If you want to argue against my position, quote me. Don't make up what you think I said and argue against that. If you want to argue against a fantasy opponent do it in private.

Happy to have the discussion — Xtrix

Great. Let's take the first issue. We tell people there's global warming, they say it's a hoax. What's your preferred approach there. Seems like people believing there's even a problem is a good place to start solving it.

Suffice it to say, I don’t find the attempt to “Bayes” qualia at all convincing. — Michael

Can't say fairer than that. What is unpersuasive is unpersuasive.

after taking LSD I don’t then see that LSD when seeing the things it causes me to see. — Michael

LSD disrupts neurotransmitters which allows for an abnormal data exchange (among other things). What you see is whatever triggers the image (often an actual object, but sometimes an interocepted internal state). You're still modeling hidden states, the subject of your inferences. I really can't see how the fact that your inferences aren't very good changes what the subject of them is. It strikes me as a really odd way of doing things.

Consider a child's drawing of a cow. It's rubbish, doesn't look anything like a cow. The drawing is still a drawing of a cow. It's just a really bad one.

The alternative seems to be that we say a model of a thing is only a model of that thing if it exactly corresponds to that thing. Well then it's no longer a model.

So if I put a brain in a vat and configure it to cause the brain to see a cat then the cat that the brain sees is the vat (or me)? — Michael

It's whatever inputs you used (probes, computers, whatever). The brain has modeled them as a cat. It's not a very good model. When it tries to interact with the cat it may find that out.

If, however, it lived in a society of other BIVs who all refer to the same hidden state (judged by joint interaction) as 'cat' then that's clearly what the word means in that language community.

I don’t believe that truth consists in a proposition’s correspondence to some mind-independent state of affairs — Michael

I don't think what I'm asking requires an explanation of your theory of truth. Merely that when one says "X is Y" one is making a truth claim about X. For us to say "the things we see are mind-dependent" one is saying that's the way things are. The world is such that the things we see are mind-dependent, X is Y.

in terms of the metaphysics, reading doesn’t provide us direct access to history — Michael

Neither do the events.

there needs to be some sort of resemblance between the thing I see and what causes me to see what I see. — Michael

This just begs the question. The counterargument is that the thing you see is what causes you to see what you see.

So nothing then. Got it.

The co authors on those papers are cognitive scientists or psychologists. Again I'm not questioning the contribution, I'm questioning the origin. What the philosophers brought to each of those papers was philosophy.

Arent you defining ‘cognitive science’ in conveniently narrow terms such that it preemptively shuts out precisely the kinds of challenges to its methods and assumptions that non-realist enactivists like Gallagher are presenting? — Joshs

I feel like I'm defining cognitive science quite uncontroversially. One is a cognitive scientist if one has trained, and does research, in cognitive science. doctoral students, post docs, professors, researchers, etc. It seems like a pretty normal delineation based on where they're likely to gain their insights. Someone sitting in an armchair just 'having a bit of reckon' is not going gain insights into cognitive science without testing them somehow (hence the collaborations). No university in the world is going to open their labs to a bunch of philosophers who've 'got an idea' about cognition.

So why don’t you help me out here. I’m sure you can provide a name or two from
within the enactivist research community. Then we can see what, if anything, they say about realism, pro or con. — Joshs

Well Francisco Varela was trained in Neuroscience and Eleanor Rosch is a psychologist. You can't get much more pedigree in enactivism than those two.

do you consider Lisa Barrett to be more of a ‘real’ cognitive scientist than Gallagher? — Joshs

Yes. I mean I can't believe there's any debate about this. Lisa Feldman-Barrett is a professor of psychology. Gallagher is a professor of philosophy. That means that Professor Feldman-Barrett has demonstrated that she's familiar with all the background research in psychology and can conduct research of her own in the field of a standard suitable to obtain a doctorate. Professor Gallagher has made no such demonstration. How is this remotely controversial?

No one's. No change took place. The condition under which the house could not be built was in place all along, the builders simply didn't have the information to understand.

We never went from five to four builders, because a fifth person was not available. — Tzeentch

So before you changed your mind, when you were planning to help build the house, you were unavailable? How so?

