Do you have free will regarding your thoughts? Well, first notice that your thoughts occur linearly through time in succession — Paul Michael

This would be your first mistaken assumption. People do not think purely sequentially. Trivially, the Zeigarnik effect shows this, where the mind tends to continue to work on unsolved or unresolved problems until it reaches a solution, when you suddenly remember the name of an actor that escaped you in conversation yesterday, for example. Eureka.

De Anima
by Aristotle

:up:

I feel uncomfortable having to make a choice between "what is understood" and "the way in which it is understood" because they go hand in hand in all branches of knowledge but if I were forced to pick one, I'd go with "the way in which it is understood". — TheMadFool

Do you think that there could be such a thing as "transformative knowledge?" They talk about the "Copernican Revolution" which marks the paradigm shift to a heliocentric understanding. To me, that seems like an example where expertise, as you call it, begins to alter the basic nature of our understanding, via the relationship between the individual thinker and the universe.

How could that be a difference? — Heiko

Well, in some sense objective contents are "digested" and assimilated/accommodated to contribute to the subjective makeup, so both things occur. I guess I'm really trying to wrap my head around whether having a comparatively limited foundation of objective understanding would necessarily limit the subjective experience in other important ways? I'm reading De Anima next, which I suppose will help answer that.

You used a pretty great example, the distinction between using science and inventing science. I am just digesting that...

. He is modelling how to use language during the work of inquiry. — Paine

Like a kind of generalized methodology,. I agree with the idea that knowledge is meant to be enacted. It fits with my focus on genuine beliefs (which intend towards something with true investment) vs. merely hypothetical beliefs, which appeal to logical possibility.

I don't really think so. I don't think that the average person living today understands how the world works better than Aristotle. — T Clark

So then you would place a much higher value on the subjective aspect of experience, relative to the meaning of the objective aspect? A Shakespeare play cast in a modern setting has the same meaning, plus that meaning transcends those settings and is more important than them?

Sure, we know more stuff now than they did back then, but we aren't smarter or wiser. Today we use science — T Clark

Ok, granted. Much of what it means to be human is to interact with the humans around you. In fact, I argue that all of it does. If you are Paul Dirac, you still measure your life by the daily interactions with friends and family, traditional activities, etc. Or you live in a very lonely reality.

But still, that actually increased grasp of something must mean something at the social level too. Material knowledge must be quantifiable in some subjectively meaningful sense.

When I was studying artificial neural networks in the 90s it seemed evident to me that the way that the so-called "hidden layers" worked pointed to a correlation of properties between entities or phenomena that, to the human mind, were unavailable. ie. the classic "mine-rock discriminator" detects an otherwise unobservable "dimension" in which mines and rocks are uniquely differentiated.

Basically, any set of features or characteristics that can be used to identify and discriminate constitutes a dimension.

The Story of Psychology
by Morton Hunt

Well, logic is a function of human reason. Aspects of quantum theory are definitely counter-intuitive, you could interpret them as being also illogical, in the same sense.

Meaning you can't disprove one metaphysical position with another one.

Of course, the scientific method itself is fundamentally a methodology which doesn't necessarily have metaphysical implications. ie. Science openly admits its status as provisional and approximate. Science is consistent with material reductionism, but it doesn't imply it......

The universe doesn't give a damn if it follows our logic or not. — Manuel

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The Psychology of Intelligence
by Jean Piaget

Is racism natural? — Lil

Is being an asshole natural? Or is having the disposition to be an asshole natural?

I think almost everything is learned behaviour.

I tend to agree with Aristotle's approach (Metaphysics, Book One):

the wise man is he who can comprehend difficult things, such as are not easy for human comprehension (for sense-perception, being common to all, is easy, and has nothing to do with Wisdom)

It opens the door for me to the idea of "cognitive effort" or will, which has both empirical and normative aspects.

I wouldn't agree on that, my personal view is that:
1. Conscious mind is a biological phenomena
2. Animals are less conscious but never completely unaware — SpaceDweller

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Cognitive biases are a well-established fact. The vast majority of people reason fallaciously in a wide variety of circumstances.

Intuition has formed the basis of my professional career in troubleshooting computer systems. For a self-trained engineer, I have enjoyed considerable success. I feel it has guided my studies equally well. I've heard it described as "immerse yourself in your subject matter....and wait." I'd say that's accurate.

Yes, ,much of everyday human reasoning is fraught with technical difficulties (viz. cognitive biases). So there is some faculty which counterbalances sensory reasoning. I personally have always enjoyed a highly-developed intuitive sense. It's no mystery to me that there is such a thing.

The guy didn't behave the same afterwards, whereas the zombie behaves indistinguishably from a 'human' in the same situation, so it doesn't really fit the definition. — noAxioms

Right, so I guess it highlights the problem with the p-zombie hypothesis: is it plausible that a p-zombie could accurately report on phenomenal experiences without actually having them? It seems like a p-zombie would actually be in this boat....

Maybe the P-zombie is just really stoical.....

