I would point out that while race has no scientific grounding, there are cultural differences that are of great import. The generic flaw in liberalism is that in seeking to treat everyone as equals it inadvertently seeks to minimises these cultural differences. In the end this looks like white males arguing that the solution to the world's problems is for everyone to act more like white males.

Such differences are to be celebrated, not eradicated — Banno

First, there is a scientific grounding of race.

Second, cultural differences aren't important when hiring someone or giving them a raise.

Third, what is the difference between acting human vs. acting black or white? What does it even mean to act black or white? It seems to me that putting people in boxes is what is racist. I guess for you, acting black is voting Democrat and acting white is voting Republucan?

To quite the contrary, there are some clear indications that we're still not talking about the same thing(s). — creativesoul

That's not surprising given that privilege is subjective. One person's privilege is another person's taboo. We all don't value the same things, so what you consider a privilege, I might not.

After all, when groups of people distinguish themselves from others by focusing on skin color, as if what they value is different than what others with a different skin color value, then privilege becomes something different for each group.

Does Genotype Truly Determine Phenotype?
Genotype = The genetic composition of organisms

Phenotype = The set of observable characteristics of an individual [[b]resulting from the interaction of its genotype with the environment.[/b]] — TheMadFool

Seems to me that you answered your own question in your OP. The phenotype is determined by not just the genotype, but by the environment as well. Think of phenotype as a feedback loop between genotype and the environment.

The phenotype of prey is determined by the phenotype of other predators and the predators are determined by the phenotype of prey, just as the phenotype of some insects and plants are intertwined.

I don't have time to go into detail on Genetic Science, so I'll just mention that in Systems Theory, Reductive complexity (sheer numbers) is distinguished from Holistic Complexity (interrelationships). Reductively & numerically, a pile of sand may be "complex" (thousands of grains), but add a cement binder (links between grains), and the resulting concrete is a holistic system that is much stronger, and more complex, than its component parts. — Gnomon

Right, the grains and the medium binding the grains is a more complex system than just grains. We can't talk about things without talking about how those things interact with other things or are determined by other things, like the environment it is part of. It's not that it is more complex, it is that it impossible that objects can be apart and not determined by the very environment it is part of, and all objects are parts of environments.

Truth can not be contained in any philosophy, because the truth is what's real, and any philosophy any one might come up with is merely a collection of symbols which point very imperfectly to the real. To confuse a philosophy, any philosophy, with the truth is like confusing a highway sign pointing to the next town with the town itself. — Hippyhead

Strange. Is it not true that you just used a collection of symbols to point to the truth and reality of the relationship between symbols and what is true? Are we suppose to take what you just asserted as the truth about symbols and truth?

You're essentially sayng that it is true that we can't know the truth. Its a contradiction.

Yes, of the object "human". Not of the object "rock" or "atom" or of objectivity per se.If subjectivity is a uniquely emergent property, then you can't say that experience is a feature of objectivity as such. — Pantagruel

Thats strange because you just wrote about subjectivity objectively, just as we can talk about some property of rocks being unique and a defining feature of rocks and that makes rocks behave in certain ways.

Adherence to ignorance, on the other hand, when identified as ignorance, I call stupidity, and practitioners stupid. Not to be confused with incapable or unintelligent. And these persistent stupid are eventually revealed as enemies. Of reason, understanding, knowledge itself, across history, of everything of worth. — tim wood

Exactly. Thats essentially the nature of politics and religion. These two branches of philosophy (they're actually part of the same branch, IMO) are where the use of logic and reason are typically abandoned in favor of pushing an agenda (proselytizing). The participants aren't interested in truth as they use statistics to support certain narratives while ignoring other stats that could support another narrative. They are unwilling to look at alternative explanations because they've been indoctrinated into believing that there is a right way to think and a wrong way to think, and logic doesn't determine what is right to think, rather it is their emotional state that determines what it right to think.

One solution would be to abolish the political parties and religious denominations. This would prevent people from thinking that they have to adhere to some type of group-think.

