I don't know what you are saying here. — Cavacava

Just that you are developing concepts in experience (such as "being born", "physical structures"), and then turn around and use them to explain the causes of your experience (which are clearly outside of experience). You're just being circular.

When I think about something I will do tomorrow, that, "what I will do" is a thing in my mind, and it is a future thing. — Metaphysician Undercover

It's not future, it's happening right now, not in the future. If I have a thought, that thought occurs now, not in the future. So what future are you talking about? I might be thinking about what I will do tomorrow, but tomorrow is my distinction, which is occurring right now in the present. There is no tomorrow.

In the example, he is thinking about an apartment he will furnish in the future. The act of rearranging is clearly driven by this anticipation. In all these acts, which Manzotti refers to, rearranging the furniture, juggling words, and the child learning, we can ask why does the person who does this, do this. The answer is always that the person anticipates a future need. — Metaphysician Undercover

I disagree that the person always anticipates a future need. What if I'm just imagining different ways chess pieces could be arranged on a chess board just for fun? For no purpose (that is located in the future) at all?

First, he doesn't properly distinguish between past and future, such that all objects in the mind, are explained by encounters with past objects (memories). — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't think there is any past or future in his vision. There is just the present. The past and the future are merely distinctions in the present. There is no other time but the present moment.

An "agent" is a source of activity, an efficient cause. I really don't know how, you could explain any rearranging, juggling, or learning, going on without a source of activity. — Metaphysician Undercover

So why can't the activity have no source? Why can't the activity just be? Where is the logical contradiction in this? It's only when we try to play a specific game, and look at the activity as something that we can predict, that we hypothesise a "past" and a "future", which are merely useful fictions. To use an economic example.

I was talking with ssu awhile ago about financial value. So I said that every businessman and investor wants to know the REAL value of an asset, not the market value, under the assumption that in the long-term, even if in the short-term the market can undervalue / overvalue it, the market will approach that real value. But why does the businessman / investor want to know this real value in the first place? Because they want to make a profit - they want to know what will happen to the markets so they can position themselves to make a profit. So what if there is actually no real value, and it is only their desire that makes them hypothesize a real value, which can be used to take decisions, and even very successful decisions, even though it's not real, and it's just a fiction? What if time (past and future) are likewise merely useful fictions?

But there is a break in the chain of efficient causation when the object goes into memory. — Metaphysician Undercover

Okay, but you're presupposing a certain view of time here. You're viewing time as something that flows as it were. Why can't there be no time? There is change, a continuous change, but without a past or a future. What you call past or future are merely useful fictions. You use this fiction to say that the past events cause the current ones. But why can't current events always include the so called past? Maybe the present doesn't include just what is visible, but rather it includes everything within itself, and we just break it up into future and past for ease of analysis.

We are born with certain physical structures which enable us to experience the world, and how we see it depends on the adequate functioning of our physical senses. — Cavacava

How do you know this? Is it because you've developed certain concepts based on experience, such as bodies, etc. and then applied them out of experience? How do you know what a physical structure is? You had experience I presume - and you started differentiating things like thoughts, and things like trees. You called the latter physical and the former mental. And yet, they are all within your experience. How can there be a non-experienced physical thing?! What would that even be?

In the same way that the body is prior to the experience of seeing. — Cavacava

That makes no sense to me philosophically (at least for the purposes of this thread). It only makes sense within a limited scientific discourse. That scientific discourse is arrived at how? By means of experience. So what is arrived at by means of experience is used to tell me what happens prior to experience? :s

The notion of a body is arrived at within experience, and hence makes no sense out of it.

Part of what it means to see at least for humans — Cavacava

So is it prior to the experience of seeing?

To individuate is to "distinguish from others of the same kind; single out". A babies ability to follow patterns is from birth — Cavacava

So it is prior to experience?

I think individuation is tied to the individual's body, that the entire body forms the basis for our interactions with the world. I don't think that a child understands the implications of its individualization without language, and it does not understand itself as a responsible agent until they are 4/7 yrs of age. — Cavacava

You're already stuck in a theoretical understanding here, where you assume that you are a child, with a physical body, etc. That's not interesting. I'm interested in how you arrived at this framework.

