Well, you’re just too smart for me.

I'm not insulting you. Are you perceiving it like an insult? — flannel jesus

I judge it to be an insult to proper philosophy.

…."do you still beat your wife?" It's nothing like that. — flannel jesus

It’s exactly like that, insofar as if I say yes, I believe a query has been made, than my knowledge of it appears predetermined and I’ve contradicted myself, and if I say no I don’t believe the query has been made leaves open the catastrophic descension into that pitiful sophism, you can’t know what you don’t believe.

Are we done here?

I said I know a thing. Why would you ask if I believe the very same thing I said I know?

The only way to answer you question is if I’d said I believe a statement had been presented, which I could than have answered in the affirmative.

“Do you still beat your wife”-type entrapment is “…beneath the dignity of philosophy…”

Oh. Well, damn. So if you have the power to tell me what I must have believed, does that mean you know what it is that I must have believed? What do you believe in order to know what to tell me I must believe? Please don’t tell me you must believe the same things I must; that just ain’t gonna fly.

If you just mean it only makes sense to you that in order for me to know something I must first believe something but you’re not sure what it is I have to believe, or it really doesn’t matter what it is I have to believe, then you have no warrant whatsoever to claim I need to believe anything.

I suppose it’s only fitting, given those conditions, that because I know my mother raised me I have no choice but to believe I had a mother that I know raised me.

I believe I’m not imagining….. Why not just, you know…not imagine? If I believe I’m not imagining, what tells me I am or I am not? That I believe I’m not imagining does not in itself negate the possibility that I am. Quite the Keystone Cops drill you got goin’ on there, bud. Thankfully, Mother Nature saw fit to make human cognition rather more efficient than that.

Or….I believe She did, I mean.

I can’t think of an example of knowledge of a statement requiring belief of a statement, no.

Obviously I experienced, hence now possess the knowledge, that to me a query has been presented. What can you tell me about what I had to believe in order for me to know about that experience?

do you have any illustrative examples? — flannel jesus

Examples that I disagree with the claim that knowledge requires belief? How would I illustrate, given something I know, that there necessarily exists in conjunction with and antecedent to it, something I believe?

My claim was that knowledge is existentially dependent on belief(knowledge requires belief). — creativesoul

I understand your claim, but disagree that knowledge requires belief.

Your rejection is based upon a conception of experience that cannot include language acquisition. Your responses thus far have been full of strawmen and red herring. — creativesoul

So lemme get this straight. We’re talking belief/knowledge, you bring in experience/language….yet I’m the one committing strawman/red herring dialectical inconsistencies?

It must be that your position is more complex and penetrating than I realized.

So be it.

Who's made those claims anyway? — creativesoul

Somebody was talking to. You should know; you commented right after, a day ago.

Do you think someone has made the argument that all belief is necessary for bike riding? — creativesoul

Nope. I know the thread topic major premise has the form, “Knowledge is only belief”. I know from reading the discourse, that someone said all knowledge requires belief, both of which I for sure, and apparently, reject.
————-

Bike riding - as we know it - is existentially dependent on the belief of the original bike makers. "Belief is not necessary for bike riding" is proven false. — creativesoul

Categorical error: one subject’s beliefs are irrelevant with respect to another subject’s skill acquisition. Whatever the dude believed about the possibility of a bike disappears upon its successful manufacture.
—————-

The bike emerged onto the world stage through the belief of the original bike makers. — creativesoul

True enough, but irrelevant. Post hoc ergo propter hoc informal fallacy, when attached to my knowledge of bike riding.

Impossible to ride a bike that you do not believe is there. — creativesoul

Whatever bike I consider riding must be right there in front of me. Otherwise all I’m doing is considering the possibility of what a bike ride would be like. I grant it is impossible to ride a bike that isn’t right in front of me, but in such case there is no need to believe it isn’t there if I already know there’s nothing there to ride.

Any sympathy forthcoming here? Maybe a slight tip of the pointy hat?

