Which I never said. So get it right. — apokrisis

You don't even understand what you said. I called it word salad for a reason.

I said there are differences that make a difference distinguished from differences that don’t. — apokrisis

You are saying that there are only differences - those that make a difference and those that don't. Never mind that your using two different meanings of "different" in your sentence. You are simply being artful, not coherent, with your use of words.

It would make more sense to say that there are differences that matter, or are useful and those that don't/aren't. But then aren't there similarities that matter, or make a difference, and those that don't? The fact is that they all matter, or make a difference, depending upon the present goal in the mind. The difference or similarity that doesn't matter now, matters later when you have a different goal.

I was a believer at one time. I remember the feeling I got when thinking about the power of God. It was no different than thinking about a beautiful sunset, or thinking about the enormity and power of the universe. Have there been any studies about what part of the brain is used when thinking about those things as opposed to thinking about God, or speaking in tongues?

If you want to believe the claims of the religious, then which religious claim do you believe? There are many, and many contradict each other. They all can't be right. What method do you use to determine the validity of any claim that another human being makes? It seems to me that you accept all claims made by other human beings simply because of how they feel when they make the claim (their emotional attachment to the claim) .

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
-Albert Einstein

The Science of Awe
https://ggsc.berkeley.edu/images/uploads/GGSC-JTF_White_Paper-Awe_FINAL.pdf

We were discussing how minds perceive the world - as differences or as categories. I never denied that we make distinctions. What I do disagree with is your proposal that that is all that we make. We also make out patterns and similarities. As a matter of fact, recognizing and finding patterns is consoling to minds. It is what minds seek to do.

That isn't what I said. Read the ENTIRE post again and respond to the ENTIRE post and we can continue to show that everything is interconnected under one category (nature) and not seperate after all.

Categories are differences that make a difference by grouping the differences that don’t make a difference. — apokrisis

Word salad.

A cat is different from a dog. — apokrisis

Yet a cat is similar to a dog. They are both mammals. As a matter of fact, everything is part of just one category - reality, or nature.

That perceives life semiotically in terms of signal found in noise. — apokrisis

Exactly. Our minds favor patterns over the randomness. Minds are more at ease with patterns than with randomness.

I individuate, therefore I am. — apokrisis

...therefore I am - what?

You don't just individuate or else you could never call yourself a human being.

Our minds are not differential machines. They are categorical machines. Categories are different groups of similar items.

I agree with SX. We don’t see the physical world as such. We just seek its informative differences. — apokrisis

How do we recognize things if we only "just" seek differences?

Sensation is attention. — apokrisis

Attention is the amplifier or suppressor of sensations depending upon the present goal in the mind.

Consciousness is universal, and our material brains, through the pineal gland, act as a kind of antenna to facilitate the universal consciousness. Our differences being determined by matter. Our commonality being determined by a shared universal consciousness. — Noah Te Stroete

I don't see how you have explained how consciousness and the material interact. You've basically made consciousness into EM energy and our brains into antennas. How is that useful for explaining consciousness as the primary substance? Dualism never seems to work. Monism is the way to go.

"Consciousness is the primary substance" is making a category mistake. It would be like a tree claiming that the primary substance is wood. Wood is just a particular arrangement of the primary substance. Consciousness is a particular arrangement of the primary substance. What is the primary substance? Information.

That's a sort of Wittgensteinian or pragmatic position to take, but it's not realism, since realism is concerned with things as they are, not as they appear to us. — Marchesk

The contents of your mind is part of how things are. Psychology and neurology are scientific fields attempting to get at those parts of how things are.

Well, it depends on what's meant by awareness. A computer program could be said to be aware of its inputs. A simulation of perceptual awareness could be built into a robot.

That's different from having a conscious perception. — Marchesk

Is it? What is a conscious perception and how exactly does it differ from a robot's perceptions within it's own "brain"? All you see is a brain when you look at a human being. How do you know that mass of tissue contains conscious perceptions?

Isn't it that that mass of tissue or silicon is just a model of what is actually there? Hasn't your argument been that it is naive to think that what you see is actually the way things are?

