Rather more on topic...

"That truth is greatest or truest which expresses most, which includes most successfully within itself a number of diverse and by themselves conflicting points of view."
~R.G. Collingwood, Truth and Contradiction

I'm merely pointing out the limits of our relation to the answers, that some answers require a drastic change in perception in order to know where to look and where to conduct the further research. — Christoffer

Thomas Kuhn's paradigm shift.

Still there can be no science without art:

"For Collingwood, art is the beginning of the process by which we create the self and the world. The distinctions between the self and the world and between the world as discovered and the world as made only occur at the level of intellect. However, for intellect to function, there must first be art."
~Richard Murphy, Collingwood and the Crisis of Western Civilization

If science is a tool then it is susceptible of improper use, like any other tool.

We lack enough comprehension to fully grasp the implications of what we objectively know. And therefor we lack in the instinct which guides us towards further knowledge. — Christoffer

Which is why it is so important not to overestimate the scope of our empirical "knowledge". What is real now might not cover what is real tomorrow.

What usually comes to mind for me about energy is how scale influence the perception of entropy. — Christoffer

I wonder too about time, whether time at micro-scales is even a well-defined property.

A society which thinks, as our own thinks, that it has outlived the need of magic, is either mistaken in that opinion, or else it is a dying society, perishing for lack of interest in its own maintenance.
~R.G. Collingwood, Principles of Art

Collingwood and the Crisis of Western Civilisation: Art, Metaphysics and Dialectic
Richard Murphy

A Harlot High and Low
Honoré de Balzac

Is there a sense in which consciousness overflows its symbolic representations? Empirical knowledge is precisely reflected in exhausted by what is symbolically represented. However consciousness can know some things in a way that seems to transcend empirical encapsulation of this kind. The fact that it can "know" that something can be brought about by conducting itself counterfactually, for example, acting "against" the way things are in order to bring about something different. So does intuitive knowledge transcend empirical encapsulation? Or is it in fact such an encapsulation itself?

Presently, I am focusing on consciousness as a builder by way of being a boundary administrator. The boundary negotiations work towards construction of a representation of reality. — ucarr

Conceptually, this is cogent. But it still begs the question of the exact nature of the representation construct. I view it in light of what I'd call "constructive realism".

Math...among other things. But are we talking about the conscious experience qua representation, or are we talking about some kind of construct - presumably a material-symbolic artefact - that instantiates or incorporates this conscious experience?

Is it strictly mental, or does it also inhabit the empirical realm of practical physics? — ucarr

To me this seems like asking the question, Is the "representation" real? It seems incontrovertibly to be so, the question being posed (by the representing faculty). Our increasing mastery of quantum phenomena being solid evidence.

If you are suggesting that consciousness functions as an organizational principle of reality I'd agree that is evident.

Actually quantum phenomena are being practically harnessed at rapid rate, beginning with transistors and cascading throughout modern electronics. But also of course being increasingly recognized as operating in nature, including organic nature. Most recently, the realization that microtubules in the brain can sustain quantum states supporting Penrose's hypothesis. So I would hazard that more than just the construction of a picture of reality is going on. Constructing reality itself perhaps. However, undoubtedly constructing the picture is a significant part of that project.

I completely agree consciousness crosses the quantum-classical bridge; I just don't know whether it therefore builds that bridge. Certainly quantum phenomena are not a discrete and isolated realm, because they not only do manifest directly at the classical level, but are increasingly being exploited (by consciousness) in advanced technologies.

The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays
by John Dewey

When we look at the world at the scale of QM, we’re looking at pre-cognitive reality without the benefit of the formatting by reality’s boundary administrator, our consciousness. — ucarr

Why should this be the case? On the one hand, you seem to be presenting a metaphysics of consciousness as a natural feature of reality. But then you seem to fall back on a more anthropomorphic interpretation.

Perhaps consciousness does exemplify an "executive" function (oversees boundary negotiations). But another way to phrase it would be that it is a "function of" those operations.