Does it pertain to living a good life? Does it pertain to not harming others? — Tzeentch

Why would those two criteria determine something to be a moral rule, as opposed to any other rule?

what about those deliberations in one's head that according to you cause conditions and harm? Isn't it about time you address that elephant? — Tzeentch

It's not remotely a problem for me. deliberations in one's head are neural activity. I don't have a problem with that having consequences. The problem are for those who think mental activity is magic.

It seems people are a lot happier when they don't harm each other. — Tzeentch

So the aim is to make people happier?

What would inform us of the invalidity of a moral rule. — Isaac


Logical inconsistencies. — Tzeentch

How? I just cannot see what kind of logical inconsistency would render something I thought a moral rule into not one? What logic could one apply? LEM?

I agree, but this discussion isn’t about truth, it’s about whether or not the things we see are mind-independent. — Michael

I don't understand. Answering your second proposition there would seem to entail a truth claim.

I see an apple, the apple is red, I eat the apple, the apple nourishes me, etc. All of this is true but none of this is some mind-independent state-of-affairs that is directly perceived. — Michael

True. I don't think any of us are disagreeing about the directness of perception, we're disagreeing about the implication of that indirectness for reference/aboutness.

You seem to be simply assuming that if you see the apple indirectly you must not 'really' be seeing the apple. What I've been trying to get across is that you don't directly respond to the model either. For directness to be the criteria for aboutness, we only directly respond to fragments of action potentials in our working memory.

Because I was asked.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/720896 — Xtrix

So you don't see removal of barriers as part of the solution? What distinguishes the two for you?

I was talking about both being true. As I've mentioned before, it is true that the stars in Orion are in the shape of a man with a bow. It is also true that they are in the shape of a rainbow.

Reality can be exactly as the standard model describes, and as we ordinarily perceive it. Nothing I perceive is in contradiction with the standard model.

the answer ultimately involves things like awareness, empathy, listening, finding common ground, and genuine respect for working people. — Xtrix

Right. That's very similar to where I was headed. What's the point in rehashing the solutions whilst you know full well the barriers to achieving them are as firm as ever.

It's like going over and over the plan to hitchhike to Mexico once you're out of prison without having a clue how you're going to get out.

I'll add that this is all the more true when one considers the impact of those factors on consumerism.

Putin wants as much of Ukraine as he can get away with — jorndoe

And you know this how?

Because he once made a speech in which he talked about them being 'one people'. So did Nelson Mandela.

there are trends and reasons that Putin + team aren't looking for peace. — jorndoe

Which are? Compared to which actions of the US or Ukraine thst indicate they're looking for peace?

Give us a quick rundown of the moves so that we can all see what you see.

if the mind-independent world is as the Standard Model says it is then it isn’t as we ordinarily perceive it to be and vice-versa. — Michael

And yet you've still failed to even present an argument as to why it cannot be both.

Physical actions. — Tzeentch

In the scenario I described, whose physical actions caused the change in conditions from the state where a house could be built to the state where one could not?

The rules of chess guide behavior for individuals playing chess. Morals guide behavior for individuals in life. — Tzeentch

Traffic laws also guide behaviour for individuals in life. Is it a moral rule that we ought drive on the left?

The rules of mathematics determine how I behave when calculating. Is it a moral rule that 2+2=4?

What property distinguishes moral rules from other rules?

I don't create conditions in matters that I am not involved in by not getting involved. I'm not a part of the conditions initially, and I don't become part of it when I choose not to get involved. — Tzeentch

Then who does? You keep dodging the question. Who causes the change of circumstances in the situation I described, if not you?

It's immoral because we're creating harm by our voluntary action. Individuals do not like being harmed, and interactions with other individuals should be on terms acceptable to both sides (consensuality). — Tzeentch

Why?

Testing the validity of one's ideas, of course. — Tzeentch

What would inform us of the invalidity of a moral rule. What properties does it need to have, or criteria, such that an examination might cause it to fail it's validity-check?

And the answer for many is “nothing, because it’s a hoax.” But somehow this counts as “knowing” about it? Then yes, everyone in the world has most likely heard the words “climate change.” Was that really your point? — Xtrix

Yes. If people hear all about climate change and what they ought to do about but their response is "it's a hoax" then telling them again isn't going to do anything, is it?

The point I'm making is that you keep talking about solutions which have already been tried and failed and you're not addressing the reasons why they failed.

