I like this gap that you insert between the believer and the belief. Belief is only interesting if it determines action in the world. If I claim to believe I can fly and nevertheless carefully avoid high ledges, then maybe I'm wrong about myself or have an uninteresting conception of belief. — jas0n

Reality doesn't care about aligning its truth to what you may or may not find interesting. I find it interesting that you believe that though.

A brutal dictator that is only interested in hearing what they want to hear from their subjects and not what their subjects actually believe and cannot act on because its not what the dictator wants to hear or see, then you can understand the difference between the thought (belief) police and the action police. If there can be a distinction between the way people act and what they believe, then I find that distinction very interesting.

I think you're wondering if some ontology is being smuggled in with the concept of a proposition. There isn't.

I will say, I've been surprised since I've been here how many posters have the same misconception about what analytical philosophers mean by "proposition." — frank

Unless the analytical philosophers define a proposition as a string of scribbles in it's fundamental state, then I don't know what else they could be getting at, as any proposition in a language that you don't know is a string of scribbles.

What is it like for you to believe that the sun will rise tomorrow? How do you know that you believe it? Is your belief simply the sound of you talking to yourself in your mind saying, "I believe the sun will rise tomorrow".? That is what I'm trying to ask. Beliefs have some kind of ontology for you to be able to talk about them and for others to agree that you have them.

Not only that but Wayfarer seems to not realize that believing something is a way of being just as acting on those beliefs are. It still begs the question of why one person would choose to engage in the behaviors and rituals of one religion and not another if not because of some belief.

I'm trying to understand and ask how you know that propositions are the content of beliefs in that you and Banno seem to suggest that beliefs are like boxes with contents that are propositions. In using visual terms to describe beliefs and their contents it seems to me that beliefs and their contents have a visual form, as opposed to an audible, tactile or olfactory form.

The same thing goes in describing that beliefs and propositions are bearers of truth, as if one is carrying another. But we all know beliefs can be false, so it seems to me that we can believe in false things and beliefs are not necessarily bearers of truth.

Years later, we've all gone around the circle and ended up right were we started! What form does a proposition take as the content of a belief?

You are claiming that people cannot care about the environment or social inequality and that they can only care about being perceived as a good person? — praxis

I think you may be confusing the ends with the means. One can care about the ends of a clean environment and social inequality but not agree with the means by which some groups try to achieve those ends.

Stage 1.
A person seems to be owned by one or more concepts. He is unable to critically evaluate the concepts animating him or appraise them in a broader context. He believes those concepts to be the ultimate truth and is very combative against anybody questioning their validity.
Usually such concepts fulfill one's need to be perceived by the society as a “good person”.
For example, “a good person has to fight climate change” or “a good person has to support BLM”. — stoicHoneyBadger

I agree that most people are at this level and never climb out of it. Thinking for yourself is difficult, especially when you don't want to take the time to educate yourself on certain topics or issues. You simply adopt the position of the group you find yourself in and you compartmentalize those concepts from other concepts that you hold that you end up holding contradictory concepts because being part of a group is more important than being consistent for these types of individuals. They naturally gravitate towards the collective mindset.

Stage 2.
A person is no longer owned by random concepts, but chooses a concept to serve more or less deliberately out of what is offered by his culture.

Stage 3.
A person already starts understanding the relativity of concepts and is actively exploring different world views. He mentally dissects existing concepts, tries to rearrange some parts, etc.
For example, “what if we take a Stoic world view and spice it with Yogic exercises?” — stoicHoneyBadger

I find 2 and 3 part of the same stage - at least for me in my development. I went through this stage in my late teens-early twenties when, as a young Christian, I began to question my beliefs primarily as a result of my observations of other "Christians" in how they didn't behave as if an all-knowing, all-seeing god existed and was going to ultimately judge them for their actions. I lost faith in my religion so I began exploring other religions and turned to explore those fields of science that my religion had told me was the "devil's work" like evolution by natural selection.

Stage 4. A person is able to generate his own concepts and build a coherent world view out of them. Cultural norms are no longer relevant to him. He himself has the authority to determine what is good or bad, regardless of other people.
Stage 5.
A person not only has his own unique world view, but is able to communicate it to others, creating his own schools of thought. — stoicHoneyBadger

I didn't reach this stage until much later in life - like nearly 20 years later - after I had time to digest all of this new information and integrate it into a more general worldview. It seems to me that 5 comes with 4 as you need to be able to articulate it to yourself and understand it to be able to communicate it to others. Communicating vs proving it to others are two different things as well. It's essentially three stages for me. 1) Living in the bubble you find yourself born into. 2) realizing that you are in a bubble and attempt to break out of that bubble. 3) emerging from the bubble.

