Interesting, thanks. Descartes simply assumes that extended substances cannot think and that thinking substances are not extended. I think Spinoza's solution, that there is only one substance with both attributes, works. Descartes allowed two substances, Spinoza only one, but Aristotles' conception was of many substances, all extended and some thinking and some not.

Science is normative in the sense that there are methodologies to follow and peer reviewing of work. Really, all aspects of culture are normative.

On the other hand, scientific theses and results are judged as good or bad on account of whether they are consistent and coherent with the whole body of scientific understanding and whether they work, i.e. whether they have useful applications; so, science is preeminently pragmatic.

what advantage is gained by affirming something as real without the possibility of demonstrating it? — Mww

:up: I don't see it as a matter of advantage, but rather simply as affirming what seems most likely to be true. But to be sure what seems most likely to one may not seem so to another.

OK.

OK. I was speaking more generally about intelligibility of things. Heidegger's "ready to hand" or Gibson's less human-centric "affordances" for people and the other animals seems plausible. Things are first and foremost intelligible in terms of their uses, their significance for living.

Only because beings such as yourself are able to interpret them. — Wayfarer

You seem to be saying that things are intelligible because intelligent beings find them to be so, and that seems kind of tautologous or else one-sided, depending on how you might interpret the saying. Of course, you cannot have manifest intelligibility without intelligent beings finding intelligible things, but it could be said that things were potentially intelligible even prior to the advent of intelligent beings.

I probably go further than you in thinking that even though it cannot be demonstrated, it is plausible to think that space, time. energy. entropy and causation are human-independently real given what a remarkably coherent synthesis the sciences present. But I also acknowledge there is no definitive measure of plausibility, so...

Right, we have things we know are real, by definition, like the everyday objects and entities we all deal with every day, and then we have those things like time and space and causation, which may or may not be human experience-independently real. I don't have a problem with the idea that there may be real things which we cannot deomstrate to be real.

As such, causality/causation is no more than a metaphysical explanatory device representing either the progression or regression of real things in relation to each other.

Yea? Nay? — Mww

I think causation is understood in terms of energy exchange. I would say it is real, although it cannot be directly observed. Perhaps energy differentials can be measured, and the exchange of energy and causal processes inferred from that.

I wouldn't call it a metaphysical explanatory device. If it is real, it is a physical process.

What you say seems to imply that you think that seeing a particular colour and that particular colour are the same thing.

I have asked you several times if this is so and you haven't given a straight answer. If that is what you think I don't count it as clarity but as murk.

If you refer to a dualism of aspects as opposed to a dualism of substances then I agree.
You seem to count as real only that which the senses apprehend. My point earler was that on that criterion causation is not real.

No, you are missing the distinction between "not attended to" and "not conscious". Think of looking at a painting. You are aware of the visual gestalt of the whole painting, but you can only attend to an aspect of it, maybe the main theme of the painting. Then you can choose to focus on other details. — hypericin

How do you know you are aware of the "visual gestalt of the whole painting" simultaneously? I mean you can probably fix your gaze on the edges that contain the painting and thus say you are aware of the whole painting, but you will not be aware of all the detail contained within those edges or perhaps much or even any of it while you are attending to the containing edges. I'm not convinced I can even attend to all four edges at once.

Sure, you can scan it and become aware of the various details, but for me 'attending to' just is 'being conscious of'.

I’m sticking with the notion that my senses will never be given my neural events, from which follows I can never represent a real-time, first order neural event as a phenomenon. As for every single possible real object ever given to my senses, every single one of them will be represented as a phenomenon. Thoughts are represented, but as conceptions, not as phenomena, and this is sufficient to mark the validity of the distinction between the real of things, re: neural events, and the not-real of abstract conceptions, re: thoughts. — Mww

Right, we are "brain blind" in the sense that we cannot see neurons at work. But we cannot see cells, molecules, atoms or electrons at work and yet we count those as being real and causal. For that matter we cannot see causation itself at work either.

For me, thoughts inasmuch as they can be objects of awareness are phenomena. We call them mental phenomena. It seems odd to me to say that thoughts are causal and yet not real. You say

what the brain does in its manufacture of our thoughts, in no way relates to what is consciously done with them. — Mww

But I would say our thoughts are products of real causal brain activity just as what is consciously done with them is. Otherwise, the grim specter of dualism looms with all its problems and aporias.

Perceptual experience represents the world, to conscious awareness. We are aware of a gestalt of perceptual experience, and can choose to attend to a tiny slice of it. — hypericin

Right, so those parts of sense which are not attended to, not conscious, are not representations, but are presumably unconscious physical, neural effects.

I was referring to perceptual experience as representation. I changed "representation" in the quote to perceptual experience for clarity. — hypericin

Right, but it depends on what you mean my "perceptual experience". Presumably the body/ brain is affected by the environment constantly via the senses, with only a small part of these effects becoming "perceptual experience" if we do not count anything as being perceived which is not attended to, however minimally.

After all, we receive a torrent of representative perceptual experience all the time, and most of it is unreflected upon. Only a small fraction receives attention, and anything like linguistic content. — hypericin

If most of the data is never brought to consciousness it does not seem apt to refer to it as "representation"; who is it being represented to?

