Anyhow, this is pointless, right? — James Pullman

Pointless? I don't know about that, but you're opening up a discussion that's much broader than this one. When push comes to shove, Descartes was right, or at least close. I experience something, therefore something is.

All that a zygote 'has' is the DNA of its parents, and a temporary location. With luck, the zygote will move through the stages of development and become a human baby in about 9 months, and then be thrust out into the world. A cigar, but no person. — Bitter Crank

When a person becomes a person is a matter of convention. Some thoughts:

• Black people used to be considered 3/5 of a person. Or was it 2/3.
• It says "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all [People] Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness…." So, that doesn't apply to newborns?
• I've said this many times - babies come out of their mothers already the people they are and will be. So much of temperament and personality is there from the very beginning. Probably before the beginning.
• Which brings us to the problem of abortion. I support women's right to choose whether or not to have a child. That doesn't mean I don't recognize that personhood develops sometime between conception and birth. Something important is lost when a pregnancy is ended. Abortion is a bad method of birth control.
• Of course, Republicans think that life, and personhood, begins at incorporation.

What if nothing exists? Then first come the notion, the concept, and only then the word (philology/etymology), that supports epistemology, right? — James Pullman

But something does exist. Descartes told me so. At least, I think he did.

With the way things are going now, does my grief make logical sense? Or should I feel glad that my child won’t share in the probably horrible fate bringing them into this world will bring to them? Should I keep trying to make this world a better place for future generations so the grief makes more sense? What if my worst fears should be realised and I find out I cannot have children? Should I still contribute even though none of those future generations will be of me? — Mark Dennis

I don't know if you've seen them, but there are lots of discussions on the forum about anti-natalism. "On Anti-natalism" is currently on the front page, but it's already 500 posts long, so it may be hard to get into.

Sorry for the personal nature of this post. However, where does a philosopher go for therapy? As if the psychologist or psychiatrist could be prepared to deal with the kind of existential depression that comes hand in hand with increasing ones understanding of the nature of reality, or the clear ethical conflicts of duty that arise when our personal lives are rocked by tragedy and we have to consider the world we bring our children into or whether we even should bring any into it? — Mark Dennis

I've read that some philosophers who convinced themselves that there is not free will committed suicide. There is plenty of psychological, physiological depression around without creating more out of thin air.

The strong, classical view assumes that the objects studied by metaphysics exist independently of any observer, so that the subject is the most fundamental of all sciences. Some philosophers, such as the logical positivists, and many scientists, reject the strong view of metaphysics as meaningless and unverifiable. — alcontali

To me, this is completely wrong. Backwards. Metaphysics provides the rules for the application of human conventions of knowledge to the world. It makes the universe a human place. As Lao Tzu might say, it brings the universe into existence.

I am afraid that I have to agree with the logical positivist view on the matter. As far as I am concerned, epistemology is the flagship of philosophy, while at the same time it is not clear whether metaphysics even makes sense. — alcontali

I've spent some time thinking about this. To me, epistemology is part of metaphysics. If you look up definitions, it's about 50/50 whether others agree with me. I have always thought of metaphysics as the set of rules we agree on that gives us a common framework for looking at the world. Again, some agree, some disagree.

A paper that I have found very helpful is "An Essay on Metaphysics" by R.G. Collingwood. And by helpful, I mean he and I agree.

And I do agree that epistemology is the key to everything. The heart of the matter. But I think metaphysics is really the only thing that lets us agree on what makes sense and what doesn't.

Oh no, more agreement. — Coben

Yeah, we both must be wrong.

I'm talking about the impossibility to explain consciousness in a materialist framework (by consciousness I refer to what a being experiences: perceptions, feelings, thoughts ...), or in other words the impossibility to explain what gives rise to our consciousness based on the contents of our perceptions alone (so if we claim to have a model that describes the fundamental laws that govern our universe, but it is impossible to derive from that model that anything experiences anything even in principle, then it's not a model of our universe, because at least something experiences something). Well we can always give an explanation by invoking magic (for instance say that consciousness arises from the brain because magic, or that it arises from some complex process we can't describe), but usually we expect more from an explanation, otherwise we can explain anything in any way we want. — leo

Just to make sure I understand - you think that consciousness rising up out of brain function is fundamentally different in kind than life rising up out of chemistry. And that this is the reason for the "hard problem" of consciousness. Is that right?