This case may be being "aware of the phenomenological experience" without having the experience though....

The two are closely linked. For metaphysical possibility, you can just posit a god that makes it happen.

Physical possibility is trickier. That's whether it's possible in our world. — frank

Yes, the example I give happened in our world. That was what I was thinking. Chalmers calls them logical, metaphysical and natural possibility.

Damasio's Error and Descartes' Truth: An Inquiry into Consciousness, Metaphysics, and Epistemology
by Andrew Gluck

Now for the other side of the coin.....

P-zombies it could be argued are logically possible, but not metaphysically possible, it is an example that tends to ring hollow for a lot of people.

Last week @180 Proof recommended the book Descartes' Error in the thread on emotional intelligence (thanks!) I just finished it, and right at the end Damasio describes an interesting case of a pre-frontal leucotomy (where portions of the pre-frontal cortex are removed) which was performed in the attempt to alleviate debilitating neuralgia:

Two days after the operation, when Lima and I visited on rounds, he was a different person. He looked relaxed, like anyone else, and was happily absorbed in a game of cards with a companion in his hospital room. Lima asked him about the pain. The man looked up and said cheerfully: "Oh, the pains are the same, but I feel fine now, thank you." Clearly, what the operation seemed to have done, then, was abolish the emotional reaction that is part of what we call pain. It had ended the man's suffering. His facial expression, his voice, and his deportment were those one associates with pleasant states, not pain.

Does this example support the notion of a p-zombie? Or the opposite?

The Dawn of Everything, David Graeber & David Wengrow — 180 Proof

:cool:

TPF - the place where theories of everything come to be born.

Definitely going on the short list.

I know that interpretation of what other people say is context- and situation-dependent. But do you still need some common sense in order to correctly interpret what others say or write? — Cidat

Common-sense would suggest yes......

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The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding
by Humberto R. Maturana, Francisco J. Varela

Gadamer's writings deal extensively with symbolicity, aesthetics, and hermeneutics, which seems related to your interests. Truth and Method is an excellent read.

I was just watching Leonard Cohen and his friends sing a spontaneous round of "Do Lord" in some home movies from a documentary, and the feeling was moving. I think that, even if God does not exist, the belief that people have in something, to the extent it is sincere, works towards bring that something into existence. So even if it is just people aspiring to the divine, I think you have to give the idea of God some credence.

Taking the 200,000 number as an exact date for behaviorally modern humans' emergence (for the sake of simplicity), and then reminding ourselves that writing wasn't invented until roughly 5,000 years ago (3,200 BC), it leads to a question: what was happening during those 195 thousand years of our existence? What were we thinking? — Xtrix

I would extend that even further. Chalmers leans towards defining consciousness as a fundamental property of reality. He says "It would be odd for a fundamental property to be instantiated for the first time only relatively late in the history of the universe." I agree. If consciousness "is" at all, it has been around for a very long time....

Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain by Antonio Damasio

Purchased a few more books along with this to take me well into 2022...

Damasio's Error and Descartes' Truth: An Inquiry into Consciousness, Metaphysics, and Epistemology by Andrew Gluck

The Tree of Knowledge: the Biological Roots of Human Understanding by Humberto Maturana

Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud by Herbert Marcuse

The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind by Michio Kaku

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison by Michel Foucault

Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason by Michel Foucault

Capitalism and Modern Social Theory: An Analysis of the Writings of Marx, Durkheim and Max Weber by Anthony Giddens

The Psychology of Intelligence by Jean Piaget

The Piaget I am most looking forward to. Reading is a privilege and a blessing.

Yeah, that's the real problem here. If qualia are epiphenomenal, how can we talk about them? — InPitzotl

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Godel's theorems apply to systems that fulfil specific criteria of translatability into facts about natural numbers, as I understand. Without specifying the system - i.e. looking only at the sentence itself - the sentence would not have the same force. So Godel's sentence is true just in case it is true - i.e. it applies to the specific set of systems in which it is true.

edit: Alternatively, you could consider the sentence itself to be an axiom. E.g. "This is true" has to be taken axiomatically. Likewise, "This is false". If "This is false" is axiomatic, then, axiomatically, it must be pointing to something other than itself, otherwise it is nonsense (unsinn). To claim a different version of the statement "This axiom is false" is true is to deny its status as an axiom. Likewise for provable/unprovable.

Check out Descartes' Error by neuroscientist Antonio Damasio for a better account for the role emotion plays in human intelligence than you will get here or from most philosophers (except Spinoza and a few others). — 180 Proof

Excellent, I will. I've been wanting to read this for some time and I just started my last new book, so it's buying time again.

edit: Have you read Damasio's Error by Gluck? Thinking about getting both....

Naming and Necessity by Saul Kripke

In which case the claims would be 'caused' by something familiar with the experience presumably....

Yes, this isn't in scope for Chalmers' theses, but is metaphysical speculation, as I said. I don't know that he disagrees specifically though - it is an extension of his dual-aspect approach but may suggest an overarching monism (of information). He is amenable to such notions.