The subjective is the reality of the conscious thing from its perspective that no one else can know. One does not negate the other. — Philosophim

I think we more or less agree, but I would say that both the objective and the subjective are ideas rather than realities from the human perspective.

Right. And that's why Nagel choose the bat. Our experiences are different enough that we can't imagine what they experience. But, since we're both mammals, there is a lot more common ground than between us and, say, the fly, so we might feel safer thinking bats do have subjective experience.

But I'm wondering if, by saying
Thinking that subjectivity is experienced is a kind of reification,
— Janus
Janus means our subjective experience is equivalent to the electric eye's. I'm just not sure what is meant. — Patterner

What we see may be very different from what the bat sees and closer to what an "electric eye" or camera sees, but that wasn't what I meant. The bat and the camera may be closer in that the bat probably has no idea of its subjective experience. So, I was saying that I see subjective experience, if thought as being distinct from what is experienced, as merely an idea that very easily becomes reified into the notion that qualia are realities over and above what is experienced. To put it another way, I experienced the rain, and I self-reflectively think of myself experiencing the rain; I do not experience myself experiencing the rain.

Inasmuch as I feel, being, as I am, a sensitive organism, I am of course closer to the bat.

I prefer what scientists do. They file the question under "pending", basically meaning "to be worked out later". That's the undogmatic response. — Ludwig V

Right, that is the undogmatic response, but it may also be an evasion or deflection in the form of an implied promissory note that it will all certainly become clear later. Of course, "later" may never come. I think this evasion or deflection happens in science just as it does in religion.

I just don't see religion as being a major contributor to the array of problems humanity faces. If there are ways in which some religious sects or aspects of religion are exacerbating personal, social and environmental problems than those specific areas and issues are what need to be addressed, and corrected or reigned in, not religion as a whole, because some religions and aspects of religion are arguably also ameliorating personal. social and environmental problems.

If you can't see that, then of course you won't agree, but that would say more about you than about religion. All of those I've ever encountered with your kind of anti-religious fanaticism were once devout, or at least heavily conditioned by religion when they were young, and I'm betting you fit in that category.

The only thing I will not countenance is : "He didn't know what he meant." — Vera Mont

Right, but I haven't been saying the author did not know what they meant in the sense of had no idea what they meant but that they may have meant more than they were consciously aware of. My own experience of writing (both poetry and prose and a little fiction) has been that much of the time the work seems to write itself. It certainly is not as if I start with a clearly and exhaustively worked out intention and then set pen to paper and consciously make it all manifest.

I see has made pretty much the same point. Perhaps it's different for different writers. Anyway, I'm happy to leave it there and agree to disagree, because neither of us is going to be able to prove their point.

I think this is ok. How would you apply this in relation to the OP's point? — Philosophim

I would say that subjective consciousness may not be what we naively or intuitively think it is, and that. maybe (I'd have to think further on this) there is no substantive distinction between objective and subjective consciousness, but that the distinction is an artefact of our dualistic mode of thinking.

Right, but I wasn't saying that; I was saying that the wordsmith's words may be capable of associations and interpretations that the wordsmith had not consciously thought of in the process of wordsmithing. And I'm not claiming that any interpretation is "privileged", although in cases where the wordsmith had very definite ideas in mind, then her intentions should certainly be acknowledged as authorial intentions, although in cases where the author is no longer with us to answer questions about her intentions, we cannot determine with certainty what they were.

I also acknowledge that this would also depend on how "literal" the work is. Some of the best poetry and prose literature is highly ambiguous. I believe the unconscious feeds into much of the greatest literature and of course the other arts as well, which should not be surprising since much of our own lives are lived unconsciously, which certainly does not necessarily mean without intelligence. That's my understanding anyway.

I think we might be talking semantics here. — Philosophim

I don't think it's merely a matter of semantics. I'm not claiming that you can see the world from my perspective. I'm saying that we don't experience our subjectivity; rather 'subjectivity' is how seeing the world from a perspective is defined, so subjectivity is thought post hoc, not experienced. Thinking that subjectivity is experienced is a kind of reification, and I think the same goes for qualia. This reification of the self as substantive entity is the source of much confusion, Descartes being a notable example.

The viewpoint of the subject is what I mean by "subjective". It is formed by the viewer, and can only be experienced by the viewer. That subjective experience is what they have, which is undeniable. — Philosophim

What if I said that the viewpoint of the subject is thought, not experienced? The subject perceives (experiences) things from some perspective (viewpoint) but does not experience the viewpoint itself. Further to that would be to say that the subject does not experience subjectivity or being a subject.

