Might have once read something about government gaining legitimacy through the consent of the governed. — Ennui Elucidator

For most of human history governments have gained legitimacy through lies and fear. The governed may appear to be consenting (North Korean citizens proclaiming their love for their precious leader is a good example), but they only do so out of fear. In this sense they are not consenting, they are coerced.

When power-hungry elitists gain control of government and consolidate their power (outsider, non-politicians are not welcome in their group), and much of what they do is behind closed doors and what they say is all generalizations and plurality, then is this what the goverened has consented to, or are the goverened merely preoccupied with celebrities and themselves (making themselves a celebrity) on TikTok and Facebook to give a damn? Dumbing down the governed is one way to make it look like the governed are giving consent when in fact the governed are just to dumb to know that they arent, or wouldn't, if they really knew what was going on in the government.

Self-awareness: x sees x via an image of x that x is capable of generating. — Agent Smith

I dont know what this means. I describe self-awareness as a sensory information feedback loop, like the visual or auditory feedback you get when pointing a camera at its monitor or a microphone to its speaker. When you think about your "self" (one problem that we need to resolve is what is a self and where is it relative to the mind, brain and body), you are creating an information feedback loop - of the mind minding itself.

Come to us, humans, now. When I engage in self-reflection, I don't see myself as a brain. Physicalists insist that the brain is the mind. Ergo, the brain is incapable of self-reflection (it doesn't see itself as it truly is, a mushy mass of meat). Consciousness is an illusion? — Agent Smith

Im not a physicalist (i dont even know what "phyisical" means), nor do i believe that consciousness is an illusion. I do agree that the distinction between mind and brain needs a good explanation. I think that the mind and brain are one and the same - just from different views, like photons can be both waves and particles, depending on the measuring device being used. The sensory-brain system (mind) is a measuring device. But be careful not to confuse the measurement with what is being measured.

Separates" and "unites" are somewhat opposed. — Metaphysician Undercover

The definition in the OP is wrong. Scientists have described space as a thing that can expand or contract. Put a wall between you and I and an object, not space, separates us.

These are both types of relationships. A couple can be married (unites) and then divorced (separates) and both are types of relationships between them. You could be sitting right next to me or across the country and that is a relationship between you and I.

In measuring the space between individuals are you not establishing a relationship between them? Thats what a measurement is - a relationship.

An agreement is in no way an object or an entity, so it's not even worth your while arguing that an agreement is a non-spatial "object" or "entity". And since it is a relation between a plurality of individuals, it is in no way an "individual". — Metaphysician Undercover

Yet it only takes one individual to break the agreement, or relationship.

Is not space a relationship between individuals?

I'm not satisfied with your replies. Have a good day. — Agent Smith

It wasn't replies, but questions that I asked that you need to answer for me to better understand your position. I'm not satisfied with your answers (or lack thereof). Have a good day.

Metacognition: The mind forms and image of itself. This image, last I checked, is definitely not a brain. — Agent Smith

Well no, an image is not the thing the image is of. You seem to be confusing the thing with an image of the thing. Is the image of the thing seen as it truly is?

If you don't see your brain as it truly is how can you say that you see other brains as they truly are? How is it that you have true sight of other people's brains but not of your own when you only have access to the image and not the thing itself?

If you are able to know about things by only accessing an image of those things, does it really matter that you don't have direct access to those things?

The camera captures itself, right but neither single neurons nor neural networks see themselves as they truly are, neurons or neural networks; in other words, they (neurons/neural networks) can't make themselves objects as they truly are. — Agent Smith

What do you mean, "see as they truly are"? Do you see anything as it truly is? Does the mind "see" itself as it truly is?

Ain't it the matter on which zeroes and ones are formed that occupies space? — Raymond

What else are numbers if not scribbles on a page, which occupies space?

Even if the records of the mortgage disappeared, the obligations remain - they just cannot be proved.

Same as keeping a verbal promise. — Banno

What is it that keeps the agreement intact? If at any moment I can make an agreement, at any moment I can cancel the agreement. It takes more than one to make an agreement but only one to break the agreement. If I decide not to abide by the agreement then I don't need to pay my mortgage?

No, Harry. The mortgage is an agreement. But this sort of thing has been explained to you before, by many folk. — Banno

I've also been told by many folk that God exists and wants me to be saved by him. Does that make it true? You're not appealing to popularity are you?

