You have such mastery of the text — Manuel

Nah. I make it up as I go along. Seriously. Of course it is based on what is found in the text, but the connections are things I am working out as I write.

you mention two uses of the word "nature" — Manuel

As I understand it there is distinction is between a particular nature of something and the nature of a kind of thing. In both cases the nature of something is what it is to be that thing, its essence (esse, to be). The nature that is particular to Descartes and the nature shared by human beings. There is the nature of this poorly made clock, which is by its nature unreliable, and the nature of clocks in general, which is to be a reliable time keeper.

Descartes also uses the term to refer what God has created, the natural world.

The example of the clock is illustrative, for he thinks that bodies, including human bodies, are similar to clocks ... On this he turned out to be quite wrong — Manuel

But not completely wrong. The details of his biomechanics might be wrong, but much has been gained by seeing the body as a mechanical system.

Natures:

In the sixth meditation Descartes touches on the concept of nature:

... I have been using ‘nature’ ... to speak of what can be found in the things themselves

and:

For the term ‘nature’, understood in the most general way, refers to God himself or to the ordered system of created things established by him. And my own nature is simply the totality of things bestowed on me by God.

So, what is his own nature? On the one hand:

I know that I exist and that nothing else belongs to my nature or essence except that I am a thinking thing

but on the other:

... the nature of man as a combination of mind and body ...

If nature is what is essential and in the things themselves, and among the things bestowed on him by God is his body, then it would seem that the nature of the self is to be both mind and body.

And yet he says:

I am really distinct from my body, and can exist without it. — ibid. Sixth Meditation, page 51

The nature of time:

For it is obvious to one who pays close attention to the nature of time that plainly the same force and action are needed to preserve anything at each individual moment that it lasts as would be required to create that same thing anew, were it not yet in existence. — ibid. page 33

Given the importance of this claim about the nature of time, it is surprising that he does not say more. There is, however, a couple of brief comments about time keepers, that follows the same pattern of seemingly contradictory claims.

A badly made clock conforms to the laws of its nature in telling the wrong time.

but:

... a clock that works badly is ‘departing from its nature’

This is resolved by noting that in the first case he is talking about the nature of a particular clock, a badly made one, while in the second he means the nature of clocks, that is, what it is to be a clock.

Is time itself like a badly made clock? Even a good craftsman, let alone a perfect one, would not make something that required his continued support it at every moment in order to work. Either what God has made is badly made and its nature is to work badly, or the argument for the nature of time as discreet moments is badly made.

In that case there must be something wrong with the argument for discreet moments of time. Why would Descartes make it then? The argument was made in response to two possibilities:

If I had derived my existence from myself, I would not now doubt or want or lack anything at all; for I would have given myself all the perfections of which I have any idea. So I would be God.

and:

Perhaps I have always existed as I do now. In that case, wouldn’t it follow that there need be no cause for my existence?

If his argument is bad then either one or both of these possibilities cannot be ruled out. It would follow that God is not in control from moment to moment. As I was reminded by Paine, the phrase 'knowledge is power', which is commonplace today, was new at that time. Man exerts his control over what God made through the conquest of nature.

Descartes has proposed that the nature of the self is both singular and composite. Just as the nature of man or clocks is not the same as the nature of a particular man or a clock, the nature of thinking is not the same as the nature of a particular thinking thing such as Descartes.

Although Descartes isolates himself in his room, as a thinking thing he is not isolated. As a thinking thing he is connected to thinking itself, that is to say, to what is thought not just by him but other thinking beings before and after him. The nature of thinking is something we do together, a joint project, something that occurs between human beings. The thinking self is not just the individual but thinking itself, which is by its nature public.

The nature of thinking is not limited by the span of a lifetime. For thinking itself time is not moment to moment. It is a collaborative effort across time periods. Descartes was not primarily concerned with the past, however, but rather the present and future. More specifically, with his project for the perfectibility of man, which takes place over lifetimes.

Thinking for Descartes is not fundamentally contemplative or meditative but constructive. Thus he sought foundations on which to build. Although a lot of attention is paid to his epistemology it was groundwork for a science that would change the course of nature.

This equation between creation and persistence is what I am trying to wrap my head around. — Paine

@frank

For Aristotle to be is to persist.