No, I think individuation is a developmental achievement. We can watch a baby track a ball as it rolls by her in the first few months, when the ball rolls out of view the infants stops looking and puts its attention elsewhere, then a couple of months latter, the baby stretches its neck or crawls to see what happened to the ball, where it went. Object permanence is learned and probably a necessary step prior to individuation, language learning and the rest. — Cavacava

This doesn't make sense. How can the boy track the ball if he cannot individuate it?

That's what I have been saying all along, obviously.
Go back and read your first post. — charleton

Can you please answer the question:

So where does this individuation come from, if it is already required before I can perceive sense impressions? — Agustino

I know that the concept of individuation will only enter awareness AFTER experience, that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist prior to experience as an activity.

There is no "IT". It is just an abstraction you are conceptualizing. — charleton

That's not true. Let me illustrate. Abstraction is something that happens after experience. For experience to occur, I must be able to distinguish between things - that means to see red, and blue, and feel hard and soft, etc. Red, blue, hard, soft, etc. are sense impressions. But all these sense impressions presuppose individuation, since they are all individuals, distinguished from each other. Red is not blue and is not hard, etc. So where does this individuation come from, if it is already required before I can perceive sense impressions?

We weren't discussing God, I asked you an epistemological question. How do we know "individuation" granted that we must already be able to individuate in order to experience anything?

This is about conceptualising. All experience is prior. — charleton

And yet, "individuality" cannot come from experience (the senses), but rather experience presupposes it. So where does it come from?

Yes, what about it? That means exactly what I said above. Individuation does not mean just individuation into a person as distinct from other persons. It means individuation of anything and everything.

You started by saying we could have no experience without the concept of self as individual. Are you now rejecting that position?
yes/no? — charleton

Well that's not what I said. I said we cannot have any experience without individuating things - into red, blue, sweet, sour, etc. That individuation cannot come from the senses. I still maintain exactly the same thing.

But experience predicates it all. — charleton

I agree. It doesn't follow though that the concept comes from experience itself.

Why are you asking that?
Proprioception, is an innate sense with which we experience our own bodies. — charleton

What does this have to do with the concept of an "individual"? I don't mean just and "individual" as in a person, but ANY individual whatsoever - the impression of red is an individual, the impression of blue is an individual, etc.

Have you thought about the possibility that is might come from experience? — charleton

Sure. So in experience we find impressions - the impressions of red, yellow, hard, soft, sweet, sour, etc. Where amongst those impressions is there an impression of "individual"?

There is no implication in the video that the number of cells or the internal structural architecture necessary for that to occur is in the video.
As no such machine exists in reality then the field is open for discussion. this is one of the first problems that was chewed over at the top of the thread. You really must pay more attention as you keep making a fool of yourself — charleton

The video discusses at length the fact that animal cells of both elephants and mice are around the same size. They do not say that the animals will die when enlarged because of their cells becoming too big. So where have you invented that idea from? When you're proven wrong do you always cower and move goalposts and stomp your feet? :s Or is that only sometimes?

We do not need a concept of individuation to have experience — charleton

Where does the concept of individual or individuation come from then?

What kind of enlargement? I posited TWO. Neither of which leads to a living giant mouse. — charleton

>:O Yeah, you posited two and dismissed one because "it's not on the table" >:O - give me a break.

If you enlarge a mouse then the cells would break down as you would be enlarging the cells too.
If you enlarge the mouse you would be enlarging the capillaries too, making it impossible for the healthy exchange of nutrients and gasses. — charleton

I don't think anyone was talking of this kind of "enlargement"... Have you watched the video? They weren't talking of this kind of enlargement there. I suggest you pay more attention to the subject of threads in the future.

But to cut through to the core, how is learning what red is different from learning how to use the word "red"? — Banno

Words are irrelevant, it's concepts that matter. So sure, learning what red is, is the same as learning how to use the concept of red. Learning how to use the word "red" on the other hand is not very significant in and of itself.

Bootstrapping. The operating system loads itself. — Banno

How is it possible for the operating system to load itself? In order for that to be possible, certain things must already exist such as electricity.