Then if you remove one of the members of the agreement, you remove the agreement? Then agreements are composed of members of the agreement and therefore occupy space.

Since the brain isn't capable of making itself the object of its own study like it can with other things like a table or a person, the ability of the mind to self-reflect is physically inexplicable. — Agent Smith

Connect a camera to a monitor and then turn the camera back to look at its monitor. The visual feedback in the monitor is the camera's view of itself - the camera-monitor system. This is like the infinite regress you experience when thinking about your self.

Thinking about thinking is what blurs the boundary of subject and object. In thinking about thinking object and subject are one and the same.

The normal definition for "will" in psychology/psychiatry is "the independent faculty of choice", in other words, "volition". Though better by characterizing the deliberate aspect of "will", I still find this definition wanting. — Michael Zwingli

Then came Schopenhauer, who, building on the ideas of Immanuel Kant, revolutionized the term. For him, the "will", as is so eloquently described on the Wiki, seems to have been "a blind, unconscious, aimless striving devoid of knowledge, outside of space and time, and free of all multiplicity". In this view, the will becomes less a faculty, less an ability or power, and more a source of constant impulse...from the biological perspective, an "instinct" (in the sense derived from it's constituent Latin etyma, "an inner prodding"), if you will. — Michael Zwingli

Occam's Razor comes to mind here.

I don't see much of a difference between these two descriptions other than the number of words in the description. If we accept the idea that computers make decisions based on their programming, and finite information stored in them to use to make decisions with, then it follows that computers make these decisions instinctively, as in that is how they were designed and programmed to respond to some input which isn't much different from organisms. Organisms are programmed by Natural Selection and possess limited information in their heads for which to make decisions with - instinctively.

If we're going the academic route, we define our context and our aim and justify a definition that suits, usually with the aid of some authority, whether historical or contemporary. Without context, the appropriateness of any specific definition is unresolvable. — Baden

In the context of understanding reality we don't necessarily need language or definitions to do so. Just an understanding of the relationship between things, like the an observation of the way thing currently are, the will (intent or the idea to change how things currently are) and what is intended (or what new conditions you would like to see).

Cool. I'll delete the contents of the hard drive and then my mortgage is gone. — Banno

Like I said, it was a COPY of your mortgage agreement. You'd have to hack into the bank's computer and delete it there too for your mortgage ro be gone.

If that be true than whether the morgage is stipulated in Word or in PDF would make a difference to the motrgage, since it will occupy a diffferent amount kilobytes of space on my hard drive. However, it does not. Likewise if Banno's morgtgage would somehow be eradicated from his harddrive and from the hardrive of the company he has a mortgage from, that would somehow destroy Banno's obligation to pay. That however is false. — Tobias

Word and Adobe add extra information that is not part of the mortgage information and that is what makes the difference. If there us no record that Banno has a mortgage then he is not obligated to pay something that doesn't exist. If you ask the bank for evidence that you have a mortgage, what do you think they will show you? If they can't show you any information of your mortgage then you effectively don't have a mortgage. If you are talking about his memory of his mortgage, then we are still talking about information that occupies the space in his head.

If everyone forgot that Paris is the capital of France, would Paris be the capital of France?

What space is occupied by your Mortgage?
What space is occupied by Philosophy forums?
What space is occupied by three hundred? — Banno

These are all examples of information. Information occupies space. If you don't believe me, look at the contents of your hard drive on your computer. Does not the signed copy of your mortgage agreement occupy kilobytes of space on your drive? This forum occupies space in the cloud. Type 300 in a text document and you can see that the text occupies space and the document occupies space in RAM until saved to your hard drive's space. For something to exist and for you to be aware of and talk about it, it must occupy space.

An object being something with finite extent in at least one of its properties (a particular entity); space being that which separates distinct objects. — Daniel

Using these definitions of object and space, objects and space would be the medium of change.

Another way of looking at it would be objects and space are the means by which minds model change (or process) which would mean that change/process would be fundamental and objects and space would be a mind's (which itself is a process) way of perceiving and knowing change/processes.

