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.

For me, anything objective/existent is something that participates in causal relations.
— Harry Hindu

The point which that completely misses is the subjective nature of consciousness, which is not at all required or implied by calling it 'information'. — Wayfarer

You said something like this before in the thread which I called you out on and you failed to follow up. You seem to be saying that only others' consciousness have subjective natures as the nature of your consciousness does not miss the point. To even claim that others miss the point is to say that the point is objective which we are all missing but you are not. How is it that you are not missing some point if the nature of your consciousness is as subjective as everyone else?

Is the fact that you are conscious subjective, or the causal processes that make you conscious subjective? What exactly is the subjective nature of consciousness and how anyone of us can ever hope to get the point (objectivity) if the nature of consciousness is only subjective?

Suffice to say that I don’t believe the wavefunction is physical. It is a distribution of possibilities. The observation actualises a specific possibility. Prior to that actualisation, there is no definitely-existing ‘particle’. Atomic entities are nowadays thought of in terms of excitations in fields although what exactly fields are is an open question. In any case, I think the idea of particular atoms as the being what the world is ‘made of’ is no longer tenable. — Wayfarer

How does the observer get actualized?

Is there one wavefunction for every particle? When observing multiple particles what determines which wavefunction actualizes which particle? When observing a macro-scaled object are we actualizing trillions of wavefunctions (one for every sub-atomic particle), or just one big one?

The idea of ‘mental substance’ is also problematical. (See this OP). I don’t believe that the mind or consciousness can be thought of as something objectively existent, or as any kind of ‘substance’ in the sense we usually use the word. — Wayfarer

I wouldn't call 'mental' a substance rather an arrangement of information, or an information process and is "objectively existent" (seems redundant) as anything else we talk about as the scribbles on this page would not objectively exist if not for the "objectively existent" ideas in our heads. For me, anything objective/existent is something that participates in causal relations.

The information exists in the relationship between the two devices — JuanZu

Yes, information is a relationship and relationships are fundamental. Everything is a relationship, or process.

Information exists everywhere causes leave effects. Information about who committed a crime exists in the effects they left at the crime scene, and those effects exist whether anyone ever finds the crime scene or not to be informed that a crime occurred, at least until time begins to erase the evidence - another causal process.

There is a lot of information that makes up a USB stick other than the binary data that is stored on it. The manufacturer and the factory it was built in is all part of the causal processes that went into the existence of the USB stick. The existence of the USB stick is itself informative of the causal processes that preceded the effect of it being in your hand and plugging it into the USB port on your computer. Information is everywhere you care to look and which information is relevant is dependent upon the goal in the mind of the informed.

I'm not talking about the number of properties. I'm talking about the number of kinds of properties. The ones we can detect, manipulate, and measure on the one hand, and the one we cannot on the other. — Patterner

In other words, substance dualism.
Googling "substance vs property dualism", the AI response is:
"Property dualism and substance dualism are two different views within the broader philosophical concept of dualism, which addresses the relationship between the mind and body. Property dualism suggests that while there is only one fundamental substance (typically physical), there are two kinds of properties: physical and mental. Substance dualism, on the other hand, argues that there are two distinct substances: a physical substance (like the body) and a non-physical substance (like the mind or soul). "
Since "physical" is used to describe both a kind of property and a kind of substance, I would need you to define what you mean by "physical" to understand what you are actually talking about. You mentioned that it comes down to being able to measure something or not, and I pointed out the problems with that in that it may turn out that the mind is measurable and you would be wrong as you admitted. There are also the plethora of issues QM brings along, like the measurement problem, Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and observer effect.

You cannot simultaneously determine both the exact position and exact momentum of a particle with complete precision due to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Does this mean that one property becomes more non-physical while the other becomes more physical, and vice versa, depending on which one is being measured? This would mean that "physical" and "non-physical" are properties of the measurements themselves and not the actual things being measured or that there are multiple properties, like position and momentum, that can be either physical or non-physical depending upon its interaction with a measuring device.

The idea of property dualism labels both the substance and the property as "physical", which I find odd and would need further explanation from you and others more knowledgeable what that really means by defining "physical" in both terms of property and substance.

I'm not saying we can study and quantify the world via our consciousness. Consciousness is our subjective experience of our studies and quantifications. (And our subjective experience of everything else we subjectively experience.) — Patterner

We are only aware of the studies and quantifications by being conscious of them, which you are saying is subjective. It seems to me that consciousness can be both objective and subjective depending what parts of consciousness are involved in interpreting sensory data (if our emotions and value systems are involved that would make our interpretations more subjective and less objective.

Where are you saying information is? — Patterner

Everywhere causes leave effects.