My point was that when you do such solitary things it is experienced as an interaction with others. We also interact with others when dreaming. I'm not claiming that this is the same as bodily interacting; but I'm emphasizing that these are not solitary activities in the 'lived' sense, but only in the ostensible sense. — Janus

Well... if you push the definition so far, then anything is interacting with things that are not you - even your body, to a certain extent, is not you, since you don't control everything that happens by sheer will. But how do dreams count as interacting with another PERSON as opposed to thing?

To me, bodily interacting, or interacting by forum, or by voice, or by playing a game (chess, etc.) are all quite similar. I do count those as social in nature.

To have more discipline with my sleeping schedule, and to work less at night >:O

But then the sound isn't distinct from meaning, but has a coextensive conceptual meaning. — Marty

Yes, so long as you understand that "concept" means just a vague impression.

Well, so that article doesn't contain a bit of information which actually invalidates the notion I quoted? Can you summarise for me then why it would invalidate it?

Not ridiculous but you are. The cells of a mouse the size of an elephant would be too big. The number, size and distribution of capillaries too few; for the elephant the size of a mouse the complete opposite would occur. You simply have not thought this out. — charleton

No, cells of all these animals are about the same size. Where did you learn biology? In the textbook of Medieval Sciences?!

It's relevant because of Manzotti's claim that mental activity is a rearranging of past things. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, that is true.

But it is clear that in the mind there is future things as well as past things. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's not clear at all to me. How are there future things in the mind?

And in his example of imagining furniture in a future home, this rearrangement is driven by anticipation. — Metaphysician Undercover

How is it driven by anticipation? He's imagining possible combinations, has nothing to do with the future as such. His purpose for imagining those possible combinations may be because he wants to see what ways there are to arrange his future house, but there's no necessary tie to the future in simply imagining possible combinations.

Also. when he uses "juggling" and "learning", these are both activities which are driven by anticipation of the future. — Metaphysician Undercover

How?

No it clearly doesn't collapse that distinction, it makes it more evident, because the way he describes things implies a distinction between the internal agent which is carrying out these activities such as rearranging, juggling, and learning, and the things, the objects which form the past memories which the agent is engaged with in these activities. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, you don't get the gist of his enterprise at all. Here's another interview:

Manzotti: The enactivists toy with the first switch, without actually turning it all the way to not separate. They see that consciousness can’t be reduced to a property of the goings-on in the brain, so they start to look outside. But instead of considering the external object as such, they look at our dealings with the object, our handling the object, our manipulating the object, believing that consciousness is a product of the actions we perform. At the end of the day, though, the object remains doggedly separate from the subject who experiences it. And unfortunately, as we said last time, actions, whether they be eye movements, or touch, or chewing, are no better than neural firings when it comes to accounting for experience. How can my actions explain why the sky is blue or sugar sweet?

Parks: Okay, let’s stop playing with that switch and set it determinedly on subject and object not separate. As for the second switch, let’s again start with a subject that is not physical, since I suspect you are going to give that position short shrift.

Manzotti: Yes. This is the territory of Bishop Berkeley and Leibniz in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Crudely speaking, they proposed that subject and object become identical, the same thing, but both in a completely non-physical world.

His position is in the right-hand bottom corner. But I would push it even further, and argue that even the physical/non-physical distinction makes no sense.

So there is no internal agent at all carrying out the actions. The actions themselves are the agent. Why do we need an agent who is different from the actions themselves?

An agent is implied by Manizotti's description. Can you imagine rearranging, juggling, or learning, being carried out without an agent which is carrying out this activity? — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, I can imagine rearranging, juggling, and learning happening by themselves, without an agent.

If that is Manizotti's aim, then he clearly fails. He refers to words as well as other objects as "external objects". I think it's your turn to reread the interview. — Metaphysician Undercover

I did read it carefully. He refers to it as "external objects" the same way I referred to it as "mind" when you objected in the next paragraph, or when we say "the sun goes down" (of course in truth we know it doesn't really go down, it's just a manner of speaking).

And you criticized me for using the word "mind", saying that it is "no-thing" and a term that needs clarification. You didn't allow me to say that the mind "creates" something, but now you've turned around to say that the mind "assumes" something. What's the difference between creating something and assuming something? — Metaphysician Undercover

I already addressed this:

And when I say "the mind" above, that's just a way of talking. In reality, there would just be the association. — Agustino

We're talking about how mental activity turns past memories toward the future events. If your claim is that this is done through the means of assumptions, then we must account for where these assumptions come from. As I said already, I believe the mind creates them. Where do you think they come from? — Metaphysician Undercover

No, my claim is that there is no projection towards the future, just old ideas coming to mind when new impressions are encountered through old associations.

