Conflict Resolution

Let us start by supposing that there are two opposing opinions on some matter. Is there a tried and true universally applicable method of determining for ourselves what's best to believe regarding the subject matter? — creativesoul

My emphasis, and probably not the OP's, in which case apologies for going off topic. Anyways...

Something often missed is a variety of advantages which may be enjoyed by a discourse that tolerates both of two opposed opinions on some matter. I don't say that pointing this out will necessarily lead to world peace, but I do wonder whether the extent (admittedly partial) of its observable application might deserve further scrutiny.

An obvious hoped-for benefit (of the mentioned toleration) is the peaceful co-existence of the disputants. But then, an associated cost is a notional divide between matters of fact and of opinion, which is of course a price almost universally thought to be worth paying. And so the conflict is merely deferred: have your opinions about this or that regardless of mine, but expect your factual claims to stand or fall against mine.

What we usually fail to notice is that our disagreements about certain cases, if they are the intrinsically unclear ones, are often the largely unconscious method by which we keep the overall shape of the discourse in good repair, so that our usage of mutually exclusive terms remains just that.

We disagree about borderline cases of, say, "acceptable abortion" not necessarily to ensure the "correct" judgment in those cases: even though that might be exactly what we think we are doing, such that if only we had our way... etc. The disagreements serve, rather, to maintain the myth (or social construct) of an extension of the word or concept, made all the more realistic by its having a fuzzy border: cases that are variously judged to be both included and not included. That in itself might be useful for the discourse; but what it also probably helps with is the parallel maintenance of the extension of a mutually exclusive concept, perhaps "murder".

To the extent (debatable no doubt) that "abortion" and "murder" are recognised as mutually exclusive, the borderline cases of each fix a theoretical limit on the possible reach of the other. Any even alleged abortion then exemplifies (in the discourse) a clear enough case of non-murder. And likewise, any alleged case of murder is a clear non-case of abortion. What we can offer the recalcitrant extremists on either side, as an incentive to join in the discourse on this basis, is the surprising prospect of opinions creating complete unanimity with respect to judgements of clear non-cases, and therefore the impossibility of pointing certain words at certain cases, exactly as those same opinions seem to be expressing a free choice of what words to point at what cases. Not only do the enemy camps share common ground but their battles maintain it in good condition.

The surprising result is explained when we notice that disagreements about borderline cases are themselves negotiated, because each party agrees (implicitly) to agree which judgements are real events inside the discourse, and which ones are, as exemplified by attempts to point "black" at white, or "murder" at abortion, simply invalid, and (literally) not counted. So speech acts will not be more (or less) defiant of others than is good for their credibility as contributions to the implicit shared project.

Another, probably less emotive, example is consciousness. Ok, even more emotive...

Common sense — fdrake

"that repository of ancient error"

The First Chair

A small
Rickety
Wooden chair

Sits in
The shadowy
Corner. — I like sushi

Sure, a poem why not... but, given the title, should you be calling it a chair, already?

And then, the adjectives... are they wise? Don't they sound a bit childish? Couldn't you "show not tell"? (E.g. "below their knees" for "small"; "swaying" or "moving" for "rickety".)

Hey, criticism is fun! I wonder if receiving it will be quite as much so...

The ‘First Chair’ here is, funnily enough, a means to furnish a narrative — I like sushi

"Funnily enough" as in, "what a coincidence"? I don't quite follow. And, a means for you, here, or for people generally?

that reveals something intrinsically human about our modes of thinking and how they adapt. No one really thinks there was some ‘First Chair,’ a eureka moment where an inspired carpenter rushed to their workshop to fashion their furniture idea. — I like sushi

Cool.

Such is merely a flight of fancy to highlight — I like sushi

Again, a means by which you in particular or people generally may highlight...?

how humans have explored the space they’ve found themselves a part of, and apart from, and managed to extract and contain this space in varying states of permanence through which a common yet often unconscious need has expressed itself and perpetuated through multiple cultural iterations. — I like sushi

... Ok, I think I get the abstract stuff about extraction and re-forming to express unconscious needs, but I ought to check: the multiple cultural iterations are tools and furniture getting made and replaced...?