All of this reads like an argument reductio ad absurdum. Is it? — ucarr

Maybe, but more like an appeal to extremes, I would think. I mean…beyond imagination? How can we go beyond imagination except by using it?

Ok, fine. Absurdum it is.

We're over-reaching when we imagine a fleshy mass of connected hemispheres has a scope of imagination beyond what protein-based matter has the capacity to conceive. — ucarr

Yet, for all intents and purposes, that is exactly what appears to be the case. If we are what the brain does, and we have a rather unlimited imagination, we can only be that way iff the brain has a matching unlimited capacity for what it does, such that we can then do what we do because of it.

If abstract thought is connected to the brain, then the limitations inherent in the material_physical dimensions of the brain: cells, synapses, electric current, gravity etc. exert controlling limits on what the content of abstract thought can be. — ucarr

If the human can think whatever he wants, where is the controlling limits by the brain on the content of his thought? All that’s left is to say the brain’s limits prescribe the kind of thinker a human is, the content of his thoughts be what they may.

But I feel ya. The brain informs of all our knowledge, but doesn’t give us even an inkling of the knowledge of how it informs of the knowledge we have. It’s like the brain keeps to itself its own inner workings, while at the same time permitting the ability for us to know anything else, all else being given.

To exalt the mind's perception of reality beyond limitations of the brain amounts to driving the express lane to fallacy without knowing it. — ucarr

Because we don’t know enough of how the brain works, by what warrant can we say we’ve over-reached the brain’s capacity for knowing things? I think we do know when we’re approaching fallacies, in that Nature will tells us regarding real things (never step in front of a fast-mover), and logic will inform us regarding other-then-real things (A /= B).

Hey. Once again, for no particular reason while agreeing in a rhetorical fashion…..

I question whether all knowledge does require belief. — Janus

If such were the case, it reduces to belief being a necessary condition for knowledge. If it is true the only source for knowledge is experience, and there is no possibility of experiencing that which one merely believes, wouldn’t it follow that one cannot condition the other?

Pretty dumb, methinks, to merely believe I know how to ride a bike while I’m actually doing it, and conversely, even dumber to claim to know I can ride a bike by merely believing I’ve been on one and in control of it.

Maybe I believe I can’t know how to ride a bike cuz I’m a hopeless klutz who believes he shouldn’t use a hammer given the historical precedent of experiencing serious bodily injury. But then, out of sheer well-being necessity, I find myself riding a bike in order to escape the neighbor’s mutt. If knowledge requires belief, and the belief is negative the knowledge must also be negative thereby how to ride a bike should not have been known to me, and under sufficiently strong negative belief that I can’t know how, I shouldn’t have even bothered to try. Yet given that riding a bike….which I’m now doing….presupposes at least the awareness of the mechanics and principles by which bike riding is accomplished, re: I’m peddling upright in a progressive series of times, it is the case what I believe about bike riding (I can’t know how) has nothing whatsoever to do with my coming to know how to do it (YEA!! Look it me, here I am bike riding).

So did I switch beliefs and come to believe I can know how to ride a bike? Like that little engine that could? Seems kinds silly to me, to take the time to believe something at the same time I’m discovering it for myself in conjunction with the extant experience that bikes are inherently ride-able. Even if IthinkIcanIthinkIcanIthinkIcan is running through my brain, am I navigating positively because of that alone, or am I concentrating on the objects of certain mechanics and principles necessary for transportation via bicycle? Do I really need to believe in the authority of those principles in order to use them, especially considering the fact I’m only interested in their objects I use and not the principles themselves I merely think as given?

Wonder why Nike, instead taglining with “Just do it”, didn’t instead go with “Believe you can know how to do it then just do it”?

….a philosopher arrives at some logically valid statements…. — ucarr

….neuroscience discovers through long-term testing…. — ucarr

How would the scientist test the philosopher’s logically valid statements, the subject and predicate of which are merely abstract conceptions? At bottom would be Aristotle’s laws of thought, in which it is clear A = A would be impossible to test with deductive certainty.