In the Days of the Comet
by H.G. Wells

I think pretty much everybody who is alive is pro-life. The so-called "pro-life" movement is really "anti-abortion". If it is an issue of personal responsibility, then it is and should be a personal choice. If it is an issue of social responsibility, then the world is becoming increasingly overpopulated, in a way which increasingly threatens the health and well-being of many, as well as the biosphere. In which case it is a reasonable choice.

Little Dorrit
by Charles Dickens

So - is there a connection between biosemiosis and this broader understanding of evolution? — T Clark

My take is that biosemiosis is essentially the materialization of understanding. So expanding it becomes a kind of self-understanding that embraces and constitutes reality at the deepest levels, through/as the mechanism of semiotic feeback.

I'm currently reading about biosemiotics. It is the science of signification that stretches across the biological domain, the logical extension of Lorenz's ideas you mentioned. The grandfather of biosemiotics is Jakob von Uexkull. Biosemiotician Barbieri notes that von Uexkull's Umwelt:

had an influence on...Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger...and was instrumental for Konrad Lorenz's development of ethology.

I'm trying to expand the notion of biosemiotics to embrace the entire material domain, not just the biological (a la Terrence Deacon).

We are free to act on our will, but not free to choose our will.... We are our will, who would be the "we" apart from our will that wants to change the will. — ChatteringMonkey

Yes, we have an inherent disposition. In many ways, this is akin to having (being) a perspective. How does this not make sense conceptually? And just because we have a disposition, why should this mean we are not free to change our disposition? Your argument is like saying that a sailboat being driven by a northerly wind is not able to change its course.

Introduction to Biosemiotics: The New Biological Synthesis
by Marcello Barbieri

I think the most compelling idea in the book is there there is a direct continuity between the "cognition" of the earliest animals and the cognition of complex animals such as us. — T Clark

What is your interpretation of "direct continuity"? I feel there is a "direct continuity" between individual consciousnesses, their socio-cultural encodings, and their subsequent re-encodings (as subsequent individual consciousnesses). Like that?

A Journal of the Plague Year
by Daniel Defoe

Civilization and Capitalism 15th-18th Century, Vol. 1: The Structures of Everyday Life
by Fernand Braudel

The C.S. Peirce collection was edifying. From the perspective of a voracious intellect, Peirce consistently demarcates the different spheres of scientific, logical, and metaphysical inquiry:

the scientific man...ardently desires to have his present, provisional beliefs (and all his beliefs are merely provisional) swept away (312)
the conclusions of science make no pretense to being more than probable (326)
Metaphysics [is] an observational science (313)
that which has been inconceivable today has often turned out to be indisputable on the morrow (332)

Peirce also suggests that there is an overarching kind of reason that encompasses the totality of our experiences, something that is neither reducible nor amenable to scientific expression. For me, this is a fundamental truism.

The Expedition of Humphry Clinker
by Tobias Smollett

A Norton Critical Edition I happened across. Includes a critical essay by Sir Walter Scott I'll probably read first.

(a) How do you know (i.e. corroborate) that you or any other agent is "conscious" if "consciousness" is completely, inaccessibly subjective?
— 180 Proof

cogito, ergo sum — Wayfarer

:smile:

Well, apparently you're too lazy to think — 180 Proof

You mean like when you asked me to explain Mario Bunge's metaphysical concept of energy and I provided a link to his text and you told me "never mind" because you were too lazy to read his essay? Ok. Sure.

I'm not really sure why you even bother to engage people who are legitimately trying to offer good commentary only to mock and belittle them. It's not productive. You are definitely the Donald Trump of philosophy. You strike me as the kind of person who would tattoo "Prove me wrong" on his forehead. Maybe that could be your avatar.

Straight-forward, relevant questions are beyond you. Gotcha — 180 Proof

I'm sorry, what exactly was the question again? All I saw was more of your trademark wit, but no actual philosophical commentary of any kind. I substantiated my position anyway.

Inasmuch as you didn't see fit to amplify it I took it that way and responded appropriately. What I thought was funny was that you didn't bother to offer any comment.