Can the hard problem be solved by science? If so, where do we look? If not, that's just magic too. I've been following up on our previous discussion with some reading. In what I've read, a lot of people equate the hard problem and vitalism. I'm assuming you disagree.

Falsificationism is in my impression subject to falsification — alcontali

The idea of falsification is not science, it's metaphysics. The scientific method is metaphysics. Induction is metaphysics. If math has no content, none of these things do either.

"Metaphor is not a mere embellishment; it is the basic means by which abstract thought is made possible. One of the principal results in cognitive science is that abstract concepts are typically understood, via metaphor, in terms of more concrete concepts." — Joshs

I agree. A lot of scientists and mathematicians believe that the universe is mathematical, and not in a metaphorical way. Mistaking the map for the territory is a common human failing. Some people also think the universe really, literally consists of information, or is a computer, or a living creature, or consciousness.

Silly, ha, ha, ha, ha. Think that's funny, some even think the universe consists of a four dimensional space formed and distorted by matter and energy.

And if you thought of knowing that way, then, for example, you'd have to say that in terms of the sciences, we categorically can never know anything, because it's a basic tenet of science methodology that any claim is open to revision in the face of new evidence. In other words, it's a basic tenet that any scientific claim could be wrong. It's never impossible that a scientific claim is wrong. Taking a claim so that it's impossible that it can be wrong means that we're no longer doing science. — Terrapin Station

This brings to mind a relevant quote from Stephen Jay Gould that I've always loved:

“In science, ‘fact’ can only mean ‘confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.’” Replace "fact" with "knowledge."

Negative justification is trickier than positive justification. Furthermore, positive justification deals with the physical world where we can look at the world and draw conclusions. Negative justification is lack of evidence and is much weaker. — Noah Te Stroete

In the context of my approach to knowledge - justification takes in to account certainty, benefits, negative consequences) - then negative evidence is important. If I have searched carefully for negative evidence and haven't found any, that contributes in a major way to justification.

Totally agree. And I have gotten so much shit over the years for saying the T should be taken out. First, because it implies that there are two criteria for knowledge 'justification and truth. When in fact, there is no second process after evaluating the justification where we then look to see it is true. If we have evidence of a black swan, then the justification that there are lots of white ones is poor justification. When we evaluate the justification we will look for counerexamples and lack of logic, but we cannot determine now if in the long run what we consider true today will be true tomorrow. Adding the true is confused. — Coben

As I've said, I think you also have to take the consequences of failure into account. If the decision is who has to wash the dishes, who really cares. If it's should we start a war in Iraq, we have to be a lot more careful. We found out what could possibly go wrong with that. Now the people in the White House are itching to do the same thing in Iran.

Assign a factor to the epistemological reliability of your credible witness? God's validated word is 1.0, your credible witness is given a prior of .8. The contention then is that your state of knowledge of this fact is, itself, approx. .8. — JosephS

Well.... Two thoughts - First, I don't really like a numerical calculation like this for decision making, although it is not uncommon in my line of work. Example - we put a design out to bid. We establish a set of criteria for the bids, say price, experience of bidder, quality of technical approach to the work, completeness of the proposal, health and safety performance in past projects, company size and resources. Then we weight the criteria by importance. As you might imagine, price gets the highest weight. Then we rank each criteria, multiply by the weighting, and then add up the values. Bidder with the highest ranking gets the project. Problem - it almost never works. We almost never pick the company we think will do the best job.

Second - As I said, you can't really know your "state of knowledge" unless you take in to account the consequences of failure. The question isn't how much uncertainty is there in my decision, it's whether or not the justification is adequate given the risk. The question to ask - what could possibly go wrong.

It's really simple. Meaning is the relationship between some cause(s) and some effect(s). — Harry Hindu

I don't understand the argument you are making. Your definition doesn't match my understanding of what "meaning" means.