I grant that science can test some philosophic statements, but I wanted to account for it, by stating that philosophers need no consult for that investigation which in no way involves natural law, which would include statements the validity of which are only logical.
———-

….it can work through unlimited higher orders of categorical thinking… — ucarr

….after reaching higher order X of categorical thinking…. — ucarr

Here the philosopher, specifically the metaphysician, would reject even his own the notion of unlimited higher orders of critical thinking, which makes the neuroscientist’s claims of brain data loss inherent in it, mistaken hence irrelevant. On the other hand, the philosopher may well acknowledge data transfer loss even for the levels of critical thinking he grants to human intelligence; he would simply label “forgetfulness” what the neuroscientist labels “plasticity”.

Interesting gedankenexperiment though.

no science is ever done purely a priori, and no philosophy is ever done purely a posteriori;
— Mww

Do you think it's also true when we switch the position of the two disciplines in the above statement? — ucarr

If the differences between the two hold, one cannot be switched with the other. So, first, it would have to be shown how they are not, in order to show how the purities by which each is conditioned, are removed. Still, it is the requisite of metaphysics that it is purely a priori, eliminating it from being even partially a posteriori, as the switch in positions would ask.
————

I suppose I'm saying science and philosophy are two sub-divisions, or specializations operating under one over-arching category. — ucarr

I might agree with that, iff the one over-arching category, is reason. Science and philosophy are both done by humans, and reason is the singular human condition, so….
———-

If a philosopher is not first a scientist, then they need to always maintain a direct line to someone who is. — ucarr

The philosopher doesn’t need a scientific consult if he is theorizing in, or merely speculating on, that which cannot at all be legislated by natural law. Or, in the interest of fairness, why would he?
————

I think the relationship between scientific truth and philosophical truth is bi-conditional. — ucarr

I don’t understand what bi-conditional means. Nevertheless, I’m not sure there is a relationship between truths predicated on an observable natural order, and truths predicated on speculative conceptual order.
————

philosophy differs from science merely in the determination and application of rules.
— Mww

I think this difference, when the two disciplines dialog constructively, for my reasons above, shrinks to a near vanishing point. — ucarr

If it is the case these two dialogue constructively only by means of reason, then the difference may well vanish with respect to the determination of rules, but would remain for the application of them, insofar as rules determined as governing empirical conditions cannot apply to abstract conceptions. Bearing in mind, of course, cause/effect is a principle, not a rule, and as such applies to both.

Anyway….worthy subject, but I can’t think of much else to say about it.

What is the difference between philosophy and science:

The short list, and assuming the human condition alone….
…..no science is ever done purely a priori, and no philosophy is ever done purely a posteriori;
…..philosophical truths are proven logically and are necessarily so, scientific truths are proven empirically and are contingently so;
…..no science is done that isn’t first a philosophical construct, from which follows….
…..a scientist is always a philosopher, but a philosopher is not always, nor needs be, a scientist;
…..all together, philosophy differs from science merely in the determination and application of rules.

…..is a judgement of truth the same as truth? I don't think that is how the two are commonly conceived. — Janus

Perhaps not commonly conceived, but common is so boring, innit? At the end of the day, each comes by and thereby possesses his own anyway, so….

A judgement of truth just indicates the condition of the object of the judgement. To judge a thing as the case, then to think or be led to think the negation of it, leads to self-contradiction, and conversely, to judge a thing as not the case, while equally a lawful truth, still leads to self-contradiction upon thinking or being led to think its affirmation.

I think there is a valid distinction between knowledge and belief, although I also think that much of what is generally considered to be knowledge might be more accurately classed as belief. — Janus

As do I, but if there is a distinction, putting belief and knowledge in the same class kinda invalidates it.

But I get what you’re saying, I think, in that it is often the case one validly disputes another’s knowledge claim, while he can never dispute another’s mere belief with equal validity. By the same token, I can never dispute with myself the persuasion of belief with the conviction of knowledge, at any one time with respect to the judgement of one thing.