The subject is an object. Yes, things which are subjects (have subjective experiences) are also objects. But having a subjective experience (which is specifically how subjectivity was being characterized, "being real for a subject,") is explicitly different from "being real as an object." Your construction lacks specificity. — Pantagruel

If humans are objects, then having subjective experiences is being real as an object. It would be a defining property of a the object, human. Our subjective experiences have a real causal effect on the rest of the world and are caused by the real interaction between the world and body, all of which are objects. So talking about states of objects being subjective isn't helpful as all objects have defining states that make them unique with unique responses to the events in the world.

But it is easy to evolve extra photo pigments yet even as many as three Is unusual in large brain mammals. However dragonflies can have 30.

So evolution seems to say more is not necessarily better in this case. Maybe it is like science. The more you can predict from the least number of measurements seems like a good indication you have a great theory. — apokrisis

A dragonfly may have 30 with their eyes to head ratio being much larger than other animals, but the ratio of brain-size with humans is much larger. So what evolution did for the eyes of a dragonfly may have done the same for the brain of a human. The human brain could probably perform the calculations to acquire the information that a dragonfly eye acquires without doing as many calculations because it's eyes do most of the work of distinguishing colors while it's the brain of a human that does the distinguishing.

This is a meta distinction. When folk talk about qualia, they are now talking about the experience of experiencing. Rather than just doing, it is now a rational exercise in contrast and compare. — apokrisis

Sounds to me that talking about the experience of experiencing is simply talking about memories. What they are doing is recall.

Sure. A “red” ganglion cell collating the information will have some baseline neutral rate of firing and fire harder depending on the degree of redness and slow it’s firing right down to the degree instead of greenness present. So “off” isn’t just a signal of no red. It is a signal of green. Hence afterimages. — apokrisis

Talking about wavelengths having degrees of redness is nonsensical. There aren't only three wavelenghts of visible light. There is a range of wavelengths and the human eye is sensitive to them all to some degree or another. So it makes no sense to assert that there are only three colors that a human eye can see. It's just that our eyes are more or less sensitive to certain wavelengths.

That is trite. My whole argument is about how to make physicalism work and avoid having to take the usual Cartesian route. And you are failing to respond to the particular way I resolve the issue - a properly biological form of “information processing”. — apokrisis

I think we agree mostly and are simply disagreeing about how and what types of information are being processed, and for what purpose.

I don't expect much from a site that has streetlightx as a forum mod but banning Asif for "low quality" is quite amusing. I wonder what he said that got him banned? — Judaka

I think it has to do with the rate of low quality vs good quality. SLX might be close to the bannable rate but hasn't yet crossed it.

Funny how people always think that people they agree with are good posters — Benkei

Funny how people talk about other people without realizing that they are a person too. Mods are people too. Isn't that a conflict of interest for a mod?

I'm pretty sure I said being real for a subject is not the same thing as being real as an object. I'm quite sure I did not say a subject is an object — Pantagruel

Correct. And I disagreed and said that a subject is an object.

Dreams are real states for some objects - like humans.

No. A subject is an object.

Indeed. So it would seem that being real for a subject is independent of being real as an object. — Pantagruel

It depends on what we're talking about. Are we talking about the experience or what the experience is about. Experiences are real, but what they are about requires logic to be applied to the experience.

Colour reveals the surface and so helps you see the shape. — apokrisis

When the lights are out, all you experience is black with no shapes. Black is a color, no?

Seems to me that that could be done with just two colors - black and white. So then why the estimated 10 million colors that humans can distinguish? What use would that be if not additional information about the environment that just shape and two colors can provide? It seems to me that more distinctions we can make, the more information we have, and the more information we have, the better decisions we can make.

Like I said, turn out the lights and the color changes, so what changed - the object, the light, or something else? Color isn't about just the object, but also about the light and your eye-brain system's interaction with it. This is how the doctor can diagnose problems with your eye-brain system by asking you to describe your visual experience of objects.

So, it's not so much that "my red is the same as yours", more that there's enough interactional stability that we can find coherent ways to talk about it. — jorndoe

Exactly. While you and I aren't the same experiencers of objects and light, the objects and light are the same and is the stability in our experiences. It is what we are talking about when talking about objects, not our experiences of them.

