I was not even talking of qualia. I was just explaining to Isaac that his cherished objectivity stems from subjectivity, rather than being the opposite of subjectivity. Then he goes all emotional and crashes out of the conversation... Go figure.

Conversations with Olivier5 are like that. Nothing happens. — Banno

I have excellent, fruitful conversations with non-zombies though. It’s only with the zombies that it’s over so fast. They run away from me I guess...

Actually there is a lot of nothing, so it’s not either/or.

I see we've devolved into irrelevancies .... your jeremiad ... — Isaac

LOL. Did I hit a nerve?

anything you say from a phenomenological perspective about your experience of colour is only selective and filtered data from your memory of having that experience ... — Isaac

That is incorrect. I can say all sorts of things about my experience which are at a variance or additional to my memory of said experience. It’s called ‘lying’, and people do it often.

...your memory of having that experience which is no more accurate than interpreted data from third parties. — Isaac

This is a tall claim. How would you go about trying to prove it?

the reporting in a discussion of such 'experiences' would still themselves be memories, and so flawed. — Isaac

The assumption here is that memories are ‘flawed’, ie that forgetting is necessarily a problem. But forgetting may be a solution to a problem.

This seems to be the perennial trick of the idealists and woo-merchants. To point out that empirical data has flaws (subjectivity, the necessity of an observer etc) and then for some reason assume this counts as an argument in favour of alternative methods of discussion. Pointing out that one approach is flawed does not count as support for another unless you can show that it is not similarly flawed, and in this case you can't. — Isaac

Once again, all this talk about ‘flaws’ is yours, not mine. To me, the subjectivity of empirical data is not a flaw, it is sui generis. It follows from the definition of ‘empirical’. Empirical is a strength, not a flaw. It means that any subject can check by him or herself whether some things happen. It means that we, subjects, are like St Thomas: we want proof. We subjects can do our own observations, and base our thinking on them, thank you very much. This is not the problem.

The real problem is bias. Bias is a necessary part of any observation, because any observation is made from a certain view point, typically answers some preformed questions, and is interpreted within a certain belief framework that filters out some of the evidence we collect. It follows that confirmation bias happens quite a lot. Instead of basing our thinking on our observations, we very often chose our observations (those we accept as conclusive) based on our thinking. And this means going around in circle.

Another problem is that individual bias stands in the way of productive communication and comparison of observations between subjects.

A key point to understand here is that the road going from subjective empirical observations to generalisable, objective knowledge and back (the road of science) is built by different observers collaborating with one another, checking, replicating the experiment, verifying the math, etc. Therefore, the road from subjective empirical observation to objective knowledge goes through intersubjectivity: several subjects sharing their observations and coming to an agreement about them. Individual bias makes this work both necessary and difficult. Other tools to control individual bias are therefore necessary, such as triangulation or bias analysis in sociology.

You should not mistake me for an idealist. I just want science to work better at the ‘hard problem’ and get better chances at solving it, by recognizing its blind spots and trying to control its biases. One of which is a misplaced fear of subjectivity.

Actually Aristotle's form/matter distinction was a counter to dualism (in this case, Plato's). — Andrew M

Didn’t know that, thanks. True that form cannot exist without matter and vice versa. Still it is a duality of sorts, like the two sides of the same coin.

I don't believe neurologists are so stupid — Janus

Some are smarter than others I’m sure, but the argument has nothing to do with the alleged stupidity of neurologists. It’s about a blind spot.

Subject and object" is just the way we conceive the situation vis-à-vis perception and knowledge. I think it's best understood as an artifact of language; a reification. — Janus

I don’t believe in ‘artifacts of language’, which I hold as the lamest philosophical argument ever made.

This can also be parsed in physicalist terms. The knower is the brain/body, whose activity is never known — Janus

In fact Bitbol starts with the physicalist concept of blind spot. Each of our eyes has one, corresponding to where the optic nerve starts, and yet we are not naturally aware of it. It’s not like we see two dark spots on the right and left of our focus area.

Incidentally this is another evidence for the idea that what we see is NOT what we get from our senses. Sense data are actively repackaged, interpreted and corrected before we see them, and that includes erasing the blind spots. But that’s not the point that interest Bitbol. Rather, for him it’s merely a metaphor for the epistemic blind spot of neurology, which thrives to objectify subjectivity and in doing so takes a necessary distance with subjectivity, ignores the subject in order to make of it an object. According to Bitbol, and as talking to Isaac confirms, neurologists don’t necessarily know that they have this epistemic blind spot.