I think quality (cf. Pirsig's Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance), and good, are (examples of) such words. The multiple meanings they carry are too close together to separate easily. Maybe this is what gives rise to confusion? These words carry all of the meanings they carry, often simultaneously (or so it seems). So when it comes to defining these terms precisely, we encounter problems. — Pattern-chaser

Sure. The ambiguity is part of the fun and the power of language. In the context of this discussion, what's important is that the posters make sure we are all talking about the same meaning of "meaning." Otherwise, we get a muddled mixture of comments that don't seem responsive. When I am king of the forum, I'll make everyone define terms in the first paragraph of the OP. Also, I'll ban anyone with a cute username. Don't worry, "Pattern-chaser" is ok.

This is really interesting and well presented. I have some thinking to do. We'll pick this up again later.

I see. It takes a team of experts and a consensus then (always difficult) in order to determine best policy. If only lobbyists didn’t get in the way... — Noah Te Stroete

They are political decisions, with all the ups and downs, ins and outs, backs and forths associated with those.

It’s easier to know what the direct intended consequences will be, but there are unintended consequences to every decision. Some good, some bad. — Noah Te Stroete

That's not entirely true. Unintended consequences are not unforeseeable consequences, at least not necessarily. We can certainly do better than we do.

That said, I am certain you know as an environmental engineer what is best policy for the environment more so than politicians or corporations. — Noah Te Stroete

Environmental engineers apply technology to implement the laws and regulations that reflect environmental policy. I have opinions on what the appropriate policies are, but it's not my job to establish them.

One only knows a decision is bad after the fact. And bad for whom or what? Some consequences are good for some and bad for others. That’s where values come in. Making decisions has more to do with values than epistemology in my opinion. — Noah Te Stroete

One can know what the consequences of of a decision will be before the fact better than we currently do, it just takes more work and attention. It costs money, so there are strong political forces resisting it.

Definition of consciousness: a person's awareness or perception of something

So no, looking at brain activity associated with conscious experience is not looking at that conscious experience. That's like saying "of course looking at a fossil associated with a dinosaur is looking at a dinosaur". — leo

Your definition doesn't say "the un-observable, personal experience of a person's awareness or perception of something." It's perfectly possible to talk about consciousness as an objective fact about a state of mind. Just like it's possible to talk about and study pain, depression, sight, language, and all the rest of our internal states based on observable and measurable external signs, symptoms and measurements. We talk about consciousness of non-human animals and try to determine what types of observable behaviors show us what the animal's internal state is. Of course we are also interested in personal reports of what consciousness feels like, but that is not the only way we can know about it.

So, yes, looking at objectively measurable evidence of consciousness, including brain activity, is a legitimate way of studying consciousness. Just as studying fossil evidence of dinosaurs is a legitimate way of studying dinosaurs.

obviously if you define consciousness as brain activity then there seems to be no great unknown about it, it's just a matter of associating observed brain activity with reports of the person whose brain activity is observed. But that's not how consciousness is defined. — leo

I didn't define consciousness as brain activity. The original point I made is that there's no mystery about how brain activity expresses itself as the observable phenomena we call "consciousness." Lot's of unknowns. No mystery.

There are physicists like Dirac who claimed that the whole of chemistry can be derived from the laws of physics: The underlying physical laws necessary for the mathematical theory of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, and the difficulty is only that the exact application of these laws leads to equations much too complicated to be soluble. It therefore becomes desirable that approximate practical methods of applying quantum mechanics should be developed, which can lead to an explanation of the main features of complex atomic systems without too much computation. — leo

I'm skeptical, but I'll see if I can track down the references. If you have something more specific, it would be helpful.

