Well the was someone on here who claimed the mind is fiction or something, but that’s just wrong since our experience of reality itself is all mind. Our brains construct a simplified version of reality so we can navigate it, not to mention it’s constantly making predictions and overriding incorrect guesses. Even what you believe impacts what you experience or perceive. So I guess I can see your point.

Like…if mine isn’t reality then nothing is given what neuroscience says. But that’s obviously nonsense.

Though when I first learned that about our experience it threw me for a loop, but yeah mind is reality/nature (or whatever you call it). — Darkneos

If the mind is a fiction or illusion, what does that say about our understanding of the world given that we can only refer to how the world appears to the mind?

The visual of chemicals and neurons interacting is a visual model of what is happening. What you see is not only dictated by the type of senses you have but the medium by which the information travels (as light waves for vision, waves in the air for hearing, etc.)

If we were all actually stuck in our subjectivity then how could numerous people - all prisoners of their own subjectivity - work together towards a common goal and actually succeed? How many people were involved in getting humans to the Moon? How many people in their separate departments and jobs came together to accomplish something above and beyond what they do in their own departments if our minds are only subjective in nature? I think that the distinction between objective and subjective is a false dichotomy.

They are relativized becasue one speaker might intend different meaning than another for a specific word. This is not true of computer languages, which allows (almost) no ambiguity. You speak of physical language as distinct from common language, and perhaps my assessment is only true of the latter. — noAxioms

For communication to occur (the primary function of language-use) it would do the speaker or writer good to understand the language understood by their listeners and readers, as well as the level of understanding of the language. What would you hope to accomplish in talking about quantum physics to a 4 year old, or publishing a book written in Spanish in Russia? The relativized nature of language disappears when it is actually used to successfully communicate. You could say that the relativized nature of language only appears when miscommunication occurs.

So what? I presume we share the same ontology, but none of that matters to the question of 1) what that ontology is, and 2) what else (unperceived) also shared that ontology.
'What you are' is irrelevant to the question at hand 'what all is?'. — noAxioms

And you have been using the parts as examples of what all is while appearing to fail to account for the mind as part of the whole as well.

The point is that minds are part of what all is. If you are going to go for the "Hail Mary" to explain what all is, your explanation is going to inherently define what its parts are as well and their relations to each other, and what all is should not contradict nature of its parts.

.

How does the relationship between energy and matter play a role in the nature of the wave-particle? Einstein showed that matter and energy are the same thing. It seems to me that energy of all forms come in waves. Waves on the ocean are two-dimensional while EM waves propagate across space in 3 dimensions. What if the wave in wave particle duality is propagating across 5 dimensions? If time is the fourth dimension would this play a roll in how we perceive particles making wave patterns over time?

The idea does bug me, the thought that if it's all just chemicals then there would be no real reason to not plug into it. What difference is there if we can just replicate everything? — Darkneos

It bugs me too. It's as if neurologists claim to have direct access to what it is to be me as "just chemicals" when they are only aware of this via their own subjective experiences of other people and their brains. It's as if neurologists are claiming to have some special power that the rest of us do not, in seeing everything as it is, even though they have the same limitations as everyone else in that we are prisoners of our subjectivity.

It's as if people are claiming that the view through their window is true, but the window isn't.

Living beings, even the simplest ones, behave quite differently from non-living things. They demarcate the 'outer' and the 'inner' space, they have a metabolism, they strive for self-preservation and so on.
So, I would say that in their case, it seems reasonable to assert that they are distinct entities (instead of, say, distinct patterns, emergent features or whatever). — boundless

Every thing behaves differently than other things. This does not make living beings special. We are merely talking about degrees of complexity, or causes, of some behavior of some thing. There is an "inner" and "outer" to everything. Open an box to see what is inside. Peel an orange to get at what is inside. Open a skull, and well you get at what is inside - a brain, not a mind. It would seem to me that you, as a living being, would subjectively think of yourself as special, which is a projection of your self-preservation.

Is this true in all cases, though? I don't think so. In the case of living beings as I said before, it seems that we can treat them as individual entities. — boundless

Yes, it is true in all cases that whether we treat organisms as individuals or parts of a larger group, it depends on our goals. This can be said of individual atoms of individual molecules of individual cells of individual organs of individual organisms of individual species, of individual genus and families, of individual planets, star systems, galaxies and universes.[

quote="boundless;983469"]In the case of a chair, we can of course distinguish it from a table. But maybe they aren't distinct entities as much distinct emergent features that appear to be distinct entities. But is this true for all non-living things (at least if they are composite)? I'm not sure. But I do believe that it is more difficult for inanimate objects to have a level of differentiation from the environment to be considered separately existing things.[/quote]
Can you distinguish a chair from the class, "furniture"? No, because it is a type of furniture. Change your goals and you change which information is relevant at any given moment.

Organisms are composed of organs, which are composed of cells. Are cells living things? Organisms evolve based on changes in the environment (natural selection). Organisms are even participants in the selective process of other organisms (prey vs predator).

Anyway, as an aside, probably the main reason why Albert Einstein was dissatisfied by QM (even by the realistic non-local interpetations like de Broglie-Bohm interpretation) is that the non-locality in QM to him meant that the division of the world into sub-systems (i.e. distinct physical objects) become arbitrary. — boundless

This seems to coincide exactly with what I am saying. Any individual entity or system it is part of is dependent upon arbitrary goals in the mind. One simply changes one's view by either looking through a telescope or microscope, or by changing one's position relative to the object being talking about. When on the surface of the Earth, you are part of it. You are part of the environment of the Earth and actively participate in it. Move yourself out into space and the Earth becomes an individual entity because you cannot perceive all the small parts and processes happening. They are all merged together into an individual entity, but only if you ignore that the Earth is itself influenced by the Sun and the Moon. The question is, which view is relevant to the current goal in your mind?