As for a physicalist rendering of knowledge, as in “my body/brain knows A, B or C”, I would concede that a little bit of that is possible in a biosemiotic framework, inasmuch as cells share information all the time by way of hormones and other chemicals. But information is not the same thing as knowledge. Knowledge implies an epistemic cut between subject and object, between an observer and what he observes. This is the real problem, and it does not matter whether one calls the observer a body or a mind... When a subject tries to understand subjectivity as an object, this necessary epistemic cut is introduced within the subject himself. The discursive, analytic self tries to take and maintain a distance with its own subjectivity, e.g. tries to shut down emotions and intuitions that don’t fit with the discourse being attempted. And this may explain a certain cock-sure attitude of materialists who keep contradicting themselves, like Dennett: they have managed to shut down their own subjective intuitions when they don’t conform with their self-denying discourse, so they literally don’t see their own contradictions. Blind spot.

It isn’t my subjectivity I’m attempting to understand, in which would be found the logical paradox. — Mww

I suspect you are trying to understand subjectivity in general, which would include your own subjectivity doing the trying. Or are you trying to understand the subjectivity of a certain person in particular?

What do you suppose would be between the ears of our dear apple seller in that case? — Marchesk

He may feel like chasing after the indelicate customer.

While I may need to understand monetary exchange is the normal process, in that I should expect to pay for the apples, it is still not a necessary condition, such that if I don’t pay it becomes immediately impossible for me to get my apples. — Mww

If you can run very fast, yes.

Romans see it as rude to conduct any commercial transaction without a little chatter, a little joke, a bit of push and shove. They see commerce as a normal social interaction. So if they like you or want you to like them, they will give you the extra apple free.

At some point my wife and I would go to this grocery store held by a young couple. He was handsome, she was a bomb. They would alternate at the shop. He was always passive-aggressive with me, while handing out my apples, but she was all smile and flirtatious. I thought she was nice and he was just an asshole.

Then one evening, it was my wife’s turn to do the groceries. Dropping the bags on the kitchen counter she unloaded on how much a bitch that girl fruit vendor was, and how much of a sweetheart her husband, who unlike his wife always smiles when handing out the apples...

I’m unconvinced by:

For you, the grocer is an object and his subjectivity is irrelevant to you. For the grocer, you are the object and your subjectivity is irrelevant to him. You want two apples, the grocer must understand you want two apples, or he isn’t going to do anything, or he will do what doesn't conform to your ask. — Mww

Emphasis added. You also need to understand that he wants money in exchange of the apples. So you need to understand his (subjective) intentions and he needs to understand yours.

But looking at the broader argument I agree that it supports your side of it: the grocer’s subjectivity is important.

But when I tell him to give me two apples, his opinion is completely irrelevant to me. — Mww

Unless he’s got no apple, or several different types of apples, in which case he will tell you and I trust you may listen to his opinion and his to yours. He will also ask for a certain price for his apples, and you may have to agree with him on that as well. So even in this simple example there will be some normal, human interaction between the two of you, where he cares a bit for what you want and vice versa.

If the subject is absolutely indissoluble from himself, how could he NOT include himself? Ever notice the absence of the first person personal pronoun “I” when you think to yourself? You never think “I think.....”, “I am....”, I want.....”, “I feel....”. If that first person personal pronoun is a representation, and in some cases there is no use of the representation, then all thinking IS the subject itself that thinks. Then it becomes the case that subjects don’t include themselves at all, but are that which includes. — Mww

Interesting. See how you fall on both sides of the paradox here? You start by assuming that ‘the subject is absolutely indissoluble from himself’, and end with the idea that ‘subjects don’t include themselves at all, but are that which includes’. Hence when subjects try to understand subjectivity as an object, they must try to take a distance with their own subjectivity, which tends to lead to logical paradoxes.

To include himself as part of a description of any experience, on the other hand, because all descriptions carry objective implications, requires a representation of the subject that is describing experience as an object, and here the “I” stands as that representation. The description of the going, re: “The other day, I went to the grocery store to get two apples”, is very far removed from the going. — Mww

Indeed, a description, a report, is always ‘removed’ from what is reported. The map is not the territory. The word ‘apple’ is quite removed from real apples. Ceci n’est pas une pipe.