If we're using the term "religion" within a community, it has meaning, even if the meaning amounts to delusional, confused, and inconsistent beliefs about the origins of the universe. To declare that the term is meaningless is to claim it's gibberish, just sounds conveying no thought whatsoever. "God" means something different from "cat" and different from "jldjlk." To say otherwise is just to impose an opinion on the validity of the concept that underlies the word "God." — Hanover

As I said, for some word to have meaning it needs to refer to something. So if the user of the word, "religion" isn't referring to anything then it would just be a string of meaningless scribbles or sounds from their mouths.

What one person means by "religion" someone else could mean something different, then how do we know that they are even talking about the same thing? To say that the word has meaning in that any person can use it however they want renders the word meaningless in that it is now to vague for anyone to understand how it is being used and that it would be more efficient to just say what you are referring to rather than use the word, "religion" at all. It becomes useless.

My belief in bigfoot is different from my belief in gorillas, but my belief in bigfoot doesn't dissolve into meaninglessness because there is no such thing as bigfoot. — Hanover

I understand that beliefs in bigfoot are not the same thing as bigfoot itself. We can talk about both but some people can confuse their belief with the real thing.

Your definition of religion is wanting and does not universally describe all religions. It's entirely possible to have a religion with gods that interact only on the "natural" level, which isn't entirely inconsistent with primitive religions, especially considering in primitive societies they don't have a real distinction between the miraculous and ordinary earthly events.

For your definition to be workable, you would be admitting to essentialism. — Hanover

It seems to me that if you want to posit gods on the natural level then you would be practicing science, not religion - which leads me to think of another definition for religion: The act of favoring one unprovable concept over all other unprovable concepts. There is no reason to value one concept that has no evidence over other concepts that don't have any evidence or even others that do have evidence. In this way, religion is a type of delusion. And in this way, atheists are not necessarily denying a theists claims, they simply find no good reason to believe what one theist says over another, or what one philosopher says over another - when none of them are able to provide any evidence for their claims. Essentially a non-religious person would be one that has an open-mind; one that understands that they and others are probably wrong when there is no evidence and questioning yours and others beliefs is a good thing.

Does the term "religion" refer to nothing? — Banno

Meaning is use. We use the term, to be sure. It must therefore have meaning. — Hanover

Meaning is using terms to refer to things that are not words. If the word does not refer to anything that exists outside of one's own mind yet it is used to refer to things outside of one's mind (confusing the map with the territory) then it is a meaningless word - just like the term, "god".

Now, if it is correctly being used to refer to a concept (those things that only exist in minds) then it has meaning. The difference is do those concepts then refer to things in the world.

Religion is the belief in things outside of, or beyond, the natural.

Seems to me that one merely needs to look at processes of one's own mind for evidence of causation. Thinking is a causal process. Logic is the process of identifying and eliminating premises that do not causally support one's conclusion, such as pleading to authority and popularity as not being the cause of one's conclusion being true. What makes one's conclusion true is if it is the case.

Thinking itself is an IF-THEN-ELSE statement, ie. (IF) I think, therefore I am (ELSE I am not).

It also seems that causation is an integral part of any realist world-view in that your experience is a product of the interaction of your body and the world (ELSE solipsism is the case).

Reading a sentence is another causal process as it takes time to read a sentence. It has a beginning and an ending and the beginning causes the context to emerge for the rest of the sentence and the rest of the paragraph.

Symbols symbolizing would be another causal process.

This makes sense in that Being grounds Becoming in the Aristotelean scheme. So that which stably exists becomes the stuff which also can stand under the change. — apokrisis

Stability of form and structure is an illusion. It is a product of our minds' frequency relative to the frequency of what is being observed. Change is relative and minds change relative to every other process. The rate at which they change, or process external information, is relative to the speed or frequency at which the external world changes. Some changes happen very fast and some very slow. Those that happen fast appear as "non-physical" processes, while those that happen very slow appear as stable "physical" objects.

If reductionism is faulty then how is it that we understand the things we have invented as products of smaller parts? How can I repair your computer by replacing a part, not the whole computer, or by the process of elimination by eliminating the causes that are not at fault to get at the cause that is the fault? You only arrive at the right answer after making all possible mistakes.