What would it have been to a human to create the very ‘First Chair’? Not merely to select a spot and sit down, but to actually fashion an item meant for the sole purpose of planting one’s posterior on. — I like sushi

Cool.

We could imagine a scene, millennia ago, where humans congregated at the day’s end to partake in social relations. They undoubtedly rested in this period, and therefore likely sat rather than stood. Would they have always sat in the same position or order relative to their fellows? Would that day’s achiever have had first choice of spot? Was there a strong social hierarchy involved that was symbolically reflected by each person’s position within the group? — I like sushi

I get this. :up:

Given the sparse dispersion of prehistoric humans it seems reasonable to assume — I like sushi

Fair enough, but you mean "infer" from the given, not assume?

that different cultural habits would’ve emerged where some tribe’s members — I like sushi

I think you mean some members of some one tribe but it's coming over like all members of some one tribe?

attached social value to ‘sitting positions’ as a marker for status, and others would’ve perhaps have been mostly, if not completely, unconcerned with such habits and rituals of daily social life. — I like sushi

Not sure whether you mean different tribes or a single tribe is dispersed, and whether the seating conventions were or weren't acknowledged throughout the tribe. Also the extra "have".

Such daily social occasions are clearly of high import to human society due to their frequency, — I like sushi

You mean their being "daily"? In which case is that called "redundant" and to be trimmed? "Such social... due to their being daily", or something?

All cool down to...

A nomadic lifestyle would mean prehistoric tribes would likely have only carried what was deemed ‘necessary’. A Chair would probably not have been deemed ‘necessary,’ — I like sushi

I'm not sure why you might expect a reader to buy that.

but soft materials to sit on and possibly a piece of material for support (be it a tool/weapon of some description) to form a more ‘purposeful’ sitting space: still, not a ‘chair’. To have meaningfully constructed a ‘chair’ would be something quite different. — I like sushi

Do you mean, not a "chair" in our sense of the word, or do you mean, not something clearly enough individuated (if that's the word) to be indicated by a general noun?

Ok, the next two paragraphs suggest (I think) the former: before the "chair" we had the "sitting space" or "seat" or "seating layout" and the innovation recognised by the etymological ancesters of "chair" was an object that helped to facilitate the moving of a whole seating layout (with of course all of its attendant social symbolism)? Is that what the "space in-itself" stuff is saying?

Not sure if I can read the last two paragraphs on that basis or not. So, interested to hear if I'm on track...

:cool:

the above is clearer. Hopefully? — Moliere

:up: :cool:

I was quite happily sampling Ground Zero in ten or 15-minute "bleeding chunks" (which I believe is the musicological term). Probably that was on the assumption I could then decide whether it was worth giving it a full 50 minute listen. Now though I'm far enough through to see why it was a particularly apt example (something about the 'dramatic arc'?), and also slightly ashamed that I shall now never have the experience of a first-listen-that-is-also-a-full-listen, if that makes sense?

Especially if that was,

the way the composer designed it to be heard — Julia

Ashamed is too strong, but...

Cool, it's up there in post #3, but I'll post subsequent edits down here. Reading yours now. Hopefully respond tomorrow.

time’s up! — I like sushi

Haha, I'm rubbish at deadlines. (I asked for an extension, but not so you would notice - my bad.)

Anyway, I reckon we might be interested in each other's efforts. Expect copious opinionating on your style and content, and I will (in principle, haha) likewise be glad of the stimulation to improve mine for a possible future (much shorter) OP. 1058 words (as yet).

Let's go along with this. The identity of a musical artwork is a set or class of sound-events identified through notation, recording, or both. — Moliere

I'm stretched on the carpet and purring...