According to Joe Sachs' article "Aristotle: Metaphysics" in the IEP:

Aristotle formulates the latter, the kind of being that belongs to a thing not by happenstance but inevitably, as the “what it kept on being in the course of being at all” for a human being, or a duck, or a rosebush. The phrase to en einai is Aristotle’s answer to the Socratic question, ti esti? ... Stated generally, Aristotle’s claim is that a this, which is in the world on its own, self-sufficiently, has a what-it-always-was-to-be, and is just its what-it-always-was-to-be.

On the face of it, Descartes rejects this. A living being is a created and always dependent being. But in "Principia Philosophiae" he says:

It seems clear to me that the general cause is no other than God himself. In the beginning he created matter, along with its motion and rest; and now, merely by regularly letting things run their course, he preserves the same amount of motion and rest in the material universe as he put there in the beginning.

·(Part ll, Article 36)

Here he claims that God is the cause of things coming to be, but rather than saying that God is the cause of their persisting he says that God lets things run their own course. No claim is made about God keeping things in existence.

His first law of motion (or nature) follows:

The first of these laws is that each simple and undivided thing when left to itself always remains in the same state, never changing except from external causes.

(Article 37)

In order to avoid confusion, Aristotle and Descartes do not mean the same things when they use the term 'motion'. Aristotle means more broadly any kind of change. The underlying problem is, how can something change and remain the same thing?

Descartes means:

A piece of matter or body moves if it goes from being in immediate contact with some bodies that are regarded as being at rest to being in immediate contact with other bodies.

(Article 25)

As we see with the wax, while it undergoes change something remains the same. It remains the same wax, which is known by the mind. The wax persists. All of the changes it undergoes are the result of external causes.

Descartes claim here is the reverse of what he argues in the passage cited in the Meditations:

it does not follow from the fact that I existed a short time ago that I must exist now, unless some cause, as it were, creates me all over again at this moment, that is to say, which preserves me. — ibid. page 33

According to the law of motion, things remain the same unless there is a external cause, but in the Meditations it is only the result of an external cause, namely, God, that things are preserved. In the case of the wax Descartes identifies the external cause of change, but he has not identified the external cause that would cause him and everything else to cease existing if not for God.

It seems to me that this is a critical omission. It is not enough to simply rely on the Scholastic notion of of contingent beings. If we are to accept that at each moment the existence of anything and everything is threatened by extinction, there must be some external cause that threatens their existence.

With regard to the question of existence and dependence, in the third meditation Descartes says;

Perhaps I have always existed as I do now. In that case, wouldn’t it follow that there need be no cause for my existence? No, it does not follow. For a life-span can be divided into countless parts, each completely independent of the others, so that from my existing at one time it doesn’t follow that I exist at later times, unless some cause keeps me in existence – one might say that it creates me afresh at each moment.

This argument should be compared to one in the sixth meditation:

Whereas every body is by its nature divisible, the mind can’t be divided. For when I consider the mind, or consider myself insofar as I am merely a thinking thing, I can’t detect any parts within myself.

(emphasis added)

A bit later he says:

... the nature of man as a combination of mind and body ...

We might conclude that by a thinking thing he does not mean that all he is is a thinking thing, but:

Furthermore, my mind is me, for the following reason·. I know that I exist and that nothing else belongs to my nature or essence except that I am a thinking thing.

Is he making a distinction between the nature of man and his own nature? Does his nature extend beyond his human nature?

Descartes' life can be divided but his mind cannot. It would seem that the mind is not dependent on God from moment to moment for the mind is not divided into parts. Is Descartes declaring his independence from both the Church and from God? Or, perhaps, he is declaring the independence of thought itself.

Toward the beginning of the fourth meditation Descartes claims:

I infer that God exists and that every moment of my existence depends on him.

Why would Descartes claim that every moment of his existence depend on God? Is this just feigning piety? His sincerity is questionable at the end of the fifth meditation:

... until I became aware of [God] I couldn’t perfectly know anything.

But the first thing he claims to know, prior to his awareness of God, is that he exists.

I think there is more to this, but don't know yet what it is. It seems significant his claim is not simply that God sustains us but must do so from moment to moment.

In your previous answer you talked about "particular things that are ascribed to materialism might not stick". But mental things are not just "particular" things. They consist a whole world, in contrast with the material one! — Alkis Piskas

Throughout the long history of the term there have been various things ascribed to "matter". By particular things I mean some of the things that are said about matter that I am not in agreement with.

Nothing wrong with asking someone where they stand on an issue. I usually address the question in terms of embodied minds. The term "matter" has become problematic. In my limited understanding matter is not inert stuff but actively forms self-organizing systems.