Representation without language and knowledge is still perceptual experience. But language and knowledge without representation is just language and knowledge. — hypericin

Since language and knowledge are inherently representative, I can't see how we could have language and knowledge without representation.

Doesn’t that just say neural events are real? No one doubts that, but no one can map from such physical neural event to a metaphysical abstract conception with apodeictic certainty, either. — Mww

The only certainties we have (barring global skepticism) are empirical and logical. To me, because it seems most plausible, because we seem to have no cogent reason to doubt, that thoughts are neural events, then I count them as real and causal. I think apodeictic certainty is overrated, but that's just me I guess.

No straight answers or arguments or anything interesting, so nothing to respond to...

I’d eliminate abstract conceptions having affect/effect from being real. — Mww

What if abstract conceptions only have effects if they are actually thought, and every actual thought is a neural (i.e. real) event?

Am I being that unclear? My point is not that perceptions are of many things. My point is that perception is not just "seeing an object", you have to at least conceptually recognize both phenomenal awareness and object awareness. — hypericin

I see no reason to believe that objects in the environment do not appear more or less the same to animals and children as they do to adult humans. it seems reasonable to think that becoming familiar with objects in the environment would make them to stand out more clearly as "gestalts".

For humans becoming familiar with objects includes naming, conceptualizing them as particular kinds, at least at a rudimentary level. We "carve up" the world conceptually, but we do not do so arbitrarily, the nature of the things that make up the world are the primal constraint on that process of carving up, or at least that seems to me what is most plausible to believe, as there seems to be no other way to explain how it is we all see the same things down to very precise details.

Science is based on human experience, it is a particular way of investigating and learning from human experience, so I can't see how it makes sense to say that science ignores human experience.

True, perceptions are of many things. I'm not sure what your point is though.

I would have thought it clear i was using your term here, hence the inverteds. — AmadeusD

I really don't know what you are talking about. You still haven't answered my question as to whether colour and seeing colour are the same thing. You seemed to be implying that they are. If you don't believe they are then fine, we agree on that much.

It's important insofar as it is the indirect cause of sensation — AmadeusD

I agree that it is the cause of sensation, I just don't see what the "indirect" is doing there. Perception is a complex process, and I haven't denied that. But sticking with the visual paradigm and according to the scientific analysis, the light reflected from perceptible objects affects our living sentient bodies and gives us information about the nature of the things we perceive. Thus, we see and can come to deeply understand those perceptible objects; I see no reason to doubt this. There would not seem to be any imaginable more direct ways of accessing perceptible objects (visually at least, since we might want to say that touching is more direct than seeing is).

I'm afraid there is a big problem. What "correspond" means is completely unclear. Consequently, this theory - paradoxically - is the basis of some very strange ideas, such as the idea that reality is, in some mysterious way, beyond our ken. — Ludwig V

The idea of correspondence is inherent In Tarski's approach, and it is only a problem if reality is considered to be something absolute and out of the reach of human experience and judgement. What is generally considered to be real is of course not out of the realm of human experience and judgement.

antidestablishmentarianism — Jack Cummins

Do you mean 'antiestablishmentarianism' or 'antidisestablishmentarianism'? I presume the former, since the latter means being against the idea of disestablishment. The former could also be 'disestablishmentarianism', the ideological principle of disestablishment.

These terms seem too absolute, too ideologistic. Am I always against the establishment, against the establishment in principle, or am I merely against those aspects of the establishment which entrench classism, racism. sexism. privelege and so on?

I would not class an hallucination as a perception because nothing is being perceived.

I don't think hallucinations are problematic. I have never experienced an hallucination, visual or otherwise, that I thought was a real object or from a real object, and that includes my copious experiences with hallucinogens.

Some might say that perception refers to our sensory experience of the world. — Luke

It seems that 'perception' is a polysemous term and is used to refer to the whole process as in 'science of perception'. However, the part of the process that is prior to awareness seems irrelevant to the question of whether we see things or merely representations of things. Of course, we can say either and there is no matter of fact there but just different interpretations. I think the point at issue is whether one way of speaking or the other is more coherent and consistent.

For me saying that we see representations is more problematic and less parsimonious than saying we simply see things. The fact that the process that leads to our seeing things is complex does not seem relevant. Life and existence itself is a complex web of causal processes, and it does not seem right to characterize any of these as "indirect" in any absolute sense, but only in comparison to alternative processes that are more direct.

There is no alternative, more direct process of perception that we know of or can imagine except the prescientific 'naive realist' one where the eyes were thought of as windows through which we look out on a world of objects that were thought to exist in themselves exactly as they appear to us.

I've addressed this. Restating the question in terms i've noted make no sense isn't helpful my guy. — AmadeusD

colours are obviously visual sensations. 'seeing a colour' is that sensation — AmadeusD

It's very simple—are you saying colours and seeing colours are the same thing? — Janus

You say colours are obviously visual sensations, and you say that seeing colours is a (presumably visual) sensation, so you seem to be saying that colours and seeing colours are the same thing. That's why I asked the question which you don't seem to be prepared to answer.