So we could say, in the above that we heard the entire piece, at least. — Moliere

Hang on, though... not to be ungrateful but, is "the above" the OP? So you are agreeing after all with the suggestion that an instance of an artwork can be served up in two halves and still be an instance of the same artwork? :grimace:

I like how you [@TheMadFool] point out that when we push pause we're introducing something to our experience which the composer also uses in the artwork. That would be why the visual division served as analogue -- because the artist uses space in the case of paintings. — Moliere

:100: :party:

Still, I think I'm being won over by the identity theory posited by bongo fury, for now at least. — Moliere

Still?? Despite the preceding? But I'm totally on board with you and the @TheMadFool for that preceding paragraph. So, what's coming?...

Whereas pausing it does introduce a significant difference to the work of art, — Moliere

I'm saying that your pausing it does definitely create a (longer) sound event which fails to count as an instance of the artwork, just (roughly) as your butchering of the Picasso fails to count as a reproduction of the painting. It potentially though not inevitably impairs the aesthetic merits of your listening experience, which is of a sound event obviously related to but not instantiating the artwork.

the identity of the work of art is unchanged by my pausing it and starting it back up again. — Moliere

Well, in the sense that the artwork is still either the set of continuous plays of the recording or the set of complete realisations of the score, whether or not you facilitated one of those plays or realisations on this occasion, yes. But in the sense that you got both halves and therefore all of one of the continuous plays or realisations that multiply instantiate the artwork, no.

Hope that clarifies my position, and doesn't misrepresent @TheMadFool's.

:cool:

Cool, not sure I was even aware of the SEP article, so you've returned the favour in kind :up: Did you find the article on his aesthetics, specifically? There's a link near the top of the main article, which omits the aesthetics.

But I would recommend the main source, as it's perfectly concise also: https://monoskop.org/images/1/1b/Goodman_Nelson_Languages_of_Art.pdf. Page 114 and elsewhere for print-making from a plate... might be only in later books that he pretty plainly generalises that to photographic printing from a plate or negative. And very briefly to recorded music too.

It's interesting to me to think of music in these two different categories - the notational vs recorded — Moliere

Sure, but for me the crucial insight is that musical artworks are sound-events: or, usually, sets or classes of sound-events, identified either through notation or recording or both. As such they reward attention to fine detail and differences as much as any visual artworks, and for the same reasons. Having a criterion of identity by which to differentiate very similar physical objects or sets of objects that we mightn't otherwise have told apart is how we sharpen our senses. Which is why @TheMadFool is quite right that we are never invited to come back to a piece of music "right after the break". And why I was keen to read the OP as being about the identity of the stimulus, not the response.

Notice there's nothing essentialist about this. It all falls out directly from G's nominalism. Like prints from a plate, plays of a recording can differ noticeably. As you say: "pops" or other distortions. We live happily with them, and carry on our (typically) obsessive comparisons and discriminations on the basis of the "identity" of reproductions from the original master.

someone who has an ear for a particular orchestra or conductor likely has more narrow limits to someone who is just passingly familiar with some orchestral work. — Moliere

Yes, we don’t want to spend our time on just any correct realisations from a score: is that what you mean? And with or without the aid of recordings we make discriminating choices. They just aren't the kind that we can base on a criterion of identity. They shade into other aesthetic questions like expression and aesthetic merit, which are also addressed in the book, if you're interested.

Cheers

Any clue what I'm on about? — ztaziz

Sounds like what you already said. We notice more and more, and then maybe eventually less, and look for something new.

Cool but heading off-topic.

I wouldn't have noticed this pattern on listen 1? — ztaziz

Good point. Being exposed to a stimulus isn't always noticing it.

And 'hear' can mean notice. (As well as be-exposed-to: my preference in the OP.)

Even so, what we can notice depends on what we are exposed to. And "small" differences in what we are and aren't exposed to (e.g. between the genuine article and two halves of it delivered separately) often make the most difference aesthetically.

Not saying you were saying differently.

What then? — jamalrob

Decide whether the question is about whether or not we have encountered a complete and genuine instance of the artwork, or is instead one of any number of related questions about our processing of and response to whatever it is we have actually encountered.

