I found that emergence was modelling as a composite of the bottom-up and the top-down. The two levels of action have to be mutually reinforcing - each synergistically producing the other in emergent fashion - for the whole to have stably emergent existence. — apokrisis

I think I agree with that. Emergence thinking is not a negation of bottom-up causality, it is a reminder that causality is a two way street: it can also work top-down.

I don't see any evidence of the effect on the world of the 'redness' of a flower, — Isaac

Why do you think plants synthetize pigments for their flowers, rather than keep them chlorophyll green? What Darwinian advantage is there to have your flowers colored?

Galileo's mechanics are relativist and makes the point that frames of reference are key to understanding what's happening. E.g. in the experience of throwing a weight from the mast of a boat while the boat is moving (the weight falls along the mast, not behind it), to explain why all seems to happen as if earth was immobile, while e pur si muove. This is why an inertial frame of reference may also be called a Galilean reference frame. Einstein generalized the finding to light.

However again this overlooks the centrality of the human mind in arriving at that understanding. .... the universe has, as it were, come to this understanding of itself through us. — Wayfarer

Through us and other species. And let's remember that our understanding of the universe remains highly imperfect. As for size, why does it matter? The stars are not as wise as you are (Omar Khayyam).

The notion that modern science ‘de-humanises’ the modern worldview is hardly my invention, it is the topic of a vast literature. — Wayfarer

That is true but in my experience, real scientists are far more humane and modest than their philosophical worshipers.

Modern scientific method ‘brackets out’ the subjective - that is the meaning of the ‘view from nowhere’. — Wayfarer

While I agree with you on the general thrust (as always), I think you (or Nagel) may be attributing too much antisubjectivity to the scientific method. Galileo imposed the concept of frame of reference, I think. Nothing in physics can be described without a frame of reference - physics are not about the view from nowhere, and do not deny subjectivity or agency. If fact authorship (who discovered what) is a key question in science, absolutely central to the project. Scientists have an ego too.

It is only the most naïve and nihilist forms of materialism that deny consciousness or agency, not science.

The other point is that the "bracketing" was an idea of Husserl if I am not mistaken, and what he recommended philosophers to "bracket" was analysis, so as to return to the acts of perception. That seems far more productive to me that bracketing out the subjectivity of the observer.

Okay so if a star explode into a supernova and no critter every notices, did the star explode?

I don't know but I tend to think yes.

So yes, it does go back to "If a tree falls in the woods.." that makes the problem no less tricky. — schopenhauer1

Why the anthropocentric perspective? When an actual tree does fall in the forest, humans may or may not notice it but the tree seems to notice, as well as many other critters.

Our theories about the world emerge from our pretheoretical observations and reason...
— Olivier5

What would such pre-linguistic reason consist of? — creativesoul

"Pre-theoretical" means something different from "pre-linguistic". It means stuff you do in practice without thinking about it in theory. Like when you watch large packs of birds fly. You are not necessarily theorizing about yourself watching birds fly, or even about how the birds fly. You may simply watch them. You may wonder why they fly so high or turn so suddenly, all as one, but it's not a research program yet, more a wonder, a question. You may start to reason that this is peculiar and beautiful, and start filming the phenomenon with your cellphone. You are still not theorizing much. You are just recording whatever you can of the event, thinking your friends will like this.

You may theorize latter, for instance if I ask you why you looked at those damn birds for so long.

But how would such a theory ever be confirmed? That theory must be able to tell us the conditions required for consciousness to occur. But how will we test the hypothesis? — khaled

If the theory is a good one, it may give us tools to measure consciousness. Let's imagine for instance that a theory crops up, saying consciousness is mediated by brain waves. The supporters of this theory will try and find signals in brain waves, and if they find some patterns, and start to notice clues, they could program their MRI to tract a certain kind of wave modulation.... leading one day to be able to read someone's thoughts... Science fiction?

What founds the knowledge of Dennett, if not his subjective observation of the world? — Olivier5

I've mentioned this already: reason cannot undermine reason, a subject cannot doubt his own subjectivity, observations cannot prove that all observations are illusory.

Our theories about the world emerge from our pretheoretical observations and reason. If some of our theories require that pretheoretical human observation and reason be illusory, then these theories undermine themselves. They must therefore be false.

In any case the underlying philosophical issue is that of agency, of whether subjects are meaningfully designated moral agents or whether that sense of personal agency is an illusion engendered by cellular automata (as Dennett holds). — Wayfarer

That's one of the related philosophical issue indeed. Another one, much more pressing here in my view, is What founds the knowledge of Dennett, if not his subjective observation of the world?

And then, if Dennett's observations are illusory, why read them?

Or is he saying that everybody else is deluded about their observations and consciousness, but not him?