If we can't perceive things as they really are, then direct realism is impossible, since realism is concerned with things as they are, not as they appear to us. But I take it you're an indirect realist. — Marchesk

I tried to make another point there in my post, but I think you missed it.

Not only is "direct realism" impossible, it doesn't even make sense to make a distinction between direct and indirect in how we "see" things and how we know things. Seeing is a form of knowledge. You acquire knowledge of real-time events. Observation is a key part of the scientific method. The fact that we can reproduce and predict so many external events must mean that we see/know some things as they really are. It doesn't seem to matter enough to make a distinction between indirect vs direct.

I also pointed out that you have a direct experience of your own mind and your mind is part of reality. Our minds are affected by external events and can be causes of external events. Your mind is external, or separate from mine - and mine to yours. We each have direct access to something in this reality. You could say that you have a direct perception of what it is like for Marchesk to experience reading a post on a Philosophy Forum. It seems to me that we have both direct and indirect access to reality, so it makes no sense to make the distinction between direct and indirect. I find the term, "space/time" more useful in referring to the separation of causes from their subsequent events, and I guess I'm just a realist.

But we don't consciously perceive the world as it is. From science we know that it's not true. — Marchesk

This is simply because effects are not the same as their causes. This would be the case for any being with senses. The effects: conscious experiences, will never be the things they are experiencing. It is nonsensical to even think that could be the case, and to even ask the question: "How can we see things as they really are?" It seems to me that the only way to observe how something truly is, is to BE that thing. You are your mind and you experience your mind as it truly is. I can only infer what is in your mind through your behavior. But this is simply because of how vision works. Our visual systems make models of how things are. We see things as objects when everything is process and information.

While we don't see things as they really are, we can know things as they truly are. Is there an advantage of seeing things as they truly are as opposed to knowing things as they truly are? What would it be like to see the ripeness of an apple as opposed to "just" the redness of the apple? What advantage would one have over the other?

Therefore, I cannot be directly perceiving the real, physical objects when I'm conscious. — Marchesk

What would it mean to directly perceive something? How would you perceive it? It seems to me that "perception" itself entails using real things (colors, shapes, feelings, etc.) to symbolize other real things (cars, roads, etc.), including other symbols (stop signs, red lights, etc.). The symbols are just as real as what they symbolize. Why would it matter if you get at the symbols or the real thing? Isn't the information what you need to get at - what those symbols symbolize (red apples mean ripe apples, black apples mean rotten apples)? Isn't it the information that is real and useful?

Isn't the sensations of colors, sounds, feelings, part of reality and you directly experience those things? It can't be indirect all the way down. Eventually you get at something real to even say that those things symbolize other real things. We directly experience the symbols.

"Self-awareness" is a rather broad rubric, which includes awareness of one's location, for instance. We are talking more specifically about "thinking about thinking," which, it seems to me, we rarely actually do, and even then we would be registering something that happened in the past. It is hard to think of two things at once, let alone telescoping an infinite recursion of thought about thought about thought, etc. into one moment. — SophistiCat

Well, being aware of thinking is being aware of your own thoughts, which would entail self-awareness. Thinking about thinking is like being aware of being aware. Its like creating a visual feedback loop by turning a camera back on its monitor and seeing the infinite corridor of monitor images within the monitor.

So why is it only in this thread and from me that there's nothing useful for you if I'm not falsifying something you said, but in other contexts and/or from other people, they can be useful if they're not falsifying something you said? — Terrapin Station

Because one must have a goal to find something useful. My goal was to see whether or not my idea holds up by exposing it to criticism. You have yet to provide reasonable criticism or reasonable approval. Therefore, you have yet to say anything useful regarding my goal.

And no, you wouldn't have time to think "I am thinking about running away." That requires self-reflection, which you are capable of, but it doesn't happen automatically. Most of the time you are not thinking about thinking. — SophistiCat

Good point. Would you also say that most of the time we aren't self-aware, as that is, in essence, self-reflection? Would you also say that self-awareness and concsiousness are two separate things (one can have one without the other).

That isn't what I said. I only said that you haven't said anything useful in this thread. You haven't said anything useful regarding my claims, or even in making your own claims on this topic.