I don't think so. One substance (that which makes up the universe) has two kinds of properties (physical and experiential). If that's not property dualism, then what is? — Patterner

Because you're also talking about a multitude of properties (mass, charge, etc.), not just those two. You are positing property dualism by asserting that there is something special about two properties and all the rest are not special (You're essentially invoking a third property - "special", which is a mental projection). Why are just those two properties so special? If there are more than two properties then property dualism is inherently false.

If we ever come to study and quantify consciousness, then it will be revealed that it is a physical property, and I'm wrong. — Patterner

That's strange that you are asserting that you can study and quantify the world via your consciousness that cannot be studied and quantified. If you can't study or quantify the means by which the world is studied and quantified then what does that say about your actual understanding of the world? It's like you're saying you can measure the length of a stick without understanding how a ruler works.

I define it as that which makes up the universe. I don't know if there is a bottom. Perhaps the vibrating strings of energy that some physicists speak of. In which case, it would seem the bottom of matter is energy. Are you saying this energy is more properly called information? I suspect that's not what you mean, but don't know what you do. — Patterner

It does seem that energy is more fundamental than matter as energy seems more prevalent than matter as most of the universe is a vacuum (the absence of matter) yet EM energy permeates the vacuum. Matter appears to be something like energy feedback loops.

I'm only mentioning the two a) to try to give an idea of what I'm getting at, and b) because I don't know house many we know about. Spin and charm are two more I've heard of. — Patterner

Then we are not discussing property dualism, are we? We are discussing substance dualism.

I call these "physical" properties because they are studied and quantified by our sciences, and we call everything that we can study and quantify "physical". Hence physicalism. Things that cannot be studied and quantified, or even detected, are not physical. Terrence Deacon's absential features. — Patterner

This is circular. Does this mean that once we are able to properly study consciousness and quantify it, it becomes physical? It seems to me that what you are describing as physical and non-physical is not ontological, but epistemological, in that what is physical is dependent upon us following Galileo's recommendation that we measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so, not some inherent nature of matter.

Can you explain? I've been involved with someone on another site who says things like that. For example, "At the most micro-level you can imagine, matter does not seem to be anything other than information." I haven't gotten a real handle on the idea. — Patterner

Maybe you should try to explain to yourself what you mean by "matter". Is not matter really the interaction of smaller particles, which are themselves the interaction of ever smaller particles, all the way down? If all we ever get at is interactions when observing reality at deeper levels, then where exactly is the matter?

The strange thing is that you both seem to be ignoring the access to your own minds that you have and not accounting for its properties/structure and how its property/structure is used to model something else (physical) that does not share its property/structure (non-physical), but then go on to assert that the model is a more accurate representation of reality than the structure you have direct access to (your minds).

It seems only logical that the world share more properties/structure of the mind than the way the mind models the world (which is really just part of the mind in the first place). This is not to say that idealism or panpsychism is the case. It is merely saying that the mind and world are informational, not physical or non-physical.

What I do say, is that what is real is not exhausted by, or limited to, the physical. To clarify — I’m not suggesting we invent a false reality, nor that the physical is an illusion. What I’m questioning is the assumption that the appearance of a world with particle-like structure entails that the physical structure is primary, or exists independently of the mind that apprehends it.
— Wayfarer
I agree with all of this, but I think it has a different explanation. I do not think the physical and conscious properties of what exists can be separated. No more than the mass and charge of a particle can be separated. And, just as it doesn't make sense to say either mass or charge are more important than the other, it doesn't make sense to say either or both are more important than consciousness. So no, what is real is not exhausted by, or limited to, the physical. No, the appearance of a world with particle-like structure does not entail that the physical structure is primary. And it is impossible for the physical structure to exist independently of the mind that apprehends it. — Patterner

You are both forgetting about a very important thing - QM.

What is a physical structure and how exactly does that differ from a non-physical structure? How are mass and charge physical and not informational? What does QM say the mass and charge, and the particle they are associated with, are when not observing them? Is a wave function physical? Is the observer and the collapse of the wave function a physical interaction?

Is it that the observer actually causes the collapse of the wave function, or are we confusing the map with the territory here, where we are confusing what we experience (particles) with what it actually there.

If mass and charge are properties, then how many properties of physical structures are there? It seems to me that there would be far more than just two to claim property dualism, or you are focusing only two types of "properties" - physical and non-physical while ignoring the rest to be able to claim property dualism. It seems more like substance dualism but then you'd have to explain how two different substances can interact.

It goes in both directions. The property of matter that makes it produce something also makes it respond to that same thing. At least when it comes to gravity and electrical charge. If there's a property of matter that gives it consciousness, then there's no way to rule out the possibility that that property can also make matter susceptible to consciousness. — Patterner

Sure, mind causes matter to move and vice versa, but that would lead me to believe in a form of monism, not dualism. Properties are information and it seems that is all was have access to - the properties of "stuff". If properties (information) is all there is then we essentially access the world as it is and dichotomy between physical and non-physical, and direct vs indirect realism disappears.