As I understand it, he is saying that he wants his readers to become accustomed to his way of thinking before they sense what the consequences are. That is,

before perceiving that they destroy those of Aristotle.

I see Paine beat me to it.

I guess you must believe that thoughts, ideas, memory, knowledge, emotions and all mental activities and contents of the mind in general are composed of matter — Alkis Piskas

No. See my previous answer to your question. Mental activities are not composed of matter, but organisms that think are.

I've never denied his talent for climbing the greasy pole of popular opinion. — apokrisis

Nice image!

Thank you for saying so!

Are you a materialist? — Alkis Piskas

Yes, although particular things that are ascribed to materialism might not stick.

The will argument is somewhat strange, especially when he says that the scope of the will is larger than the scope of the intellect. — Manuel

Good point. Limiting the will seems to be unnecessarily self-limiting. There is something else going on here.

I can't get to the bottom of reasons in a way that I feel no problems in "seeing" this is as simple and as foundational as any reason can get, there's just so much in every judgment and proposition that are assumed. — Manuel

Descartes has a universal method for solving problems, his "mathesis universalis". He describes the mathesis univeralis in Rules for the Direction of the Mind. The first rule is:

The aim of our studies must be the direction of our mind so that it may form solid and true judgments on whatever matters arise

(emphasis added)

With his method he will be able to solve for any unknown. With his method it becomes less and less necessary to limit the will, for the intellect will be continually expanding.

.

So, I would prefer to say that he strives for certainty, as far as human understanding goes, though some things we can't comprehend, we being finite creatures. — Manuel

At the end of the fourth meditation he says:

This is where man’s greatest and most important perfection is to be found ... If I restrain my will so that I form opinions only on what the intellect clearly and distinctly reveals, I cannot possibly go wrong.

He has within himself the ability to become more perfect by avoiding error. Note that he allows for degrees of perfection.

In the fourth meditation:

I know by experience that will is entirely without limits.

and:

My will is so perfect and so great that I can’t conceive of its becoming even greater and more perfect ...

His will is perfect and thus the proximate and more likely source of his idea of perfection. He goes further. It is not just the idea of perfection, but the reality of perfection, as he avoids error and becomes more perfect, that is within him

I only know that He exists and this guarantees that clear and distinct ideas gotten through this method, can't be wrong. — Manuel

According to the argument it is not simply knowledge that God exists, but the claim that God would not deceive us that guarantees that clear and distinct ideas can't be wrong. But if clear and distinct ideas can't be wrong, then:

a Cartesian project, without God — Manuel

At bottom is a reliance on reason. For even his claims about God depends on reason. Further, he has established that even if God is a deceiver, his Archimedean point, his knowledge that he exists, established by reason, is fixed.

I think we have gone about as far as we can with going over the same things again. I appreciate that despite our differences the discussion remained civil.

how would you even go about looking for such a mind (I hesitate to say 'phenomenon')? — Wayfarer

I don't know how to go about looking for something that probably does not exist. That is why I keep returning to living things as the place to look for minds.

I can get on board with the idea that our minds do not exist without bodies because our bodies are extrinsic representaEition of our minds. — Bob Ross

We will have to agree to disagree on this as well.

So of course we should expect to a dead body to still have an alive mind — Bob Ross

You might expect that. I don't expect that. The majority of the medical community does not expect that. The majority of those working in cognitive science do not expect that.

Firstly, “Either or” entails a dilemma — Bob Ross

Either it is raining or it is not. What is the dilemma? Either it is Tuesday or it is not. What is the dilemma? Either consciousness is ontologically fundamental or it is not. what is the dilemma?

the former simply posits that there are physical things within experience — Bob Ross

It does not say that there are physical things within experience. It says that there are physical things that we are aware of. It does not say that those things are in experience. That is your assumption. I am aware of the tree that is providing me with shade, but that experience does not mean the tree is within experience, only that my awareness of it is. My experience does not provide shade, the tree does.

As I already explained, there is a symmetry breaker. — Bob Ross

Once again I will take the option to agree to disagree.

I provided an argument and you didn’t really counter it. — Bob Ross

Round and round we go.

But that research isn’t going to afford us an explanation of what mind is — Bob Ross

I agree. We do not have an adequate explanation of mind.

If by “embodied” you just mean that your mind corresponds to a physical body — Bob Ross

Mind is a capacity of sufficiently developed living bodies.