In the same way it is imagined that molecular biology could be derived from chemistry, cellular biology from molecular biology, and so on, but that in practice it is simpler to find laws at a given level than to infer them from the laws of the level below. — leo

I believe that's not true. Here is a link to a well known article by P.W. Anderson about reductionism and emergence and how the properties of higher level phenomena are not predictable by the properties of lower level phenomena.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/177/4047/393

If you say that laws at a given level emerge but couldn't be derived even in principle from the laws of the lower levels, then what is it that makes them emerge, at what point is the magic infused to make these new laws appear? You're saying we couldn't find a mechanism that would explain how cells behave based on how molecules behave, so what is the additional thing that cells are made of which isn't molecules? If it can't be described in any way then it might as well be magic. — leo

That's just the way it is. Higher level behavior does emerge from lower level behavior. Biology is not predictable using chemistry and physics. It's not a short cut, it's the only way we can know the principles of higher levels of organization - by observing them directly. Reductionism doesn't work. It doesn't reflect reality.

I've been looking for the specific reference in Alan Watts I mentioned. Still not sure it's Watts. It's got me rereading "Nature Man and Woman." I'll let you know if I find anything.

People do make decisions. It was ultimately the business class and the desire of the people to make their lives easier that made things so bad because they didn’t think about the consequences. But they weren’t aware of the consequences. No one can KNOW all of the consequences of their decisions. Certainly people continue to fail to see the consequences of new technologies, technology being an application of science. — Noah Te Stroete

That just underlines what I wrote previously - Knowledge only really has meaning in the context of a decision and no one can say knowledge is adequately justified without understanding the consequences of a bad decision.

I disagree. — JosephS

What do you disagree with? That calling something a mystery will make people evaluate it differently than if it's just everyday old normal stuff? That it undermines the credibility of your argument?

Anyway, never mind. We seem to have taken this as far as we can.

Epistemology as the foundation of good decisions then? — Noah Te Stroete

Yes. Exactly. I'm an environmental engineer. My job is to know stuff, know how I know it, know how well I know it, and figure out what to do with that knowledge. I used to joke about putting "Environmental Epistemologist" on my business cards. I have written several times on this forum about the epistemological methods I use in my work.

Science has made many stupid decisions. One example, in my opinion, the industrial revolution that led to unsustainability. However, I enjoy the many fruits of industrialization. That said, wouldn’t the conscious life of the planet including the many now extinct species been better off without it? — Noah Te Stroete

Well, science doesn't make decisions, people do. The jury is still out on whether the industrial revolution was a good thing or a bad thing. The next 30 or 40 years will probably tell. I'm not sad that I won't be around to see. I admit I am worried for my children.

The essence of what we have learned about environmental issues over the last century is that humanity has failed badly to understand the true consequences of its actions. As I indicated previously, a good understanding of the consequences is necessary in order to make any claim to knowledge.

It seems to me (I may be confused) that I don’t agree with the concept of a “necessary” decision. What about discovery? Could you explain further please so I can understand your position? — Noah Te Stroete

Has anyone ever discovered anything that didn't go on to have any practical consequences? Can something really be knowledge if it has no interaction or impact on the world we live in?

So you’re a proponent of positive justification for belief that need not be true. Care to justify that? — Noah Te Stroete

I thought I did. In summary again - the words "knowledge" and "know" have no useful meaning if knowledge always has to be true. The only thing that really matters is whether or not I am justified in making a particular decision. If I'm not making a decision, truth is useless, knowledge is useless.

In the context of me saying we have no idea what the mechanism is, I am happy to have someone from the 'we know a lot about it' camp couch it as unknown. I would think however that people probably react in a variety of ways to both what is or what we consider unknown and to what we consider mysterious. Mysterious it seems to me adds in that there is a surprising element to the phenomenon. I don't think that's ridiculous if one is coming from a physicalist viewpoint. — Coben

I don't get it. The universe is chock full of stuff we don't understand. Is that surprising? No, it's a big place. We're just getting started. We have a very limited, parochial point of view - we're located somewhere in the middle of a continuum of scales that goes from subatomic and maybe beyond to galactic and maybe beyond.

He's not mixing in his personal mysteries, he is saying that it strikes him as mysterious. Which is probably true, unless is lying or quite bad at introspection. Mysterious and unknown both cover situations where our limited knowledge encounters something that seems real. — Coben

Fine, it's mysterious, but you shouldn't pretend it's science or good philosophy.