Because I don't see why a non-physical mind in a non-physical reality would interpret and represent things in a way that doesn't exist. Fabricating a system of interpreting reality that has no basis in reality doesn't make sense. Why fabricate a system that doesn't exist to interpret reality, instead of interpreting reality in a way that reflects the true nature of reality and/or the mind? — Patterner

I don't understand this. Are you saying that things that are non-physical don't really exist? Are you not also saying that the mind is non-physical? Does that mean that minds do not exist? If the contents of the mind do not exist then how can "it go in both directions" where the contents of the mind cause changes in matter outside of it? If you have an idea and that idea causes you to change your behavior, how can you say the idea does not exist? What caused your change in behavior?

This idea that the contents of the mind are non-existent stems from the faulty idea of dualism (existence vs non-existence). Non-existence is one of those things that exists as a idea but not in any other form, but it can cause you to do things like typing scribbles on the screen about it. Non-existence exists - as an idea. There is nothing that does not exist because any time you think about it you bring it into existence. The only question is what is the nature of its existence (what are its properties). Is it just an idea, or something more?

You’re not seeing the point of the article. It’s not a matter which can be assessed objectively. — Wayfarer

Isn't the "point of the article" the same as being "objective"? If there is a point to the article that one is not seeing, isn't that the same as saying the article can be assessed (seen) objectively which you have "seen" and the other has not "seen"? How can we hope to see the point of anything if all we have to go by is "subjective" experiences? It would seem that we have both subjective and objective experiences and the issue is trying to discern which is which.

I think the universe has physical and non-physical elements. There can't be a problem with the two things working in conjunction, because we are physical beings and we are conscious. They are working in conjunction. I'm just saying this is how I think it all comes about. — Patterner

But thinking in this way complicates things unnecessarily. How do physical and non-physical elements interact? Would it require positing a third element, or how does that work? Why do you think there are physical and non-physical things when the only way you "know" of "physical" things is the way they are represented by the non-physical mind?

So the question is, what if consciousness has no basis in particle physics whatever? — Wayfarer

I still don't understand how we've come to "understand" the nature of particle physics when the only access we have to particles is via our particle-less immaterial mind. It's like scientists are merely focused on the things in the view and fail to account for the view itself. Ultimately when talking about particles, we are talking about mental objects. It seems to be more of a problem of direct (naive) vs indirect realism. Is the world really made up of particles (naive realism) or is physical particles merely a mental representation of what is out there that is not physical or particles? We know that the simple act of observing can turn waves into particles.

Proto-consciousness (or just call it consciousness) has no basis in particle physics whatever, and is of a completely different order to the entities of physics. No physics can explain it, define it, describe it, or even detect it. It "can’t be understood in terms of the laws that govern inanimate matter." — Patterner

Minds cause bodies to move. It seems to me that both you and physicists are wrong. I think that we have a better term to use here instead of "proto-consciousness" and that is "information". Information is the property of causal interactions and information is the basis of the mental.

It is not the case that when perceiving a colour we use all our senses, reasoning and available evidence to make a judgement as to what colour we are seeing. We don't make the judgment that we are in fact seeing the colour red.

When we perceive the colour red, no judgment is involved. We perceive the colour red. — RussellA

We don't ever just perceive the color red. What is the purpose of experiencing red if we are just suppose to perceive it? Judgements involve integrating all percepts into a consistent whole experience of the world. It is not just using all of your senses, but using them over time that allows you to make valid judgements about the world. It also depends on the context. Red on an apple means something different than red on a street sign.

However, as you say, for the Direct Realist there is no causal intervening process, and the red apple they perceive is the same red apple on the table. — RussellA

What does a direct realist do when they say the chocolate ice cream is delicious but someone else says it is disgusting? Is the direct realist talking about the ice cream or their mental state when eating it?

Both the Direct and Indirect Realist are the same in using all their senses, reasoning and evidence to try to understand the original cause of their perceptions. But they differ in that for the Direct Realist there is a one to one correspondence between what they perceive and the thing-in-itself but for the Indirect Realist, what they perceive is a representation of any thing-in-itself. — RussellA

Yet both of them succeed in accomplishing their goals with the same rate of success.

Well, most of our information about our environment comes in the form of visuals
— Harry Hindu
The naive classical stuff maybe, but not the deep stuff that gets important when exploring the gray areas. — noAxioms

I don't know what you mean by the "deep stuff that gets important". What form does the deep stuff that gets important take in the mind if not colors and shapes? Because we get most of our information about the world via vision, we tend to think in visuals as well. How do you know when you are thinking about the deep stuff that gets important? What is it like? What form do your thoughts take when thinking these things? What mental constructs are you pointing at when you talk about what you are thinking? And what form does the gray areas take when exploring them. You even used the color, "grey" (a visual) in your description.