In my understanding, a physical language per se is purely a communication protocol for coordinating human actions, that is to say physical languages per-se do not transmit information about the world from the mind of the speaker to the mind of the listener. — sime

Then what actions are you attempting to coordinate with this assertion? It appears to me that you are attempting to inform others something about the world - about the nature of physical language.

The problem with Kant is that people who don't understand him say that the problem is his. — tim wood

Well, yeah. That could be possible. It is also possible that the problem is theirs. How do we find out who has the problem if not by getting at language as a thing in itself - the scribbles on the screen as the things in themselves?

What is so strange are these philosophers that cast doubt on our understanding of things in themselves yet fail to make the same case for people, their minds and their actions (language-use), when they are accessed by the same apparatus that we access everything else. It's no different than how physicists have ignored having to account for consciousness in the grand-scheme of things, as if minds either do not exist, are an illusion, or not susceptible to the same laws or rules that govern everything else.

Solipsism logically follows from doubting the existence of things in the external world, including other minds, because they are all apprehended by our senses and reason in the same way.

And here's spoor of the confusion: "had no knowledge of modern atomic theory and quantum mechanics." Knowledge of what, exactly? — tim wood

The study of atomic structures, the calculus of QM and its predictive power as well as the conflicting interpretations of QM and the current problem of trying to reconcile the quantum with the macro.

The point is that Kant is a product of his time and times have changed.

Would Kant have said the same things if he were alive today?

Kant was concerned with knowledge. His arguments are toward both what we know and how we know it. You, e.g., speak of knowledge of quantum mechanics. Richard Feynman famously wrote that no one understood QM. Assuming him correct, how can you have knowledge about what is not understood? But that's just half the problem. Is yours knowledge of a theory, or of the thing itself? — tim wood

What Feynman meant was that we do not have an adequate interpretation of the calculus of QM and why it is so useful at making predictions.

Is a theory a thing in itself? Is knowledge a thing in itself? Are scribbles on the page things in themselves? Are minds things in themselves?

I agree with Kant that knowledge is an amalgam of experience and reason. Beliefs would be having just one or the other. Knowledge as justified belief is reasoning justified by observations or observations justified by reason. For instance, religions typically try to explain experience (the existence of the universe, suffering, etc.) without reasoning (many arguments made are illogical and contradictory). Logic independent of confirmation by observation would be hypotheses unconfirmed by observation.

I would go further to say that logic is symbolic relations - symbols which require the senses to perceive. All thoughts are composed of empirical data - visuals, sounds, etc. If not, then what are you thoughts composed of if not shaped colors, sounds, etc.? How would you know you are even thinking at any given moment? What are you pointing to when you assert that you are thinking, if not the various sensory data and the relationship between them in your mind?

I like your overall view. But I don't know if I understand aspects of it, because I don't see how it solves the HP. Remove me from the process, and view the remainder as an object. Why is that object - a process that continues without my observation - not conscious? — Patterner

It isn't conscious because there isn't a working memory establishing a sensory information feedback loop. What I mean by "working" is a system whose behavior resembles goal-directed behavior (intent).

I think consciousness evolved as a way of responding to more immediate and rapid changes in the environment rather than just relying on instinctual responses to adapt, which could take generations.

I think that only brain-like structures are conscious with the degree of consciousness commensurate with the degree of complexity of the structure. I believe that robots, not necessarily computers, could be conscious. If they are designed to take in sensory information via their camera-eyes, microphone-ears, tactile-pressure and heat sensors, air chemical sensor nose, etc. and a working memory that integrates that information into a working model of the world for planning actions and learning, observes the outcomes of it's own actions and uses it to fine-tune future actions, etc. it is conscious.

What we are basically talking about is degrees of complexity. On the smallest scales of time and space the relations are as simple as you can get and it is the compounding of these

You may be right. But, so far, I think what creates the problem is our being so secure in our mastery of all things that we think we can know that nothing we are not aware of can exist. — Patterner

Or that awareness (the observing observer) itself is being neglected as part of the explanation of the world, as if minds are separate from the world.

Particles in motion, as opposed to particles not in motion, doesn't seem like dualism to me. How do you mean? — Patterner

Those particles in motion are themselves particles in motion. Even solid objects are made of particles in motion. The difference between solids, liquids and gases is related to the strength of the bonds between the particles, allowing greater motion between them.

I think relativity plays a role in how objects appear to us. Our minds process information at a certain rate, or frequency. That frequency will be relative to the rate of change in other aspects of the environment, like the movement between particles. Slower processes will appear as solid, static objects, while faster processes will appear more fluid, or as blurs, or processes.

Can we talk about this more? I think of information as something that means something else. A mountain is a big hunk of earth rising above the earth surrounding it. A mountain doesn't mean something it is not. It doesn't even mean 'mountain'. It simply is a mountain. — Patterner

I'm saying that the mountain means it causes. The mountain is just the current observable state of the long slow process of plate tectonics. The existence of the mountain means plate tectonics is a process that still occurs, or has occurred on this planet, as well as where the plate boundaries are (where the mountain is), which direction they are moving relative to each other, etc.

The point is change your goals, or your view, to other than looking at a mountain and you will be aware of those other bits of information.

In information systems, things mean other things; things that they are not. In spoken language, sounds mean things they are not. Because we have all agreed to it, a particular combination of sounds mean 'mountain'. This combination of sounds is not, itself, a mountain. It's just a combination of sounds. But we have all agreed that those sounds mean 'mountain'. — Patterner

How can a thing mean another thing that it is not if not by causal processes? The effect is not the cause, but it means the cause because of its causal relationship. The effects of the crime (the crime scene and its observable evidence) means "<insert the name of some convicted criminal here>" committed the crime.