How do you look at consciousness closely? Measuring brain activity is not looking at consciousness, it isn't seeing what the person sees or thinks or feels. — leo

Of course looking at brain activity associated with conscious experience is "looking at consciousness." Consciousness is something other than personal experience. All mental phenomena are something other than personal experience. It's like saying I'm not looking at disease because I look at factors other than the patient's symptoms.

If you think biology could be derived in principle from chemistry, and that chemistry could be derived in principle from fundamental physics, then you think biology could be derived in principle from fundamental physics. Fundamental physics claims to describe the fundamental constituents of the universe and how they move, through equations of motion. These equations allow to derive where some particle will be at some point in the future, or what probability there is to detect one in some location, or even how some arrangement of matter is going to move or change, but by construction they can't allow to derive that any arrangement of matter perceives or thinks or feels anything at all.

Or if you think biology couldn't be derived in principle from fundamental physics and you invoke some emergence to account for the existence of consciousness, then that amounts to invoking magic, to say there is some magical stuff happening that makes a bunch of moving particles become conscious. To say that we don't know yet how consciousness emerges from these particles but one day we'll find out, is just wishful thinking, it's logically impossible without sprinkling magic in the middle. Believing that it's possible is not proof that it's possible, it's just blind faith. — leo

Although biology must be consistent with the principles of chemistry and physics, it cannot be derived in principle from either or both. It operates on principles and according to "laws" that are not predictable from the laws of physics or chemistry. And so on on up the line. This is what people mean when they talk about "emergence." Consciousness and other mental experiences are emergent phenomena of biological anatomy and physiology. And that's why it's not a mystery, any more than the emergence of chemistry out of physics is a mystery. It's not magic, it's the way the world works. Or are you denying that emergence is a real phenomenon?

To me knowledge is justified true belief. — Noah Te Stroete

I remember when I tripped over a paper on justified true belief (JTB) a few years. I couldn't believe that someone, a professional philosopher, could write so confusingly about something so simple. Then it got worse with all sorts of odd cases - If I consider you a credible witness and you tell me John's car is brown because you saw a brown car parked in his driveway but it turns out that was his sister's car but John's car really is brown - Do I know John's car is brown? And then you get those silly Gettier problems.

So, did Newton know anything about motion and gravity? No, because classical Newtonian physics has been replaced by relativity. So we have to keep going back and retroactively deciding that people really didn't know something at sometime in the past even though they, and we, thought they did. So, nobody can ever really know anything.

Solution. Simple!! Get rid of the "T." It doesn't have to be true, I only have to be adequately justified in believing it is. What does "adequately justified" mean in this context? It means that, given the information I have, the uncertainties in that information, the consequences if I am wrong, and the benefits if I am right, it makes sense for me to make a particular decision. Knowledge doesn't mean anything except in the context of a necessary decision.

Indeed. Any further argument devolves into dictionaries and word play -- boring.

Imbued within the word 'mystery' is some sense of wonder which I accept as personal.
If someone can live without mysteries, more power to them. I choose not to. — JosephS

It's not just word play. It has significant consequences. If you call something a mystery, you treat it differently than if it were just unknown. I think it was Alan Watts who said that what we call mysteries are parts of ourselves that we're not aware of. That makes a lot of sense to me. If you want to mix your personal mysteries in with science and philosophy, that's fine, but it undermines the credibility of your argument.

You fail to get my point because you fail to understand that talking about language is in essence an infinite regress equivalent to pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps.
The only 'given' we can start from is that we are clever primates with a complex set of socially acquired behavioral gestures ,we call 'human language' which segments what we call 'the world'. The abstract persistence of 'words' (internalised gestures) act as place markers for focal aspects of that shifting flux we call 'things' allowing us to attempt to predict and control aspects of our world relative to our lifespans and our pattern seeking. Place markers are not 'representational' of 'things in themselves', they are contextual memory aids within potential action plans. — fresco

I've been thinking about this. I really like your formulation, but I think you've broadened the discussion to a point where it isn't reality about meaning anymore. It's about the nature of reality and truth. I think that's why I like it. It struck me a while ago that the primary question of philosophy is not "what is truth" but rather "what do I do now."