Still, regarding the question in general, this….

What distinguishes a 'fact' from a belief is that THAT PERSON ONLY (…) has decided…. — Chet Hawkins

….would be the focal point of the issue, insofar as whether opinion, belief or knowledge, any relative judgement of truth is a purely subjective effort. And even if that is the case, brain states aside, still leaves the method by which it happens.

At any rate, I agree there is a valid distinction.

So be it.

Take all the exception you like; you compound perception with experience, my presently considered pet peeve.

Ya know….it’s too bad the major reference material stipulates “perceptual experience”, so almost everyone just figures that’s the way it is. It used to be, back in the Good ol’ Days, that perception was one thing, experience was another, just as you’re describing the confusion of the road with the destination. But that road has to be built, which requires machinery of a certain type, and that’s what’s been neglected here for 37 pages.

Progress, donchaknow. Science can’t inform what kind of machinery is needed, so speculating on the construction has become passé, and we end up with no road at all. Not even a bumpy, potholed, wagon track, yet perception is conjoined with experience as if there was a gawdamn 6-lane freeway.

OK. Thanks.

And I guess if x is in a coma….. — Metaphyzik

Anthropomorphic tautologies with respect to x aside….on the off-chance you weren’t actually going there….the coma thing won’t work, if we’re keeping with the original cogito simpliciter you started with, in that Descartes counts thinking as such “because we are aware of it”.

But the simple cogito? (…) If there were no other way to exist other than to think…. — Metaphyzik

If it is I that thinks and given that there is thinking, then isn’t it necessary for “I” to be? Under these conditions, there is no way for “I” to be other than to think. Descartes used the term “exist” here and there, for which he should be forgiven, considerIng the general mandate of his thesis.

“…. This is the best way to discover what sort of thing the mind is, and how it differs from the body. How does it do that? I am supposing that everything other than myself is unreal, while wondering what sort of thing I am. I can see clearly that I don’t have any of the properties that bodies have—I don’t have a spatial size or shape, and I don’t move—because those properties all fall on the supposed-to-be-unreal side of the line, whereas we’ve just seen that I can’t suppose that I am unreal. So I find that the only property I can ascribe to myself is thought. So my knowledge of my thought is more basic and more certain than my knowledge of any corporeal thing.

….I take the word ‘thought’ to cover everything that we are aware of as happening within us, and it counts as ‘thought’ because we are aware of it. (…)

….I’m not going to explain many of the other terms (in addition to ‘thought’) that I have already used or will use later on, because they strike me as being sufficiently self-explanatory. I have often noticed that philosophers make the mistake of trying to explain things that were already very simple and self-evident, by producing logical definitions that make things worse! When I said that the proposition I am thinking, therefore I exist is ‘the first and most certain thing to occur to anyone who philosophizes in an orderly way’, I wasn’t meaning to deny that one must first know what thought, existence and certainty are, and know that it’s impossible for something to think while it doesn’t exist, and the like. But these are utterly simple notions, which don’t on their own give us knowledge of anything that exists; so I didn’t think they needed to be listed…”
(Principia Philosophiae, 1, 8-10, 1644, in Bennet, 2017)

Ok. Thanks.

“….depends on the philosophical framework and the specific definition of these terms used in the discussion….”

Can’t disagree with that, at least.

As ChatGPT states: — Luke

Just curious. What did you ask of it, to get that statement?

psychology is becoming one of the most popular subjects for study. — Jack Cummins

Probably because on the one hand there’s no math in it and on the other, it’s socially more inviting than sports analytics.

In any case, what do you think about the argument overall? — Malcolm Lett

Overall, not too bad, except for the false attributions of Kantian metaphysics. It would have been better to go your own way and leave him out of it.

Which is merely a friendly way of saying my opinions would have been happier….

My question arises because neuroscience has changed the thinking of mind completely. — Jack Cummins

Perhaps, of a scant few, but Everydayman couldn’t care less if he tried, unless neuroscience lowers his grocery bill.