In written language, we have all agreed that squiggles of certain shapes on paper (or a computer screen) mean other things. Usually, they mean sounds; sounds which, themselves, mean something. The squiggles mountain mean the sounds most of us are now hearing in our heads, which, in turn, mean the big hunk of earth rising above the earth surrounding it. — Patterner

The scribbles do not mean the sounds. The sounds and scribbles are different representations of the same thing - that big hunk of earth rising above sea level. They mean the mountain because of the causal process, representative nature of language itself. Someone had to come up with the symbols to use, and we all had to agree on them - a causal process.

DNA is an information system. It has meaning. It is about something that it is not. DNA is two complimentary strands of nucleotides running along sugar phosphate backbones, and joined by hydrogen bonds. DNA means chains of amino acids and proteins, which, once constructed, build living organisms. — Patterner

Some current DNA structure of a particular species means the natural selective forces that shaped the organism and its ancestors it descended from.

I think your definition is different, if any cause>effect fits it. we are able to glean information from many such situations. because of what we know, we can learn things about the weather many years ago by looking at the rings of across section of a tree. However, that does not mean the rings are about the rainfall, or that the rainfall is about the rings, so it does not fit my definition. — Patterner

How can you say the rings are not about the rainfall if you can glean information about the rainfall from the rings? What do you mean by "about" and is it any different from what you mean by "mean"? What does "informed" mean to you? How are you informed about anything and what are you informed of if not the causal processes that preceded what it is you are talking about explaining?

Not at all. That world relates to you as much as it does to me. But confining our declaration of reality to that mutually shared world is what I'm bringing into question. — noAxioms

But you are only aware of me in the same way you are aware of anything. I don't understand how you can question the nature of everything except other people when you access the nature of people the same way you access the nature of everything else. I mean, I could be a bot. Others could be p-zombies or androids, or aliens in disguise. Even then, they would be something tangible (a bot, android or alien), like stars and planets, chairs and tables, rocks and mountains, and CDs and books. So the question doesn't seem to be "DO they exist" rather "HOW do they exist". Are they ideas, physical, information, process, relationships, or what? And the answer seems to be intricately related to our present goal in the mind.

A system state does not measure itself. Subsequent system states measure it, yes, true even under Newtonian physics, although I don't think this relational spinning of ontology was seriously considered back then. — noAxioms

But that is what you said,

a system at a moment in time does not exist since it hasn't measured itself. — noAxioms

The issue now is what measured the first system to get it all going, or is it measurements all the way down? Is this different than saying it is information, or relationships all the way down? Is measuring a process?

It's just because our minds are parts of the world. — jorndoe

Yes. The map is part of the territory.

There's a small possibility of that, yes. Boltzmann Brains and whatnot. — RogueAI

Possibility is a projection of our ignorance of the facts. Either CDs and books can randomly spawn into existence or they cannot. Even if they did. The information would be the causal relation between their existence in the present moment and the causes that preceded their existence. If there was no cause then there is no information.

I may not be understanding you, but I argue that no ideas are mind-independent. As we seem to be out in the Kantian plain, it's useful, imo, to try to navigate the context of these ideas. Among Kant's tasks was to account for knowledge. Before him it was either mind or world, and he found a way to put them together - mind and world - noting also limitations in the synthesis.

My understanding is that he never doubted the efficacy of practical knowledge, but instead had noted that practical knowledge was not well-accounted as knowledge, which account he provided.

Thus the "in-itself-(as-it-is-in-itself)" suffix used in reference to things in themselves is both significant and important. It's the boundary between knowledge that ideas about a thing provide, and the thing that provides it - the thingness of which cannot be doubted. — tim wood

How does this apply to rocks "as-it-is-in-itself" and the atoms they are composed of "as-they-are-in-themselves" and the structural arrangement of the atoms that gives the rick the property of hardness and porosity?

The problem with invoking Kant here is that Kant had no knowledge of modern atomic theory and quantum mechanics. Is the "thing-in-itself" a state of superposition, or a wave function?

With living beings, I suppose that one can consider them as distinct entities, but with inanimate composite objects the distinction seems more difficult to make. So, in a sense, no, the rock isn't an idea. But in an important sense, I would say that it probably is an idea, indeed. The way we 'carve' the world into physical objects seems to be in part mind-dependent.

Is a chair an unique entity? Are the parts of the chair distinct entities from the chair? Or is the identification of the chair or its parts as different 'things' a mind-dependent construct? — boundless

Good point. The problem though is why are living beings distinct entities but rocks and chairs are not. If perceive living beings the same way I perceive rocks and chairs then why make a special case for living beings?

I think that the boundaries are defined based on our goals. It is useful to distinguish humans from other animals and inanimate objects. It is sometimes useful to distinguish individual objects or group them together. Which cause or which effect one focuses on is dependent upon the goal, or intent, in the mind.

I vote for what I want government to do at a given time. — Vera Mont

Does this entail telling others how to live their lives or what they can and can't say, or what they can spend their money on or not?

I know of a dozen reasons, that have roots in the recent and distant past, but I will not discuss them here, for lack of sufficient space and time. In brief: fear and loathing beat out joy and optimism. A considerable amount of Repub cheating didn't help. — Vera Mont

You sound just like a Rep. Reps say the same thing. Dems and Reps aren't any different when it comes to using their constituents as pawns in their game of chess. They know that their constituents are in an information bubble and don't question the party for the threat of heresy (just look at the Dems who tried to criticize the extreme left of their party and ended up leaving it).

Abolish political parties. Abolish group-think and group-hate.

Your discourse is unobjective. — Ludovico Lalli

Political discourse is inherently unobjective because it is rooted in ethics. Thus is why Libertarianism is the default position for those that understand this fact. What allows me to live my best life might not necessarily be the same for others but as long it does not infringe on the way they live their life, what's the problem?