Yep. But what we're talking about here is your memories of the experiences which preceded knowledge, not the actual experiences themselves. You no longer have direct access to those seconds after you've had them, so their causal primacy is irrelevant. — Isaac

No, because what you remember of an experience is yet another form of experience. Therefore experience still precedes any report, and can never be fully described by reporting.

Another way ro say this is that looking at consciousness as an object necessarily introduces in consciousness a distance with itself. — Olivier5

According to Bitbol, this effect is used in Dennett’s Quining Qualia to introduce confusion in his reader’s mind. Dennett does so by asking his reader to intuit or imagine herself away from her own experience, to take a distance with one’s phenomenological world: imagine your tastes were changed, the colors you see were changed, etc. By going along with the text, the reader walks away from her own intuitions and starts to consider alien ones until she gets confused about herself and her own perceptions, until like Bano, the reader concludes ‘there’s nothing useful to be said about experience, it’s all very confusing...’

And when one does not follow the alienating flute player, when one derives other conclusions from his intuition pumps, when a reader sticks to her own intuitions rather than fabricated, artificial ones, that reader is said to have « the wrong intuitions », or to just go on and on saying « but it’s obvious »...

But what we (Wayfarer, frank, marchesk et al.) are saying is obviously far from obvious, because many of you don’t even start to get it. It goes beyond pointing at logical contradictions in naive materialism. It extends to the need for the subject trying to understand himself to remain connected with his own subjectivity, to include himself as part of his description of any experience, including in scientific experiments and reasoning. According to Bitbol, it’s no coincidence that both the Copernician revolution and the Quantic one repositioned the observer as central to understanding the observed phenomenon. Trying to forget about the place that we occupy and how it shapes our observations is always a mistake. All observation is subjective, and science does recognise this by calling for metadata: data about the observers, their analytic framework and their methodology. This is normal and philosophically sound. Man (in his subjectivity) is the measure of all things.

I think the point that my experience and thoughts are initially private, and that I may decide to share them, and always can share a part and not the totality of my experience, is an important point, which establishes that experience is by default private, until made otherwise, and far exceeds ‘reports’. I also explained above how knowledge always stems from subjective experience, and therefore experience is primary to knowledge, in time and causality: existence precedes essence.

an intuition by Kitaro Nishida that our effort toward objective knowledge comes from consciousness and subjectivity but turns its back to it, while looking at its objects. — Olivier5

I think this is quite perceptive. It introduces a seeming contradiction: to understand itself from the outside, as an object, consciousness must turn its back on itself. So for consciousness to try and apprehend itself as an object is alienating. One looses touch with oneself, by putting oneself in a catch 22. As Bateson argued, catch 22’s tend to generate schizophrenia.

Another way ro say this is that looking at consciousness as an object necessarily introduces in consciousness a distance with itself.

You can do nothing to escape from the fact that you have no more privileged access to your original thought processes than a suitability dedicated third-party has. All you have is your memories of those processes, which can be put into words and transferred to a third party with no less fidelity than that with which they were stored (which is, not a lot). — Isaac

Well, I can hide my thoughts if I want to, and I can share them if I want to. So my thoughts are initially private, but I can decide to share some part of them. Even if I decide to share transparently my experience (as I surmise it by memory), I must always chose what to share, because I could never share the whole of an experience in words. 1, There are things I do not feel like sharing even if I answer your questions faithfully otherwise, e.g. shameful things like ‘I wanted to scratch my balls at some point in that fMRI’... 2, it would last forever while I rack my brain for details that in fact my ‘system’ opted to forget progressively because they were deemed forgettable, and why would I do that?

So I agree it would be lunacy to give primacy to what's between our ears when we have no clue what that is other than by treating it as an object 'out there'. — Isaac

You will probably agree that if you had nothing between the ears, you wouldn’t look at fMRI scans, ask people for phenomenological reports, and record behaviour. In that sense, what we have between the ears IS indeed primary, as a matter of fact, because it is necessary for any knowledge to accrue. That’s the purely logical aspect of the problem, the easiest aspect to fathom. The really tricky part is to realize what we do when we try to think of consciousness — or of phenomena as they ‘appear’ to our consciousness, i.e. the whole qualia discussion — as an object of knowledge, when we study it as another phenomenon, as another object ‘out there’ as you put it. What happens in our mind when we try to objectify minds; what is the phenomenology of consciousness looking at itself in this objectifying manner? That’s where Michel Bitbol is going in his paper It is never known but it is the knower (thanks Wayfarer), following an intuition by Kitaro Nishida that our effort toward objective knowledge comes from consciousness and subjectivity but turns its back to it, while looking at its objects.

