I do take the hard problem seriously, and (unlike T Clark) I would not use either of their accounts to argue against that. Seth says he's interested in the 'real' problem of consciousness, not the hard problem. — GrahamJ

I wasn't presenting Damasio's work as the correct view on consciousness, I was using it as an example of a type of description. I asked

So, how, if at all, does this type of description fit into this discussion? — T Clark

Do you guys prefer to read a lot of books at the same time? Or do you prefer to focus on one, finish it, and then move on to the next. I'm trying to do the latter because it lets me immerse myself a bit more, but I have my moments of weakness! — Jafar

I tend to read fiction one book at a time, but non-fiction; generally science, sometimes philosophy; I often read in episodes. If I really want to read a book that is slow going or takes contemplation, I'll read 20 pages a day and then let it sit while I read other things. That way I'm less likely to get discouraged and it lets my thinking about the book percolate while I'm not paying attention.

To start, before I get more specific, I agree with just about everything you've said. And I'll add this - my primary argument is against setting philosophy up as some sort of pinnacle of human inquiry. I don't see it as all that special. For me, it is an exercise in self-awareness - more a practice than a study.

In my view, philosophy in its most general sense refers to a mode of discourse melding comprehensiveness, unity, and explicitness. — Joshs

I like this. I used to say that metaphysics is the set of phenomenological rules we reason, argue, by. Although I still think that's a good way of thinking about it, most people don't look at it that way, so I've taken a different approach.

So a psychologist can become more philosophical, more ‘meta’, by moving from cognitive psychology to philosophy of mind. Does this mean that philosophy is a branch of psychology? No, because there are many philosophers who define psychology as an empirical discipline, the scientific study of mental phenomena in all its guises and levels of focus ( cognition, emotion, sociality, biological ecology, neuroscience, genetics, etc). — Joshs

I even agree with most of this, all but the "no" part. Yes, I overstated my case for rhetorical purposes by calling philosophy a branch of psychology, but that doesn't mean that isn't a defensible way of looking at it. Maybe you can see from the things I've said - I come at philosophy from a psychological point of view, i.e. why I do it, what I use it for. As I said previously - self-awareness. My discussion with @Leontiskos started when I questioned his statement that philosophy has no presuppositions. At that point, I started thinking about what the underlying assumptions of philosophy might be. The ones I came up with were psychological. The example I used was the assumption, what Collingwood calls an "absolute presupposition," that there is a conscious mind. You can't have philosophy without a conscious mind, which is a psychological entity.

Those philosophers who don’t consider their mode of inquiry as belonging to psychology, who believe that disciplines like philosophy of mind (and writers like Daniel Dennett) ‘psychologize’ philosophy, argue that psychology forces us to confuse the primordial underpinnings of being and existence with the contingent results of a science. They may argue psychological concepts like ‘mental’ , ‘physical’ , ‘value’ and belief’ are confused derivatives of more fundamental truths that no longer belong to psychology, but are instead ontologically prior to it. — Joshs

A couple of thoughts about this. It seems to me that the confusion of primordial underpinnings with science mostly come about by philosophers, including us, who come up with philosophical positions which aren't consistent with what we know from observation, including science. One prime example of this is the whole hard problem of consciousness. Some say that it is a problem that will never, can never, be resolved by a scientific approach. When I describe to them the kind of work psychologists, including cognitive scientists, are doing, they dismiss it out of hand.

Also, you point out that some say "psychological concepts like ‘mental’ , ‘physical’ , ‘value’ and belief’ are confused derivatives of more fundamental truths." I would put it differently. I think I can make the case that philosophical concepts like "truth," "ontology," "objective reality," and "morality," are high-falutin, often confusing, ways of talking about human thinking and experience.

I'll say here at the end what I said at the beginning, my main argument is against the arrogance of holding philosophy up as more important than it is.

You may be right. Would you say he's reductionist wrt consciousness? — frank

He's a cognitive scientist, and he is primarily interested in the neurological and structural aspects of mental processes, including consciousness. I often use him to make my case against the "hard problem." Does that make him a reductionist?

The post you quote does not say what you think it does. — Leontiskos

Pretty lame argument, and irrelevant to my position. We should probably leave it there since we seem to be descending into disagreeableness.

As I noted, psychology is the study of minds.
— T Clark

No, you didn't. And if you want to say something like that then I would ask you what philosophy of mind studies. I don't think your arguments are very clear at all, and part of the proof is that you think you said things that you haven't said. — Leontiskos

Oops.

I think it is reasonable to say that philosophy is the study of thought, beliefs, knowledge, value, which are mental phenomena - the structure and process of the conscious mind. As such, it is a branch of psychology. — T Clark

Also, are you arguing that there is not a philosophy of mind and a psychology of mind? Given my position, why would that be a contradiction?