Where do you think they come from? — Metaphysician Undercover

They are triggered by new impressions. New impressions are similar to old impressions, so they trigger the very same conjunction of ideas that previous impressions triggered.

If it smells and looks like a pineapple one "assumes" that it will taste like a pineapple. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, there is no question of assumption. One just experiences the vague impression (ie idea) of the taste of pineapple upon seeing another impression closely associated with it.

Say if this was the case, if words were like sign-posts that had no meaning associated with them. — Marty

They do have meaning associated with them. Hearing a certain combination of sounds (impression 1) evokes another set of impressions (however vaguely) which in the past were associated with it. So hearing the word "apple" invokes the impressions of an actual apple. There is no infinite regress and no problem.

Manzotti does not adequately distinguish between past and future, memory and anticipation. — Metaphysician Undercover

What's there to distinguish? And why is this relevant?

Memories of external objects are past events, but we still must account for the act of "rearranging", and this is the creative act which is driven by anticipation. — Metaphysician Undercover

What do you mean by "rearranging" and why would this be driven by anticipation?

Anticipation cannot be validated by external objects because it's object is non-existent, and so this mental act, the creative act of rearranging, also cannot be described in reference to external objects. And so Manzotti continues to speak about rearranging, and juggling, and learning, without accounting for the agent of this act. He answers this with ambiguity "I am nothing", or "I am part of everything". But the problem is that his position requires an agent, and this brings us right back to the internal. There is an internal agent which is doing the rearranging, the creating. So it isn't really an externalist position at all. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, you're right, it's not externalist. It collapses the distinction between external and internal.

And so Manzotti continues to speak about rearranging, and juggling, and learning, without accounting for the agent of this act. — Metaphysician Undercover

Why is an agent needed? All that is there is the change from one impression to the next (or likewise from one idea to the next), why is there an agent needed to do the changing? Why can't the changing itself be basic?

Very clearly there has to be something which anticipates the non-existent states of the future, something which does the rearranging, which does the juggling, which does the learning. If you don't like the word "mind", then use "soul", or "agent", but the brain cannot completely account for this creativity because the brain is just another object. And that object only has past memories, and past memories cannot account for the anticipation of non-existent objects of the future. — Metaphysician Undercover

I disagree. The whole point of the article, as I see it, is to strike at this distinction between inner and outer, internal and external. Nothing is internal or external, the distinction is false. All there exists is impressions and copies of impressions (ideas). What is external here? There is no external object to the impressions - the impressions themselves are the objects.

So the input, from the imagination, and this is the creative factor, cannot be accounted for by the memories of past occurrences. It must be accounted for by reference to the anticipation of future occurrences. How can you account for the brain "representing" something which has not yet occurred? And this is what prediction is. — Metaphysician Undercover

Simple. The mind assumes that the same associations it's seen in the past will continue into the future. So if it finds something that smells like pineapple, but cannot see it, for whatever reason, then it will expect it to be pineapple. Remember that pineapple, on this account, is just a bundle of different impressions, smell being just one of them. So when we say it will expect it to be pineapple, we simply mean that the experience of the smell of pineapple, will recall/cause vague experiences of the taste of pineapple, and all the other previous impressions associated with it.

And when I say "the mind" above, that's just a way of talking. In reality, there would just be the association.

This is a scientific realist view of the situation and seems likely to be mistaken. Barbara Saunders has a trenchant critique of the Berlin/Kay view here. — mcdoodle

Can you please cite the parts of the article you linked to which discredits the views of Manzotti?

color names do not change the colors one sees — Manzotti

Also take a look at this. It seems that people can still perceive colors, even when they group them differently.

You don't seem to apprehend the fact that the mind creates these associated impressions. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, the mind is a no-thing as far as I'm concerned. What is "mind"? Until it's clarified what that even means, you're saying nonsense by the "mind" creates.