Lol re you seem to think that "you" means "everyone".

and if you weren't falsifying anything I said, then you haven't said anything useful. What is useful is what you haven't said (you haven't falsified anything).

And what did I seem to be saying I was falsifying? — Terrapin Station

Come to think of it, you've used language yet you haven't said anything.

Because that's how you use language.

That isn't a falsification of anything I have said. Try again.

You're coherent when you have an argument to make but become incoherent when you are shown your argument doesn't hold any water. How typical.

All you can do is point to a goal, or knowledge, that they didn't have, or have access to, when making a decision based on the goal at the moment. So no, they didn't have the goal you say they have. They may have that goal later, after their knowledge is updated, but not before.

I told you how my claim could be falsified. The ball is in your court now.

Sure, unless you can provide an example where someone would be glad to have to have their goal inhibited, or where they didn't have a goal in the first place. Good luck with that.

Go back and read what I wrote to I like sushi.

So you're not going to answer the question.

I just did. Do you not understand how to read posts and answer questions posed to you, either?

That's not a "clarify your view for me so I can understand it better" question. It's a rhetorical question--you immediately afterward give your answer. In other words you're presenting it as an argument, not as a question about my view. — Terrapin Station

No. It was a question you should be asking yourself. You take a position and then, if you truly are objective and want the truth, you would question your position yourself and check to see if it is consistent with the rest of what you believe. I don't make distinctions between a rhetorical question and any other question. You should always be questioning what you know.

How about someone having a goal that was, unbeknownst to them likely to end in painful death. Let us say they wish swim in lava annd imagine it to be a pleasant warm experience. You stop them. You “inhibit” them. They then see someone else dive smiling into the lava and then watch them scream in tormented pain briefly before dying.

Do you think the person feels “wronged”? Obviously not. — I like sushi

You and don't seem to understand how we make decisions.

Decisions are made with the information we have at any given moment. We can't make decisions with knowledge that we don't have. Our goals are the intent of any decisions we make. Goals are ideas about the future in the present. We then make decisions to reach our goal. There is no reason to make decisions without having some goal in mind.

You and Terrapin keep referring to some future knowledge that the person in our examples have after the fact, that they didn't have at the moment of decision. If the information changed, then as you both have pointed out, their goals change. That isn't to say that they made the wrong decision with the information that they DID have at that moment.

What if the person that wants to jump into the lava lake told you and I, "God told me to jump into the lava lake for a greater good." when we tried to stop them?

I did. It was each sentence with a question mark at the end of it. That is how most people ask questions by using language.

There are many many simulations. These simulations, we might as well call them reality, or you can call them multiverse. They are running on a substrate. That substrate is probably boring. — Posty McPostface

Reality and simulations are two directly opposite things. To say that one is the other is making a category mistake. Is it "simulations" all the way down, or is it just reality all the way down?

Simulation only makes sense in relation to some reality.

No, it was an attempt to clarify your own position by asking a question about your position and you avoided answering it because it would show that your position is total nonsense.

Spoken just like someone who responds too quickly to posts without thinking things through — Harry Hindu

I've been doing this stuff for more than 40 years. — Terrapin Station

You've been responding too quickly to posts without thinking things through for more than 40 years. Yes, I can see how that could be the case.

What were the goal posts? — Terrapin Station

I explained that in my previous post. Take the time to read before posting a reply.

Good and bad are ways that people feel about things. You correlated it to goals/goal achievement, etc. I pointed out that it's only correlated to goals/goal achievement per how an individual feels about it, where not achieving a goal, or being inhibited in achieveing it, can result in feeling any way towards it--positive, negative, anything in between. — Terrapin Station

This is total BS. Having your goals inhibited makes you feel wronged, or else you didn't have your goals inhibited. When would anyone feel good about their goals being inhibited? If they feel good about it, it's because they realized that it wasn't necessarily a goal of theirs. How do you feel about your stuff being stolen? Wouldn't you feel wronged because you have the goal of keeping your stuff in your possession?

Well, but that only matters with respect to how the person feels about those things, though.

In other words, S says he has goal x. Y inhibits goal x. S winds up not feeling negatively about that, at least not overall, and maybe S even winds up feeling positive about it. What matters there for "good/bad" etc. are how S feels. — Terrapin Station

Spoken just like someone who responds too quickly to posts without thinking things through and who wants to argue for the sake of arguing.