Solipsism would be but one example of a philosophical position which denies the claim that there are independent minds, and therefore that there is any such thing as the field of psychology. — Leontiskos

As I noted, psychology is the study of minds. You need a mind to think and you need to think to generate a philosophical position such as solipsism. And I didn't say anything about independent minds. I'm serious about my argument, but I can see we'll just go back and forth on this. As far as I can see, philosophy can't step outside the box of psychology.

And to be fair, I don't care a lot about this argument. It just bothers me when people want to claim that philosophy is somehow more than it really is. Philosophy is wonderful, but all it is is thinking about stuff.

Are you saying that philosophy is different because everything is on the table - open to questioning? I'm skeptical of that, but I'll have to think about it more. — T Clark

Yep, pretty much. — Leontiskos

Ok, let's try this out. Back in the OP, @J wrote:

Suppose some surly neo-Freudian interrupts me at the point where I assert that “there’s nowhere else to go.” Nonsense, he says. “I’ll give you a psychological-slash-reductive explanation of why philosophers do what they do, and this explanation will have nothing to do with ‛ideas’ or ‛reasoning,’ and everything to do with culturally determined modes of expression mixed with individual depth psychology.” Ah, but I can reply, “Indeed? And what is your justification for asserting that such an explanation is true?” — J

I didn't say anything at the time, but this argument seems faulty to me. It begs the question. It judges psychology by philosophical standards and finds it lacking, which is irrelevant.

I think it is reasonable to say that philosophy is the study of thought, beliefs, knowledge, value, which are mental phenomena - the structure and process of the conscious mind. As such, it is a branch of psychology. Anything you claim as the province of philosophy can be trumped by a psychological interpretation. The overarching absolute presupposition of philosophy is that there is a mind which is knowable.

unless he's a behaviorist — frank

I don't think there's any way Damasio could be described as a behaviorist. He's about as anti-behaviorist as I can imagine. He explicates what is going on inside the black box of behaviorism.

In philosophy there are no such unallowed criticisms. In philosophy there are no such presuppositions. — Leontiskos

Are you saying that philosophy is different because everything is on the table - open to questioning? I'm skeptical of that, but I'll have to think about it more.

I think Damasio would be across or orthogonal to Davidson, Chalmers, and Wittgenstein. — frank

Do you think Damasio's description is consistent, or possibly consistent, with each of the three views you described in the OP?

Philosophy could be called highest because it is without presuppositions. — Leontiskos

I haven't been participating in this discussion, but I read this and was curious. What exactly do you mean? The philosophical definitions of "presupposition" I find use as an example something fairly trivial like this - The question "Have you seen John's new car" has the presupposition that John has a new car. In "An Essay on Metaphysics" Collingwood says that for every question there is at least one presupposition. Collingwood also talks about "absolute presuppositions" which are the underlying, often unrecognized, assumptions that are the foundation of a way of looking at the world. Is this what you're talking about?

If so, I still don't understand how this is applicable to philosophy.

No Man Is an Island

No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
As well as if a promontory were:
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were.

Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee. — John Donne

Because I am involved in mankind.

The rest of the text is written by me. — javi2541997

I've said this before - I'm glad you are posting more of your own writings here.

This is hilarious; outstanding; comical and funny. — javi2541997

Where is this from? I have never heard the phrase "Spanish practices" before.

We are far apart; it is indeed a miracle when two men of distinct schools of thought join to kindle under the fire of a united friendship. Friendship is divine, but it necessitates a spirit to eliminate distance. — Abdul

I said in my previous post that I'd come back reread you post. It took me a while, but here I am.

The sentiment expressed in the text from your post I quoted is common, but I've never understood it. I feel like I am swimming in a sea filled with other people swimming and I'm at home there. I don't feel the separation you describe. What that tells me is that whatever isolation there is is in the isolated person. It's unnecessary. It's not part of our human nature.

I am open-minded — Bob Ross

I know I'm not the only one who chuckled when they read this.

Send me a link to the sex offense that he was charged with, or the reasonable evidence that he should have been convicted (of some sex crime). — Bob Ross

Regarding the accusation of rape, the judge gave to the jury "the narrow, technical meaning of that term" under New York law as it existed at that time, which defined rape as forcible penetration with the penis, as Carroll had specifically alleged. The jury rejected her rape claim, but found Trump liable for a lesser degree of sexual abuse than rape. In July 2023, Judge Kaplan clarified that the jury had found that Trump had raped Carroll according to the common definition of the word. In August 2023, Kaplan dismissed a countersuit and wrote that Carroll's accusation of "rape" is "substantially true". — Wikipedia - E. Jean Carroll v. Donald J. Trump

Add on if you like. — frank

I don't want to distract from your discussion, but I wanted at least to mention this. I won't take it any further if you're not interested.