This is very evident from the fact that an individual's memory of a certain event will change as time passes, such that an event from last week will be remembered in a particular way, but if the person still remembers that event in thirty years from now, the memory will most likely not be the same. That is because to remain the same, the memory must be recollected in the exact same way each time. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, so this constant conjunction isn't always the same. There must be an input from the imagination to fill in gaps of vagueness.

That's not at al what the article actually says: — Metaphysician Undercover

That's what Tim Parks says, I don't care about him. He's interviewing the other guy. What the other guy says matters, Tim is just making noise there.

Notice in particular the phrases "language inside our heads", and "we call this thinking". — Metaphysician Undercover

And you ought to notice how the other guy corrects him. So read it more carefully, I can't do that for you.

Parks: But we were talking about words, Riccardo, not sofas and armchairs! Last time we talked about thinking things directly; this time we’re considering thinking in language, which is surely different.

Manzotti: Not at all. Words are really not so different from sofas and armchairs. They are external objects that do things in the world and, like other objects, they produce effects in our brains and thus eventually, through us, in the world. The only real difference is that, when it comes to what we call thinking, words are an awful lot easier to juggle around and rearrange than bits of furniture.

This is actually where the obfuscation is, because the article is talking about words within our heads. — Metaphysician Undercover

Nope.

From another interview:

But the implications of this “official” view are profound. First it suggests our perceptions are radically separate from the external world, fenced off inside the skull. Second, and as a result, that we all live in error and need the authority of science to tell us what reality is really like. So it gives scientists considerable power. — Parks (with my bolds)

Right, so maybe what we need to do is to get beyond the idea that consciousness is a “representation” of the world at all. Maybe it is simply reality. Maybe, as I hinted at the beginning, we have to do away with that subject/object distinction which lies behind this whole discussion. — Manzotti

Words in the mind are representations of the physical things. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's already obfuscation. The point of the article was that "words" are actually physical sounds. So they are not representations at all. So when I hear "apple", I experience the idea of apple - because there is a constant conjunction, due to habit, between hearing apple (experience 1) and feeling the conjoined properties of an actual apple, however vague (experience 2). So we're back to the Humean understanding where there are impressions and ideas (which are nothing but copies of impressions). Otherwise, we have the problem of explaining how it is that a sound can represent a taste + a sight + all the rest.

If that is the case, then we have a bit of a problem, because it seems that we have ideas for which there are no corresponding impressions. For we never have an impression of, for example, individuation. It is true that the impressions which we do have are individuated, but where is the impression of individuation itself? So then either individuation is a concept that emerges from other concepts (space, time, etc.) or it is a primary concept itself. From whence does such a concept originate? What does it mean to say that our mind has a capacity to abstract this concept from the impressions themselves? And if we were to say that, then it would follow that we do know something a priori about the impressions, namely that they are by necessity individuated.

Memory itself is another obfuscation. All that I mean by memory is precisely the habit of experiencing an actual apple however vaguely, everytime I hear the sound "apple". So memory is formed precisely of this constant conjunction - that is what memory is. Now the real question is why is there such a constant conjunction through time? Just cause our mind associates impressions that occur together with each other? And if so, what is this "mind" of ours, and why does it happen to have this property to associate impressions?

[delete]

For you maybe not; but then perhaps you are not possessed by such urges that are due to neurochemical imbalances, as some others are. You really have no way of knowing what it is like. — Janus

Hmm, arguably I was possessed by such urges at one point, when I was diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder and OCD. But over time the compulsions disappeared - at first they didn't disappear, but I stopped giving in to them even though I felt them. And over time I stopped feeling them completely. That's why I say that it's one of the things you have to learn to manage. Mindfulness and meditation were very helpful for me.

These issues are interesting. I think most doctors do not spend sufficient time with their patients (due to the way this work is bureaucratically structured) to be able to help them really change. The brain has neuroplasticity, which basically allows old habits to change into new habits. So, as long as someone has consciousness, there will always be a gap between impulse and response, which can allow the brain to use its neuroplasticity to change.

For example - you may not be able to get significant results in whatever mental illness you're facing by going 1-2hours/week to a doctor or professional. But if you lived with that professional 24/7 and you were the only patient in his or her care, then I'm quite certain that we'd see very different results.