I haven't given any examples because I've assumed that most people know, that any use of a word in a sentence, is an example of how it's used. So, if I'm talking about epistemology for example, and I say, "I know John is guilty of murder," then the sense of the word know, (namely, how it's used in this sentence), is that I'm justified in some appropriate way. Another use or sense of the word know that is common, is to use it as a kind of emphasis. The emphasis on know would reflect a conviction, i.e., how one feels about the belief their expressing. Wittgenstein pointed this out in OC, where he says this kind of use can express itself in tone of voice. These are two specific examples of different uses of the same word. An epistemological use, and a use that expresses my subjective conviction. However, don't confuse a use that expresses the subjective, as a use that gives the word meaning. — Sam26

Exactly. Words are used to point to states-of-affairs that are not just another use of words. To know is to both be justified and to reflect a conviction because it is justified. Why would you reflect conviction unless you were justified in doing so? So it seems to me that your use of "to know" points to the same state-of-affairs and you're unnecessarily complicating the meaning of "to know" as being used in two or more separate states-of-affairs, when it is really being used in just one way - to point to one's justified conviction (a redundancy).

And, even if you're under the spell of a mass delusion, it doesn't follow that your words have lost their sense. It just means that you're convinced of something that's false, among other things. — Sam26

In today's world, is the phrase "The Earth is flat" of any use? Does it make sense to say such a thing? No, because it doesn't point to any state of affairs that exists outside of our heads. It can only point to an idea, or a delusion, and that is what it pointed to a 1000 years ago when people used that phrase. The difference between today and a 1000 years ago is that today, most of us now know that it only points to an idea, not to a state-of-affairs that exists outside of our heads.

The idea that it's you (emphasis on the subjective) that's convinced, gives people the false idea that it's you that gives meaning to the word. Again, the difference between understanding an expression of the subjective, and understanding how meaning comes about within a social context. — Sam26

Meaning is the relationship between cause and effect. Intent precedes the use of words. The idea that I intend to convey is what my words point to. My ideas, in turn, either point to some state-of-affairs that exists outside my head or they don't. So depending on how accurate my ideas of the world are will determine how useful my words are to others. The meaning of words comes about within a social context only after they are deemed useful in pointing to actual state-of-affairs that exist outside your head.

Just look at all the conversations on this forum in which words are used in ways that are confusing and require the user to define how it is that they are using it (what state-of-affairs the words point to outside one's head) for the readers to understand what it is that they are actually saying. Some people use words ("consciousness" and the distinction between "natural" and "artificial" are prime examples) in ways that they think that they know how they are using them (the way that they learned to use it from others in a social context) only to find that when their way of using it isn't consistent with the other things that they have said or that we know, hence their use of words are not useful.

We do not need to evoke images to describe the difference between how the dog sees and how the human sees, is what I meant. — NOS4A2

Images are a type of information and is what is evoked to describe the difference.

Is there really that much of a difference if TV screens with images of birds can trigger the same type of behaviors in dogs as if they had seen a real bird? If we can use a trick of light to make humans and dogs see birds that aren't there, then isnt there some similarity between how we both see birds?

Evolution is not "goal-directed". The consequence (i.e. increased reproductive fitness) of adaptive mutations via natural selection is called "survival". — 180 Proof

I said earlier tha behaviors are goal-directed, not natural selection. NS is the means by which goal-directed behaviors come to exist in organisms. So instincts and habits (behaviors) are goal-directed.

NS is simply the process by which other processes adopt attributes that allow them to persist through time.

Goal-directed behaviors are attributes that allow certain things to persist through time by integrating stored information with live (sensory) information.

I didn't see much in these articles about memory being dynamic. I found this interesting article though: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02523/full

It seems to suggest that memories can be dynamic yet also suggest memory as a type of storage. If memories are reconstructed (still not sure what this means), then they must be using a template to reconstruct from, or else it doesn't really qualify as a reconstruction. If memories are not stored information and not reconstructed from a template, then does it even make sense to call them memories instead of imaginings?

To say that memory is "dynamic" means that memories change and therefore would no longer qualify as a memory, but as an imagining.

Erik Rietveld
"Enactive approaches to cognitive science aim to explain human cognitive processes across the board without making any appeal to internal, content-carrying representational states."
But it is the scientists' internal, content-carrying representational states that inform scientists of the way brains work. What other means do scientists have of being informed about the human cognitive processes?