I think one of the places where philosophy runs up on shoals of science is on the subject of consciousness/self. They tend to get mixed up. This is from "The Feeling of What Happens" by Antonio Damasio.

Incidentally, [core and extended consciousness] correspond to two kinds of self. The sense of self which emerges in core consciousness is the core self, a transient entity, ceaselessly re-created for each and every object with which the brain interacts. Our traditional notion of self, however, is linked to the idea of identity and corresponds to a non-transient collection of unique facts and ways of being which characterize a person. My term for that entity is the autobiographical self. The autobiographical self depends on systematized memories of situations in which core consciousness was involved in the knowing of the most invariant char- acteristics of an organism's life-who you were born to, where, when, your likes and dislikes, the way you usually react to a problem or a conflict, your name, and so on. I use the term autobiographical memory to denote the organized record of the main aspects of an organism's biography. The two kinds of self are related. — Antonio Damasio - The Feeling of What Happens

So, how, if at all, does this type of description fit into this discussion?

It definitely sounds up my ally. — Moliere

"Up my ally" is what is going to happen to Europe when Trump retakes office.

Thus natural science is not a way of knowing the real world; its value lies not in its truth but in its utility; by scientific thought we do not know nature, we dismember it in order to master it. — R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History

I'm saving this. I'm sure I'll find use for it later.

And just to clarify,what do you mean by tolerance and inclusivity have gone to far? — Swanty

You’ll find that the only bigotry allowed here on the forum is religious bigotry.

Ancient philosophy was mainly story-telling & myth-making : what we now call Religion. But modern philosophy --- since the Enlightenment's rational-turn --- has become an amalgamation of abstract reasoning (logic) and metaphorical story-telling (meaning). — Gnomon

Aristotle, Plato, Lao Tzu, and Epicurus were "mainly story-telling & myth-making?"

Also, a suggestion. If you highlight the text you are referring to and then push the "quote" button that pops up, the text and a link will be copied direct to your response.

But the guys I'm talking about had good ideas and were concise clear writers as well. — Swanty

I value clarity and brevity also. It's what I aim for in my own writing.

I forgot to say - welcome to the forum.

Amongst philosophers I appreciate brevity,clarity and power...

So what is your opinion,are dialectical or enycopediac philosophers suspect,and guilty of Apologetics? — Swanty

I also value clarity, but I'm more interested in the quality of the ideas. Just because the lights better, it doesn't mean it's where you lost your keys. I hope you are familiar with that joke.

I get that. You're wrong, it's illegitimate, it kills more people than it saves and it doesn't work.

That’s not always true though. You are conflating a subset of scenarios with all of them. — Bob Ross

Give us some examples where it's worked. The only possible one I can think of is the Balkans in the 1990s, and I'm not sure about that.

Like what? The UN is a charade. — Bob Ross

I was just pointing out to Vera Mont that the UN would not be useful in the situations you two are discussing.

And sometimes even the territory and food are imaginary. — Tom Storm

Where does that empower any nation that considers itself superior to the nation in which a wrong is taking place to invade and impose its own values? — Vera Mont

I was pointing out that the UN does not authorize it's peacekeepers to do the kinds of things @Bob Ross proposes.

No, a reality-check. It's the UN's mandate, not any self-appointed guardian's, to organize interventions against genocide, but those morally superior modern western nations are mighty slow to support UN initiatives. — Vera Mont

This is not really true. This is from the UN's guidelines for peacekeepers:

UN peacekeeping operations are deployed with the consent of the main parties to the conflict. This requires a commitment by the parties to a political process. Their acceptance of a peacekeeping operation provides the UN with the necessary freedom of action, both political and physical, to carry out its mandated tasks.

In the absence of such consent, a peacekeeping operation risks becoming a party to the conflict; and being drawn towards enforcement action, and away from its fundamental role of keeping the peace.

The fact that the main parties have given their consent to the deployment of a United Nations peacekeeping operation does not necessarily imply or guarantee that there will also be consent at the local level, particularly if the main parties are internally divided or have weak command and control systems. Universality of consent becomes even less probable in volatile settings, characterized by the presence of armed groups not under the control of any of the parties, or by the presence of spoilers. — UN Principles of peacekeeping

If I take your argument seriously, then we should stop the Nazis if they were to stay in their own country; we shouldn’t stop North Korea from literally torturing their own people; etc. — Bob Ross

I assume you meant to say "not stop the Nazis." Again - both pre-WW2 Germany and today's North Korea have or had formidable militaries - North Korea has nuclear weapons. China would never let us attack without a response. They've already done it once. Also, South Korea would be destroyed in any war. This is a fantasy.