If not reductionism, does that mean we live in a world that is only made up of Earth, Wind, Air and Fire? In a non-reductionist world, there would be uncountable substances and forms - none of which would be reducible to anything else. Energy and matter would be different substances and forms. Plastic, metal, wood, electricity, light, sound, etc., would all be different substances and forms without being reduced to smaller processes. It seems to me that a non-reductionist view would be the view of the naive realist - that things exist as they are experienced without being reduced to things that we don't see, or can observe.

It seems to me that a lot of people are saying the same thing, but using different terms, mostly in an effort to make the simple sound complicated as a way of "chest-beating" for social status.

And yet you go on to give support for my point. She was not about to let the hearings turn into a dispute about transgender people. — Fooloso4

Actually, you're proving mine. She wasn't asked about transgender people. She was asked to define a woman.

According to USA Today we can't determine the difference between a man and a woman, so how do we know that Biden nominated a woman to the supreme court, hence the threat of mis- and under- representing women. All USA Today did is pull the rug out from under the left's own push to nominate a black woman. This is what I mean by creating more lies and contradictions to cover for the mass delusion that has been created.

We all could see how Jackson wanted to answer the question with her reference to biologists. But her free speech was being limited by less than 1% of the population.

It's not that simple. A bit of online research based on the scientific literature rather than religious or political claims will bear out that sex and gender are not binary. — Fooloso4

Actually it is people like you who have become religious in accepting the claims by certain people without questioning those claims. Politics is like a religion in that it makes people out to be victims so that you can turn to Big Brother save you from being a victim. It is like a religion in that everyone on one side believes that they are the righteous and the other side are not. Politics = religion because they are both forms of group think. The left has essentially swapped one Big Brother for another.

She is well aware of the trap that was laid. It has to do with the Republicans obsession with transgender people. — Fooloso4

Wrong. It has to do with the extreme left's fetish with sex/gender and using it to make victims out of people to get votes. It also has to do with Republicans, Independents and moderate Democrats concern over how a warped sense of sex/gender is an infringement on the equal representation for women.

The extremists on the left are the ones over-representing trans-people which ends up misrepresenting both men and women. They are the ones that want to promise trans people special rights, not equal rights. And they are the ones that treat people who claim to be the opposite sex/gender differently than someone else claiming to be something that they are not that has nothing to do with sex/gender. When you take trans-people's claims without the same skepticism that you show others that make outlandish claims then you are the one's with an obsession with sex/gender.

The biology of gender is not a simple matter of male vs female. — Fooloso4

It's actually very simple, but in order to maintain the mass delusion, you have to create more lies which makes it seem more complicated than it actually is.

Which is better?

1. Hey, here's a judge, she's a black woman?

2. Hey, here's a black woman, she's a judge? — Agent Smith

I don't know but I do find it strange that Mrs. Jackson doesn't seem to have a problem defining "black" but does have a problem defining 'woman". Is Biden sure he picked a black woman for the Supreme Court?

In Jackson's befuddlement when asked the question she seemed at least understand that it has to do with biology as she she said, "I'm not a biologist."

If making consciousness primary is solipsistic, how is a naturalism that claims the existence of entities independent of awareness of them not also a solipsism? — Joshs

But that is what I'm trying to ask you. If consciousness/experience is all there is then are you only referring to your consciousness/experience? Where is your consciousness/experience relative to mine? If you're saying that consciousness exists everywhere are the boundaries of everywhere your own consciousness, or is there consciousness outside of your own? Do other minds only exist within the boundaries of your own consicousness/experience or are they separate from yours? If the latter, then what is the medium that divides one mind from another?

After all , this alleged ‘independence’ of things is always only perceived through conscious construal. There’s a certain radical connectness between the subjective and objective poles of experiencing which can never be transcended. It wouldn’t be a ‘substance’ we’re talking about, since that brings us back to the assumption of entities ‘outside of’ warner’s of them. — Joshs

Was my mind independent of yours before we started our discussion?

It would instead be be a relational point of view that is primary. — Joshs

Then relationships would be primary and not consciousness.

The why questions go to formal and final cause. — apokrisis

It seems to me that "why" questions could be just as easily asking about causality. Formal and final causes are illusory in that the goal in the mind in the present is what is causing something to happen. Goals don't exist in the future, but are visions of the future in the present moment and it is always the state-of-affairs in the present that determine the future, not the other way around. — Harry Hindu

How does a particle know which path between two points is the shortest, even before it sets out on its journey? How can nature be ruled by the finality of least action before anything has begun to happen? — apokrisis

Again you're simply making the case that knowledge causally precedes any use of that knowledge - that knowledge of the shortest path causes the particle to move a certain way and in a particular direction so I don't see how this could be an example of a final cause. It could be an example of a formal cause in that the knowledge some particle has is part of what it is to be that particle and that causes it to behave in certain ways, but we're still talking about basic causation of causes preceding their effects. Aristotle's four causes are merely multiple facets of the same thing.