English grammar makes no distinction between subject and object.
— Olivier5

I'm referring to philosophical subject/object dualism, not grammar. The grammatical distinction is very useful. — Andrew M

Okay so on this ordinary language scheme, subject/object duality is necessary.

Note that "feels cold" doesn't predicate Alice's sentience, or perceptions, it predicates Alice herself. The statement does, however, presuppose that Alice is sentient, otherwise it would be a category mistake.

On this ordinary language scheme, subject/object duality is unnecessary, and an internal/external distinction is just an artefact of that duality. So a question of qualia doesn't arise. — Andrew M

"The cold is feeling Alice" makes as much sense as "Alice is feeling cold", right? English grammar makes no distinction between subject and object.

Err... sorry, I mean: distinction between subject and object makes no English grammar

Not convinced everyone should be this happy about a republican winning. — StreetlightX

In Europe, everyone is happy the cryptonazi lost. A title from the French press this morning:

Trump almost alone in his bunker
(Journal du Dimanche)

it remains much more parsimonious, methinks, to allow perceiving its dependability, dismiss qualia as something conditioned by perceiving, and fault understanding a posteriori or judgement a priori, for whatever cognitive errors I make. — Mww

Hope it works for you. I will stick to science and to the tools nature gave me.

We seem to have very different understandings of what the issues are here. Not sure there's much else to say. — Srap Tasmaner

You behave dogmatically here, you try to defend a long-dead dogma (behaviorism), and that's why you have nothing interesting to say on the topic. You think defensively, not creatively.

yep, that's about right.

I don't know what the metaphysical implication is. The physical one is that you need a frame of reference to describe any event. This is a logical, mathematical requirement to describe any event in any language, whether that language is made of words or x, y and z coordinates and vectors.

Since your rejection of subjective points of view now extends to a rejection of logical frames of reference, no event can be described to you in a logical language.

Nothing can happen in the view from nowhere.

I guess nothing ever happens in the view from nowhere, then.

sense experience is not a subject-object affair; it's an interaction of organism and environment — Srap Tasmaner

That's just another way to say the same thing though.

You invoked "subjectivity". I argued for it's uselessness as a means to further discriminate between our differing claims about conscious experience. — creativesoul

So your conscious experience is not subjective? Is that what you say?

Your what?

consciousness sovereign of all, center of the universe. — Srap Tasmaner

I'm no idealist. Consciousness rules not the universe. Animals endowned with it use it for their own highly integrative analysis and action orientation. They often make mistakes, too.

Denying the usefulness of the subjective/objective dichotomy is to deny one particular accounting practice. — creativesoul

Accounting by whom and to whom?

We always return to the subject.

Right, because sexual partners have prior to recent philosophy readings never asked each other, "what was it like for you?" — javra

Two behaviorists make love. At the end one of them says: "It was good for you. How was it for me?"

you seem to have settled into thinking of yourself as the spokesman for life and flavor and joy and everyone on the other side is some dreary life-denying ivory-tower dweller.

That's all horseshit, of course. — Srap Tasmaner

It's not horseshit. To deny one's subjectivity is by definition to deny one's own life.

It rules out action at a distance.

The biologist bases his knowledge on observation, which implies subjectivity. He trusts his own senses and his own intellect, subjective and biological as they are. He is only behaviorist from a methodological standpoint. He cannot ask oak trees how it feels like to shed one's leaves at the end of summer, so he has to content himself with watching the phenomenon happen, but if he could ask them oaks, he would. And in fact, biologists specialised in human beings (medical doctors) do ask their patients how they feel all the time.

So those who don’t perceive them are the ones who don’t trust their senses? — Mww

Yes, in short. They question their own senses a bit too much. Real things are simpler than all this mad neurosurgeon literature, because biology places severe constraints. Senses are there for a reason, which is to help the animal navigate the world. They can be trusted, they keep us alive every day.

I'm deeply skeptical that learning is just recording earlier instances and referring back to them. — Srap Tasmaner

I am a learning specialist of sorts... An effective, logical and well grounded philosophical approach to learning must involve Phenomenology, and due attention to and respect for subjective experience as the font of all knowledge, as I said. Behaviors are secondary to subjective experience, which must take center stage.

Alright. I'll take the first one.

1. An atom decays and emits radioactivity.

At what scale is this event happening? Assuming that the laws of nature are local, it starts at the atomic scale. But of course, it can set in motion other events, such as radioactivity. So it depends where the atom is located. Assuming the decaying atom is located on earth allows for a few interesting possibilities:

1.a At worse, at the heart of an atomic bomb it could create a chain reaction and kill millions.

1.b Biologically, it could hit some DNA in a living organism and induce a mutation. Or hit a protein and give it a suboptimal, innactive or even toxic steric geometry, or breaks it in toxic oligomers (bits and pieces of broken proteins, see example 2).