Very pragmatic at least, and given that pragmatic utility, it may even be logical that we think the world is as it appears, but it isn't logical that the world is actually as it appears, for reasons you spelled out earlier. — noAxioms

That depends on what one means by, "the world is as it appears". If it means that the appearances allows us to get at the actual state-of-affairs, which it does most of the time or else we would be failing at our tasks much more often that we succeed, then what is the issue? What is missing from our knowledge when we successfully use appearances (representations) to accomplish a vast majority of our tasks that we set out to do? I don't know about you, but when I interact with the world, I interact with the actual state-of-affairs via its appearance in my mind. I don't interact with appearances.

I find that many indirect realists like to whine about how we might be mistaken, or that we end up not knowing anything, when we are not mistaken and we succeed in our goals most of the time. How often have we understood each other's scribbles on this screen as opposed to not understanding them?

That something 'nonexistent' (whatever that means) cannot have properties. — noAxioms

Seems like a misuse of language to me. How can we ever hope to talk about such things? Why bother? — Harry Hindu

What? Talking about dragons having properties? That's fine. All of those are ideals, valid things to talk about. The EPP concerns actual dragons having wings, not possible if there are not actual ones. The problem with that reasoning is that it presumes a division into actual and not actual before applying the logic, which is circular logic. Dispensing with EPP fixes that problem, but leaves us with no way to test for the existence (E1) (actuality) of anything, leaving the term without a distinction.
— noAxioms

It seems to me that in describing how something exists you would be inherently describing it's properties. — Harry Hindu

OK. Dragons breathe fire. Therefore, per EPP, dragons exist. That leverages definition E3. — noAxioms

Sure, this goes back to what I was saying about thinking in visuals. When describing a dragon, you are describing how it appears visually in your mind. Your description is visual in nature. You do the same thing for objects that exist in other locations in the world, like outside of your head. If ideas can have the same types of properties as physical objects, then what does it mean for lizards to exist but dragons do not exist? It seems to me that people are trying to make a special case for ideas (as having the property of non-existence) as opposed to everything else, when they possess the same types of properties and have as much causal power as everything else? The only difference is the location of the things we are talking about - either in your head or outside of it, and you head exists, but the things within it do not?

There is only one cause
— Harry Hindu
I break my hip (an effect) because 1) I chose to take a walk that day 2) there was a recently repaved road 3) shoulder not properly filled 4) coyote in distant field
That's four causes (there are more) of the hip break (true story). Coyote distracts attention from foot placement. Step off road and fall, instinctively to the side into a roll.

Once again, perhaps we are talking past each other when you say there can be but one cause and I disagree. If I say that each of those things is a cause, I mean the state of my broken (chipped actually) hip is a function of all those things and many others. Had any one of them not been the case, the hip thing would not have happened. Cause C (a system state) is a cause of effect E (another system state) if state E is in any way a function of state C. A state is a system state, however local, like say the coyote. — noAxioms

You are talking past me. That is not what I was saying. Russell was making the point that, from his own position of ignorance, there appears to be multiple possible causes for some effect. He would be projecting multiple causal paths to the same effect when they are merely products of his mind (his ignorance of the one actual causal path that led to the effect).

If you read the rest of that post you would see that I go on to say that a cause is an interaction between two or more things. So depending on if you point at the interaction ( a single thing), or the two or more things interacting, one could say that the cause is a single thing, or multiple things. It depends on what our goal is in the moment.

You could say that the Big Bang is also a cause of your chipped hip.

One cause can only have one effect, in that if one knows the cause then the effect has been determined by the cause. For example, if a stone hitting a glass window causes the glass to shatter, the same stone under he same conditions hitting the same glass window will always cause the glass to shatter.

However one effect can have more than one cause, in that even if one knew the effect, it doesn't follow that that one will necessarily know the cause. For example, knowing that has a glass window has shattered is no reason why one will know what caused the glass to shatter. It could have been a bird, a stone, a window cleaner etc. — RussellA

You're confusing your ignorance of the cause with there being more than one cause. There is only one cause and because you do not know the cause you might come up with some options but those options are mental constructs (possibilities), not actual causes. Only by doing an investigation can you eliminate those possibilities, thereby finding that those causes didn't really "exist", or at least don't exist apart from your mind.

You're also focusing only on the broken window as the effect. Breaking a window (any effect) is an interaction between at least two things (a rock and a window). If a rock broke the window, the effect is not only that the window is broken but also the location of the object that broke the window. There is a rock on the floor just inside the broken window, not outside in the rock garden where it was before the window was broken. Often there is more evidence (effects) than just a broken window. You have to use your senses and powers of reason to find it.