This doesn’t negate the fact that one can explain the whole by reduction to its parts and the relationship between those parts in their proper arrangement. — Bob Ross

This is only part of it. You are leaving out important information that cannot be gained simply by looking at an arrangement of parts. An engine does work. That work depends on parts but is not in any of the parts or combination of parts. The whole cannot be explained without an explanation of what the engine does, how it functions as a whole within another whole, a car for example.

It is not simply of analysis into parts but of parts as dynamic systems within larger dynamic systems. A dynamic system is more than just an arrangement of parts.

if one is fundamentally claiming that the mind is a part (or group of parts) of a physical body which emerges due to the specific relationship between those parts, then they are thereby claiming that the mind is reducible to the body. — Bob Ross

I am claiming that there are no disembodied minds. We find bodies that seem to be without mind, but no mind without bodies. The physical is ineliminable.

quote="Bob Ross;811549"]The purpose is irrelevant for all intents and purposes here.[/quote]

You do not know what an engine is or even what its parts are if you do not know its function and purpose.

A tornado is explained by the reduction of it to its parts (e.g., wind, dust, etc.). — Bob Ross

An actual tornado is not an assemblage parts. Wind does not combine with dust, etc. The forces that create the tornado create the wind and raise the dust.

Physicalism is arguing that it can explain (in terms of the how it works) a mind in terms of the physical biological brain. — Bob Ross

Physicalism as I understand it, does not argue that it can explain mind in physical terms simply because it cannot yet. What is at issue is methodological rather than ontological. Because we do not have access to disembodied minds we must look to the embodied minds of living being. That is the only place we find mind.

Either a)there are physical things that we are aware of within experience or b) there are no physical things without experience.

a) states that there are physical things and that we are aware of these things within experience. If, however, you accept b) then it is not simply that we are aware of these things in experience but that they would not be without experience.

It is a soft problem, though, because it is reconcilable in the view; whereas the hard problem of consciousness is a hard problem because physicalism is provably unable to solve it even theoretically. — Bob Ross

If there is fundamentally only mind then the physical has to be explained in terms of mind. It there is fundamentally only the physical then the mental has to be explained in terms of the physical. If one cannot be solved in terms of the other this cuts both ways.

And once again, it has not been proven that physicalism is unable to solve it even theoretically. You are convinced it can't. You should leave it there.

I am not claiming that we have evidence of minds existing that have no bodies except for the universal mind. With the universal mind, we do have introspective experience of this. — Bob Ross

I have no introspective experience of a universal mind. Private experience cannot stand as public, shareable evidence. In your mind is the idea of universal mind. That idea in your mind is only evidence that your embodied mind can entertain the notion of a non-embodied mind .

Your mind, as the producer of the dream, did not have a body in it. — Bob Ross

My mind that produced the dream is an embodied mind. Whatever I dream, whether a body is present in it or not, it is the dream of an embodied mind.





.

That is a false presupposition. — creativesoul

It seems remarkable to me that this is not more readily understood.

When one explains an engine, they do so by reducing it to its parts and the relation between them when put together properly. — Bob Ross

An engine is not an assemblage of found parts. The parts are designed and manufactured as parts of a whole. Even something as simple as a bolt cannot be understood in isolation, without it being a part of a whole.

A biological entity is not put together out of parts. It can be separated into parts but unlike the engine those parts did not exist prior to the living being.

The relations between the parts that constitute the engine is weakly emergent from the parts — Bob Ross

They are not emergent. Once again, parts are parts of some whole. The relation of parts is inherent in the design of the parts. They are designed with their function and purpose in mind.

With the engine, it is 100% a reductive explanation because once I explain to you the parts and how they relate to each other there is nothing more that needs to be explained about the engine. — Bob Ross

Of course there is more that needs to be explained! What is it for? What does it do? What is its purpose? The engine itself is a part of some larger whole. Not only must the parts of the engine function but the engine itself must function. There must be an energy source that is not part of the engine. The engine must convert this energy into a useful form to be used by the larger whole of which the engine is a part.

Most idealists do not deny that there are physical things, but they mean it in the sense of tangible objects within experience. — Bob Ross

Either a)there are physical things that we are aware of within experience or b) there are no physical things without experience. Either a) you are a substance dualist or b) you are a monist. If b) then you cannot sidestep an explanation of how mental stuff gives rise to physical things.

Physicalists do not mean it this way: they mean that there are actual mind-independent objects beyond the tangible objects within your conscious experience. — Bob Ross

Idealists mean there are physically-independent minds. Given the central importance of conscious experience in your account, what do you make of the fact that we have no conscious experience of disembodied minds?