It is not even a problem the presence of a single party as far as there are perpetual elections that are accessible to everyone and within which everyone can concur; in addition the single party must be accessible by everyone, that is a characteristic that must distinguish all the offices of the State. — Ludovico Lalli

Not just accessible but questioned and criticized to encourage compettion and for progress to be made.

The idea of a rock is an idea. As to what the rock is apart from ideas is not easy to say. But that there is something seems clear. — tim wood

Yeah, something there that has the properties of hardness and porosity, among others that allow us to distinguish it as a rock instead of a chicken feather.

It's contradictory to assert that we can claim that ideas can be of rocks, but not of the properties that make the thing distinguishable from other things. Are the differences between a rock and chicken feather an idea of something independent of your mind?

These are ideas, not things. Being ideas, they exist as ideas. As ideas they may be inspired by the rock, but are nothing to or for or with the rock. This isn't difficult. What is difficult is sorting out the truth of the matter from the way language uses it, and language can be a great misleader. But that's why we're all here at TPF, to dig out the truth of the matter. — tim wood

Then what is the rock? Just another idea?

Not independent at least of the process via which they are implemented. — noAxioms

You can say that about anything, not just minds and their ideas. Rocks are not independent of the processes that makes them rocks.

You might say that ideas of rocks need rocks to exist
— Harry Hindu
Nah... My ideas of unicorns exist despite the typical assertion of the nonexistence of the unicorns. — noAxioms

I wonder if you could have the idea of a unicorn without having experienced the existence of horses and horns prior.

Your idea of a unicorn caused you to write the scribble, "unicorn" on the screen, and you can draw a picture of one too - all causal processes. Can your drawing (the paper with the ink marks) exist independently of your idea of the unicorn? I mean would that drawing come to exist if there if you had no ideas of unicorns?

You seem to misunderstand the OP. I'm not suggesting that mind causes the existence of things, but rather that the minds cause the concept of existence of things. Whether that concept corresponds to objective fact is an open issue. People tend to assert the existence of things perceived. (They're presumed to exist) because they are perceived, but I think you're reading it more as They're presumed to (exist because they are perceived). The latter is the idealism I'm not talking about. — noAxioms

Then you're talking about solipsism if you are emphasizing the uncertainty of an external world.

I'm not sure if the mind causes concepts. The mind is composed of concepts. Minds certainly do cause the existence of things, like books, CDs and rockets to space.

More to the point, are 'you' in the past, and per the reasoning quoted above, the answer is yes. A relational view is described there, and Rovelli (from Relational Quantum Mechanics) says that a system at a moment in time does not exist since it hasn't measured itself. It can only measure the past, so only prior events exist relative to a measuring event. — noAxioms

Sure. It takes time for the light signals that enter my eye and interpreted by my visual cortex. Everything we see is in the past and the further away it is the further in the past it appears (other stars and galaxies). Classical physics seems to do better at explaining the time difference. How does a system that doesn't exist measure itself?

Well, not being a presentist, I would word such comments more in B-series. Any particular brain state includes observation of past states, binding those states into a meaningful identity. I (some arbitrary noAxioms state event) have but one causal past (a worldline terminating at said event), but no causal future since no subsequent state is measured.

This is quite different from a more classical presentist view where only current state exists (all unmeasured, all counterfactual), and the past is but a memory, not real. — noAxioms

Yet memories define present and future interpretations of sensory data. They are what allow us to make predictions. In a deterministic universe, which you seem to be describing, the past, present and future are all informative of each other. We can determine the past by observing present facts and predict the future by observing present facts and integrating past facts. You would need to explain how we are so successful at making predictions (much better than random chance) and implementing them in the world.

BTW, minds do not come into play with either definition. Your example involved a mind, but it didn't need to. — noAxioms

Sure. Minds are but one kind of process in the world. When talking about any process we are talking about causation and information. Minds are not necessary for either, but can be part of both. It just depends on what process we want to talk about.

Ideas do not exist independently of the mind that has them. Rocks on the other hand do. — tim wood

Hardness and porosity do not exist independently of the rock either. So what is the point? Properties do not exist independently of the thing they are part of.

If we were to instead define being independent as being causally separated, then jorndoe provided the simple answer to that question:

You (decide to) call your dog, and it comes over: mind → world

Your dog comes over, making you happy: world → mind

So no, not independent. — jorndoe

So it appears that "independence" in the context of minds, their ideas and the world are not independent at all, in any sense of the word.

Let's say you have a compact disk of Mozart pieces. In a mindless universe, that disk is just a collection of particles assembled in a disk with a bunch of tiny pits. There's no musical information, right? But the CD also obviously contains musical information. Mind is fundamental viz a viz the musical information.

Or take a book about Sherlock Holmes. In a mindless universe, that book is just a collection of inks and pages. There's no Sherlock Holmes there. But that book also contains information about Sherlock Holmes which only a universe with minds could detect. — RogueAI

Are you saying that CDs, books and watches can come to be without their being a mind with intent to create them? If a mind went into creating them then these things cannot exist in a mindless universe, so your examples are unrealistic.

Take natural phenomenon, like tree rings in a tree stump. Is a mind necessary for the tree rings to mean the age of the tree, or are the tree rings representative of the age of the tree because of the causal process of how the tree grows throughout the year?

If some mass of molecules absorbed the light reflected off the rings and made some marks somewhere equal to the number of rings and then erased those marks for each ring in another stump, you'd have the age of the first tree when the second one began its life, no mind necessary.

The distinction with minds is that they possess intent, or are goal-directed. Information is everywhere but what information is relevant is dependent upon the present goal in the mind. It's not that there isn't information there. It's just that it is irrelevant to the current goal.