I think that this is part of the problem - that we arbitrarily "box in" effects and causes as discrete events when causation is a constant flow and any boundaries we impose on this process may be of our own mental makings.

There is a temporal direction of information flow in a causal chain. The Indirect Realist accepts this fact, and accepts the fact that one effect may have several different causes. This makes it impossible to follow a causal chain backwards in time. The Direct Realist doesn't accept this fact, and believes that even though one effect may have several causes, it is possible to follow a causal chain backwards in time.

The Indirect Realist accepts that they may never know what broke the window. The Direct Realist has the position that they will always know what broke the window. — RussellA

Actually, for a direct realist there is no causal process. The red apple on the table is the same red apple they perceive - the cause and effect are one and the same with no intervening process in between.

For a direct realist, the apple is not ripe as they never directly experience ripeness. They experience red. When a direct realist hears someone say, "That apple is ripe", what they interpret them to really mean is the apple is red. There is no such thing as ripeness for a direct realist. A direct realist would have problems explaining causation. Or they would be separating their minds from the causal interactions of the rest of the world - as if their minds are not subject to the same laws that govern the rest of the universe. As such, I find that most direct realists seem to be religious in some way or another as their God created them in a way (with a soul) that allows them to perceive the world as it is.

It is not the case that the indirect realist may never know the cause because we actually do get at the cause on a great many things. If we didn't we wouldn't be able to accomplish tasks with the degree of success that we do.

The issue for direct vs. indirect realism is that they are really just the extreme positions on the spectrum of explaining perception. The best explanation will lie somewhere in the middle and incorporate the best, non-contradictory parts of both extremes.

Incorporating determinism (same causes lead to the same effects) and the idea that we have multiple senses AND reasoning capable of getting at the same property in different ways for fault-tolerance gives us more confidence in our understanding of the causes of some effects. I don't ever hear indirect realist take into account determinism and reasoning - as if all the indirect realist has in their toolkit is their senses and not reasoning.

You can only know whether an apple is ripe from experiences through your senses. It may be soft to the touch, it may have a sweet smell, it may have a speckled colour, it may taste bitter and there may be a dull sound when you hit it.

There is no escaping the fact that you can only know the ripeness of an apple through your senses.

Take one of these as an example. You experience a sweet smell through your sense of smell. This is no different in kind to experiencing the colour red through your sense of vision. As red is a property of the mind and not the thing-in-itself, a sweet smell is a property of the mind and not the thing-in-itself.

Ripeness is a set of properties in the mind, not a set of properties of a thing-in-itself. — RussellA

Is it? I though ripeness is a property of the apple and all those sensory impressions you spoke of are mental representation (effects of our senses and brain interacting with light reflected off the apple) of that property. How can all those very different sensory impressions be the same property? Aren't they really just the many ways one can represent the ripeness of the apple, in the same way that we can use many different scribbles (languages) to refer to the same thing in the world (apple in English or manzana in Spanish)?

And doesn't this mean that our multiple senses provides a level of fault tolerance in getting at the actual properties of the apple? Those objects look like apples in the basket at the center of Grandma's dinner table but when you try to grab one and eat it you find that they are all ceramic apples in a ceramic basket that is the centerpiece on Grandma's dinner table. So your multiple senses and reasoning allow you to get at the true nature of the objects on the table, just as it would allow you to get at the cause of the broken window. If you only had the broken window as the effect, sure I can see your issue, but that is not the case. We often have more evidence available if we just use ALL of our senses AND reasoning to get at them.

For Meinong, exist, subsist and absist are part of a hierarchy. Round squares absist but cannot subsist or exist. Sherlock Holmes can absist but not exist. Horses can exist, subsist and absist.

In Meinong's domain of understanding, Sherlock Holmes doesn't exist. In my domain of understanding, Sherlock Holmes exists. The question is then raised, how can something that doesn't exist exist. But this question is conflating two different domains, understandably leading to contradiction

For Meinong to separate thoughts into exist, such as horse, subsist, such as Sherlock Holmes, and absist, such as a round square, seems quite sensible. But the fact that many attack his views makes me believe that I may not really understand what he is saying. — RussellA

It seems to me that Meinong is simply conflating properties with different kinds of existence. Absisting an subsisting are different kinds of existence, or the nature of their existence, for what are they really saying when using these terms if not different modes of existing? What distinction are they trying to make in using these terms, if not how they interact with the world causally? Sherlock Holmes does not exist as a biological entity. It is a mental construct - an idea, but it has the same causal power as biological entities. The idea of Sherlock Holmes can cause you to do things in the world, so what exactly is the distinction they are trying to make if not the nature of their existence?