"A challenge to such a research programme in cognitive science that immediately arises is how to explain cognition in so-called ‘representation-hungry’ domains. Examples of representation-hungry domains include imagination, memory, planning and language use in which the agent is engaged in thinking about something that may be absent, possible or abstract. The challenge is to explain how someone could think about things that are not concretely present in their environment other than by means of an internal mental representation. "
The challenge is solved by merely understanding that if thoughts are about things, then thoughts must be representations of those things. In the case of imaginings and dreams, they are simulations of behaviors and their outcomes that we can use to streamline our behaviors in the world when the moment arrives. We can use the memory of a simulated outcome to change our behaviors just as we can use the memory of a real event that happened to change our behaviors. Computers run simulations and the outcome of those simulations are used by humans to understand the world better. So representation-hungry domains are really about certain aspects of the world, or else they would be useless in the world.

Patently false assumption (e.g. reflexes, habits). — 180 Proof

So you're saying that reflexive and habitual behaviors didn't evolve to achieve some goal - like survival?

Re: blindsight – Perception (like volition or cognition) is primarily (mostly) an 'unconscious yet functional' process; therefore, "intentionality" might only be an ex post facto metacognitive illusion: thus, unknown knowns (i.e. unknowingly knowing). — 180 Proof

I'm not sure what to make of this. If intentionality is part of the same system (the whole body) then why can't we say that we always behave with intent? All of our behaviors are goal-directed.

It seems like you keep trying to separate the various functions of the brain apart from our self. What is the self - the brain, the mind, the body? If we are our bodies does it make sense to say that we don't operate with intent? Intentionality is only an illusion if intent existed apart from our bodies. So if I perceive that my conscious intent as the source of action, and my perceptions are models of what is really happening, then my model shows that the intent came from my self (my body). If I assume that my body is the source of my intent and that my consciousness is only a model of the world and my body's relationship with it, then my conscious content informs me of what I (my body) intended to do and it makes no sense that we have an illusion of intent. It's only an illusion if you're a naive realist and believe that everything you consciously perceive is the way the world is, rather than a model of the way the world is.

Blindsight is essentially when a person doesn't perceive anything in front of their eyes due to brain damage, yet better than chance they can "guess" what is there somehow. Surely all of our knowledge isn't gained strickly from perceptions from our senses? Perhaps we can gain knowledge from things we can't even perceive is there? — TiredThinker

They can't describe in detail what is there. They just know something is there. This is the difference between p-zombies and non-p-zombies. The assumption that p-zombies can behave the same way as humans is wrong. Blind-sight patients are unsure about what it is that they are aware of and won't behave in the same way as a human who perceives consciously.

If I say a word has a use, then I'm saying that it has a use within a particular language-game or a particular social context. There may be many uses of a word, so your question, "Used for what?" isn't taking into account that there may not be any one use, but many uses. — Sam26

Ok, but what other uses? That is what I'm asking. Strange that you can't even provide any examples of what it is that you are trying to say.

However, the sense of a word is never the result of your subjective view. We can use words to communicate a subjective view, but we learn to use the words, and the meanings of words, in social contexts apart from the subjective. Not only is this the case, but as far as I can tell, it's necessarily the case. — Sam26

So you've never heard of mass delusions, or ideas that propagate within a group that are just wrong - like the Earth being flat?

Oh, I get it Harry, you're joking, right? You're trying to be funny, because I can't make any sense of this apart from a joke. — Sam26

If words have meaning apart from the subjective and is necessarily the case, then how did you misconstrue my intent as being funny when that wasn't my intent?

Then what's the difference between imagining and remembering - neurologically and phenomelogically?

All of this can be put simply a "Spider hallucinations look like spiders" - no use of "qualia"!

What's relevant about an hallucination of a spider is that thereis no spider. Hence, as you point out, characterising some event as an hallucination presumes realism. — Banno

What does it mean for hallucinations to look like the real thing? How can something that isn't real look like something that is?

And what does it mean to say that the hallucination isn't real? Are you saying that hallucinations themselves aren't real, or that they don't represent anything that is real? If the latter, then aren't we talking about representations (qualia) vs what is represented (spiders)? And are the representations real things themselves?