But I talk of constraints and habits rather than laws and rules when I am speaking for my own particular pansemiotic position on the Cosmos. I emphasise the immanence and self-organisation of Nature and point to how talk of laws and rules indeed falls into the usual dualistic bind of transcendent accounts. — apokrisis

Constraints and habits = laws and rules.

He has elaborated a metaphysics for a radical neurophenomenology that is not a neutral monism placing consciousness and naturalism on an equal footing , but a grounding of naturalism in consciousness. Consciousness must be primary, since all our objective science are activities within and of consciousness. “…experience is not one node in an intellectual graph among other nodes; it is not one box in a functionalist diagram among
other boxes. Experience is the lived origin and byproduct of any process, including the
intellectual process. Experience is all that there is at this very moment when I am writing and you are reading. Indeed, experience is the lived background of the very
intellectual inference that there is something beyond experience.” — Joshs

I think we need to be careful as to not become a hammer that sees everything as a nail. I don't understand what it would mean to say that consciousness is primary. Consciousness seems to complex to be primary. What exactly do you mean by, "consciousness"? How is saying "consciousness is primary" or "experience is all there is" not simply implying that solipsism is the case?

I think that the substance of consciousness is primary and consciousness is a complex arrangement of that substance (neutral monism in that it is neither physical nor mental). Think of the substance as like an analog signal and consciousness as a digitization of the analog signal - like making particles/objects out of waves. A view (first-person) emerges from the way the information is organized and as a relationship between body and environment. As a relationship between the two we find it difficult, if not impossible, to separate the experience(r) from what is experienced.

For me, "naturalism" is simply the idea that things exist and they exist in particular ways. Whatever is the case is natural and how it changes is natural. All explanations that attempt to describe or symbolize the way things are are natural explanations. Even god would be natural if one were to exist and has a causal influence on everything else. If solipsism were the case, then solipsism would be the natural state of affairs.

That is what quantum indeterminism describes - the impossibility of classically exact knowledge of a system's initial conditions, coupled to the possibility of also getting arbitrarily close. — apokrisis

So is quantum indeterminism describing knowledge of a system, or the system apart from any knowledge of it? If the former, then is quantum indeterminism in the field of neurology, or if the latter a field in physics?

How does a particle know which path between two points is the shortest, even before it sets out on its journey? How can nature be ruled by the finality of least action before anything has begun to happen? — apokrisis

I don't know how a particle knows anything. So again, is QM a theory of knowledge or physics?

I don't understand how nature is ruled by anything. Humans create rules as general descriptions of the basis of some observation. Rules did not exist before nature began to happen. Nature happens and humans use general rules to help them make predictions for similar circumstances.

You seem to be engaged in anthropomorphizing nature and particles.

Physics just plugs this global finality in as a law. And it uses integration - inverse differentiation - to make the calculation. It is then silent on how all this fits into a view of reality as being merely the sum of its mechanical (ie: material + efficient) causes. — apokrisis

Physics is also effectively silent on the role of the observer, or more specifically - the conscious observation of such things - as if physicists have direct access to the processes they are attributing laws to.

This is why the nonlocality in quantum mechanics, and the principle of least action that grounds physics in general, are such a metaphysical problem for the reductionist point of view. — apokrisis

Seems to me that reducing everything down to QM, thermodynamics, trinities and semiotics would have similar issues. QM also has the problem of not integrating with macro-style physics.

If you could set up exactly the same circumstances twice, the outcome ought to be exact. But because you can't, you can only get arbitrarily close to making history repeat. — apokrisis

Arbitrarily meaning based on the particular goal in the mind at the moment. In using generalities to make predictions of future outcomes we often aren't concerned with circumstances that don't affect the outcome that we are looking to use to achieve some goal. Like I said before, information exists everywhere causes leave effects. In interpreting your use of language, I could be interested in knowing where you are from, what your level of education is with the language you are using, or simply in what you are trying to say, depending on my goal. In trying to interpret what you are trying to say, I'm ignoring the causes of where you are from and your level of education has on the way you are using some language. I'm only focused on your idea that you are intending to communicate to me.