I've never experienced a musical piece being aired on TV being interrupted by ads. [irony]Maybe they're too short[/irony] or [understatement]maybe[/understatement] the producers intuit that any interruption to a piece of music amounts to altering it. — TheMadFool

:100:

No — Noble Dust

:100:

yes you did hear the entire piece. That is to say every audible bit of it did reach your eardrums and your brain did process it. — Outlander

Often people differentiate between hearing and listening. — Outlander

:ok: But often, as in the OP, and my comments so far, listening is just hearing, or facilitating hearing.

But I wonder if there's some conceptual dimension here -- — Moliere

:ok:

-- like, is there something that spells out what a complete work is? — Moliere

For notational music, we potentially care about and often prize the differences between sound events that hang on "small" differences between notational descriptions. IOW the score is what spells it out. Although, we care about a lot else besides, of course.

With recorded music (whether notation-based or not) I think the situation is more like that of print-making and photography as analysed by Nelson Goodman: we prize the authenticity of sound events according to whether they trace back historically to a particular performance or, very often, an original master tape, or mix-down. Again, the identity of the work from instance to instance (from play to play, as from print to print) is important if "small" differences can be hugely consequential aesthetically.

I think I speak for both myself and @TheMadFool when I say we already agreed absolutely with all these implications of your OP for art and music, viz, the potential importance of experiencing the work as a whole.

I am guilty, possibly, of excessive understatement ("yes, except").

To hear an entire piece differing by one notational element is indeed to hear a different piece.

Some departures from notational correctness will be more consequential aesthetically than others, but I wasn't for a moment meaning to imply that fewer (e.g. a single) departures must be less consequential.

Did you hear the entire piece? — Moliere

Except for the single un-scored pause, yes.

To put it differently, you heard an entire piece differing (from the one you planned to hear) by one pause mark.

Hey... :gasp: yes! :100:

I find it interesting that you think that information only comes in the form of images, data, words, and symbols. — Harry Hindu

It's more that I don't trust "information" to facilitate communication in a discussion like this, and would rather gloss it in other terms.

What about neural firings? Is that information in the brain? — Harry Hindu

In the context of some theory of neural processes, no doubt.

If so, then information about what? — Harry Hindu

Action potentials in other neurons, I'm guessing.

Can neural firings be about the location of an apple relative to your body? — Harry Hindu

Not in any sense of "about" that I can trust to help us in the present discussion. I would suspect that this is where an unreliable usage of "information" has already attached you to an unnecessarily abstract and mentalist notion of a "view".

How? — Harry Hindu

Ah, well if this means you are sceptical too, on this point, all good.

It seems like you are confusing your sensitivity (the symbol) with the location (the symbolized). — Harry Hindu

Massive difference between our usages of "symbolism" (and hence "information"): I'm talking about language games of pointing words and pictures at things. Animals and artificial neural networks can be trained in all (e.g. navigational) sorts of skills without having to engage in any such games, which involve an altogether higher level of social interaction. Even with more old-fashioned automata, they can at least be programmed to perform, albeit to a lesser standard, and then of course we can certainly examine the game of word-pointing played by the programmers. But with the automata themselves, as with animals and artificial neural-networks, there is no such game. Until the neuro-scientists get involved, maybe. Then (maybe) some neurons get pointed (like words) at things.

Sounds like symbolism to me. Cue is just another name for symbol/signal. — Harry Hindu

See above. There could be symbolism in the human theory of the animal behaviour. But not in the behaviour itself. (Unlike with human behaviour, where the behaviour itself nearly always involves language games.)

Is the cue the same thing as the state of the environment, or are they different things? — Harry Hindu

The same.

Are you a solipsist? — Harry Hindu

No.

But you said that the illusion of consciousness doesn't happen. Is an illusion something that happens? — Harry Hindu

I agree that the fact that we think that, or entertain the illusion that, we have mental images does deserve explanation, yes. Hence my attempt at that. On the other hand, I can't agree that it's a fact that we have mental illusions in the form of mental images. — bongo fury

what are you talking about when you talk about "habits of interpretation" and "thinking in symbols"? — Harry Hindu

thinking in (as in, preparing to select or manipulate) symbols. — bongo fury

(For more and better, see Goodman's discussions, linked in my first.)