But the point of the hard problem of consciousness argument is precisely that no amount of objective analysis can capture the first-person experience. — Wayfarer

Yes, I am aware of the claim. The third person report is first person.

[Added: a joke that fell flat. The person's report is first person, but third person to the investigators.]

You might ponder, then, what it is that ‘eliminative materialism’ seeks to eliminate. — Wayfarer

I'll leave it to them to tell you what they are eliminating and why.

An impersonal, unreflective, robotic, mindless little scrap of molecular machinery is the ultimate basis of all the agency, and hence meaning, and hence consciousness, in the universe.’ — Wayfarer

My great, great, great ... grandthing. We keep a picture of it in a prominent place.

This is, of course, a poetic simplification, but it is a provocative way of stating his physicalist stance.

Why didn't he just specify a single "physical entity"? — Gnomon

According to Aristotle biological beings are a single physical entity. There are no separate forms and hyle floating around waiting to be combined. There is not one without the other, substantiated in living physical entities, that is, substances.

I don’t see how this helps your case that physicalism doesn’t dissolve into reductive physicalism. The pile of parts of an engine does explain the weakly emergent property (or properties) of a running engine. — Bob Ross

The point is that reduction is only a part of the process. You cannot understand an engine if you do not understand the parts. That is the reductive part. But you can't understand an engine at that point. The parts have to fit and operate together. You have to look at the functional whole. That is the non-reductive part of the process.

Let's look at this from a different perspective:

Your argument eliminating the physical cuts both ways.

If the mental cannot be explained in terms of the physical then the physical cannot be explained in terms of the mental.

The hard problem in reverse.

I outlined an argument for why I do know this. I am unsure as to why you said this: it is unproductive. — Bob Ross

Getting someone to realize that they do not know something they think they know can be very productive.

This is true and that is why I specifically used the term ‘reductive physicalism’. I do not think that irreductive physicalism is a valid position (as it either dissolves into reductive physicalism or becomes a closeted substance dualism). I can elaborate on that if you would like. — Bob Ross

You have it backwards, it is not that physicalism dissolves into reductive physicalism but that the analysis of a complex involves an understanding of its parts as they function in terms of the whole. By analogy, you cannot understand how an engine works by taking it apart. A pile of parts is not an engine. Taking it apart in only a part of the process whose goal is to understand the whole.

Complaining about a valid metaphysical position is kibitzing. Insisting on a metaphysical position when trying to understand a biological organism is counterproductive. Fortunately, most working in this field are unconcerned with such issues.

Correct, but the claim that the living organism is fundamentally a mind-independent organism is to reduce consciousness thereto. — Bob Ross

Physicalism is not a rejection of mind. To the contrary, it seeks to understand mind in terms of the organisms that have minds, without assuming that mind comes from somewhere other than the organism.

If one cannot account for consciousness with a reductive physicalist approach, then the only other option is that it is not emergent. The proof that it is emergent rides on the idea that it can be reduced to brain states. — Bob Ross

A misunderstanding of physicalism is not proof. Brain states are only part of the story. But of course the brain is an important part of the story. It is not clear what you think a brain state is.

As I said before (in the proof), the only way to argue that it creates consciousness (without just making it up) is to argue in the form of “consciousness is [set of biological functions] because [set of biological functions] impact consciousness in [this way]”. You are assuming it creates consciousness even though this form of argument cannot prove it. — Bob Ross

Consciousness is not a set of biological functions. I think this mistake is the source of your claims about brain states. Consciousness has content, it is of something, and that something is the biological functions that are the conditions for consciousness.

The only way you can prove that consciousness is produced by the brain is by the reductive physicalist method. — Bob Ross

If by proof you mean argument, such proofs are beside the point. But then again, if you think the problem of consciousness is a metaphysical problem, then your only recourse is to rely on argument.

So if you can’t prove it with reductive physicalism, then you have no reason to believe it. — Bob Ross

I would counter by saying you can't prove it by metaphysical argument, but you think you have. Back to the top of this post.

The objection to Dennett remains that no third-person account of even something as simple as pain can ‘do justice’ to the actual feeling of pain, because no amount of analysis of the firing of nerve fibres, no matter how scientifically accurate, actually constitutes ‘the feeling of pain’ (‘what it is like to be in pain’). This is why, for example, John Searle parodied Dennett’s book as ‘Consciousness Explained Away’. — Wayfarer

It is not the analysis of the firing of nerve fibers but the actual firing of nerve fibers through stimulus that could cause a third person to report feeling pain.