CDs and books contain information more than just the music and stories. They contain information about how and where they were constructed, their authors, the language they are written in and the level of understanding the authors have of the English language, the author's intentions, etc., all causal processes, that are there and ripe for the pickings if your goals were different than to just listen to music or read a story. What if you were a collector of CDs and books? You might organize them based on different types of information contained within them, not just the story or music, like the author, printings, publisher, etc.

I wish that distinction were made clearly enough in a dictionary and in political parlance for everyone to understand the same meanings. — Vera Mont

You're saying you do your research into candidates but don't understand their differences?
:gasp:

The more Dems and Reps abandon those ideals within the Libertarian box, they become more extreme (communists and fascists). There isn't much of a difference to the Libertarian. They are both authoritarian and hypocrites (blaming each other for the same things they do).

The point being that people that do their research actually vote for candidates, not parties
— Harry Hindu
Or policies, maybe? Or one particular issue? Or a leader they prefer as head of their government? Or some other aspect of candidate and/or party that is meaningful to that voter? — Vera Mont

...and a candidate is what entails all of these things so you haven't contradicted my point. You're just reiterating it. :roll:

I don't believe you know his motivations, his experience or what research he's done. — Vera Mont

I know what he said:

I vote party line Democrat. I’ll never vote for a Republican. Voting for third-party candidates is voting for Republicans. — T Clark

Sounds like someone who lets others do their thinking for them.

You don't bother questioning your group when the majority (the more moderate Dems) allow the actions of a few (the extremists (socialists/communists that are trying to erase diversity, not promote it)
— Harry Hindu
That's not what I'm seeing in US politics currently. — Vera Mont

Delusional are we? Why do you think the left lost in the recent U.S. election?

The current US Democrats are what you consider far left? In that case, I'm so far left I'm beneath your horizon. No, not in an ism, and not on the basis of any big-name thinker's recommendation; simply through observation of how we humans screw up our lives, our communities and our world. — Vera Mont

What I was responding to was,

Voting for third-party candidates is voting for Republicans. — T Clark

If you view third party candidates the same as voting Republicans, how much further left could you be?

Conservatives complain of discrimination against them when they encounter social disapproval of their views. Liberals complain of being jailed, fired or censored for theirs. Which is the 'snowflake' and which the hypocrite? — Vera Mont

Just don't conflate the "left" with "liberal". The left will have you censored for refusing the accept that women can be men and men can be women. The left and the right perpetuate delusions. Liberals don't want anything to do with delusions.

Then Something is mistaken. I have a choice of voting L, ND or G. Though none fulfill all of my requirements, I choose the one that comes closest at any given election cycle and hope their parties can form at least a temporary alliance in the face of regressive threats. I do inform myself and I always vote, even if the odious C candidate is a dead cert in my riding. — Vera Mont

The point being that people that do their research actually vote for candidates, not parties. T Clark votes for party. When you do that you don't bother doing research. You don't bother questioning your group when the majority (the more moderate Dems) allow the actions of a few (the extremists (socialists/communists that are trying to erase diversity, not promote it) bring down the whole group and lose.

I myself distinguish between ideas and (material) things, both real, but ideas not "independently" existing. — tim wood

If ideas are real then how can you say that they do not independently exist? Do ideas exist independent of rocks? If rocks do not need ideas to exist, do ideas need rocks to exist? You might say that ideas of rocks need rocks to exist, but what about ideas of things that do not exist in the world, like leprechauns? Are ideas of leprechauns independent of rocks?

Is saying that some thing exists independently saying that it can exist without interacting with anything else causally, or that it is a property of one thing and not another (ideas are properties of minds and not properties of rocks so ideas exist independently of rocks), or something else?

The current US Democrats are what you consider far left? In that case, I'm so far left I'm beneath your horizon. No, not in an ism, and not on the basis of any big-name thinker's recommendation; simply through observation of how we humans screw up our lives, our communities and our world. — Vera Mont

When it comes to free speech and women's rights I would say the Democrats share more in common with the Republicans than independent moderates.

Not anymore. They're being relentlessly stripped of their voting rights, and such votes as they have, are discounted more at each election cycle. This erosion of democracy has been going on steadily in half the country for over a century and a half. It was retarded for a couple of decades in the mid-20th, but has accelerated in the 21st and under the current ministration, is in existential crisis. — Vera Mont

The erosion of democracy starts with limiting free speech, which has become the mantra of the current incarnation of the Democratic party.

What is so ironic is that you claim the erosion of democracy was retarded in the mid-20th century when the U.S. had a president for four terms. So was it when Congress amended the Constitution to limit the number of terms to two that renewed the retardation of democracy or was it only when Republicans were elected?

Democracy is retarded by life-long politicians like Biden, Pelosi and McConnell and only essentially having two choices.

A two-party system is only one step away from one-party rule. Abolish political parties and give us more choices - that is the essence of freedom and democracy.

Something tells me you wouldn't know who to vote for if they didn't have a D next to their name.

Is anyone willing to defend a mind-independent view? I am not positing idealism, where there is no distinction between a concept and the ding-an-sich. I'm just noting that human biases tend to slap on the 'real' label to that which is perceived, and resists slapping that label on other things, making it dependent on that perception. — noAxioms

If it isn't idealism then it must be some form of panpsychism. Minds are not fundamental. Information is. Minds are one of those complexities that arise from exponential information processing. Brains are mental models of other minds and brains are one of the most complex things we know. We understand that complex things arise from an interaction of less complex things.

What do we take away from all this? Perhaps that ontology runs backwards. The existence of a causal thing is not objective, but rather works backwards from the arrow of time. Future measurements cause past measured events to come into existence, at least relative to the measurement done. And by 'measurement', I mean any physical interaction, not a mind-dependent experiment does with intention. Such a definition would be quite consistent with the Eleatic Principle, no? — noAxioms

Sure, but what about your mind? Is your mind in the past? Based on what you are saying, another's observation of your brain would be in the past, but your mind, for you, is in the present. One might say it is the present, and the past and future are processed information in the mind. The past and future would actually be in the present. Solipsism seems to logically follow from this.