I remember this discussion I had with Marchesk a while back:
in talking about Sara Walker's ideas about the relationship between biology, chemistry and physics: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/01/13/79-sara-imari-walker-on-information-and-the-origin-of-life/

Thus the Standard Model is based on the emergent biological information abstraction. Sara mentions it being a loop between our probing regularities at tiny scales and the biology that produced the abstraction used to understand it. But this loop is not included in the Standard Model. It's similar in some ways to the observer problem in QM. It's a recursive problem.

She says the desire is to reduce biology to physics, but physics (as a field of human knowledge) emerges from biology. — Marchesk

Seems like you could say the same thing about biology. The question is whether or not the scales and levels of the universe are epistemological or ontological. — Harry Hindu

Yes. And both the changing of the metric and real particles moving asymmetrically (thermodynamically, irreversibly) constitute time. — EugeneW

Right. So change constitutes time. Measuring time involves comparing one change with another, like the change of a virtual particle's state vs the change of a real particle's state. Which change you choose to measure by is arbitrary, just as measuring length and mass.

They don't oscillate in time but constitute time themselves. If you hold a virtual clock beside it though, you would see the hand of that clock go back and forth. — EugeneW

Again, we're simply talking about comparing one change with another when measuring time. But you're not measuring time. You're measuring change. Just as length is a comparison of two objects in one dimension, time is the comparison of change in two objects (in another dimension).

Time cannot exist without change
— Harry Hindu

But only in space they can change. — EugeneW

Space changes too.

In other words things change relative to each other. The relationship between one change and another is time.
— Harry Hindu

In other words, things can oscillate in time, like virtual particles in the vacuum, or have a timelike direction, like virtual particles turned real. — EugeneW

I don't know what "in time" means. Oscillations are changes. How fast (how much time) does one thing oscillate? You have to compare it to another change to find out. Time is the comparison of change. The direction of some change only manifests itself when comparing the change to another change.

Yeah. The how questions are questions about material and efficient causality. The why questions go to formal and final cause. — apokrisis

It seems to me that "why" questions could be just as easily asking about causality. Formal and final causes are illusory in that the goal in the mind in the present is what is causing something to happen. Goals don't exist in the future, but are visions of the future in the present moment and it is always the state-of-affairs in the present that determine the future, not the other way around.

It's the search for a causal account. Every particular must be the product of something more general. — apokrisis

The general is the illusion that other events can be the same as another event and therefore lead to the same effects. Similar states-of-affairs lead to similar effects, not the same effects.

There’s a reason why we have two words.
— Possibility

What’s the reason? — Xtrix

For what reason does a language have synonyms?

Can you be conscious without being aware of anything? Can you be aware of anything without being conscious as well? Can you report anything that you are not either aware or conscious of?

Some will use examples of dreaming and hallucinating to distinguish between being aware and being conscious, but it seems that the distinction isn't between being aware or being conscious, rather the distinction lies in the interpretation of what it is that you are both conscious and aware of. Interpreting a hallucination to be an awareness/conscious of something outside of your head vs inside your head. In hallucinating you are aware/conscious of something but not sure if what you are aware/conscious of is located outside of your head or inside.

This argument fails if time is assume to go forward only. If it goes up and down, as before the unidirectional inflation, spawning the real from the virtual, time can have a beginning. As it must have a beginning. If this weren't the case, we would observe chaos only. — EugeneW

In other words things change relative to each other. The relationship between one change and another is time.

Time can't exist without space. — EugeneW

Time cannot exist without change.

Obviously, time had a beginning. If not, the universe would be in the chaotic, fleeting state of chaos, accelerating away towards infinity. — EugeneW

What if there is more to the universe than there appears to be? What if there is more than one universe?

Warren Weaver: The word information, in this theory, is used in a special sense that must not be confused with its ordinary usage. In particular, information must not be confused with meaning. https://www.panarchy.org/weaver/communication.html — Daemon

So maybe you can summarize or quote the part of the article that information and meaning are not the same thing because the way people use the terms indicates that they are the same thing. In saying that tree rings mean the age of the tree, we are saying that the tree rings carry information about the age of the tree. And when we ask what something means, we are asking about the causes of the effects that we observe. In asking what someone means by their use of words, we are asking what their idea is that they are trying to communicate (the cause of the words appearing on the screen).

Information isn't everywhere in the universe, it's in minds. It isn't in the tree stump. Your own example partly acknowledges that, in the way you have the observer come along and look at the tree rings. The information is in the mind of the observer. In the tree, there are only the rings.