What is a mirage? How do you explain an illusion of a mirage within the illusion of consciousness using neural firings? — Harry Hindu

Again, I hope I didn't lead you to think that I'm saying that neural firings symbolise anything. To clarify: a mirage, just like an accurate perception, is somebody so shivering their neurons as to refine and adjust their readiness to select among symbols. Obviously, some circumstances (desert sun) lead, sporadically, to a disposition to select pictures deemed wholly inappropriate in revised circumstances. Other circumstances (refraction) lead to a similar mis-match, just more predictably.

Would you agree that the information in your "brain" includes objects' location relative to your brain, — Harry Hindu

Not sure why "brain" is in quotes, but no matter.

"The information in your brain", though... are we back to internal images, data, words, symbols? I'm not keen to agree to any assertions about what such alleged internal entities include and refer to: even though I can see how natural these assertions will seem to those who are comfortable with modelling the brain as a pre-neural-network symbolic computer.

Obviously my skills in navigating myself require somehow being sensitive to what in fact are specific locations etc. I don't see that a theory of internal representations is required to explain the sensitivity.

The swallow may fly south with the sun, not necessarily by consulting internal symbolic maps but, more likely, by inheriting and/or learning appropriate responses to all manner of environmental cues.

Pleasant and informative could apply to a mind with images. — Harry Hindu

Yes, but it could apply to me, too?

I need a description that couldn't be interpreted to apply to minds with images, because you say those things don't happen. What is discerning patterns in the images and other objects around you like? — Harry Hindu

Do you mean, what do I find when I try to examine and describe my thoughts and perceptions? As I was saying, although I'm as susceptible as anyone to conventional habits of interpretation which do tempt me into assuming ghostly entities inside me, I suspect that a more realistic account of the sense of / illusion of consciousness will probably focus on the effect of thinking in (as in, preparing to select or manipulate) symbols.

What's it like? A continual, habitual and no doubt efficacious confusion of thoughts (brain-shivers) with pictures, producing either (1) an "illusion of consciousness" in the sense of a mistaken belief in mental images and/or mental matter, or (2) a "sense of consciousness", a correct understanding of the essential difference (albeit fuzzy) between man and beast.

What is a view? — Harry Hindu

Well, the view from my window could (in one sense) mean my back garden, or it could mean an image of said garden created at said window. A photo, for example. Do you mean something else?

What is looking at this screen like for you? — Harry Hindu

Pleasant and informative. Good practice at discerning patterns in the images and other objects around me. And for you?

I'm asking you what scribble you are using to refer to the form the information about the world relative to your eyes takes. — Harry Hindu

"Scribble", "refer" and "eyes", I think I understand. Not even sure about scribble, though. Do you mean the actual image on the screen, or something mental, or internal?

Think about your view of the world.
— Harry Hindu

As an image, to be stored and retrieved?
— bongo fury

No. As the form the information about the world relative to your eyes takes. — Harry Hindu

So, not as an image? (Or just not as a kind of image you would or could store or retrieve?)

I hoped you wouldn't ask that one :confused:
— bongo fury
Why? Is it a stupid or difficult question? — Harry Hindu

Haha, difficult. Working on it. :nerd:

Would you say that dreams have images? — Harry Hindu

"Have"? They relate to them, sure. I am keener than you (apparently) to avoid implying that a dreaming brain literally contains them. Especially if they have to be "mental".

If you had a dream about a brain, could you draw a picture of it after you wake up? — Harry Hindu

Sure. (Although I'd want to gloss "of it" as, e.g., "interpreting it" rather than "copying it" or other notions suggesting the dream was composed of images.)

But the external image itself is an object (a picture, polaroid, drawing, etc.) that represents other objects. — Harry Hindu

Yep. (Although of course many don't, e.g. pictures of unicorns, and abstract expressionist paintings.)

How did your brain learn to represent things if it isn't something that it already does? — Harry Hindu

Not clear what you consider the brain to have learnt, here... to participate in a language game of pointing actual words and pictures at things (my preference), or to host mental words and pictures that point at things?