Exactly!

I have not read enough of the information on information to have formed an informed concept. I agree that without physical processes there would be no information.

When I claim that reductive physicalism has a ‘hard problem of consciousness’, I am claiming that it is impossible for that metaphysical theory to explain consciousness: — Bob Ross

Right, you have said that several times. But that is not something you know.

I am not claiming that we merely haven’t yet. — Bob Ross

Right. You are claiming that we can never provide a physical explanation. But again, that is just an assertion, and it is not evidently true. [

quote="Bob Ross;811138"] ... my definition of a ‘hard problem’ is that it is irreconcilable under the view in question[/quote]

There you go. Based on your definition. But creating a definition and then rejection something because it contradicts your definition does not hold water.

The Hard Problem is a term of art. It has a specific meaning as defined by Chalmers and is used as defined. Calling something "a hard problem", stipulating it is irreconcilable with physicalism, is your problem, not the accepted meaning of the hard problem.

so in order to explain consciousness on this view one has to reduce mental states to brain states. — Bob Ross

The brain is part of an organism. Physicalism need not be reductive physicalism. The recognition that a living organism can be conscious, is not reductive. To look at an organism as a whole is not reductive physicalism. To claim that consciousness must come from elsewhere because a physical explanation must be reductive is misguided.

[set of biological functions] impact consciousness in [this way]” — Bob Ross

It is not that biological functions impact consciousness but that it creates consciousness.

why do those biological functions give rise to consciousness? — Bob Ross

We don't know. But we do know that some living organisms are conscious and we do not know of consciousness elsewhere, so it makes perfect sense to look at conscious organisms. To ignore these physical organisms because you reject reductive physicalism is willful blindness.

With your claim (that you quoted as well), I was pointing out that you were claiming (if I didn’t misunderstand you) that science can eventually come to understand how the biological functions give rise to experience — Bob Ross

I am simply saying that we should not deny the possibility. It is not a question of the "rightful investigator of the hard problem".

I am not sure how Chalmer’s defines a ‘hard problem’. — Bob Ross

The term is Chalmer's neologism. I posted two statements of it above. The second in his own words.

If you agree that it is a hard problem, then I think you should also agree that science can’t help solve it. — Bob Ross

You are defining "a" hard problem as one that is beyond the reach of science. By your definition science can't solve it. But this is question begging. Scientists are working on the problem of consciousness and felt experience, and the extent to which they are successful cannot be determined by the boundaries you set between science and metaphysics.

Your argument amounts to saying that if the hard problem is solved then it is not a hard problem.

You can’t claim that biological functions product or give rise to experience without being committed already to physicalism — Bob Ross

One need not be committed to any metaphysical claim, whether it is physicalism or something else. An investigation of consciousness in biological organism should begin with biological organisms.

you are presuming, in the question at least, that biological functions produce mental events). — Bob Ross

It is obviously true that Impairment to biological function impacts mental events. Since it is experience in biological organisms that is at issue those organisms is a reasonable place to start.

but once they realize that it is impossible to understand it via science — Bob Ross

,

This again is question begging, it assumes as established the very thing in question.

the physical transmission, which is a phenomena — Bob Ross

It is not. The physical transmission makes phenomena possible.

If the physical is an extrinsic representation of the mental ... — Bob Ross

The physical in this case is the living organism. A living organism is not an extrinsic representation of the mental. We can, however, mentally represent a living organism. That representation takes place within a living organism.

If you hooked up a brain scanner to a person that is knocked out on anesthesia — Bob Ross

Is the brain scanner an extrinsic representation of the mental? Why is it necessary? It if, and the person knocked out are extrinsic representation of the mental then the mental or Mind should have direct access.

so would analytic idealism postulate that the ingestion of a drug and its side effects in the world is simply a representation — Bob Ross

The ingestion of a drug is not the ingestion of a representation. If that were the case, the pharmaceutical industry would be out of business. The effects "in the world" are not the same as effects in a video game.

it does not follow that what is truly happening is physical stuff (in a colloquial or even formal sense of the term) simply because we experience it as tangible within our dashboard of experience. — Bob Ross

It is not simply that we have an experience but that physical stuff has a physical effect. When a plant dies from lack of water or a fish from lack of oxygen, that is a physical event not a mental representation.