If you think the information is doing something in the tree, tell us what it is. — Daemon

Right, so it's not that I didn't understand your argument. You didn't understand mine.

As I said, information is the relationship between causes and their effects. Do you agree that causes and effects are mind-independent? Do you agree that when we say that the tree rings mean the age of the tree, we are saying that the tree rings carry information about the age of the tree. And the tree rings carry information about the tree not as a result of what some human did, but what the tree did. The tree rings would mean the age of the tree even if no one looked at them, because tree rings exist as a result of how the tree grows, not because someone looked at them.

Information is not what comes about as a means of interpretation. It is what is interpreted, and what makes some bit of information valuable (values being a mental object and not something that exists apart from minds) is the present goal in the mind.

So you don't understand my point?

I thought I made my point. If you would like to make another argument, go ahead.

I argue in my link that reality is necessarily not contradictory (i.e. an impossible world). And our maps certainly can and do contain contradictions, some of which I mention in the first sentence of my previous post. — 180 Proof

Contradictions are a misuse of language, or if you want to use maps, are a misuse of maps.

Some people claim that contradictions follow the rules of some language, but only when you forget the rule that language refers to things or events in reality (which includes our minds) (which like you said is necessarily not contradictory).

Can you please tell me what exactly goes through your mind when, for example, I tell you to conceive (is this even the right word/concept?) the following:

1. Square & Not square (easy)
2. A quark & Not quark (hard) — Agent Smith

To me both are impossible. In trying to imagine a square & no square I picture a square and then picture a circle, but they both cannot appear in the same instance and in the same mental space unless they overlap, but then aren't the same object. The same for quark/not quark.

Why is it a different matter? If the neural impulses are not information until interpreted, why isn't it the same for DNA?

And where is the interpreting subject in each of these cases? Interpretation is something carried out by minds. Instructions, information and interpretation are metaphors when we are talking about DNA. The genetic process is carried out mindlessly. — Daemon

Yes, genetic processes are carried out mindlessly, but information is mind-independent. Information exists everywhere causes leave effects. Take tree rings in a tree stump. The tree rings develop over time as a result of how the tree grows throughout the year. When an observer comes along and cuts down the tree and observes the tree rings and investigates other trees and forms a theory about what the tree rings are they discover that they are a result of how the tree grows and that each ring signifies a year in the tree's age. The observer did not make up the information. It is there in how the tree grows, and is there independent of any mind. Minds only come along after the fact and either correctly or incorrectly interpret the information that is already there.

This works for objects of perception, for real objects in the world which affect our sensibility. We know this from the fact we sometimes are affected by objects but don’t know what that object is. So....we are aware of an actual sensation but also conscious that what we are aware of, could be anything, so has a level of potentiality. — Mww

To vague to be useful. Give an example of being affected by an object but don't know what that object is.

I can think of blind-sight patients but the sensation they are aware of is their own reaction to something that they are neither aware of nor conscious of. They are never aware of the object, only their reaction to it, which goes back to my description of causation - that they conclude by the process of thinking that their reaction indicates that something is there, but they don't know what it could be, which is different than something appearing in consciousness in which you have no prior experience of, which comes back to the type of thinking that is interpreting sensations that are in consciousness. You can only think in sensory forms, so if there is no form in consciousness (as in blind-sight patients) then there is nothing to think about. The only form (sensation) that appears is their own reaction to something that isn't there. Tree rings are the effect. How the tree grows throughout the year and how many years it has being growing is the cause. Information is the relationship between the two.

Can someone please contradict himself/herself and tell us what's going on inside his/her head? — Agent Smith

No one can as it would require one to hold something in the mind while at the same time not holding it in the mind. Contradictions are essentially a misuse of language.

That which sees can't itself be seen. Ergo, that which sees doesn't exist. — Agent Smith

Then there is no such thing as seeing? Let's forget about minds for a minute. Colors and shapes exist, right?

Minds exist. Minds are not perceivable and thus, as far as Berkeley is concerned, cannot be conceived of (for our imaginations can work only on what our sensations provide). But they exist and Berkeley affirms their existence. We know of them by reason, not sense. — Bartricks

How do you know when you are reasoning and when you are not if not by sensation? What form does your reasoning take as opposed to being irrational if not some sensation?