It is really important that colour experience is socially constructed through language use. We all learn to talk about red as "that experience of redness we all share". — apokrisis

The experience isn't what is socially constructed. Babies experience colors before learning how to use colored scribbles to refer to those experiences. How does a child learn to use words without first being able to distinguish black ink marks from the white paper?

Colour by contrast is much more abstract because the discrimination is based on just three opponent channel processes. — apokrisis

Not really. Those three components aren't just in an on/off state. They are stimulated in varying degrees, and those varying degrees of each are calculated to provide distinct information about each object, or parts of the object.

So the argument is that we see colour not because that is what is there in the world. — apokrisis

Our minds are part of the world and color is part of our minds, therefore color is in the world. Could we really talk about colors if colors were not part of the world? We talk about colors as opposed to wavelengths because that is what we experience, and in talking about colors, we are actually talking about wavelengths.

If reality is an illusion then, to the same extent, illusions must be real. — Pantagruel

Illusions are real. They cause us to behave differently. They are a misinterpretation of sensory data. What they are interpreted as isnt real until you interpret it as an illusion.

This is bang on. It is not about seeing "colour" as it is in the world. Reflectance is simply a valuable property to make things in the world "pop out". — apokrisis

But what is the difference between the information that pops out vs the information that doesnt if not a difference in wavelength? What is it that is so important to be aware of? It seems like shape provides one bit of information while the color provides a different bit. The size of an apple isn't dependent upon its color and vice versa. Large apples that are ripe have a different color than those that are rotten. Being able to distinguish between ripe and rotten is useful.

Turn out the lights and color of the apple changes but its shape remains the same. I can ascertain the shape of the apple without color by using my hand and my hand can feel the other side of the apple that couldn't see, so which sense provides a better representation of an objects shape - vision or touch? Why would we need both? Is how the apple feels in your hands when the lights are out the same way it feels to me?

Like words, we aren't really interested in the scribble itself. We are interested in what it the scribble means. The brain isn't interested in the wavelength, but what it means - ripe or rotten.

But you keep avoiding direct questions. — apokrisis

What do you expect from someone that thinks language is a game?

Notice that we can only see if people experience the same distinctions if there are other people. — Banno

And that we can see them.

How do you know that our experience of seeing other people and how they behave is the same?

odd, that folk seem to think explaining the physiology answers the question... — Banno

Roflmao. Language use is part of our physiology.

Red" is part of a language game played by a community. — Banno

Sounds physiological to me when you're taking about a species and its social behaviors.

Good point. The original question was 'How did doubt begin?'

I do tend to think that the answer to that is implicit in what I said, though. Animals need to make decisions in order to survive. Those that can't just die out. Decision making requires reasoning - like the bird deciding whether it's safe enough to come and get the bread from my hand. Good reasoning, in turn requires an assessment of the probability of the correctness of suppositions - 'How likely is it that I will survive the encounter?'

So doubt evolved right from the beginning of animal life (in the Cambrian or just before) along with other evolved behaviors. Basically it has always been there and animal life would be impossible without it. — Neb

Agreed.

Doubt comes from the logical understanding that all of your imagined predictions can't be true at once.

There is the way the world is and a way we think, or perceive, it is. If there wasn't this distinction, then there would be no doubt as they would be one and the same - like a solipsist. A solipsist never doubts.

There is the moment in our lives when we learn object permanence. This is when we realize that there is a distinction. This would be the catalyst for learning to doubt.

The analytic answer is that there is no my red; that rather, red is a notion constructed by our communal use of language. — Banno

Just as we use our fingers to point we use language to point. So it's more like our communal pointing to a colored experience. The OP is asking how do we know that what we are pointing to is the same? Being that words are just other sensory impressions, we use sensory impressions to point to other, more complex, sensory impressions. Language is used to communicate complex ideas more efficiently.

Is the way I perceive the scribble or sound, "red" the same (or similar to the) way you perceive it? How about how we first perceived how "red" was used? Was that the same or similar?

When we say, "The apple is red", are we saying that the apple is a scribble/sound, or made of scribbles/sounds, a communal use of language, or what? If "apple" is a communal use of language and "red" is a communal use of language, then all you are saying when using any scribble/sound, is that "The communal use of language is a communal use of language".