The video game doctor — Bob Ross

This might be reverent if the world and everything in it, including us, is a digital simulation.

does that mean that the character fundamentally exists as that ‘physical’ stuff? — Bob Ross

The character fundamentally exists as a character in a video game. There would be no video game without the physical stuff that makes it possible. The game itself is real in a sense that the characters in the game are not. In the same way, a book is real in a sense that the characters in the book are not. Story characters, whether in videos or books do not have the same physical constraints on them that you (if you are not just the character in someone else's story) or I (I am not) have.

No object without subject. That’s my final offer. :wink:

Pinter goes on to make the case that without subjects, there are no facts. — Wayfarer

An object and a fact are two different things. No facts without subjects because facts are propositions. Objects are not.

If, as you claim, we can't get outside the appearance then what is the basis of the assumption that there are no discreet entities? When a meteor hits the earth one thing impacts the other.

That’s the whole point - you can't get outside the appearance to see it as it 'truly is'. — Wayfarer

And yet you quote Pinter making a claim about the mind-independent world

The mind-independent world is not naturally divided into individual parts — Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (p92)

My view is that it really exists, but that the very notion of existence always implies an observer for whom it exists, — Wayfarer

The very notion of anything at all implies something having a notion. But existence is not the notion of existence. As you say, the object really exists.

I didn’t find anything I disagree with in the quote from Chalmers you made: was there something in it you thought is a problem for my view? — Bob Ross

Here is what I said, and your response:

The question of why and how biological functions give rise to experience has everything to do with science!

What you described here is a purported soft problem of consciousness, — Bob Ross

How does what I say differ from the hard problem as described by Chalmers? He concludes:

It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.

If experience arises from a physical basis, then the question of why and how biological function gives rise to experience, is the hard problem. If, as Chalmers says, physical processing give rise to a rich inner life then how and why that should be, then I would not have thought it necessary to state the obvious, science deals with the physical, with biological function.

Now you might think that science will not yield an answer, but that does not mean investigating the problem scientifically is not an investigation of the hard problem.

The physical “transmission” is the extrinsic representation of the mental. — Bob Ross

The physical transmission is not an extrinsic representation, it is the medium through which data is transmitted.

Secondly, anesthesia causing you to not dream and the signals in the nervous system being blocking thereby is expected under idealism too — Bob Ross

If the signals in the nervous system are blocked that shows that the transmission of data is physical.

Anesthesia, like everything else, is fundamentally mental under idealism ... — Bob Ross

This makes no sense. An anesthesiologist uses drugs not something mental. She does not rely on hypnosis.

...the outward expression of the mental idea of anesthesia disrupting your mind — Bob Ross

Again, it is specific drugs that cause anesthesia. Drugs are not the outward expression of the mental. These drugs affect awareness, they disrupt the mind.

The infinite can only be conceived by means of the negation. — Paine

Do you mean that the infinite is conceived by what is not infinite? If so, this is the opposite of what Descartes is claiming.

Is there some equivocation in the passage you cited:

For how would I understand that I [46] doubt and that I desire, that is, that I lack something and that I am not wholly perfect, unless there were some idea in me of a more perfect being, by comparison with which I might recognize my defects? — ibid. page 45

between wholly perfect and more perfect? For example, from the fourth meditation:

The more skilled the craftsman, the more perfect the thing that he makes ...

What the craftsman makes might be more or less perfect but is never wholly perfect. And as quoted before:

My will is so perfect and so great that I can’t conceive of its becoming even greater and more perfect ...

The term 'more perfect' allows for improvement, for greater perfection. It seems to follow that something more perfect rather than something wholly perfect is sufficient for me to recognize my lack of perfection.

From what source, then, do I derive my existence? — ibid. page 50

There is a shift from the source of my ideas to the source of my existence. He argues that the source cannot be something less perfect than himself. For this reason he rejects his parents as the source of his existence. But surely he knows enough biology and animal husbandry to know that a more perfect offspring can come from less perfect parents. The source need not be something wholly perfect or even more perfect.

At the end of the fourth meditation he says:

This is where man’s greatest and most important perfection is to be found ... If I restrain my will so that I form opinions only on what the intellect clearly and distinctly reveals, I cannot possibly go wrong.

His ability to avoid error and thus become more perfect comes from himself. The more perfect from the less perfect.

I think that shows Descartes agreeing with the Scholastics that an infinites series of causes must go back to what is not caused ... — Paine

Descartes does not agree against an infinite regress of causes but against an infinite regress of ideas (third meditation). He argues that the cause must have at least as much reality as the effect, but this does not mean that there cannot be a regress of causes. Perhaps the idea that there must be a limit only marks a limit to our understanding of what is without limit.