Different things. You can be aware of conscious experiences. This awareness is not a conscious experience. Awareness is conscious, but consciousness is conscious being. You can be aware of a conscious being without the awareness being a conscious being.
So I can be aware of red. That awareness is not an experience but an observation of. The observation of red has no color. The consciousness of red is red. — EugeneW

Thanks for moving the conversation past what is intellectually capable of.

Red only exists in your head. Color does not exist in the world. So by being aware of red, are you not being aware of the contents of consciousness? How does being aware of red allow you to be aware of apples that are not red, but ripe? Causation - the relationship between causes and their effects is information.

So you are aware (informed) of the ripeness of the apple by being conscious of a red apple. You can be aware (informed) of other people's thoughts by being conscious of their behaviors (which includes making verbal utterances and drawing scribbles).

And it is a dialectic non-starter to fail to grasp that talking about a thing is the only way to objectively represent it. Of course I talk about thinking in terms of nouns. How else would I?

As for the rest....(Sigh) — Mww

Sigh. Thoughts are nouns. Thinking is a verb. I fail to see how scribbles that are experienced just like everything else are objective representations of things that are experienced.

If I can't understand your position because you are being inconsistent and intellectually lazy then your objective representations probably aren't objective at all but a result of the bubble you've chose to live in.

Being conscious of thoughts is not the same as being aware of objects, hence being aware of thoughts says nothing more than being conscious of them. — Mww

You seem to be confusing imagining with thinking. Imagining is a type of thinking. Interpreting sensory data is also a type of thinking which is the type I was referring to when making my point.

I is strange that you talk of thoughts and awareness as if they are objects (nouns). Are you aware that you are aware of objects? You must be aware of the thing you are talking about (awareness or objects) or else what would you be talking about?

If you know that objects are made of atoms but you never observe atoms are you aware of atoms? What about being aware of another person's thoughts by means of their behaviors? If we can be aware of objects by how light reflects off them and how they vibrate air molecules that we hear, then why not atoms and thoughts?

Then you're a naive realist?
— Harry Hindu

No. — Philosophim

But you described a world as it appears in consciousness - as if the world is as it appears for you - that the objects you perceive have all the properties that you perceive them to have (like being physical).

What does it mean to be physical?
— Harry Hindu

To be made up of matter and energy. And I will return the question. What does it mean to be non-physical? What evidence do you have of it existing? — Philosophim

I don't use those terms, "physical" and "non-physical" because they don't make any sense. What we currently understand to be "matter" is the states or processes of "matter" on ever smaller scales. You can never point to a particle when particles are described as being the relationship or interaction of smaller particles ad infinitum. It's process, or relationships, or information all the way down.

You've made a common mistake of equating the outside observation of something, to the experience of being something. Find any other person in the world. Do you know what it is like to be them? No, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. Do you know what it feels like for them to hear the beating of their own heart? No, but that doesn't mean they don't have a heart, that it doesn't beat in their body, and that they can't feel what that's like.

If I open up a brain and look at it, I don't know what its like to BE that brain. You seem to think there should be a picture show going on in there, which is silly. What we imagine in our heads isn't light. Its the communication of hundreds and thousands of electrons at incredibly high speeds. — Philosophim

Why would you think that I would think that there is a picture show (of all things) going on inside a brain if you don't have a picture show going on inside of yours? How would you have come to that idea that there might be a picture show in someone's head, or that others might think the same if there wasn't something like a picture show going on in someone's head?

This is the point I've been making: That there appears to be a distinction between "being" (the term you used) and how "being" is observed. I don't know if I really find that term, "being" useful because I believe that I am being more than just my brain. I can feel my toes maybe more intimately than I can see them. After all, feeling my toes as opposed to just seeing them is what makes me identify them as my toes.

It seems to me that the "being" in your sense of it, is the same as the act of observing, as if being is the act of observing. This would also explain why you believe that others might think that a picture show is going on inside brains. If "being" has an ontological existence, then why can't we observe it in others? Maybe because naive realists believe that the properties that are perceived are the properties that really exist independently of your observation (your being). In other words, naive realists are confusing the map with the territory, or the measurement with what is measured.