Is my red the same as yours? — TiredThinker

Red is an interaction between the world and your sensory system. Once the apple-light system interacts with your eye-brain system, it no longer is the same interaction as the interaction of the apple-light system with my eye-brain system. We are two separate beings, and our systems process the information of the apple-light system separately. So to ask if your red is the same as my is red is silly question to ask.

If we want to know about the apple-light system prior to interacting with any eye-brain system, then we shouldn't be asking questions about color, as color is a property of an eye-brain system interacting with the world. This is impossible as every thought we could possibly have takes the form of those sensory impressions, of how the body interacts with the world.

I think that is the issue with QM, in that it hasn't quite accepted that consciousness itself is a causal part of what we experience and how we perceive the world, in that we can never experience, or talk about, the world just by itself.

All experiences include information about the body as well, and trying to understand which information is about the apple and which is about me, can sometimes be difficult. At what point in talking about the apple are you ever talking about just the apple not also talking about yourself, or your perception of it?

As far as I can tell there is no strong evidence that anything happens after we die, and yet I can't imagine life having meaning or purpose unless there is. — TiredThinker

What meaning or purpose does the existence of an afterlife provide?

No matter how proud we might be of our intelligence, and our inability to find anything seemingly more intelligent it seems we are just over complicated poop machines. — TiredThinker

So are other animals. What makes humans special complicated poop machines in that we have an afterlife and other life doesn't?

We can try to define a purpose based on our occupation, or some might argue that being happy is the only meaning to life, but that only sounds like a way to prevent sadness and suicide. — TiredThinker

Isn't a belief in an afterlife a way of preventing sadness in suicide? It seems that you are distressed that the evidence indicates that there isn't an afterlife.

"What's the point of a soul
When all I'm being is
A faulty copy of myself"

-VETO

My main concern here is this: is reason infallible? Will logic and rationality guarantee a safe passage to truth? — TheMadFool

I don't know about guaranteeing, but logic and rationality are the best methods we have in comparison with other methods for "guaranteeing truth", like faith, tradition, authority and revelation.

How things began' in scientific terms - your terms - comprises tracing efficient and material causes back to its purported beginning.

How things began, in a philosophical sense, is what is the origin or ground of something. 'The origin' in a philosophical sense, is nothing like the first in a series of efficient causes. — Wayfarer

Here is the definition of "origin" from Merriam-Webster:
Origin: 1 ANCESTRY, PARENTAGE
2 a :rise, beginning, or derivation from a source
b :the point at which something begins or rises or from which it derives
c :something that creates, causes, or gives rise to another

How is this definition different from the philosophical definition?

So, trying to understand 'doubt' in evolutionary terms, is mistaking the latter for the former. Doubt is an aspect of reason. — Wayfarer

This doesn't follow because you haven't even explained what the philosophical definition of "origin" is. There can't be any mistake if there isn't a distinction between the philosophical version of "origin" and the everyday use of "origin". Without explaining what you mean by "origin", I don't see how you can jump to saying that it is a mistake to think about it in terms of cause and effect.

Doubt is an aspect of reason. Humans can doubt, because they can question, they can wonder why they thought something, they can envisage things being different. — Wayfarer

So do newborn infants doubt? Do we doubt from the moment we are conceived? What does it mean to say that humans can doubt?

It seems that you are conflating doubt with imagination. It seems to me that you can only doubt once you have the experience of being wrong. What reason would you have to doubt if you were never wrong in your thinking? Reasons are causes and beliefs are the effects of those causes. The mind is a causal interaction between reasons and beliefs, like being wrong is the reason for believing in doubt.

Oh right. As if every other US presidential ticket of white males has not been rooted in "identity politics" — 180 Proof

According to Joe Biden, all blacks think alike, and the only way to get you to vote for him is to choose a black person as VP.

The problem is seeing someone with a different skin color and thinking that there is no way that that person could possibly share any interests that you have, or can't be representative of you, because they have a different skin color.

If blacks want whites to see themselves in George Floyd, then blacks need to see themselves in the twice as many unarmed whites that get shot by police and protest when that happens too. The inconsistency of BLM is clearly indicative of their racism and privilege they posses.