We've tried coming up with technological solutions. No one cared. We tried campaigns and messaging. No one joined. We tried more urgent messaging. People reckoned it was a hoax. We tried politics. The politicians were corrupted. We tried unionising. The corporations were able to put too many barriers in the way.

etc.

If we're to make progress we need to look at the barriers, the reasons why campaigns are failing. all we tend to do is have another campaign instead. And that itself is another barrier. Why do we prefer campaigns to actually working out what needs doing?

It’s been beaten into our heads that we can’t change anything, that we’re alone, that we shouldn’t bother and look after ourselves
— Xtrix — Isaac

Has it? — Isaac


Yes. — Xtrix

By whom, how, why have they succeed but climate campaigners have failed?

Does this mean that your earlier self's beliefs were wrong during the course of the previous dream, or does this only mean that your earlier self is presently wrong in relation to your present observation of 'waking up' ? — sime

One of a suite of reasons why beliefs in cognitive science are often treated as 'propensities to act as if...'

Your dreaming self has no propensity to act as if you were awake, so it has no belief that you are awake. It's merely rehearsing some of the neural processes that having such a belief would use.

"Why is it the words and not the events that inform us?" ?

Or "why are the words still about the events?" ? — bongo fury

The former.

There seems to be chain of causality - events -> (various perception processes) -> (various executive process) -> writing words to convey the events -> looking at words conveying the event -> (various perception processes) -> (various linguistic process) -> (various executive processes) -> (working memory storage) -> (more executive functions and long term memory processes - collectively called 'learning').

There seems a lot of stages between words and learning, so if stages between is what leads to the charge of indirectness, then the we indirectly learn from the words too.

I thought all along that our views dovetailed nicely. — creativesoul

Well, that's nice to hear. Good summary.

it is not history that informs us about history but the words written in the textbook that do. But it’s still about history. — Michael

Why?

I don't think this is justified. If I dream of a churchyard covered in snow I cannot decide to move around it, walk up to and touch its cold wet stones, turn my back on it and see the surrounding landscape, look up and see the grey dismal skies and then turn back and see the church looking just as it did when I first looked at it. — Janus

So we have no way of telling if someone is on Ketamine? — Banno

These are absolutely spot on. It's how the problem is solved in active inference, it's the active part.

Inference (perception in this case) is an active process. We do not passively receive data from the external world, we actively sample it. From saccades in perception, all the way up to the construction of a skyscraper (which matches our image of the skyscraper we intended to be there). There's no active inference without interaction. If you can't sample your image, can't move you eyes around it, reach out to it, give part of it to someone else, drink from the cup in it and feel that in your stomach... then you're not perceiving it, you're hallucinating it, or dreaming it.

The fact that hallucinations and dreams both make use of a part of the system of perception is interesting scientifically, and has yield some really good research (not to mention a few promising therapies for mental illness) but is has no bearing on the question of what we see, it is related to the question of how we see.

Seeing the wavelengths we've named "red" is a meaningful experience that consists, in part, of those wavelengths. They are being emitted/reflected by something other than our own biological structures. Thus, the meaningful experience of seeing red leaves requires leaves that reflect/emit those wavelengths. Leaves are external to the individual host of biological machinery. As is the light being emitted/reflected from the leaves. The experience also consists of things that are internal, such as the biological machinery itself. So, the leaves and light are external, and the biological machinery is internal. It takes both(and more) to have a meaningful experience of seeing red. If we remove either, what's left doesn't have what it takes to produce a meaningful experience of seeing red. This tells us that both are necessary elements of the experience. The experience consists of all the necessary elements. If some of it is internal and some is external, then the experience can rightly be called neither, for it is not the sort of thing that has such spatiotemporal location. — creativesoul

I don't find anything to disagree with in the above. Do you think it opposes something I've said, or are you just providing your own (welcome) way of seeing it? If the former I'm still lost as it doesn't seem in opposition. If the latter, then simply, yes, that seems to me to be an accurate summary of how I understand matters to be too.

Every single harm an innocent person suffers is an injustice. How many harms do you think that is? Oh, it's all of them. That's quite a lot, isn't it? — Bartricks

Yep. With absolutely no measure of how bad each is, and so no measure of how bad the total harm is. Just the number of them doesn't inform us how bad they are.