So, on this you're just wrong. — AmadeusD

And yet you seem to be completely incapable of saying why I am wrong. Odd that.

I'm unsure what exactly you're trying to ask. — AmadeusD

It's very simple—are you saying colours and seeing colours are the same thing?

Taking vision as the paradigmatic example, the science of vision includes light being reflected from objects and entering the retina, electrochemical processes in the optic nerve and neuronal processes in the visual cortex, none of these processes are perceived in vivo. These are causal physical processes which give rise to perception, but which are themselves prior to perception.

So colours and seeing colours are the same thing according to you?

This is where people are getting lost in the grammar.

I see colours. Colours are a visual sensation. — Michael

It seems to me you are getting lost in, by complicating, the grammar. Seeing colours is a visual sensation, colours are not visual sensations.

Thanks, some interesting information that raises salient questions. In the standard ghost stories I have been most familiar with the ghost haunts the place they were murdered, and doesn't follow the murderer around so locality seems to be the central aspect of haunting, at least according to that particular line.

You'd think, given the atrocities committed against the aborigines by the white settlers, that their ghosts, if there were such actual entities, would haunt us plenty.

I have heard of bone-pointing deaths, not sure if they are well-documented.

We're not old enough to be haunted. — Wayfarer

That's right, the Aboriginal people had only been here for something like sixty thousand years. Your eurocentrism is showing.

How do you know ancient people talked coherently about their mental states? Did they think in terms of mental states at all? Do you have any textual examples that support the claim that they did think in these kinds of terms?

I searched a little and found this which seems to contradict your thesis.

Theist here: It should be about more than just "getting to heaven." The bible contains unbelievably sophisticated dialogues and discourses between "God" and "man" which helps man frame and understand his world/his self. — BitconnectCarlos

I agree much of the Bible is great literature and great literature may do as you suggest. It may help people to understand the human condition and live better lives. It is all about how best to live this life, and worrying about an imagined life to come after this one is not the best way.

IMHO remove those guideposts and we're in a very different type of world... human reason is very, very late to the scene, evolutionarily speaking, and as well as biased and if you rely on it for everything as the philosopher tends to do you just end up with an enormous faith in yourself and your own convictions as I've seen time and time again. Reason has its place but to say that one's entire worldview can be constructed from reason is just folly. — BitconnectCarlos

I disagree with this. The 'higher' animals also reason in their own ways in my opinion. You should have (provisional) faith in yourself and your convictions, while remaining open to other ideas and constantly testing them and your own ideas against your own experience.

Reason alone tells us nothing, it must be applied to experience. For the free spirit accepting dogma is the way down, the way back, not the way up or the way forward.

:up:

Unfortunately some also have a narcissistic need to believe themselves superior, and religions frequently feed such a need. — wonderer1

Yes, the insidious notion of the "elect", held fast by those who believe themselves favored in God's eyes. It is mind-boggling how long such childish delusions can survive.

I'm not sure I understand the question. We all live with the illusion of free will. Society demands moral responsibility, and this leads to the assigning of praise and blame, and of course in the process of socialization this assignation becomes introjected by individuals, such that they are prone to praise and blame themselves in various ways.

I don't believe this is the best way of living, but it is not so easy to become free of. Everyone is different and has different capabilities, and circumstantial luck has a lot to do with our lives as well. People do what they are capable of, and change or don't change in different ways accordingly.

I see concern about the "fate of the immortal soul" as a sad state of delusion. I don't deny that for those who cannot see their way clear of such delusions that faith in salvation of some kind may indeed be their only way forward.

That's why I don't condemn religious faith tout court. Belief in absurd things may indeed have benefits for individuals, although I think those beliefs are only salving wounds which have been inflicted by such beliefs in the first place.

The fact that this mostly or entirely occurs without conscious awareness does not belie the fact that there is an incredibly complex inferential process at work. — hypericin

I agree that perception is a complex process. I don't agree that "inferential" is a term that aptly characterizes it. Anyway, I have little use for the whole 'direct/ indirect' framing, this argument is ultimately reducible to terminological preference and usage, and it's just going pointlessly around and around in the realm of mere assertion, so I'm stepping of the merry-go-round on account of boredom.

Right on, brother!

As I understand there are deductive inferences, which if valid are necessary and inductive and abductive inferences, which are not logically necessary.

The former are purely logical and require symbolic language, whereas the latter do not require language and presumably have more in common with animal inferences.

What I am disagreeing with are ideas such as that my seeing a tree is an inference.

I don't think he was advocating a kind of quietism. — Paine

I agree and that wasn't at all what I had in mind.

As I understand it Spinoza was a thorough determinist. He denied freedom of will even to God (or nature). The freedom that may be enabled by reason is to come to understand that all our thoughts and actions are determined, and thus to become free of the troubling illusion of free will.

But this misses the point, which is that for those who actually believe in God, it has real consequences. Whereas to believe that it's simply a 'puzzle-solver is a meaningless hypothetical. — Wayfarer

That's a pointless point that deserves to be missed. Belief in anything, however absurd, (Nazism, scientism, Zionism, scientology, you name it) has real consequences, since belief is a primary driver of action.