How the computer works is much the same. If I open up a hard drive, do I see windows running? If I open up the ethernet wires, can I see youtube and sound being streamed over? And yet if you told a programmer that this is evidence that the computer's functionality is a non-physical process, they would laugh at you. — Philosophim

I wouldn't say that it is non-physical. I'd say that it is information. Since information is the relationship between cause and effect, the information in the ethernet wires is different than the information that displays on the screen because it requires further processing to appear on the screen. What information is relevant to your goals at any moment will be the cause of the effect that you focus your attention on. So when you see Youtube on your screen, you are more interested in the video itself and it's cause (what the video is about (when and where it was recorded and what was recorded), not how it came to appear on your computer monitor). Information exists everywhere causes leave effects. Your present goals is what determines what information is useful at any given moment. I could glean from your use of language what you are currently thinking or where you might be from and your level of education in the language you are using, depending on my goal at the moment. All that information is there as a result of those causes, but what information I deem valuable is the bits that promote or inhibit my present goal.

The problem is, sometimes people believe that if they don't understand how something fully works, they can make up things about how it works. You can't. You can't introduce things that don't exist into a system. You can't say, "I don't understand how youtube can be on my screen, yet not be in my computer when I look at it," and think your made up idea that it must be a non-physical process has any merit. — Philosophim

You're conflating two different processes (Youtube being on your screen and being in your computer). Looking at one is not looking at the other so I would never say that. What I have been saying is more like why I see Youtube in your computer as electronic boards and circuits, but the computer sees it as a picture show.

Back to the brain for a second, when we physically and chemically alter the brain, people's experience of BEING a brain changes. We've confirmed that time and again. Go get drunk, then tell me that your consciousness exists on a higher level beyond what physical alcohol can touch. Go read the evidence of anti-psychotic drugs, hallucinegens, and amazing records of brain damage like loss of long term memory, the inability to mentally see colors, comprehend words, etc, then tell me their consciousness exists on some plane beyond the physical. — Philosophim

But that is my question: why there is such a stark difference between observing brains that are drunk vs being a brain that is drunk. If I am being my brain, then why don't I experience the visual of neurons firing electrical signals at slower rates rather than feelings of dizziness and reduced inhibitions?

Putting it simply, semiosis is the construction of a meaningful relation between a self and world using a (meaningless) code. — apokrisis

I don't know if I would say it was "meaningless". It seems to me that natural selection found survival and mating benefits in the ability to construct this meaningful relation between organism and environment. The phenomenological sensory symbols that are part of the construct would be similar across multiple species as brains evolve from pre-existing brains.

Phenomenology is socially constructed. It is a modelling exercise using language to externalise the internal in a socially pragmatic fashion. — apokrisis

If language is used to externalise the internal that means the internal is prior to the externalizing of it. Therefore it can't be socially constructed. The internal constructs the external. It doesn't even make sense to talk about it in terms of "internal" vs. "external". Where and when does the external become what is internally constructed? It seems that this type of language-use creates a problem of identity.

It seems to me that the externals are just other internals so internals are prior to externals and externals only come about by internally recognizing that you are one internal among many.

Object permanence comes about in toddlers not by any social design because you have to first be internally aware that other objects exist independently of you and don't share the contents of your own internal states to then go on to understand that language is used to communicate your internal states to others.

So the code can act as a code because it stands outside both sides of the equation. It is neither material, nor informational - as much as that is actually possible. — apokrisis

Then how does the code exist if not materially or informationally? In saying that there are states of being either material or information that the code is not, you are implying that there are other states of being that are not material or information that the code is. This appears to be just more word salad. It seems to me that "code" is synonymous with "information". Interpreting the code/information is determining the actual cause of the symbol to exist.

Information/meaning is the relationship between cause and effect. Information exists wherever causes leave effects. The mind is the effect of prior causes (evolution (evolutionary psychology), life experiences stored in long-term memory and the type of senses (measuring devices) one possesses).

Neurons are like genes in being essentially costless in terms of their physics. Humans can afford trillions of synaptic switches. And they are like genes in that each switch is essentially meaningless. The connections have no meaning until the pattern that is a functional regulatory model has been evolved, developed, learnt, habituated, remembered. — apokrisis

Genes and neurons and their states are not meaningless in that they are effects of prior causes. Genes and neurons evolved from prior states with natural selection promoting those states that allows persistence of those states through time and space. The things that seem to be able to exist for extended periods are those things with a cohesive resistance to external changes. It seems to me that the "randomness", which you seem to mean when you say, "meaningless" is just a state that evolved in response to the "randomness" of the external world. Adaptability (having multiple switches providing multiple responses to external stimuli) is meaningful in a changing world.

I reserve awareness in reference to sensibility, but consciousness in reference to understanding. To be aware is to sense; to be conscious is to think. — Mww

What purpose is being aware if not to think (to process the sensory information for some purpose)? It seems that both awareness and thinking are integral parts of consciousness.