So, in the light of cognitive science and neuroscience, how, and what do you see as the overriding and outstanding issues of the philosophy of mind in the twentieth first century? — Jack Cummins

Yikes. Talk about a loaded question…….

If the conditions are limited to cognitive science and neuroscience, wouldn’t it be science of mind? Which leads to a contradiction, insofar as the science of mind would need to empirically decide the absence or impossibility of that which is necessarily presupposed, but never intended for empirical status, susceptible to, thus legislated by, methodological naturalism, re: scientific rigor.

If philosophy of mind, and because philosophy proper has no use of empirical experimentation, the light of neuroscience would seem to be pretty dim with respect to purely abstract conceptions, in spite of the gross reifications by which they arise.

So…overriding/outstanding issue? Neglect of lane.

We agree that correlations can be drawn prior to(far in advance of) experience, but I suspect for very different reasons. — creativesoul

Mine are: on the one hand all that which constitutes the representation of an object as it is perceived, which I call a phenomenon, correlated with representations for all that I think the phenomenon contains, which I call conceptions. The result is what my intelligence informs me about the object, which I call an understanding.

Yours are……?

I have a strong methodological naturalist bent, a preference for ontological monism….. — creativesoul

With respect to all that isn’t metaphysics, I also hold with methodological naturalism, if that means the employment of the scientific method for instances of cause and effect in the empirical domain. It is tacit rejection of supernatural or transcendent causality. I’m not cognizant of ontological monism, so I’m not inclined to address it. Little help here, maybe? Surely more sophisticated than “one ring to rule them all”, I imagine.

….compatible with, an evolutionary timeline. — creativesoul

This being aimed against the creationists?
—————

The experience is meaningful to the dog, but not the sensor. The sensor detects and the dog perceives the very same thing. — creativesoul

Ok, I get that. Because you already posit that experience is meaningful only to the creature, can half of each of your pairs be eliminated? Detection/perception eliminates detection because the creature perceives, and likewise, for sensitivity/sentience, sensitivity is eliminated. I wonder then, why you brought them up in the first place, just to dismiss them for their difference. Although, I must say, a creature senses as much as a photocell or a thermometer, albeit with different apparatuses.
—————

….it's akin to saying “creamy ice cream”. (…) perception is one element of experience. — creativesoul

Quite right. Who ever heard of ice cream that wasn’t creamy, just as who ever heard of an experience that wasn’t perceptual, or, perceptually instantiated. On the other hand, while the ice is of the cream, experience is not of the perception, but only of a determinable set of abstract intellectual predicates cognized as representing it.
—————-

I would not even agree with saying anything much at all stays between the ears aside from the biological structures residing there. — creativesoul

Ahhhh….but whatever it is that those biological structures do, remains within the structure where it is done. Whether neurological or metaphysical, whatever the origin of what seems to be my thoughts, are never that which ultimately appears as mere expression in public language or objective activity of any kind.
————-

I think you're saying something along the lines of not all experience includes language use. I agree. — creativesoul

More than that; I’m saying no experience at all, includes language use. My acquiring an experience is very different than me telling you about what it was, which manifests as me telling you all about what I know of the object with which the experience is concerned, or how I came into possession of it.
————-

Biological machinery(physiological sensory perception) completely determines what sorts of things can become part of a creature's correlations….. — creativesoul

Yep. Mother Nature seriously limited her favored creature, I think. Made us capable of discovering all these radiant energies, but failed to give us the physiology required to directly, or immediately, perceive them.

People are very often mistaken about their own mental events. — creativesoul

I can’t tell whether they have no use for understanding what such events are, they don't want to think it the case there are any mental events to be mistaken about, or, given mistakes, that mental events are necessary causality for them, which……for (a-hem) those of us in the know like you ‘n’ me……is a serious contradiction.
————

Finally, and even if disregarding all the above…..ontological monism? What do you mean by it; who might be its more recognizable advocate? And most of all, what does it do for you?