I think we all know what it means. ... But describing and defining it in words, with any sort of precision? Not so easy. And yet it remains the case that we all know what "mean" means. You see? — Pattern-chaser

I see, but I don't think I agree, at least not in the context of this forum. I want to try this again. What does "meaning" mean?

• Meaning is a mental relationship, connection between a phenomenon (the referent I guess) and a symbol or symbols such that the symbols represent the referent, e.g. the meaning/definition of a word.
• Meaning is a mental relationship, connection between a system of related symbols and a system of related phenomena such that the symbols represent the phenomena, e.g. the meaning of Einstein's theory of Special Relativity. This is a bit clunky. Needs work.
• Meaning is used metaphorically to refer to a mental connection between two phenomena which is similar to the connection between a symbol and a referent, e.g. the meaning of life. Clunky too.

As Charles Montgomery Burns once said - I don't know art philosophy, but I know what I hate. And I don't hate that.

The mechanism is not understood at all. — Coben

That's not true.

We do not know what creatures have and which do not. — Coben

We have an idea of various animals that might have it. Again, it's unknown, not mysterious.

There is a growing number of scientists that think plants have it or may have it. ....We don't know which matter has it, though we can track reactions like memory and response to some degree, but again these are functions of the conscious matter not consciousness itself. ... Now, sure, it could be an emergent property. But we don't know where it emerges, though we can look at effects on response and behavior in life forms like us, but whether this means there is no consciousness below that in simpler matter, we have no way of knowing. ....is this my ego connecting to a consciousness that persists but which I do not usually remember? Mysterious is a word that includes the already placed paradigm of the person using it or experiencing it or not. So it depends on that. I think it should be mysterious to physicalists, so far. Maybe it won't be in a few years or in a hundred years, maybe not. — Coben

None of this makes any sense to me unless we want to completely change the current meaning and usage of the word "consciousness." Which I don't.

Also - of course consciousness is an emergent phenomenon. I'm not sure what "we don't know where it emerges" means. Do we know where any emergent property emerges?

We can't measure it, though we can measure behavior and reactions and things, — Coben

That's how we measure all psychological phenomena. Consciousness is nothing special.

Meaning is about as complicated as it gets for us, — Possibility

As a self-identified lazy person, I can't help thinking that the complications are in the way we ask our questions, not in the underlying nature of meaning. I'm not even sure what that means.

In my opinion, natural predisposition is the reason why the belief in God, as the creator of the real, physical world, is so prevalent. — alcontali

I left this out of my last response. It's getting late. Natural predisposition? Maybe. I'm not a believer in any specific God, but it seems to me that a belief in God is recognition that our world, universe, reality is fundamentally human. We are mixed up with the physical manifestations of reality in a way that is not separable. The universe did not exist before we, or someone like us, recognized it. I don't mean that in any kind of mystical or magical way. I come from materialism, although I left it behind a long time ago.

They do mean something, but the ‘something’ isn’t fixed. That something is always going to be different for a different observer, and will also change in relation to the value structure they employ in interacting with the painting. — Possibility

We're just back to what does "mean" mean.

In my opinion, natural predisposition is the reason why the belief in God, as the creator of the real, physical world, is so prevalent. — alcontali

I like the way you write and your thoughtfulness. Your depth of knowledge is impressive, but I can't help think your way of seeing things makes something which is very simple much more complicated than it needs to be. That is my primary complaint about philosophy, especially western philosophy. I do recognize that I have a lazy man's tendency to want things to be as simple as possible. I always come back to on of my favorite quote from Kafka:

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.

It's been adequately defined since. Does that not matter here? Does that change not alter the degree of frustration you had prior to it? — creativesoul

"Meaning" is just a loosey-goosey word for I don't really know the fuck what. And no, it hasn't been defined in any way that allows a clear understanding. This whole thread is constructed on a foundation of loose sand.

I have no idea what either "dasein" or "desein" mean. I don't think Hegel or you do either. I don't think either of you know what "means" means.