... my perception of God is prior to my perception of myself. — ibid. page 45

Starting, as Descartes does, with doubt, what is first is that he exists.

For how would I understand that I [46] doubt and that I desire, that is, that I lack something and that I am not wholly perfect, unless there were some idea in me of a more perfect being, by comparison with which I might recognize my defects? — ibid. page 45

The reason he doubts is because he desires to find something certain and indubitable. Recognizing that he has been deceived by his senses does not require the idea of a more perfect being, only the recognition that his senses have sometimes deceived him.

Toward the end of the third meditation he says:

I understand that I am a thing... which aspires without limit to ever greater and better things

And in the fourth meditation:

I know by experience that will is entirely without limits.

and:

My will is so perfect and so great that I can’t conceive of its becoming even greater and more perfect ...

So, it seems that the source of his idea of something perfect and without limits could be himself.

And although one idea can perhaps issue from another, nevertheless no infinite regress is permitted here — Descartes, Third Meditation, translated by Donald A Cress, pg 28

It is interesting that in arguing for an infinite idea he rejects the idea of an infinite regress of ideas.

But the object is what appears in experience ... — Wayfarer

No. What appears in experience is not the object but the object as it appears.

How do you differentiate between the object as it is in itself, and as it appears to us? That is the question. — Wayfarer

How it appears to me might be different from how it appears to you. How it appears might be different under different conditions. Are we talking about the same object or different objects when there is a difference in appearance?

If I were an auto salesperson, what would I make of this in my everyday experience? — jgill

The expression, "sell the sizzle not the steak" comes to mind. Another is about men and big or fancy cars and compensating. Of course it depends on the customer but appearance sells.

Would it make a difference were I to be a mathematician? — jgill

Maybe. Mathematicians talk about beauty, elegance, and simplicity, but although they are attracted to these things what is decisive is whether things "add up".

How do you differentiate between the thing shown and the thing as it is in itself? — Wayfarer

I differential, as you did, between the thing I show to you and what will also appear in your experience. I can hold that thing and bring it to you, but cannot hold what appears in your experience.

How is that agreement going to come about? — RogueAI

Start by banning the philosophers.

Seriously, general agreement, if and when it occurs, might be along the same lines as has occurred with animal consciousness. There are some who still deny that a dog, for example, is conscious, but they are now in the minority.

I think what he has in mind simply the notion that when we perceive something in a manner in which we cannot say we obstructed by anything, say, bad vision or a confused understanding, we should take the experienced thing as true. — Manuel

Descartes' example of the wax is instructive. His senses do not yield a clear and distinct perception of the wax.

In the second meditation he says:

Rather, it is purely a perception by the mind alone – formerly an imperfect and confused one, but now clear and distinct because I am now concentrating carefully on what the wax consists in.

Clear and distinct perception requires reasoned thought.

He goes on to ask:

When was my perception of the wax’s nature more perfect and clear? Was it when I first looked at the wax, and thought I knew it through my senses? Or is it now, after I have enquired more carefully into the wax’s nature and into how it is known?

It is, of course, the latter, but what is it that he come to know clearly and distinctly about the wax based on his inquiry? From the third meditation:

For if I examine them [his ideas of bodies] thoroughly, one by one, as I did the idea of the wax yesterday, I realize that the following short list gives everything that I perceive clearly and distinctly in them: size, or extension in length, breadth and depth; shape, which is a function of the boundaries of this extension; position, which is a relation between various items possessing shape; motion, or change in position.

To these may be added substance, duration and number.

Based on this list the question arises as to how his clear and distinct perception of the wax differs from his perception of some other object. He is correct that to perceive nature of an object requires the intellect, but it seems problematic to exclude the senses from such inquiry.

Intelligence and consciousness are not the same.

Suppose it gets to the point where there is general agreement that AI has become conscious. This would weaken rather than strengthen the case for idealism.

The same principle applies to all phenomenal experiences whatever. Stones move, mountains form, things get taken from the fridge. — Wayfarer

There is a difference between a stone or mountain and phenomenal experience.

The basis of the idealist argument is all such phenomena still occur within experience — Wayfarer

By definition the phenomena occur within experience.

If you show the same things to to me, then they will also appear in my experience, — Wayfarer

The things shown and their appearance in your experience are not the same. The phenomenal experience is of the thing shown.