Excellent point. Way too much weight is given to sight for instance, to the point that things arguably don't exist to a blind person.
Do pictures count? What if it's a picture taken at XRay frequencies? Is the resulting false color image what it looks like? — noAxioms

Well, most of our information about our environment comes in the form of visuals, so it seems logical that we would think the world is at it appears. A dog may think the world is as it smells, to a bat the world is as it sounds.

I think the wording is incorrect when we say that the world is as it appears. How it appears allows us to get at the way it is thanks to determinism (same causes lead to the same effects) and reasoning (incorporating multiple observations using all five senses over time).

That something 'nonexistent' (whatever that means) cannot have properties. — noAxioms

Seems like a misuse of language to me. How can we ever hope to talk about such things? Why bother?

Hence the 'whatever that means'. I gave at least 6 definitions, and there are more. — noAxioms

It seems to me that in describing how something exists you would be inherently describing it's properties.

For Meinong, existence is a property. For the EPP, existence is prior to properties. It seems that two senses of "exist" are being used. — RussellA

What does it even mean to say something is prior to properties? If something exists, how does it exist? In what way does it interact with other things? Does one's existence interact with another existence, or does one's properties interact with other properties and the type of properties interacting is what produces novel effects? Do properties exist?

We directly see the consequence of pain, such as someone grimacing. We don't directly see the pain. — RussellA

We directly experience some things but not others seems to show that the distinction between direct and indirect is simply one of causal complexity - how far removed the effect is from its causes, not a difference in the ontology of perception as we can experience things directly and indirectly.

Suppose I see the colour red. If I were a Direct Realist, I think that I would say that the colour red exists in a mind-independent world. As an Indirect Realist, I say that something in the world caused me to see the colour red, but whatever that something is, there is no reason to believe that it was the colour red. — RussellA

This is non-sensical. Red is a property of minds. Ripeness is a property of apples, or fruit in general. Do we concern ourselves that the apple's ripeness can exist independently of fruit, or that it's ripeness is caused by things that are not ripe, like water, sunlight, the seed, the apple tree, etc.? No. So why do this with the color red? In which natural causal process is the cause and the effect the exact same thing? Ripeness does not cause ripeness. Red does not cause red. Information is the relationship between cause and effect. The cause or effect alone is not interesting. The relationship is, and that is what we are getting at when we perceive anything.

Now you sound like me, with ontology being defined in a way that only makes sense in a structure with causal relationships. — noAxioms

:100:

Both the Indirect and Direct Realist believe that there is a direct causal chain between the thing-in-itself in the world and the experience of it in your mind.

You see the colour red. Assume that this is not a dream or hallucination, but that there is a thing-in-itself in the world that directly caused you to experience the colour red. Would you say that because you experience the colour red, the colour red must exist in the world?

Similarly, because you experience pain, would you also say that pain exists in the world?

Similarly, because you experience the appearance of a brick, would you say that bricks exist in the world? — RussellA

Yes to all those questions as minds exist in the world. When I see someone in pain, are they and their pain not in this same shared world my mind exists in? If both direct and indirect realists answer, "yes", to this question, then I don't see how this establishes a distinction between direct and indirect realists.

I gave 6 different meanings to the word 3 posts back, E1-E6. More have been suggested. Meinong seems to confine the usage of the word to things designated as 'objects' that have a property (among others) of location.

Concerning that: What is the location of our visible universe? It's not like it has coordinates. If I was to mail a letter to myself from outside the universe, what could I write that would get it here? Can't be done since there is only one origin (big bang) and that totally lacking in spacial location. There's not a place where it happened, so what becomes of the 'location' property? It too becomes a mere relation. — noAxioms

Asking the location of the universe is a silly question, like asking the for the location of reality. You could say that the universe is the set of all locations, or the set of all relations. I still prefer to tie existence to causation with location being just one property of causation.

The statement (that he is an imagining) seems to presume his nonexistence. OK, granted that Santa is self-contradictory and so is not likely to logically exist, but some imagined things are. My example was of Pegasus imagining you, without every having any empirical contact with a human. Does that mean you don't exist?

It can be argued that only the concept has those causal effects, as intended. It is God for children after all, purpose being to herd sheep, very much cause-effect going on. — noAxioms

Well, yeah. An imagining is a concept. Concepts have causal power. Do concepts and imaginings exist? What you are saying is that Santa does not exist as a flesh and blood organism. That is true. It exists as a concept, or a legend, and the legend had to start somewhere.

There might have been a person that existed long ago from which the concept Santa started, but has evolved over time to only vaguely represents the original.