If you're going to make an argument for causal systems being real, but the world is not mind-independent, then what are the causes of your experiences, if not mind-independent? I just don't see how you can say, "mind-independent" and not mean idealism, panpsychism or solipsism.

If you're saying it's backwards then you are saying that complexity is fundamental and simplicity arises from complexity, not the other way around. Is this what you are saying?

Voting for third-party candidates is voting for Republicans. — T Clark

I wouldn't expect any different from an extreme leftist. When you're so far to the left, everyone else is right.

You're right. The liberal idea has no meaning in the modern world. We're in disarray, fighting a doomed rearguard action. Evil will always win, because it's not hampered by ethics, shame or compassion. — Vera Mont

I wouldn't give up hope yet. The independent moderates outnumber the Dems and Reps and the numbers are growing. The moderate middle is the group that decides elections. When one party goes to far to one side the pendulum swings back to the other side with just as much force.

If we want to tamper the level of divisiveness and tribalism we see today we really need to abolish political parties. Stop voting for Dems or Reps. There are other candidates on the ballot. Do your research to see which one actually shares more of your ideas and positions rather then being scared into voting for one side or the other so the other side doesn't win, and end up voting against many of your positions.

"But an independent doesn't have a chance to win!" is the typical argument. You're making the Dems and Reps argument for them. Whatever happened to "Be the change you want to see in the world."?

What you say is true, but the terms liberal and conservative have come to be used differently today and especially in the US. That has led to some ambiguity in this thread. — T Clark

I would say that the terms have come to be MIS-used, or used to manipulate liberals into giving their support expecting the liberals to forget all about the left's/right's authoritative positions and actually vote against the liberal's positions on other issues.

Right, and this is where the disagreement runs deep. The idea that we need a shared vision of the good to live together—that’s exactly what liberalism resists. Its bet is that we can coexist without agreeing on ultimate ends. That isn’t moral emptiness; it’s a kind of modesty. A politics for a world where we don’t all think alike. — Banno

It depends on what you're talking about. The social nature of humans cooperation and altruism evolved naturally without any politics involved, unless you're going to say natural selection is political. The ultimate end is having the choice to participate in any group one chooses or to be a hermit if one chooses. Liberalism is about being free to choose which includes the ability to choose to be part of a group or not and cooperate or not. Liberals are not necessarily stupid. They understand that cooperation with others can produce greater things that one could do on their own.

And if that sounds unsatisfying—what’s the alternative? Who decides what the good is, and what happens to those who don’t agree? There’s a long history there, and not a happy one. — Banno

Well, AI and genetics will provide the tools to authoritarians to mold society into something like the Borg of Star Trek. If that idea is frightening then all good liberals should working together to prevent that from happening (the ultimate goal of all liberals).

I don't know. We've done very well thinking the world is physical. — Patterner

Thinking the world is physical is what creates the mind-body problem and humans have been grappling with this problem for a very long time. Scientists have also failed to account for the observer and the nature of observation in their explanations of what they are observing. QM has forced physicists to have to account for the observer according to some of its interpretations.

There is still the major problem of integrating QM with classical physics. How does the random weirdness of the quantum translate to the deterministic nature of the macro-sized world? I think that by providing a good definition of consciousness it will inherently solve the issue.

It's possible that that macro-sized "physical" world does not even exist except in how a mind interprets quantum processes. Are the interpretations of QM evidence that solipsism is the case?

But ok, how do we abandon the term physical? What are processes? I mean, a processes of what? What is doing the processing? What is the medium? — Patterner

Just stop using the word. If you go back and read everything you have written and look at where you've used the term you can remove the term and pretty much keep the same meaning of what you have written.

Processes are causal relations - where some cause/input produces some effect/output. What is the medium of the mind? Information.

To get a better idea of how it could be processes all the way down, think about how when we look deeper at matter and we find that particles are merely the interaction of smaller particles (process), and the smaller particles are the interaction of ever smaller "particles". You never get at any particles, only processes. Particles are mental representations of processes. The act of apprehending "particles" is a process. When you ask, "a process of what?", the answer is other processes. How is processes made of processes any more difficult to understand than particles are made of particles?

You might argue that there are particles and then processes of particles (which is essentially more dualism). But when you change your view you find that particles are actually processes when looking deeper at matter, as I have pointed out, and that when you remove yourself from the process you view the process as an object. Think about the process of someone driving to work. You might say that this process is made up of the person, their car, the road, and their destination. But if you remove yourself from the process, say you go to the Moon, you see that that process is really part of the "object" of the Earth, and as you keep removing yourself further from the processes of the solar system, Milky Way, and the universe, you make those processes objects. This is what it is like for the mind. Your mind is a process, but if you remove yourself from the process you experience a brain. This is why you experience brains and bodies when observing other people, which are just processes that you are separate from.

Working memory is a physical process. So is the mind. Why are physical processes conscious? Why does it not take place without subjective consciousness? Why aren't we P-zombies? Nothing about physical properties or processes suggests subjective experience. — Patterner

As I have said. The problem is in thinking the world is physical. Abandon the term. It's useless and just muddies the waters creating the hard problem. When you abandon the use of the term then you no longer have to wonder how a physical object can have consciousness. Simple. It's not a physical object. It's all process and you're confusing the map with the territory.

Yes, but you can support liberal values and be opposed to murder. Liberalism isn't about letting people do whatever they want. — frank

I never said, or implied that it did. That would be confusing a Libertarian with an Anarchist. A good Libertarian understands that doing whatever one wants stops where what one is doing infringes upon the liberties of another.