Mary's room. — Lionino

Is based on a faulty premise that one can acquire "all the physical facts" that there are about something. Which is implied by my further comments on the inherently compartmentalized and abstract-approximate nature of scientific knowledge in general.

In short, experience overflows our knowledge of it, which is self-evident to me. I know there are some people who think they "know it all" though. They don't.

Life is largely anecdotal [sophistry].
— Pantagruel
Yeah, like your posts ... care to try again? — 180 Proof

Sure.

"Practical Science...is philosophy, which deals with positive truth, indeed, yet contents itself with observations such as come within the range of every man's normal experience, and for the most part, in every waking hour of his life....These observations escape the untrained eye precisely because they permeate our whole lives...."
CS Peirce, "Philosophy and the Sciences"

Indeed, I find Peirce's views to be entirely consonant with my own with respect to the fundamentally limited and approximate character of scientific knowledge, compared with the plenary nature of both reality and our phenomenological experience of it. Peirce is also careful to distinguish between the experimental endeavour, versus just "reading about" something, which I also endorse.

In short, scientific reasoning, if it is legitimate, inherently acknowledges that its results are always open for further correction. And it also acknowledges that there are dimensions and aspects of reality of which it is wholly uninformed. If it doesn't, it is just dogmatism, mere dogmatism.

Not everything that can be proven can be proven at this moment, just like not everything that can be rebutted can be rebutted at this moment. Life is largely anecdotal. For someone with a formidable intellect, you are remarkably unimaginative.

Of course it's relevant! It is not a "glaring issue" that Aristotle is avoiding. The question of the ethics of a species that is by its nature unethical makes no sense. It is asking how something bad is good. — Fooloso4

:up:

Quite right. From an organic perspective, the only analog to a "devil species" would be "some species that human beings don't like". Which means nothing. Every species is integral to the biosphere in some way. It is a meaningless investigation, either of species or of ethics.

If so, then what makes "consciousness" mine? If it's not mine, then why should "consciousness" matter to me? If, however, "consciousness" is mine, then what does "trans-individual" mean and why should it matter to me? — 180 Proof

I watched a small murder of crows spooked from their foraging recently. They dispersed in a strategic fashion, the majority heading to a distant safe perch, two scouts remaining closer to the scene. All the while calling and responding to one another. It was evidently highly coordinated, a social entity, an organism, a macroscopic brain.

We are unquestionably already cooperative collective entities. Cells form organisms form colonies. There is no individual apart from the collective, nor vice-versa.

Thought...must presuppose communication.
Man is essentially a social animal.
~ Charles Sanders Peirce

The idea that we need to confirm our subjective experiences in controlled settings or they're not veridical is ridiculous on its face. — Sam26

:up:

Specifically, subjective experience overflows or transcends controlled settings exactly as concrete reality overflows and transcends the artificially constrained environments within which alone experimental science proceeds (and which render all scientific results as merely a set of ever-improving approximations).

I think the whole idea of consciousness "surviving death" is misleading. What is plausible is that consciousness transcends the apparent physical boundaries of the individual organism. It is a feature of a larger system. It isn't so much about surviving death as never having been entirely constrained by the limits of the purely individual organism to begin with. Consciousness, in its essence, is imminently trans-individual.

"People who want philosophy ladled out to them can go elsewhere"
~C.S. Peirce

Then you are not talking about intentionality as it is commonly and predominantly understood. So we are talking past each other. I am only interested in intentionality as it is largely understood. Your view of intentionality strips out the essence of intention and swaps it for causality; which of no use when we analyze the intentions of someone. — Bob Ross

If you concede that our intentions can be imperfectly realized, as you said, then it follows that what we are trying to do is at least as well exemplified by our actions as by our putative objectives. It is in this sense that Aldous Huxley, for example, argues in Ends and Means that the end cannot justify the means but, rather, that the means employed must be consistent with (representative of) the intended ends.

Philosophical Writings of Peirce
by Charles Sanders Peirce