Has a military intervention to protect tyrannized people ever worked? Maybe - What is history's judgment of the Balkan intervention in the early 1990s? We tried something similar in Libya and destabilized the whole region. We imposed sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s and early 2000s. Hundreds of thousands of people died while the Hussein family continued to eat foi gras and bon bons.

6. Thus, sensory abilities and perceptions are contingent on each other, and so they cannot arise simultaneously. — Brenner T

Sure they can. That's how evolution works. Some little organism 2.5 billion years ago just happened to react in a particular way to a stimulus. That reaction provided a survival advantage and was carried on in the organism's descendants. And now here we are. Minds didn't just appear fully formed by the wave of a wand. They grew up with the universe.

7. Thus, a mind alone cannot perceive itself. — Brenner T

My mind is here perceiving itself right now. There... and again... Maybe you should clarify what you mean by "perceive.

And welcome to the forum.

I challenge you to try to justify, in your response to this OP, e.g., why Western, democratic values should not be forcibly imposed on obviously degenerate, inferior societies at least in principle—like Talibanian Afghanistan, North Korea, Iran, China, India, etc. — Bob Ross

Oh good, an easy one. I don't even have to try to address your nauseating rhetoric. Here's the answer - it won't work. We weren't even able to "forcibly impose" our values on rinky-dink third world countries like Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and Nicaragua even though we killed millions of people, mostly civilians, trying to do it. Generally, our interference has made things worse, e.g. our party in Iraq ended up sending millions of refugees into Europe. Just running the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time overtaxed our armed forces.

Fun quote. — schopenhauer1

I thought you might like it.

From Catch-22.

What a lousy earth! He wondered how many people were destitute that same night even in his own prosperous country, how many homes were shanties, how many husbands were drunk and wives socked, and how many children were bullied, abused, or abandoned. How many families hungered for food they could not afford to buy? How many hearts were broken? How many suicides would take place that same night, how many people would go insane? How many cockroaches and landlords would triumph? How many winners were losers, successes failures, and rich men poor men? How many wise guys were stupid? How many happy endings were unhappy endings? How many honest men were liars, brave men cowards, loyal men traitors, how many sainted men were corrupt, how many people in positions of trust had sold their souls to bodyguards, how many had never had souls? How many straight-and-narrow paths were crooked paths? How many best families were worst families and how many good people were bad people? When you added them all up and then subtracted, you might be left with only the children, and perhaps with Albert Einstein and an old violinist or sculptor somewhere.

A couple of quotes from Catch-22.

From now on I'm thinking only of me."

Major Danby replied indulgently with a superior smile: "But, Yossarian, suppose everyone felt that way."

"Then," said Yossarian, "I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn't I?

What a lousy earth! He wondered how many people were destitute that same night even in his own prosperous country, how many homes were shanties, how many husbands were drunk and wives socked, and how many children were bullied, abused, or abandoned. How many families hungered for food they could not afford to buy? How many hearts were broken? How many suicides would take place that same night, how many people would go insane? How many cockroaches and landlords would triumph? How many winners were losers, successes failures, and rich men poor men? How many wise guys were stupid? How many happy endings were unhappy endings? How many honest men were liars, brave men cowards, loyal men traitors, how many sainted men were corrupt, how many people in positions of trust had sold their souls to bodyguards, how many had never had souls? How many straight-and-narrow paths were crooked paths? How many best families were worst families and how many good people were bad people? When you added them all up and then subtracted, you might be left with only the children, and perhaps with Albert Einstein and an old violinist or sculptor somewhere.

Saying that your opponent is obviously wrong and leaving it at that is a conversation-ender.
— SophistiCat

Yes, that was my goal. — Clearbury

And yet you keep talking.

Ought implies can. The idea that all forms of government are unjust must be rejected until it can be shown (against all available evidence) that the alternative is possible in a society larger than a modern-day commune. Even then it would likely come down to choosing one injustice over another, because there is no rule that rejecting one form of injustice leaves you with a (more) just state of affairs. — SophistiCat

Just about everyone who has responded in this discussion has made an argument similar to yours. The OP has made it very clear that he doesn’t buy it. By his standards, I think the law of gravity is unjust also.

When you are done ad homming and put your philosopher pants on, I'll wait for you. For now, ignore. — schopenhauer1

I always find it annoying when someone misuses the phrase “ad hominem.”