Meinong rejects this principle, allowing properties to be assigned to nonexistent things such as Santa. My topic concerns two things: Arguments for/against this position, and implications of it. — noAxioms

What does it mean to exist or not? Is not one property of Santa is that it is an imagining and it exists as an imagining? Things exist if they have causal power. Just look at the causal power of Santa the imagining around Christmas time. So it is not a question of whether Santa exists, but how it exists. What is the nature of Santa Claus if not an imagining? Things that do not exist we can never talk about.

The basic problem of process philosophy is to explain why processes, activities, appear to us as substantial objects. — Metaphysician Undercover

A solution has already been proposed. Is relativity a substantial object or a relation? Is relativity real? Does it exist? If so, how?

Your brain processes information about the world at a particular rate, or frequency, RELATIVE to the rate/frequency of the other processes you perceive. This will have an effect on how you perceive the other processes with the relatively slower processes appearing as substantial, solid, static objects. Procedural feedback loops will also appear as substantial, solid, static objects. Relatively faster change will appear as blurs, or actual processes, like an explosion.

Things moving is what causes time to pass. — Arne

I don't think so. I think time passing is what causes things to move.

I'm talking about time as the thing which is measured. A clock for example, consists of change/motion, and it is used to measure the passing of time. — Metaphysician Undercover

"Cause" is the wrong term to use. Change (of which movement is a type of change) is the essence of time. Measuring time is comparing one change with another (ie. movement of the second hand with how far you can run).

Yes, I think that is the endeavour of skepticism, to call into question the very foundation of science. And, the skeptic will reveal that science does pull the rug out from under itself. — Metaphysician Undercover

I was responding to your contradictory claim, where you initially make a claim about what science has revealed as evidence for what you are saying:

Well, if you want to get fussy, a brain itself is a material thing, so by that premise alone, it doesn't make sense to think of a brain in a nonmaterial world, whether or not it is in a vat. — Metaphysician Undercover

and then go on to question science:

I think it's obvious from what science has revealed, that our senses grossly mislead us concerning the nature of reality. — Metaphysician Undercover

So, IS the brain itself a material thing, or is science that reveals the nature of material things misleading us?

As I said, our senses don't lie to us, they mislead us. Lying implies that it is done intentionally, the senses do not intentionally mislead us. It's simply the case that the sense organs are product of evolution, and so they are organized toward specific forms of utility. Human beings have now developed a mind which is inclined toward knowledge and truth, but the senses evolved before this inclination of human beings. So the utility of the senses is not knowledge and truth. That is why they mislead us. — Metaphysician Undercover

The distinction between lying and misleading does not take away from the main point I was making:
Seeing a bent straw in a glass of water is exactly what you would expect to see given the nature of light and that we see light, not objects. Our senses are not misleading us. Our interpretations of what our senses are telling us is misleading us.

Is there any type of perception, either human or not (animals, mad scientists, advanced life forms that create simulations, etc.) that gets at the world directly?
— Harry Hindu

I would say introspection does this. But it is not really a type of perception. — Metaphysician Undercover

You get at the external world by inspecting yourself?

I don't think so. The senses were not designed to provide us with truth, so why should we think that they do. — Metaphysician Undercover

I understand that many of us come to this forum to discuss philosophy to escape real life for a time, but in doing so we forget about all the trivial things we do throughout our lives that would easily contradict some of the assertions we make here on this forum. So think about all the trivial things that you do through your life that you have no issues with succeeding. You make it to work each day. You can pour a glass of water without spilling it. You are able to use you mobile phone and other complex technology without issues. You can read other people's words and get at their meaning and have a meaningful conversation. We have even split the atom and landed on the moon. All these things and many, many more examples show that we get around just fine. If we use our ideas to accomplish some task successfully, then it can be safely said that the way we perceived the world at that time was accurate (I'm not really sure the term, "true" is useful here).

I think it's obvious from what science has revealed, that our senses grossly mislead us concerning the nature of reality. I wouldn't say that senses lie though. — Metaphysician Undercover

Then the very foundation of science is called into question as science relies on observations. Science has pulled the rug out from under itself and doesn't have any ground to stand on.

The fact is that science has not shown that our senses mislead us. It is our interpretations that mislead us. In providing a more accurate explanation of mirages and "bent" straws in a glass of water given the nature of light, we find that mirages and bent straws are exactly what we would expect to see. Our senses aren't lying. Light is bent when it travels through different mediums and is why we experience these things the way we do. It wasn't our senses that were lying, it was our interpretation of our experience without the understanding of how light behaves, and it is light we see, not "material" objects.

I don't see that this sort of questioning is at all useful. It's like asking if God created the world, who created God. How is this type of question useful? Unless we identify and understand God, we have no way of knowing what created God. Likewise, until we locate the "mad scientists", and interrogate them, we have no way of knowing what their intentions were. So how can a question like this be useful? — Metaphysician Undercover

This was my point. The brain in a vat thought experiment is nonsensical because it leads to an infinite regress.