To even talk about hallucinations and compare them with other things must mean that you think that they are real and have real effects in the real world, and can be compared to real things. How can you compare something that isn't real with something that is?

To be sure, realism is the view that there is stuff in the world that is independent of the mind, so the claim that what is real is stuff in the mind would not count as realism. — Banno

But "real" in what sense? You seemed to agree earlier with the statement, "we are our minds". Are you saying that "we" and our "minds" are not real?

That is, for which there is evidence. I realize in your fantasy land, you have no need of evidence, nor are troubled by lack of it. — tim wood

I'm certainly not saying the Dems are more corrupt. I'm saying that they are equally corrupt and need each other to maintain the status quo. If you have evidence to the contrary, please post it. If it makes you sleep better to say I live in a fantasy land even though I can point to issues that I have switched sides on, like religion, based on the evidence, and you probably cant. Care to share just one idea that you've changed your mind on given the evidence? If not then who is the one living in a fantasy land?

Wittgenstein has an important point, namely, that the meaning of our words or concepts is primarily a function of a norm of use within a given language-game. — Sam26

Used for what? To accomplish what goal? To win the game? Or to communicate? How does one communicate without the understanding of representation -that something (scribbles and sounds) can mean something else (that isn't scribbles and sounds, like apples and trees)? Unless Witt is saying that individuals don't exist, then it would logically follow that individuals will have varying experiences with the rules of any language which will lead to varying degrees of understanding the rules of some language, which is to say that they have a subjective view of any language.

First generation cognitive science used the metaphor of computer to model the mind as an input output device that processes , represents and stores data. That metaphor has been replaced by the biological notion of self-organizing system. Memory is no longer thought of as storage but instead as reconstructive process. — Joshs

Right, that makes sense: so memories are reconstructed from traces, which do not remain unchanged in the process of reconstruction. — Janus

Any links regarding this? How is a process REconstructive without access to the original construction? What does it mean to be self-organizing when natural selection is an external process that has selected, over a very long time, the attributes that enable a neural system to produce behaviors (outputs) given certain sensory information (inputs)? In a sense, natural selection has programmed organisms to handle (store and interpret) sensory data in specific ways to survive.

I think memory, in one sense, just is the totality of "inscriptions", In another sense we could say it is the faculty of being able to recall those "inscriptions" to consciousness. No "container" to be found or required. — Janus

The finite medium where these inscriptions are (stored)? Maybe your confusing memories with memory. Recalled from where?

It's interesting that all the bad things that happen are done by Republicans, — tim wood

Spoken like some who only gets information from sources that confirm their own cognitive biases. It's interesting that all the bad things that happen are done by demons and devils and all the good things are done by us angels. Give. Me. A. Break.

The whole thing was a carnival for alt-right cosplayers, — StreetlightX

:lol:

Riot, insurrection. Words aside, what exactly do you say happened on 6 January? — tim wood

Riots are what they called the violence in the summer of 2020 where public property was destroyed and innocent people were killed. Other called it peaceful protests. Some would call an insurrection a revolt against tyranny. So what happened on Jan. 6th and the summer of 2020? Two ignorant groups were manipulated by political elites into thinking that their lives and freedom were being threatened by another group in order to rile them up to get votes. The two political parties fear the growing number of independents and they are growing desperate in their need for votes without having to be detailed about their plans and defending their inconsistencies, which you have to do with independents, but not with their fundamentalist, close-minded party members who vote for them no matter what.

We all (at least the intelligent people) know that the elites in govt. use their power to keep power and enrich themselves at our expense. When Nancy Pelosi's trading portfolio is as performing as well as, if not out-performing, Warren Buffet's then there must be something fishy going on.

I don't think the 'container' analogy is really a good way of understanding memory. — Janus

Sure it is. Is not memory a container of information?

Thinking of memory as consisting in traces or patterns. like marks left in the sand, seems more apt to me. — Janus

You're confusing data (inscriptions in memory) with memory.

Sure, the idea of mind is how we conceive of what we take to be the faculty doing the thinking and experiencing. It doesn't seem necessary to hold to any particular conception of mind in order to have an understanding of what we take to be the workings of the world.