The Democrat strategy is to play the sex/race card. Narrowing your picks based on sex and race will severely limit your choices if you're also trying to win over a battleground state. So the Dems are putting all their political eggs in one basket - identity politics.

Nothing is ‘purely physical’. If there were any such object, physics would be the discipline which describes it. And yet, the search for the fundamental constituents of matter through the largest and most expensive machine in the history of the world, has resulted in conundrums, paradoxes and arguments about the nature of science.

Every experience we have is mediated by judgement, and judgement can’t be said to be a physical process, as it comprises the relationship of ideas - if this, then that, because this is so, then that must be so. That has no analogy in the physical world, it is wholly in the domain of ideas.

Schopenhauer of course saw all of this, although since his day philosophy has regressed. — Wayfarer

What does "purely physical" even mean? Are you saying that the universe is partly physical and partly something else? How can the physical interact with something else that isn't physical? This is the problem with dualism.

There is only one "substance". If someone were to assert that the "substance" is mental, then that would be projecting your mental properties onto the world, as if the world was like the mind, and is anthropomorphic.

If someone were to assert that the "substance" is physical, then what exactly does that mean when our perceptions of the world are not how the world is. Perceptions and the world are not the same thing. Perceptions are only part of the world. So perceiving "physical" objects would be similar to projecting your perceptions onto the world and also be anthropomorphic.

So which is it, or is it something else? I think that it is something else. I often use the terms, "information", "process" or "relationships" to refer to the primary "substance". And I think a proper explanation of consciousness will shed the light necessary to understand our minds' relationship with the world.

Maybe that is the problem - we are arguing about which scribble to use when referring to the primary "substance" (trivial), rather than trying to explain how minds and the world interact (not trivial).

Can you use "I" in a sentence Harry Hindu? If you can then what that "I" refers to is Harry HIndu's self. If you can't then that'd be interesting. — TheMadFool

Then you haven't told me what the self is, only what refers to the self. Harry Hindu and TheMadFool are just another scribble that refers to some self. So I'll ask again, what is a self?

The self is the "I" that the mind infers to from what is essentially the Cartesian I think, therefore I am. — TheMadFool

The self is a letter of the alphabet? Or are you saying that the self is but another thought? Are thoughts about stuff that aren"t thoughts?

What do you mean by "self"? The mind, the body, the brain? Is a fly aware of its body, but not its mind or brain? Then you're taking about awareness. How can an immaterial thing be aware of material things?

Both inductive and deductive reasoning make use those three fundamental rules of thought that I mentioned. My point was that there are many rules of logic. By practicing some but not all rules, are you still being logical?

It seems to me that both inductive and deductive reasoning are simply reasoning from different directions. If a dog can make generalizations from observations then why wouldn't it not be able to apply those generalizations to observations? Thats what learning and applying what you learn is. What reason would you learn something if not to apply what you learnt in some similar situation in the future?

What if the dog knew that foxes only run down paths, then the only place the fox could be is down the last path, or had the experience of observing a fox avoiding paths and darting through thick bushes? It would then understand that it should sniff more than all the paths but also the bushes. Humans and dogs reasoning are limited by their experience and their attention span and memory capacity but humans seem to be the only ones aware of this fact.

The fact is that the dig can learn from observing the behavior of foxes, and it may make mistakes, and you learn from your mistakes. If the dog never finds the fox down the last path, what did it learn?

I'm mainly concerned about the brain activity being the same between awake and REM sleep states. If the mind is the brain, we should be conscious on both occasions but we're not. — TheMadFool

Then what do you mean by "consciousness"?

What would that shared reason be?
— Harry Hindu

Anything. — Isaac

If anything can be shared, how do we know that we're sharing the same thing or not?

A somewhat idiosyncratic use of 'points'. I don't think you quite mean by it the same thing as others do. To say 'points to' seems ti me to be about drawing the attention. No attention is being paid to either ducking or riding a bike. If what you want to say is just "words have consequences", then I'd agree, I'm not sure many wouldn't, but that seems a rather trivial thing to assert. — Isaac

What did you intend when you use the word, "duck"? Using something requires intent.