Can we agree from this, that experience is a stand-alone entity?
— Mww

I don't think so. I believe experience consists of simpler things. — creativesoul

OK.

Meaning, for example, emerges as a result of correlations being drawn between different things by a creature so capable. Meaning is necessary for experience. — creativesoul

I agree meaning is a result of correlations, but I prefer to allot the correlations to understanding, and the meaning thereof emerging from the correlations, to judgement, but for me both of these are procedurally far in advance of experience. For you, then, is meaning one of the simpler things experience consists of, hence necessary for it?

It's the difference between detection and perception, or between sensitivity and sentience. — creativesoul

Meaning is that difference? Sorry, you’ve lost me now. What you mean by those terms helps me locate them in the discussion.
———-

Case in point: perceptual experience. If every experience begins with perception, then perceptual experience is redundant insofar as it says nothing more than experience alone.
— Mww

Last I checked "perceptual experience" wasn't something I invoked. — creativesoul

I know, and didn’t mean to imply you did. I was kinda hoping you wouldn’t because you’d already recognized the lack of justification for doing so.
———-

I agree that all experience is meaningful but would add that it is meaningful to the creature having the experience. This delineates the discourse. Are you okay with that? — creativesoul

Absolutely, insofar as meaningful to the creature, if you meant only to the creature, is a purely subjective predication. What goes on between the ears stays between the ears, kinda thing. For me, this is a strictly metaphysical paradigm, and through the years here, I got the impression you didn’t wish to be so limited.
————

You're focusing upon language use. I agree with that much. — creativesoul

I am forced into language use by the discussion. I reject language use for that which the discussion is about, for the first-hand, immediate occurrence of it, by the creature having the experience, which must include all that by which the experience he has, is possible, whatever that may be.

Can we agree from this, that experience is a stand-alone entity?
— Mww

How do you get from what I wrote to what you suggest for agreement? — creativesoul

You said “meaningful” experience. I’m saying, first of all, every experience is meaningful, and second, if it is granted experience is an end, the culmination of a methodological process, it needs no adjective attached to it. Case in point: perceptual experience. If every experience begins with perception, then perceptual experience is redundant insofar as it says nothing more than experience alone. Besides, separating perception from experience, and if experience is the end, then perception becomes the means without contradiction or confusion.

I’m aware of what the current reference texts everyone’s so fond of, say. Just wondering what a guy who thinks for himself has to say.
————

the nature of our human intellect makes non-dualism impossible
— Mww

I'd like to see the support for this. — creativesoul

Yes/no, up/down, left/right, wrong/right. For every possible conception, its negation is given immediately, without exception. It is impossible for the human intellect to function at all without this fundamental principle of complementarity, and from it follows the ground of intrinsically dualistic logical systems.

If we ask 'Where and when does this relation exist?' the answer must be 'Nowhere and nowhen'.

To ask of a relation presupposes a content; how can that which necessarily has content be nowhere and at no time?

I think Spinoza's solution, that there is only one substance with both attributes, works. — Janus

Of all those choices, this is provably closest to the case, but you know….that leaves us with phosphate and calcium ions, nanovolts and picometers that think. Or, a brain full of nothing but extended substances that don’t think.

We are well and truly screwed, ain’t we? (Grin)

I couldn’t remember where I found this, seems like ages ago, and your “dualism of substances” made me think of it again. So I dug it up, just to give maybe the first exposition of what the intent was behind it. Not meant to elicit a comment…just thought you might be interested, if you didn’t already know.

Hobbes’ objection:
“…. Hence it may be that the thing that thinks - the subject that has mind, reason or intellect - is something corporeal. Descartes assumes that it isn’t, but he doesn’t prove this. Yet the conclusion that he seems to want to establish is based on this inference….”