Would you say that a computer that performs facial recognition has an image in its working memory that it measures and compares to the measurements of other images in it's long-term memory? — Harry Hindu

A pre-neural-network symbolic computer, yes. But that model no longer seems so appropriate in psychology.

Think about your view of the world. — Harry Hindu

As an image, to be stored and retrieved?

Do you need to commit to mental components?
— bongo fury

No, you just experience. — schopenhauer1

Okydoke, I shouldn't have taken this,

The hard question goes beyond this and asks "How are the physical components equivalent to mental components". How is what you are saying addressing that? — schopenhauer1

... too literally.

Fair enough, you are committed to the existence of mental images as such.
— bongo fury

This is not something I have to be committed to. — schopenhauer1

Also fair enough. Are we then back to here,

Then why are we even talking of pictures in the head?
— schopenhauer1

For my part, I thought they were included among your alleged "mental components"? — bongo fury

?

Do you need to commit to mental components?

What are dreams? — Harry Hindu

I hoped you wouldn't ask that one :confused:

Ok.

There was never a standard model of brain function, at least not anything analogous to the standard model of particle physics. — jkg20

Haha, yes I was being a tad sweeping there, wasn't I.

I still haven't been corrected on my neurons reference either...

What is this entertaining of the illusion.. You are just pushing the goal-post and playing with language by saying "entertain the illusion" rather than "illusion". — schopenhauer1

I was only trying to explain that on previous occasions when you might have thought I was committing to mental entities, I wasn't.

It doesn't matter because the "hypothesis" is not the "feeling of" of the images. — schopenhauer1

So... it does matter. Fair enough, you are committed to the existence of mental images as such.

:ok:

Do I honestly need to point out that even if you're watching a film about neurons, it's still composed entirely of internal images? — neonspectraltoast

You need to explain it, too, I'm afraid. "Internal" thus far has meant intra-cranial. The film was composed of images on a screen several metres away.

Exactly, what is the relationship between the film show and the neurons if not a relationship of representation? — Harry Hindu

Well, sure. That was my point. That's how I learnt about the neurons. And?

If I asked you to draw a picture of neurons, then where would you be getting your image from to duplicate with paper and pencil? — Harry Hindu

I don't store and retrieve images, though. (You're excused for assuming I do, as it was the standard model of brain function before the neural network revolution.) I train myself to select among and produce actual, external images to be appropriate representations of (actual) objects.

It seems like we are saying the same thing - that you are un-afflicted and I am. — Harry Hindu

No. Like you, I'm gifted with symbolic/referential skills, and hence afflicted with the temptation to believe I experience internal illusions and images. We disagree over whether to accept that these internal things exist.

We agree that brain shivers happen. Perhaps we can agree to call them "thoughts". Where we then diverge is on the question how these thoughts relate to images (e.g. visual ones). Tradition and common sense suggest we identify thoughts directly with actual images swimming in some mysterious extra-physical medium called a mind. I identify them with adjustments in the disposition of the organism to select among actual images and objects, these adjustments habitually but not inevitably accompanied by thoughts that maintain the traditional myth. My original post was a suggestion how to begin to form more realistic habits of thought about one's thoughts.

Then this is the result one would expect when a non-p-zombie attempts to communicate the concept of "mind" to a p-zombie. You are a p-zombie and I am not, hence your lack of understanding of what I am talking about. — Harry Hindu

I suppose that is a plausible sci-fi scenario. I think a more realistic one would restrict "p-zombie" to creatures un-afflicted, or un-gifted, with the symbolic, referential skills that create the illusion of an internal illusion.

Your argument is as faulty as saying "I am not writing these words right now". — schopenhauer1

That may be, but is it faulty in the same way? Is something I said false for the same reason your statement (or the token of it you were then writing) is false?

The fact that we "think" we have illusions has to be explained. — schopenhauer1

I want to say I agree with that, but there's a danger we then misunderstand each other. I agree the fact that we think that, or entertain the illusion that, we have mental images does deserve explanation, yes. Hence my attempt at that. On the other hand, I can't agree that it's a fact that we have mental illusions in the form of mental images.