At this juncture we must take note of the fact that in dualism, the mind is distinct from thoughts. Minds in dualism do the thinking and are not the thoughts themselves.

Since the consensus seems to be that patterns of brain activity are just thoughts, minds can't be brain patterns at all.

Of course one could then say that the brain is the mind - its pattern of activity representing individual thoughts. The problem with this physicalistic position is REM sleep, which somnologists have given the interesting name paradoxical sleep, a big clue in this puzzle.

REM sleep is "paradoxical" because of its similarities to wakefulness. Although the body is paralyzed, the brain acts somewhat awake, with cerebral neurons firing with the same overall intensity as in wakefulness
— wikipedia

REM sleep is a state in which the brain is as active as it is when we're awake and fully conscious but we're not conscious. If the mind is the brain then why aren't we conscious during REM sleep? After all brain activity in REM sleep resembles brain activity when awake. :chin: — TheMadFool

The reason that the brain patterns are similar during REM and being awake is because you are dreaming. Where does dreaming take place - if not in your brain? When you are dreaming it is really difficult to tell the difference between dreaming and being awake, or being conscious. It is only after the fact that you realize that you were dreaming.

If the mind is not the thoughts, then what exactly is the mind and how would you know that it exists if not for some thought? "I think, therefore I am" is asserting that thinking is the evidence for the existence of the mind.

So when certain parts of the brain are damaged and it affects your ability to recognize faces, speak, etc., but when the whole brain dies you are able to rise off the physical brain and see Grandma and speak English?

If pareidolia is false then patterns are objective properties of physical objects but then you'd have to believe this pattern is real and whatever it entails: — TheMadFool

A real pattern on a pancake. What's the problem? Every pancake is unique- meaning they have unique patterns, just like fingerprints and neural wiring. Is the pattern on the tip of your fingers not physical?

I guess I'd be happy with the view that the mind, although being associated with a physical brain, is some kind of pattern of brain activity - patterns are abstractions and are, in my humble opinion, not physical. — TheMadFool

This makes no sense. If the brain is physical, then why wouldn't patterns of brain activity not be physical? What is the difference between physical and non-physical? Is the pattern of the TV show on your TV screen physical or not?

If you think that your voting power is equal to the power of just one politician, who also has the power to vote and then some, then you are delusional.

Perhaps. Though, I find it difficult to imagine why the bar should be lowered for those who are not in power. — Tzeentch

Raising the bar for those that weild the power isn't necessarily lowering it for others. Those without power don't have any responsibility in weilding what they don't have.

This portrayal of voters as victims of misinformation is something I dislike, because this seems to treat people as children who do not know any better, rather than independent agents. — Tzeentch

It depends on you knowing that you're misinformed. It also puts the burden on voters to find the truth rather than the burden be on the politicians to tell the truth. Those with the power should be held to higher standard.

Why do politicians tell lies and make promises they know they cannot keep? — Tzeentch

So you're telling me that voters vote for people that they know lie?

And whose fault is that? — Tzeentch

The ones that benefit from you voting for them and not the other guy. It is in the politicians best interest to get you to think that only one party or candidate is righteous and the other evil. If not to vote for them then vote against the other candidate, either way they get your vote because most people maintain the two party status quo.

This plays into what I was saying about the voters being barraged by misinformation perpetuates more ignorance by the media.

Why do politicians tell lies and make promises they know they cannot keep? Why do politicians focus on throwing mud at their competition instead of presenting voters with solid, future-proof policies?

They do these things because it is what gets them votes. If it gets them votes it means it is what the voters want to hear and see. Thereby the behavior of politicians is directly influenced by the voters' preferences, in accordance with the quote "Every country gets the government it deserves." — Tzeentch

It only gets them votes from their party members. No one tries to cross party lines any more. It seems to me that most independents are the ones that are tired of politics as usual while the Dems and Reps keep voting for the status quo. It is they that have established an "us vs. them" mentality, as if the only solutions can only by provided by one party and any solutions provided by the other shouldn't be supported because it is from the other party. And then there are those potential voters that don't vote for anyone. I believe that the resentment against politics as usual is growing and evident in the growing number of independents.