Descartes’ reply:
“…. I’ll explain the point briefly. It is certain that a thought can’t exist without a thing that is thinking; and quite generally no act or property can exist without a substance for it to belong to. But we don’t ·ever· come to know a substance immediately, knowing it in itself, but only through its being the subject of certain acts. This makes it perfectly reasonable and normal for us to use different names for substances that we recognize as being the subjects of radically different acts or properties, and then later on to consider whether these different names signify different things or one and the same thing. Now there are certain acts and properties that we call ‘corporeal’, such as size, shape, motion and all others that can be thought only in terms of spatial extension; and we label as ‘body’ the substance that they are in, i.e. the thing that performs the acts and has the properties. We can’t intelligibly suppose that one substance has shape, and another substance moves, and so on, because all these acts fall under the common concept of extension. There are other acts that we call ‘acts of thought’, such as understanding, willing, imagining, having sensory perceptions, and so on; these all fall under the common concept of thought or perception or consciousness, and we call the substance that has them a ‘thinking thing’ or a ‘mind’ or any name you like as long as you don’t confuse this substance with corporeal substance. That confusion would be very bad, because acts of thought have nothing in common with corporeal acts, and thought (the common concept of the former) is radically different from extension (the common concept of the latter). Once we have formed two distinct concepts of these two substances, it is easy, on the basis of what I have said in the sixth Meditation, to establish whether they are one and the same or different….”
(Descartes, Objections and Replies, Third Objections (Hobbes), Second Meditation: ‘The nature of the human mind’, 1642, in Bennett, 2017)

…..it is plausible to think….. — Janus

Yep, even Himself says we can think whatever we please. But honestly….what advantage is gained by affirming something as real without the possibility of demonstrating it? If it’s as simple as the real encompasses at minimum holding something in your hand, sheer parsimony on the one hand, and pure logic on the other, says if you can’t hold it in your hand, it ain’t real.

It’s all good.

I don't have a problem with the idea that there may be real things which we cannot deomstrate to be real. — Janus

I’m with you on that; there could be all sorts of real stuff just outside the limits of our intelligence. Still, for those things we cannot demonstrate to be real, we lose the warrant for calling them real. Possibly real is all we can say, and that’s pretty weak.

I would say it is real, although it cannot be directly observed. — Janus

I guess that’s the root of my discomfort: we have real things we can observe and we have real things we cannot even possibly observe. Seems to take something important away from being real. It isn’t that big a deal, though, until or unless one gets deep into the weeds, whereupon inconsistencies become apparent.

all meaningful experience consists of correlations drawn between different things. — creativesoul

Can we agree from this, that experience is a stand-alone entity?

Our differences may be a matter of taxonomy….. — creativesoul

Taxonomy. Hierarchal organization. Of correlations drawn between different things? In the interest of clarity, might this require a predetermination of domain of discourse? If a dialectic should follow here, seems imperative to be on the same page. You brought it up, so you should set the pace.

……Maybe not if you're a mind/body dualist or physical/mental dualist. — creativesoul

I gather from this our differences wouldn’t be merely a matter of taxonomy if I were one of those dualists. It has always been my position that simply the nature of our human intellect makes non-dualism impossible. Might be different with a greater knowledge base, but we don’t have it yet, so…..
—————

some language less creatures can see red cups in very much the same way we do, given similar enough biological machinery. However, that same creature cannot know that they're seeing a green cup — creativesoul

….cannot know they’re NOT seeing a green cup?
———-

If you refer to a dualism of aspects as opposed to a dualism of substances then I agree. — Janus

Cool. In this instance, I was.

You seem to count as real only that which the senses apprehend. — Janus

Depending on our agreement on “apprehend”, yes. Given as opinion based on parsimony based on theory, but, yes.

My point earler was that on that criterion causation is not real. — Janus

Is this to say you don’t agree? Your point would be that causation is real?

I’d use causality rather than causation, but in either case, these always represent a relation, or that under which the chronology of the concepts in a relation, is subsumed. As such, causality/causation is no more than a metaphysical explanatory device representing either the progression or regression of real things in relation to each other.

Yea? Nay?