There's no question that the injustice is huge. An innocent person gets nothing remotely approaching what they deserve. — Bartricks

Again conflated deservedness with value.

Now, if an act is going to create a big injustice, Isaac, do you think that a) is likely to generate moral reason not to perform it, or b) is morally unimportant and can reasonably be expected to generate no moral reason not to perform it?

It's a, isn't it? — Bartricks

Yep.

There are lots of cases where an act creates an injustice and it is nevertheless overall morally justified. But in all of those cases what's doing the work of making the act overall morally justified are positive moral features, such as that the act will prevent an even greater injustice. That's not true of procreation. — Bartricks

Yes it is. Procreation creates massive positive outcomes for the community at large which easily outweigh the minor negatives of a load of minor undeserved harms.

All you can do is keep pointing out that $5m is good. Yes, other things being equal it is. And it is good insofar as it lessens the losses you would otherwise have made. But in the larger context of a business in which you borrowed 10m to generate it, it's rubbish - the business is a bad one. — Bartricks

Bad at business, yes. Again that doesn't have any bearing on the value of $5m it is still worth $5m no matter how badly it was obtained in business terms. The poor business performance does not impact the value of the outcome. You're still confusing deservedness(profit/debt in your business example) with value.

The moral debt that is incurred by starting it is one that it is not going to repay. — Bartricks

Agreed. A bad thing.

Outweighed by the good.

I didn't deny those academics made contributions to cognitive science. I've found some of their contributions to be insightful and useful (though I'm not generally persuaded).

But they are contributions from philosophy to cognitive science, they are not discoveries of cognitive science, those are made by cognitive scientists. I had a paper once published in a Political Science journal. I'm not a political scientist. It was, in that case, a contribution from my work in Psychology, to the political scientists, it was not research in political science.

The relevant point here is that philosophy's contribution to philosophy is already taken as given, we were talking about the contribution from other sciences, to which your comments don't appear to be addressed.

↪Joshs
mistakes a copy-and-paste for an argument. — Banno

Odd in one usually so verbose.

Where climate denial is rampant, as you know. — Xtrix

Denial is not the same as not knowing.

It’s been beaten into our heads that we can’t change anything, that we’re alone, that we shouldn’t bother and look after ourselves — Xtrix

Has it? If I turn on the TV and flick to some current affairs, or chat show, or even a soap opera do you honestly think the message I'd be getting on climate change is "don't bother, you can't do anything, you're all alone"? It doesn't seem that way to me (I must admit thought I don't have a TV, but I do read the news - I'm extrapolating). It seems to me that the message about climate change and what we can do to help is literally everywhere. I'm not reading this fatalist, or nihilist message that you seem to think is everywhere beaten into people.

Or are you talking about a deeper psychological 'beating'? Kind of 'beaten into us by life'? If so then it seems that, if you want mass mobilisation, you need to fix that problem first otherwise no one will do anything no matter how much you wave your placard.

The indirect realist’s claim just amounts to the claim that when reading about history we’re just reading words, which is true. — Michael

You made a further claim about what does inform our intellectual considerations. You did not merely claim that the external object does not inform our intellectual considerations directly. You made the claim that it does not tout court, and that something else does.

I don't disagree about the indirectness of perception.

You said...

It is this visual and auditory imagery that informs our intellectual considerations, not whatever distal causes are responsible for such imagery. — Michael

If it is not distal causes which informs our intellectual consideration on the grounds of indirectness, then it is not the visual and auditory imagery either, because that too is indirect.

I'm not contesting your claim that perception is indirect. I'm disputing your claim that indirectness prevents aboutness.

For my money, it is not quantum physics that clearly begs for a non-realist metaphysics , but certain approaches within cognitive science — Joshs

Shaun Gallagher is a professor of philosophy at University of Memphis.

Michel Bitbol is a researcher in philosophy of science.

Dan Zahavi is a philosopher at University of Copenhagen

Hanne De Jaegher has at least qualified in cognitive science, but is currently at the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of the Basque Country

Joseph Rouse is Professor of Moral Science at Wesleyan.

Where are the cognitive scientists you're referring to?

That is what I call 'realism', and it has been called into question by these discoveries. — Wayfarer

So we're back to scientific discoveries having an impact on metaphysical theories again. Perhaps now you could explain why the discoveries of cognitive science are excluded from this allowance?