The idea is that there is something it is like to be a bat to the bat, but there is nothing it is like to be a table to the table. If there is something it is like to be something to that thing, then that thing is conscious. — Patterner

The HP is explaining why the physical activity comes with subjective experience. Why isn't there something it is like to be a table? Or, perhaps more important, why isn't there something it is like to be a robot that has sensors that detect photons, distinguishes between wavelengths, and performs different actions, depending on which wavelength? Does the robot subjectively experience red and blue? Does it subjectively experience anything at all? Does it have a feeling of being? — Patterner

But how do we know that there isn't something it is like to be the robot? If the robot reacts to the world the same way we do, how would we know whether it has "experiences" or not? How does a physical brain have experiences? You would need to answer this question to then assert what has experiences and what does not.

The problem, that I pointed out and that Wayfarer flippantly dismissed, is that we are assuming that there is something it is like in "physical" humans but then reject the idea for other physical things. If you can't even explain how the mind interacts with your "physical" body, then you have a serious problem with this assumption.

When you assume that the world is as you see it - full of "physical" objects, then you are going to have a problem reconciling that with the nature of medium in which these objects exist (the mind). If you think of the world more like the mind - as a process - the problem disappears. Everything is a process and the mind is a process of modeling the world. The way the world is modeled is not how the world is. The world is like the process of modeling, not the model itself.

The table does not have an internal model of the world but the robot might, stored and processed in its working memory. Consciousness is a type of working memory.

Nagel uses the phrase. "What is it like to be a bat", as if the experience of the bat is all there is to being a bat. It's a misuse of language if what he really means "What it is like to have an internal model of the world relative to your position within it".

The information in a robot's memory will be based on where it is in the world and what it has interacted with in the world, does this mean that the robot possess subjective information?


Simple question: If you abandoned the idea that the world is a dichotomy of physical and non-physical in favor of a monistic view of everything is process, what would that do for the hard problem of consciousness?

A pessimistic view is that capitalists need freedom to operate, so they champion liberalism because it diminishes religious and governmental interference. — frank

Liberalism does not just entail economic freedom but also personal freedom. If the capitalist champions freedom from religion and government for the purpose of making money but is then on the side of religion when comes to gay marriage, then they aren't really liberals, are they?

Democrats and Republicans hold both liberal and authoritarian views depending on the issue. The Libertarian is the only one that holds liberal positions on most, if not all, issues. That's the difference.

So if you hold a liberal position on one issue but not others, please do not call yourself "liberal". You would be a Democrat or Republbican, not liberal.

I would say: you have no possible information. There is no possible in-formation/interpretation process due to the absence of signs. Or the absence of that of a specific configuration that can relate to an interpreter. — JuanZu

Possibility and probability are mental constructs. Either the USB has information or it doesn't. If the USB never gets information written to it then there was never any possibility that it would contain information in the first place. In a deterministic universe there is no randomness, possibilities or probabilities. Those are mental constructs that stem from our ignorance about the facts.

I cannot call that information. Because in reality these rings are signs that refer precisely to the age of the tree. But this, the age of the tree, is given a posteriori. Then we can call it the result of the information process. Remember that I avoid substantivizing the word information, and I speak rather of in-formation as the act of giving form, as interpretation. In this case the signs give form to our cognitive apparatus and the idea of an age of the tree appears in us. That, that idea, is perhaps information as a sustantive, as a result of in-formation. But I prefer to avoid calling it this way so that there is no confusion. But what is clear to me is that the rings are neither information (the result of the process of interpretation) nor in-formation, they are signs. — JuanZu

You are confusing information with acts on, or with, information. Being informed is being fed information. Information processing is integrating different types of information (inputs, or what you were fed) to produce new information (output). When the output becomes the input to subsequent processing, you have a sensory information feedback loop.

For I understand information not as a substance but as the relationship. — JuanZu

...and there is a relationship between the sign and what it refers to - information.

It's information/relationships all the way down.

ou're welcome. Have a nice life! — Wayfarer

Translation: I'm right, you're wrong, consciousness is subjective! LALALALALA! I can't hear you!

Add immature on top of contradictory, hypocrite and intellectually dishonest to "what it is like" to be Wayfarer.


The hard problem seems to be more of a problem of language - of explaining what the actual problem is.

That is not a description of the hard problem of consciousness, as described by David Chalmer's Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness. It is a description of your own idiosyncratic philosophy which contains too many sweeping statements and foundational claims to respond to. — Wayfarer

What a joke. You make too many sweeping and contradicting statements yourself and then give a link with too many sweeping statements while claiming that I am making too many sweeping statements that was responding to your too many sweeping statements.

You keep ignoring the fact that you keep contradicting yourself in the same thread that you accuse others of contradicting themselves. Hypocrite.

You keep saying the mind is subjective but seem have an objective view of what Chalmers and Nagel say, and to claim that others are wrong in their understanding but yours is correct. Try addressing your own faults before spending so much time on addressing the same faults in others.

What does Nagel even mean by "what it is like"? There is a what it is like to be anything which are the properties of what it means to be that thing. There is a what it is like to be a table that distinguishes it from being a chair, there is a what it is like to be a mind which distinguishes it from being a wave in the ocean.

Necessarily there must be a process of interpretation to access knowledge like that, since it is never evident from looking at the rings that we are talking about age. That only goes a posteriori after a process of in-formation. The age itself is not contained in the tree, it is a ghost in the wood. — JuanZu

When you say, " to access knowledge" that is the same as saying "to access information". You access information via your senses. The causal relationship between the object, the visible light being reflected off it into your eyes and interpreted by your subconscious visual system, is itself information about the state of your visual system and the amount and type of light in the environment.

I already stated that the botanist needs to know how trees grow throughout the year to interpret the number of rings and the number of years the tree has been alive. So yes, it is not evident just by looking at the rings that they are indicative the the tree's age. You have to have already observed how trees grow throughout the year (another set of information), to interpret the rings as the age of the tree.