You are taking it as read that we 'have' "subjective contents"; that is the default understanding, based on the intuitive analogy of the mind as a kind of container, but is it the best way to understand the mind. Wouldn't we need to consider all the other conceivable alternatives before deciding? — Janus

The idea that the mind is working memory is a way of understanding the mind as both the faculty doing the thinking (working) and as a kind of a container (memory). It seems to me that memory is a required concept for understanding mind, as information in the mind persists through time and there is only so much information that the mind can work with and recall at any moment.

Of course; but they are not real spiders. An odd thing about denying realism is that it leads to the conclusion that there are no real spiders, and hence it's all hallucinations; we no longer have the capacity to say that the paranoiac is wrong. — Banno

Sure, but the question was why do hallucinated spiders look like real spiders. How do you explain the behavior of someone hallucinating without "silly" qualia? How is it that something that isn't real looks like something that is unless they both take the same form (qualia)?

Denying realism isn't denying what is real. It just changes the reference to what is real. If there were only hallucinations (which doesn't make any sense without something real), then hallucinations would be the only reality. Reality would simply be a solipsistic mind and that is what would be real. Spiders would exist only as qualia and would be real as qualia, while the notion that spiders exist outside the mind would be the illusion.

Like you, I'm a realist. It's just that I'm also assert that qualia are real, and it would seem to be that you do to if you agree that we are our minds, which are composed of qualia. If qualia were so "silly" then how is it that solipsism could even be contemplated. A p-zombie could never conceive of the idea of solipsism. It would make no sense to them, just like the idea of qualia.

Disproving such a law does not mean that the opposite applies - merely that the law doesn't always apply.

By dismissing the LNC I accept that:
Some contradictory ideas can be both true.
Some contradictory ideas can be both false.
Some contradictory ideas cannot be true in the same sense at the same time. — Hermeticus

Now you're going to have to explain in what instances it doesn't apply and why. Examples would be nice.

Why should the universe (1) make sense (2) to us? — Agent Smith

We are natural outcomes of the universe and its properties that we find ourselves. It's like asking how does anything exist in the way it does? Because that is how this universe works. Natural selection has selected organisms with opposable thumbs and large brains because this form of ours is more compatible with survival in this universe, or at least on this planet. What species has been able spread out like we have all over the globe and into space?

This "law of noncontradiction" has essentially been disproven by the principle of quantum superposition. — Hermeticus

Then the LNC has both been proven and not proven. Remember that by dismissing the LNC you accept ALL contradictory ideas as both being true, not just one.

At the same time, three retired generals wrote in the Post that they were “increasingly concerned about the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election and the potential for lethal chaos inside our military”. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Sounds like Senator Palpatine creating fear to use as a reason to seize more power and to become Emperor.

BLM and the Good 'Ol Boys should just agree on a time and place in some dark alley and have at it and leave the rest of us alone.

I don't think we "have access" to our own minds; we are our minds, at least in part - as you say. SO that way of speaking leads to confusion. — Banno

I don't really know that we are our minds. What of our bodies? Are we not our bodies? If confusion results from saying that we have access to our minds, in what way do we have access to our own bodies, and then to the environment they are part of? Does this mean that "we" can exist apart from our bodies? If not, then wouldn't that mean that we are our bodies and not our minds?

That's indeed a weak point. I suppose an intentionalsit account might talk about something like "persistence" being absent form hallucinations and dreams. Or better, that they are not shared in the way of veritable experiences. — Banno

A schizophrenic's hallucinations are persistent. If they cannot be shared in the way of veritable experiences, then how is it possible to lie to others - to make others believe in things that are not true? How is it that we can get others to behave in ways as if they are hallucinating by lying to them? Asserting that the behavior of others an help you determine if you are hallucinating or not doesn't help at all when the others and their behaviors could be a hallucination as well. Think about how a schizophrenic will claim that everyone is out to get him and they don't believe his ideas about being hunted down by the government.

Besides, none of this addresses why there is even a moment in time where hallucinations can be misinterpreted as being real - because of the shared qualities of the experience itself - hallucinated spiders look just like real spiders. When looking at another brain, either directly or via a brain scan, is it easier to tell the difference when someone is hallucinating or not than it is when you're the one experiencing the hallucination? If so, why the discrepancy when your view of another's brain is always via your own mind? How is it that you can know more about someone else's state than they do if you can only access their state indirectly, and if they are their own mind then why wouldn't they have more direct and accurate knowledge of their own mental state than you?