It is a fact that there appears to be mind happening. — schopenhauer1

Again, I agree that there do appear words and brain-shivers preparing words to that effect. I disagree that something called a mind makes an appearance on some scene.

That is the illusion itself. — schopenhauer1

Again, two ways to take this. "That" is the psychological account we are disputing? The hypothesis about some internal illusion or film show? Or is "that" the disputed internal images themselves? You want to conflate the two, and so you think that I'm admitting an internal, mental illusion/film-show, and no wonder you're incredulous when the next moment I deny that. But I wasn't admitting that, at all.

Then nerve firings are a kind of film show? I don't get it. — Harry Hindu

It was a film about nerve firings.

Both of what? — Harry Hindu

Mind and an inner film show, as actual non-fictional things.

Why would you call it a "film show"? — Harry Hindu

If the "it" here refers to the projections onto a screen in the lecture hall I sat in, then "film show" just seems the appropriate description. If the "it" refers to some brain-shivers then we could discuss whether "film show" is an appropriate way to describe them; I would think not. Wasn't me. If the it refers to a thing you call "a mind", or some "mental images", then we have to deal with our disagreement about what we are talking about, because I don't accept the existence of such things. So again, not me, calling that thing a film show.

I should clarify: "inner film show" I did identify with "mental images", but only to explain that I don't accept either of them as actual non-fictional things. Which is to say, again, there are no mental components to describe (appropriately or not) as a film show.

But you only know of nerve firings thanks to your "inner film show". — Harry Hindu

I would have to disagree. I know of them thanks to sitting my actual self in an actual theatre and watching an actual film show.

To even relate the mind to an "inner film show" means that — Harry Hindu

But I'm questioning both, of course.

Everyone recognizes that characters in books are fictional. Trying to convince us that other people are fictional is a different matter. — neonspectraltoast

I wasn't. I only said the alleged film show and theatre and audience are all fictional.

What is the nature of non-existent fictional characters in a work of fiction?
— bongo fury

Certainly not the basis for all we can see, taste, hear, feel, and imagine. — schopenhauer1

I don't see why actual fictions (such as the actual reporting of non-existent fictional film shows in non-existent fictional theatres with non-existent fictional audiences) can't be the basis for perfectly good inferences about the actual world, and about it's actual inhabitants who do actually report their actual experiences in fictional terms, but actually make the perfectly good inferences. (As well as some wrong ones.)

So what is the nature of this non-existent fictional images and audio and homunculi? — schopenhauer1

What is the nature of non-existent fictional characters in a work of fiction?

If you say you don't have anything like reportable internal events, you would be the first conscious person to do so. — schopenhauer1

I guess my spoken and thought (sub-vocalised) words are evidence of brain events, but you wouldn't say they describe those events? So, no, I don't see how I or anyone can report on their brain events.

So I can only surmise that here...

The theater in the brain is reported. What are they reporting? — schopenhauer1

... you meant specifically reports of a theater in a different place - in a mind?

And then you ask if I dare to deny having reports of this nature to file?

I don't deny having filed such reports most of my life. But I do insist they were all fictional: concerning non-existent images and audio, and too often also non-existent homunculi.

And I must stress: it's not that the visions I reported turned out to be hallucinations, visions with no veracity, it's that I made up having the visions at all.

We don't think, yet here we are thinking. — schopenhauer1

I don't say we don't think. Unless you are saying zombies don't think?

How is it the nerve-firings are these fictions? — schopenhauer1

But the nerve firings actually happen. Your inner film show doesn't. That's what I'm saying, anyway.

Maybe there are "illusionists" who come close to agreeing with you that the inner film show happens in some illusory way. In which case I understand your exasperation, as I say here.

But I'm becoming ever more convinced that it's an illusion in the sense of not happening.

Then why are we even talking of pictures in the head? — schopenhauer1

For my part, I thought they were included among your alleged "mental components"?

"What" is this "fiction we get into the habit of acknowledging"? — schopenhauer1

The picture in the head. It doesn't happen.