Interpretation is the act of integrating sensory information (the current number of rings in the tree) with information in memory (how the tree grows throughout the year).

The thing is that what you call information is only given in the result of a process of interpretation. That is why I cannot call memory information. Memory are signs that are inscribed in a stable and perdurable way. But these are objects of any possible interpretation. Here interpretation is synonymous with in-formation. The signs of memory form something in the interpreter, they shape his language and his consciousness. they have an active role. — JuanZu

They are not objects of any possible interpretation. Everything happens for a reason. There is a cause for every effect, and the effect logically follows from the cause.

The tree rings in a tree stump carry information about the age of the tree, not because some interpreter happens to look at the tree rings and projects the age of the tree into the rings, but because of how the tree grows throughout the year - a causal process. A botanist comes along and interprets the number of rings as the age because they have learned how trees grow throughout the year, not because they looked at the rings and pulled that conclusion out of nowhere.

The interpretation is separate from the information as causal relations that exist. The information is there and it is your observation integrating with your prior knowledge (prior observations) that is the essence of interpretation.

I don't think the answer is found in a dicitionary but a history book. Liberalism and capitalism developed in tandem and share core assumption about the individual, property and greedom (that was a typo but I like it). — Benkei

There are a lot of people that seem to confuse the boundaries of what it means to be a liberal (a libertarian - the true liberals). There are some on the left that like to support the idea of making your own personal choices, wearing what one wants to wear, smoking what one wants to smoke in the privacy of their own home, making love to who they want in the privacy of their own home, etc. but then go beyond that to coercing others into supporting or affirming what they do or think.

There are some on the left that like to support the idea of economic freedom (greedom as you put it), having more of your money in your pocket to participate more freely (afford more) in the market, etc., but then go beyond that to supporting monopolies, and the hoarding of resources, that limit economic freedom and competition.

Then are those in the middle, the moderates, which are the actual liberals - that want to live without coercion and do not have incessant need to force others to support or affirm their own choices and behaviors. The left and the right like to co-op the term "liberal" to make themselves more appealing to growing number of independent moderates but you simply have to look at how they are using the term to find that they really mean is having the freedom to coerce others into their way of thinking and behaving.

This all seems interesting but you continually pull the rug out from under yourself every time you claim that consciousness is subjective while at the same time describing the ontological and objective nature of consciousnesses everywhere in the universe (not just yours). Is what you said subjective or objective? If it is subjective then I only missed YOUR point not THE point, and we can never hope to apprehend THE point because we are stuck in the subjective nature of our consciousness.

All these dualist terms - physical vs non-physical, direct vs indirect, objective vs subjective, etc, are the cause of the problem here in this type of discussion.

You don't explain how it is we get at the objective nature of things (scientific method) from our subjective standpoint. I don't expect you to as it would be as impossible as trying to describe how something comes from nothing or how the mental can influence the material and vice versa. That is what dualism does. It separates things into two opposing ideas that dualists then have the problem of trying to explain how they interact.

The idea that there is something it is like to be me seems to be an objective property, not a subjective one. It seems only logical that by body's senses would provide information about the world relative to my position in space-time, and not someone, or somewhere else's position in space-time. My experience is an objective representation of the world from my own position in space-time. It would only be subjective if I confused the experience as the world as a whole, or the world is located relative to my eyes. But this is not what I think. I know that there are parts of the world that I cannot experience but only because my senses have not accessed them.

All you can ever be sure of is the existence of your own mind. Your mind is part of the world, unless you are a solipsist which you would believe your mind and the world are the same. So it only seems logical that the world would be like the mind. When asking what it is like to be you, can you not also say that what it is like to be you is to be part of the world, and not the entire world?

The hard problem is the result of thinking the world is at it appears in your mind, rather than thinking that the way the world appears is actually a mental model of the world. Thinking that the world is full of solid static objects and then trying to reconcile that with the nature of the mind itself - the medium in which these models appear - it is no wonder philosophers of mind have a hard problem.

When observing someone's brain you are actually experiencing your minds mental model of their mind. There is no physical brain there. The world is not physical. While the model is not what is actually there, it is representative of what is actually there. By invoking our memories of prior experiences of prior models we can interact with the world in meaningful ways.

This also brings to mind the question of how brains are actualized to become observers themselves, but I digress. QM seems to imply that your brain is in a state if superposition and you only have a brain or don't have a brain only when someone opens your skull and looks inside.

We can access each others thoughts by reading the scribbles on this page. I doubt that you think that the scribbles on this page are the actual thoughts in all of our heads, rather they are representative of the thoughts in our heads, and allows you to apprehend what we are thinking. If we think that each of us are not just scribbles on this screen, but actual human beings that the scribbles partially represent, then why is it so hard to understand that the mind works a similar way?

Subjectivity is essentially making a category mistake in thinking that you experience the world and not a model, or representation of it, but as it really is, no different than thinking that the scribbles on this screen exhausts everything it means to be the person that wrote them.

I would not reduce the interpreter to a mind for all cases. A computer can in-form itself by acting as an interpreter as soon as there is a process leading to a transcription effect. That is to say, as soon as the sign system "USB memory" enters into a causal relationship with the computer and its language. — JuanZu

The keyword here in this thread seems to be "memory". Computers and brains have memories. What is memory? To me, memory is simply a stable arrangement of matter that represents prior states of affairs and can be accessed for interpreting the present and future, states of affairs.


With this said, every stable object can be said to be a form of memory. The object you observe now (like the apple on the table) contains information about how it was formed and how it got to be where it is now (on the table). Every object contains information about its causes bottled up in its form and structure. If the apple was bitten then the bite mark is essentially a memory of what has happened to it (that someone took a bite). The shape of the bite mark is also information about what type of animal took the bite of the apple.