Phenomenology is often charged by it's critics to be a matter of mere introspection, since it is understood to be dealing, not with publicly available data, but with "subjective contents" supposed to be accessed by "looking within" the mind. — Janus

Yet we can theorize about the underlying causes of behaviors of organic and inorganic matter that we can't observe directly all the time. That's why they're theories as opposed to observations. Only by designing and constructing the right measuring devices can we then observe the underlying causes to confirm our theories. Like Galileo said, "Measure what can be measured, and make measurable what cannot be measured".

Atoms were theorized to exist before observing their existence. Why didn't we refer to atoms as "subjective contents" when we could only theorize their existence as a result of the impact they have on the macro objects we do observe? The same goes for organisms. The difference is that we each have direct knowledge of the existence of our own phenomenological experiences, and which have an impact on our behaviors that can be observed by others, including making statements like "I feel great!" or "I feel awful!" P-zombies could probably only understand and use phrases like, "I am great!", or "I am awful!". So there appears to be a distinction between how something is vs. how it can feel. Is that distinction an illusion, or a "folk" distinction?

The difference that we have when theorizing about the existence of things we can't observe except by the effect those things have on the things that we can observe and theorizing the existence of minds, is that with minds we start off with two different views - the 1st and 3rd person views, whereas, with atoms, we only have a 3rd-person view, yet this 3rd person view is always like a 1st-person view - just from some imagined place in space-time. The problem is that we have these two "opposing" views - which is what creates doubt in that we know the world or our minds as they actually are. The difference in doubting the existence of your mind as opposed to the world is that you only know the world by the "subjective contents" of your mind, so if you doubt your understanding of your own mind, you automatically undermine your understanding of the world.

Being that our "subjective contents" have an impact on how we behave, how are they not as real as atoms, and can be talked about like we talk about atoms like we did after we theorized their existence, but before we observed their existence?

Given that my neighbor replied "You don't know what's good!", it's clear that he didn't operate on the above principle. — baker

They could have meant, "You don't know how I feel!".

The point is that we already have a way of using words that can refer to our feelings in an objective way. The problem is confusing one for the other - our feelings and the object our feelings are associated with, not a problem of language. Our minds and our feelings are just as real as everything else and can be talked about objectively, just like everything else.

As a rule, it seems that people typically conflate the two, their feelings about something and the thing itself. (Gourmet culture is a vivid example of such conflation.)

And this isn't a benign matter. If people wouldn't conflate like that, they couldn't come to statements like "Jews are inferior" — baker

Is this a result of how they see the world independent of language, or how language has made them see the world?

We agree that people conflate the two, but my point was that some people don't, and that there is no limitations in our language that prevent us from talking about the world and the mind objectively.

A more interesting example of the subjective nature we view the world is how we view it as a species vs. other species. Being able to determine what you perceive is real or an illusion is by using your observations of how others behave in a similar instance, is fine for limiting personal subjective errors, but what if we all have the same kind of illusion because of how our particular brains and senses function compared to other species? Using the behavior of others that share the same illusion isn't going to be very helpful. The use of animals, like dogs with heightened senses of hearing and smell are often used in addition to our own senses to determine if the noise you heard isn't just a figment of your imagination.

Now consider how any brain processes information compared to the other processes of the world. The brain takes time to process information, and the time it takes to process that info is relative to the process of change everywhere else. So how the brain perceives the world can be relative to how fast or slow everything else changes. Stable, slow changing processes would appear as fixed, unchanging objects, while faster processes would appear as processes of the objects themselves.

Think of how we perceive the three states of matter. Solid objects are composed of slow-moving, stable molecular interactions. Liquids are composed of faster and less stable molecular interactions, and gases even more so. Could it be that the quantified three states of matter are really more to do with how we perceive other processes relative to the frequency of how our brains process the information? This isn't to say that the interaction between molecules doesn't change, only that our compartmentalized view of these changes is a projection, kind of like digitizing an analog signal.

This would mean that the objects that we perceive are the result of our own subjective frequency of processing information relative to these frequency of change in the other processes that we are perceiving. This would mean that brains as objects don't really exist. Everything is process. This would explain why what we perceive appears differently to how we perceive (objects vs process).