You've moved the goal posts here and it still doesn't make your argument work. Now you're talking about over time how the victim sees the past event. Good and bad things will happen post event. Anyone can point to those good events and say that they wouldn't come about if that special event, that I thought was bad, didn't happen.

Let's take your argument and run a variable through it. If someone kills you in your sleep, you no longer have any feelings about it afterwards. So, does that make killing you in your sleep a non-moral act, like mowing your lawn?

I'm trying to look at the issue objectively. I see bad/evil and good/right as part of the same coin - how events either inhibit our promote our goals. Unintentional and intentional events can affect our goals.

No its about maths. NET PLEASURE = PLEASURE - PAIN. It's about maximising net pleasure for the individual and the group. — Devans99


What if someone doesn't approve of maximizing pleasure for the group, though?

You'd say that they're wrong. Well, again, they're wrong per what? — Terrapin Station

I already gave the answer as to what is evil/bad right/good on the first page of this forum. It was ignored, so it is no surprise that this thread has continued on without a conclusion.

Good = the (inter)personal behavior you approve of, the (inter)personal behavior you feel is recommendable, etc.

Evil = the (inter)personal behavior you disapprove of as strongly as you can disapprove of anything. Mere "bad" is weaker--simply the (inter)personal behavior you disapprove of. "Evil" is on an extreme end of the scale. — Terrapin Station

"Evil" would be the product of intent. Bad not necessarily. For instance, someone trying to kill you is evil. Cancer trying to kill you is just "bad". Now, if God existed and created the cancer to kill you, then that would be the act of an evil God.

It should be noted that in this discussion presumably white people are debating what people who are not white should be called. Some non-whites think white people should take direction from them, not the other way around. — Bitter Crank

Everyone - black, white, or whatever - have been called names, offensive names, racial slurs, etc. Therefore everyone has skin in this game and has the right to talk about in an objective manner.

It has nothing to do with peoples skin color. It has to do with one's self esteem and self-image. Those that have a weak self-image or low self esteem are the one that get offended - no matter the skin color.

"Anarchic society" is an oxymoron.

There is no such thing as a "leader" in an anarchy. If a leader rises, then it is no longer an anarchy, but some form of despotism.

If matter creates mind then what type of matter causes mind and why that arrangement of matter and what properties?

For example if it is neurons creating mind what material properties predict this and causally necessitate it.

However if you see mind as functionally emerging from patterns in the brain then why are certain functional patterns of matter causing mind
and what prevents any matter and any arrangement of matter from causing a mind or experience to occur.

This kind of question makes me turn dualist because it seems like materialism about the mind leads to too much mind emerging indiscriminately and without clear location. — Andrew4Handel

Your questions show that you have already turned dualist. These are questions a dualist would ask. They stem form the faulty premise of dualism.

What is matter? What is mind? How do they differ? You need to ask those questions before you can ask how one influences the other.

It seems to me that if indirect realism is the case then neurons are just models of mental processes. Minds create models of the world. When you look at things, you have visual models of external processes - which includes other people. People's bodies are models of their life processes. Brains are just one kind of life process - mental processes.

So, it isn't that brains and their neurons create mind. It's the other way around. Or more accurately - the mind creates models of processes - processes that exist independent of the mind modeling them (indirect realism). The way the models are rendered leads us to believe in the existence of objects and matter - as if the models were the way reality really looks, or appears, or is.

This doesn't mean that I'm an idealist. I believe in the existence of other processes that aren't mental (that aren't mind), therefore everything isn't mind, or mental. Everything is process and relationships. Our minds are just one type of those processes.

It's real easy to make that claim anonomously here on these forums. Like I said, if that is how you really feel, put your money where your mouth is and go tell it to the NAACP.

"The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as a bi-racial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans"

No, but you are cherry-picking. You are the one that said you can only make statements of belief. If you can't back it up then calling people names isn't going to help your position. How about answering the questions I asked you above?

Right. So aboutness would be some state of affairs (the relationship between words and what they refer to) and in talking about aboutness you would be talking about a state of affairs as opposed to a belief.