1.c The radioactivity could get lost in the cosmic noise, escape earth and get absorbed in a gas cloud around Betelgeuse or something.

1.d it could just get absorbed by a nearby atom, changing almost nothing (remain just an atomic event).

As you can see from this example, a lot of different scales could be affected. So it is possible for an atomic-level event happening on earth to kill a bacteria for instance, by breaking a key part of its DNA (assuming the bacteria won't repair the DNA, which is a big "if"). Or to destroy an entire city. Or to land on Betelgeuse... It is even theoretically possible that this radioactivity event on earth creates a mutation on another planet, around Betelgeuse or elsewhere. Highly unlikely of course, but conceivable.

You want to discuss this case, or shall we deal with 2?

This actually, has a few assumptions baked into it, leading to certain kind of answers, so I'd rather focus on paragraph one. — schopenhauer1

You need language that is as objective as possible, apparently, and to give it to you, I need tools to spot and guard against my natural subjectivity. I need these assumptions explicitly laid out, to flag "the view from nowhere and everywhere", which is not my usual frame of reference. I must remind myself that you are not asking for my point of view, my view from somewhere, but for a theoretical god's view on the laws of nature.

So unless you withdraw your "view from nowhere" request, you are forcing me to use those assumptions. And therefore they must stay.

This being clarified, the first paragraph makes for more natural, less kantian language:

Is scale only in the eye of the beholder, an arbitrary choice of the viewer, or are there events (e.g. related to causality) that objectively happen at a certain scale and not below or above that scale? — Olivier5

Can we test the question on a few examples? E.g.:

1. An atom decays and emits radioactivity.

2. A chaperone protein corrects the folding of another protein.

3. A tiger in a zoo kills a keeper.

4. Biden was just named the winner of Pennsylvania, and
president elect.

Is that an acceptable way to go?

So where do events localize? — schopenhauer1

I am going to try and interpret this in my own language, if you don't mind. Correct me if I am wrong. The question would translate in my language as: is scale only in the eye of the beholder, an arbitrary choice of the viewer, or are there events (e.g. related to causality) that objectively happen at a certain scale and not below or above that scale?

To precise even further: are the laws of nature -- as seen or even designed by a hypothetical all-knowing god, not the laws of nature as we feeble humans apprehend them but the noumenal laws, if they exist -- the same at all scales, or are there certain noumenal laws, certain objective forms of causality that only crank up and become applicable at certain scales, and not below?

Did I understand the question?

It's to do with the view from nowhere and everywhere. — schopenhauer1

You are asking the wrong guy. The view from nowhere and everywhere is the view of God, and I am an atheist.

What It's Like To Be An Italian

... would be an interesting topic for a philosophy book. I doubt it would bring more clarity than similar books about bats. There are quite a few Italians left, COVID notwithstanding, some 60 million of them, and supposedly their subjective experience varies at the individual level, and from one day to the next.

But one thing it's like to be an Italian is to positively loathe other nations' coffee making and drinking behaviors, seen as nothing less than reprehensible, if not barbarian. An "americano" is explicitly a strange custom from a stranger's land; to drink a cappuccino after lunch is downright blasphemy; and people drinking machine coffee in a plastic cup deserve help.

Likewise, I can't think of a good reason why bats can't have their moods and tastes and even perhaps their philosophies. Some of them may be nihilists for all we know. "I seriously doubt our representation of the world has any reality, ya kna? It's all an illusion, a trick based on sound reverberation."

So what it's like to be a bat probably depends on the specific bat, and on the moment. Some nights are better than others...

I'm still not sure how you expect to point at something somewhere in a human interacting with their environment and say, "Right there! That's the quale." — Srap Tasmaner

Qualia are always plural (to me anyway, like data), and private so you cannot actually point at them. But you can perceive them.

...add that last post to the list that suggests not paying attention to Frank in the future...)
— Banno

Wow. — frank

You are being cancelled because you believed your own senses, rather than what emperor Dennett told you to believe... How dared you? :-)

Sweet non-dreams.

You feel insulted by the concept of mind?

Qualia are an attempt to push an unneeded extra beyond the tase of the coffee. — Banno

Oh for gode sake. Don't use the concept if you don't need it, and let others use it if they seem to need it. It's not like we're forcing you to eat your cauliflower qualia even if you don't like it.

All things ever thought, believed, spoken, written, uttered, and/or otherwise expressed come through a subject. Thus, we must set the notion aside, for it is incapable of being used to draw any further distinction between our differing claims. — creativesoul

The credibility of a source is important, though. Who is saying what, and for which reason/motive, is important. Or do you believe anything Trump says?