I think subjective experience is often conflated with and counted as the experience of subjectivity.

OK, you're just repeating the same black and white assertion, and applying it universally to boot; and since I was already aware of what you asserted without argument, and there is no substantive argument in this latest response, I think we are definitely done here.

You seem to be stuck in black and white thinking: you seem to think that either the author has no idea what they mean, or they are one hundred percent certain about it.

I agree. But I think it is not just an odd doctrine. It seems to me to be actually immoral to destroy an innocent life in order to escape from guilt, (even if the victim volunteers). Once the sin has been committed, nothing can alter that fact. There are various things, practical and symbolic, we can do in order to go on living, but what really amounts to a resolution of the problem is a mystery to me. Time's a great healer, I suppose. — Ludwig V

Yes, the very idea that the sacrifice of a human. god life could atone for the sinfulness of human nature seems not just absurd but profoundly wrong, and as you say, immoral. The only answer apologist can give is "God moves in mysterious ways": which is not even close to being morally satisfactory.

I think believers generally don't think too hard on these matters; they just want a comforting story to live by. I support their right to do that, or believe whatever they want, provided they do not try to force their ideas onto others, and their beliefs do not in some way necessarily cause social, personal or environmental harm.

It is the best, allegedly, the most parsimonious general account of what the world (i.e., reality) is. In contradistinction to its main competitor (which is physicalism), it accounts for the data of qualitative experience, which is arguably the most real aspect of all of our lives, much better. — Bob Ross

The trouble is that there is no reliable data of qualitative experience. There are personal reports, but personal reports do no count as reliable data unless they can be checked against other personal reports, and even then they cannot be one hundred percent reliable.

I would. Introspection is a form of empirical inquiry; and, yes, we can have illusory ideas of what consciousness is, but this is no different for anything else. Humans have had illusory ideas of objects for as long as history can remember.

Conscious experience is what one can be the most sure of—not objects. We use our conscious experience, we trust it enough, to determine the objects. — Bob Ross

Introspection is not a form of empirical inquiry for the reasons I've already given. In short, empirical inquiry is a public venture, and introspection is not. Conscious experience is not what we can be most sure of, for the simple reason that there is no settled agreement about its nature. On the other hand there is agreement about the (perceptual, not absolute) nature of objects. So, humans have not had illusory ideas about the perceptual nature of objects, although they certainly may have had illusory ideas about the explanation of the existence of perceptual objects. Ideas about the absolute nature of objects are pure, untestable speculation, so it seems odd to even talk about those in terms of illusion.

You can test and not test physicalism in the exact same manners as idealism. There are aspects that cannot be tested, and aspects that could technically indicate their implausibility. — Bob Ross

This is not true. Physical attributes are testable, measurable, quantifiable and ideal attributes (whatever they may be thought to be) are not. Physicalism as an absolute metaphysical claim cannot be tested, just as no absolute metaphysical claim can be tested.

I can come to know what seems right and wrong to me

Then you agree that ethics is a form of knowledge? — Bob Ross

No, it's not a form of knowledge because knowledge is a public matter and how things seem to me is not. I should have said that what seems right and wrong to me is simply what I prefer.

My point was that scientific inquiry and logic are not exclusive means of determining knowledge: it doesn’t work; and an example of that is the ‘concept of concepts’. — Bob Ross

I still don't know what you mean by the "concept of concepts".

My basic stance is that when we come to claims about the absolute nature of things we are "all at sea"; we have no way of assessing which claims are more parsimonious because we have no way of measuring parsimony in the "absolute" context. Reality can be looked at from the perspective that consciousness is fundamental or that the physical is fundamental, and both are limited viewpoints because they are both, and the whole of language is, derived from the context of our experience of a world, which certainly looks as though it is mind-independent, even if that very claim is not. I think that when people want to take up a position, they are less motivated by reason than by other factors. So, you should understand I am not defending physicalism in anything other than a methodological sense.

I don't think we are going to agree on these things, so maybe we should leave it before we start going around in circles.

If you don't agree that multiple interpreatations of literary works are possible I think either we must agree to disagree or we are somehow talking past each other, so I'll leave it there.

What you say may be true in some cases, but I think you are over-generalizing. Not every writer of fiction "drudges out the third draft" or necessarily has anything more than a general more or less vague sense of allusions and associations, although I'll grant that references and hidden jokes would likely be more definite in the author's mind.

Close reading will always reveal more layers than a single "literal" reading; and that is all I mean when I say "unpacking". You could call it 'excavating' if you find that more palatable.