Is there any type of perception, either human or not (animals, mad scientists, advanced life forms that create simulations, etc.) that gets at the world directly? If not, then mad scientists putting brains in vats and advanced aliens creating simulations, and gods would have the same philosophical problem.

I think the thought experiment demonstrates that the scientific method may be incapable of giving us an accurate understanding. Since it can only validate through sense observation, it cannot validate any part of reality which is inherently unobservable. — Metaphysician Undercover

Again, all this does is turn the tables on your claims that brains are material objects when this is based on observations. It seems to me that the answers lie somewhere between extreme skepticism and extreme (naïve) realism, in that we can trust what our senses tell us given an accurate interpretation, which takes more than one observation and reason integrating these multiple observations into a consistent explanation.

Really? Then where is the evil demon relative to me if we do not share the same world where it's actions are causally related to my experiences? What is the medium which separates the evil demon and me if not a shared external world? I am external to the demon and the demon external to me.

That's true, but I think the issue of skepticism is better represented as questioning whether things are as they seem to be. The conception of "matter" involves specific spatiotemporal references in relation to our perceptions. The "brain in a vat" scenario is just an example of how reality could be radically different from the way that we perceive it. So the example serves its purpose regardless of whether we conceive the "brain in a vat" as material, it still demonstrates that this entire conception of "material world", along with the brain in a vat aspect, could be completely wrong. — Metaphysician Undercover

It only seems to question whether we can trust our senses in a material world of brains in vats. The thought experiment still implies that brains requires sensory input from outside of itself. The brain in a vat needs to receive input through its sensory interfaces and would still be connect to the outside world in some way.

I don't believe that our senses lie. They provide information about the world and it is our interpretation of what the senses are telling us that is either accurate or not.

If we were brains in vats, what would be the purpose of us experiencing illusions, hallucinations or dreams? What would be the purpose of the experiment, or the reason why our brain is in a vat? Who put the brain in a vat - some entities that do see the world as it is? How would they know that they are not brains in vats? In the same way the "this is a simulation" thought experiment creates an infinite regress of how the simulators don't know they are in a simulation, etc., how do the mad scientists that put our brains in vats know that they are not themselves brains in vats? Why would the mad scientists allow us to even conceive that we might be brains in vats if the point was to fool us?

So I don't see how the thought experiment is useful. It seems simpler to just say that we interpret our sensory input incorrectly when we make knee-jerk assumptions about what it is we are experiencing, but when we use both observation and reason over time (scientific method) we are able to get at the world with more accuracy. I think that many of these discussions regarding how we know the world do not take this into account. It seems to take examples where we only had one observation to go by - like seeing a mirage for the first time - and then running with that without taking into account that we eventually realize what a mirage is by making more observations over time and applying reason (puddles of water do not move further away when we move toward them).

Thermodynamics is not a problem for "my god"*1, because it is not a physical system subject to natural laws, but the source of those laws. This Platonic First Cause*2 did not exist as a real thing, but as an Ideal Potential. Potential doesn't do anything until Actualized. Aristotle's Prime Mover doesn't move, because it's the Unmoved Mover. Infinite Eternal Potential --- not limited by space-time --- is, by definition, an "inexhaustible source of energy". Space-time energy is doomed to entropic anihilation ; so where did our limited supply come from? — Gnomon

:roll: Here we go again... dualism on a runaway train. How does a system not subject to natural laws become a source of those laws? Unmoved movers? Something from nothing? All you are doing is complicating things unnecessarily. I think our ideas about the fundamental nature of "objects" as bundles of process/relations/information are compatible up to the point where you invoke some sort of intelligent design.

Potential is an idea that stems from our ignorance of the deterministic effects of some cause. We think of probabilities and potentials as having some objective existence apart from our minds, but they are just projections of our own ignorance.

There is also the possibility that causation is a loop. No need for infinite regresses or something from nothing.

This is a good point which shows the inadequacy of monitoring room analogy. See first response above about cat-sensing sense. My senses tell me I'm picking up a cat, petting it, etc. but everything I experience still all sensation, is it not? Cannot someone who is a brain in a vat or hallucinating, have the sensor experience of doing experiments and experiencing the results? — Art48

The "brain in a vat", or other explanations appear like alternative explanations, but they all involve problems. — Metaphysician Undercover

Unfettered skepticism that leads to questioning how, or even if, we experience an external world would create all sorts of problems for the brain in a vat idea. Brains and vats are material objects that are experienced, so if you're questioning the reality of your experience then that would include the ontological existence of brains and vats. It makes no sense to question the existence of the material world using a thought experiment involving material objects. By invoking the idea of the existence of the material objects of brains and vats, you're automatically implying that material objects exist and we can perceive them as they are - as brains and vats.