For you, the grocer is an object and his subjectivity is irrelevant to you. For the grocer, you are the object and your subjectivity is irrelevant to him. — Mww

I realize this remark is partly in jest, and in response to a mind denier. I don’t think people treat other people as pure objects, without ever thinking of other people’s opinions, and never connecting at the subjective level with other ‘souls’. That’s just not how we work. Even when we physically desire somebody (which is sometimes called ‘objectification’) we desire her body and soul.

What about the hardware and software dichtomy in computers? Do you forgo that dualism in favor of just the hardware? — Marchesk

There.s also the quantic wave-particle duality, and Aristotle’s duality of form and matter. Dualism works just fine.

Off topic.

If science was just another social game, it would have no material effectiveness. And yet it works. You are typing on a device and we can read what you type, thanks to science. Therefore science is more that just a game. Of course it IS or can be a social game, but it’s more than that.

Induction? Is that another illusion you care to prop up and to shoot down, or what?

there were on this thread many attempts to deny a phenomenological ‘layer’, a ‘representation’ of the world constructed in (or for) our minds based on sense data
— Olivier5

The second is not just a simile for the first. There's a world of difference between merely asserting a 'phenomenological layer' and asserting that it is 'constructed in (or for)our minds based in sense data'. — Isaac

Should I take your word for it, or are you trying to make an argument? And don’t forget to mention why oh why this matters to the subject at hand, unless you’re just nitpicking...

a social game of agreeing to pretend that these symbols point at the world, according to principles of pointing that differ in interesting ways from those of art, music and literature? — bongo fury

If that was the case, science would have no authority and no effectiveness. And yet it works.

Where has any scientist reduced minds to brains? — Isaac

Nowhere, to my knowledge. That would be self-contradictory and thus in my opinion highly unlikely to ever happen. But there were on this thread many attempts to deny a phenomenological ‘layer’, a ‘representation’ of the world constructed in (or for) our minds based on sense data, and we know that’s precisely what Dennett is after: the idea of a mental theater.

The problem is that without such a Cartesian theater, without representation, there can be no science since science IS NOTHING BUT representation of reality by minds.

I just don't see the point in continuing a discussion in which the primary counter-argument is "...but it's obvious". — Isaac

That was never the argument. Rather, the point that you and others kept missing was that any knowledge of any kind comes from our self-awarenes and the phenomena we perceive. Including of course scientific knowledge. There is no such thing as a third person view, or an impersonal view. It’s always a mind that speaks, writes, observes, deducts, etc. And therefore any attempt by any scientist to reduce minds to brains is self defeating. It saws the branch on which it sits.

What can I say? Keep on not proposing if that rocks your boat...

Well I’m glad for you but when I proposed something not unlike what you just said, you said it was ineffective...

Waiting, at this point, means accepting doom as necessary or unavoidable.

Il ah okay. You got me scared for a second.

Olivier5 seemed to have some interesting points — Banno

Did I, really?

So what do you propose then?

I think it's clear that the qualists won the war because the anti-camp ended up with nothing but distaste for the word.

Distaste. — frank

:-)

I am trying to exclude any meta-physical explanation — Janus

Guess it could be close to my idea if by metaphysical you meant what I mean by supernatural: exceptions to the causal laws of the universe.

The idea of the physical is the idea of mind independent structure and interaction. — Janus

Defined as such, you cannot say that minds are physical, since they cannot be 'mind-independent'.

This solution is as old and as ineffective as "don't do what I do, do what I say." Human problems can only be answered with your life. — unenlightened

Who said I don't do that in my own life?

In one sense the term is, like the term 'natural', a distiction without a difference insofar as everything is both physical and natural. — Janus

It's important to state precisely what and why you exclude certain hypotheses. I personally exclude from my reasoning entities whose existence I haven't ascertained, such as gods, for reasons probably similar to yours. On this ground I exclude an interventionist god as a possible explanation for minds, where I differ from Descartes. That's what the term natural means to me: we can produce a new mind without divine intervention, just by making a baby. Ergo minds emerge naturally, as opposed to needing a miracle (an exception to the rules) to emerge.

So, when you say: 'minds are physical", what type of explanation are your trying to exclude?