So, from the inside, a mental illness of the likes of GAD or OCD feels like the whole world is different than in its absence. So curing it feels like looking out the window and seeing the tree red, and suddenly you don't see it red anymore, you see it normally. That's the kind of difference we're talking about.

And I think really these problems are often entrenched habits of mind, and the patient has to break out of the habit as it were, which is often very difficult. Bringing this into awareness though, that takes effort, and mindfulness is very helpful for that.

By 'social engagement' I am not necessarily speaking about bodily interaction, and much less about frivolous bodily interaction like going to parties and the like. — Janus

Well, neither am I. I consider things like this forum, talking over the phone, etc. as equally social interaction. But you must actually interact with another person in real-time. So I would not consider reading a book social interaction, or painting in your home, etc.

If someone has a rich creative and/or intellectual life, then they will be profoundly socially engaged, even if they do not bodily interact with people much. — Janus

It's hard to think of a situation since we usually do need the rest of society to survive. But suppose someone was living alone in a hut in the jungle, and they were also a poet. Would they be actively socially engaged? And how?

I have a feeling you consider things like reading and writing poetry to be social engagement, even if you do them entirely alone, without input from others. Why is that?

Not to mention it wouldn't have those ridiculous heat expending ears — StreetlightX

It would not be optimal, but it wouldn't be ridiculous. Keep in mind that the ears aren't the mechanism via which the elephant regulates internal temperature (relative to metabolism rate, the ears are really insignificant). Hippos don't have giant ears. They have tiny ears. So this aspect of the video is another joke - they just imagine the ears have big surface area in order to release more heat. It's easy to think you know when you just imagine nice little solutions to all problems that you have, without bothering to check if your imaginings are also true, and how they fit in the larger context.

Now it is more likely that the elephant's ears have to do with the fact that elephants are often found in very hot climates and are exposed to the sun for a long time. If the elephants were found in more moderate climates, they would most likely not need big ears. In fact, I'm right.

Err, bodily regulation happens with values within expected ranges for a particular animal's environmental niche - a change from mouse to elephant and vice versa would be orders of magnitude different. — StreetlightX

It is true that bodily regulation happens within limits - for example a human heart cannot beat at 100,000bpm - but it can beat at 600bpm in atrial fibrillation for example.

However, you are wrong that these limits are governed by expected ranges for a particular animal's environmental niche. More like they are functions of physical limits. If a heart beats too fast, the muscle will break for example. It's a mechanical limit that is under discussion, has zero to do with the environment. In other words, it's something to do with the material's physical resistance.

No amount of regulation would prevent near-instantaneous death. — StreetlightX

It would depend how fast or slow they are shrunk or grown (over what time period). However, even if they do die, it would not be from overheating or freezing, and that's almost guaranteed. Organisms can self-regulate those aspects of themselves quite easily.

bulk as it heart beats its body to death at ten times the rate of an elephant. — charleton

>:O >:O >:O

In your universe of medieval science maybe. You clearly have no understanding of what determines heart rate. The brain monitors if cells are getting as much oxygen as they need, and if they don't, heart rate increases. It's a negative feedback loop that balances it. The heart won't keep beating faster if all cells are getting sufficient oxygen. When the human body is at rest, the heart beats at 60bpm - when it is running for its life, the heart rate may be at even 200 bpm. How the hell does the body change that eh? Mystery no? >:O

It's because living things aren't mechanisms - that's why this ancient silly scientism is a joke. We're not in the middle ages when we think of things being the stupid dry mechanisms that this guy often portrays them to be in his videos.

So if the hamster gets enlarged to elephant size, its brain would detect that the now bigger heart (which pumps more blood in one go), doesn't need to pump as fast to fulfill the oxygen needs of cells. So it will slow it down significantly. This is almost 100% certain.

Don't forget the thick legs, man, thick legs! — Janus

Ok, to clarify, obviously I was wrong to say that they could have evolved in an environment like Earth's, having to compete for resources with other animals like hamsters. The small elephant would be, relative to the hamster, much slower, so it would have much greater difficulty to get to food compared to the latter.

However - I was not wrong in the sense that there is nothing contradictory physically with an elephant being the size of a hamster. In other words, provided that such a creature had access to food and didn't have to compete for it, it would survive and live.