Thanks. By sacrifice I meant the temporary death of Jesus, the 'blood sacrifice'. — Tom Storm

That whole aspect of Christianity has never made any sense to me either.

You take away whatever you take away; you interpret however you want to interpret; it says whatever you want it to mean; it's as exactly as profound as you want it to be.
Bah! Good fiction doesn't yield to "textual analysis" - it says what it means to say and you either get it or you don't. — Vera Mont

Great literature is often characterized by ambiguity, by layered allusions, by the possibility of multiple interpretations. Textual analysis can unpack some of the imaginable interpretive possibilities. Perhaps the author had in mind just one interpretation, perhaps not. If the author is not around to ask then we can only make more or less educated guesses as to whether the author intended just one meaning or not, and it she did, what that meaning is. Perhaps the author did not know precisely what she meant when she wrote.

Having speculation be informed by the world around us is not special to science: metaphysics also tries to inform its theories based off thereof. — Bob Ross

I'd say metaphysics informed by science is informed by the world around us, as we find it both in terms of ordinary observations and inductive reasoning and in terms of science, since science is really just an extension of ordinary observation and inductive expectation.

Science and metaphysics are both engaged in abductive reasoning (i.e., trying to discern the best explanation to account for the data). — Bob Ross

Can you elaborate as to just what data is being explained by the idea of the world as will or mind at large?

It is derived from our understanding of all life: not just higher animals. Kastrup posits that all life is a grade of consciousness. Of course, we only immediately, through introspection, have access to our own, so that is where we typically start. — Bob Ross

Our introspective access to consciousness I would not class as data. I would only class as data what can be observed publicly and corroborated by repeated experiment. It's not even clear that our purported introspective access to consciousness is what it naively seems to be.

So the natural forces, as well as entropy and everything else, is within the universal mind and thusly is upheld by the will thereof. The will is ‘outside’ of the system of which represents it, just as necessarily as my mind’s will to dream of a beautiful forest is ‘outside’ of that dream forest. — Bob Ross

Yes, but all of this is purely speculative and cannot be tested.

Are you saying that you don’t think you can come to know what is right and wrong (even if the propositions are indexical: subjective)? — Bob Ross

I can come to know what seems right and wrong to me. It may not agree with what others think is right and wrong. What counts as knowledge is what can be reliably agreed upon publicly. You might object that what can be reliably agreed upon publicly or by experts in a field is just a more widespread seeming, and in the final analysis I think that is true. That is why I say we can know the world only as it appears to us.

You can’t invoke hypothetical conditionals without propositions, and, as far as I understand you, you are claiming ethics is non-cognitive (non-propositional): you can’t assess that “if p, then q” (“if we want to achieve that, we should do this”) if ethics doesn’t provide propositional or otherwise knowledge. — Bob Ross

The knowledge of what to do if you want to achieve an outcome comes from life experience. If you want to promote social harmony, don't go around murdering, raping and stealing; it is obvious that people don't like those things. If you want to promote personal physical health then eat foods which have proven to be good for the body, and don't eat foods that make it unhealthy. The ethics is not in knowing what foods are good for the body or what actions are bad for society, but in making the choice as to what outcome is desirable.

For example, if one can only gather knowledge by observation and logic, then they can never come to know what a concept of concepts is. — Bob Ross

I have no idea what this means.

What ‘truths’ do we find in scripture? I can see how parables are like fables. But in relation to Christianity, I can make no use out of sacrifice and resurrection. You? — Tom Storm

Resurrection, no...not sure exactly what you had in mind with "sacrifice". but some sacrifice I think is intrinsic to human relationship.

But the thing that springs to mind is Adorno’s notion of the non-identical. There is always something about the object (a pair of boots, a gas station, marriage, or the Russian aristocracy) that escapes our concepts (and thus escapes science), and yet is not necessarily always perceptible merely by sitting there looking at it or by contemplating it. This is where art comes in: to give shape to this experience. That’s roughly the idea. — Jamal

:up: I think Roland Barthes tried to get at some of this with his semilology; but it's a long time since reading him, so I might be mistaken.

Perhaps if I went back and performed textual analysis I could come up with something, but off the top of my head, no. I cannot precisely formulate anything I learned from reading those works.

It's the same with poetry' you can do close reading and textual analysis, but there is always ambiguity in the best work, so poetic meaning cannot be exhaustively explained. I suppose that means there is always an element of ineffability.

My point is that I don’t think you can consistently reject metaphysics as “pure speculation” while fully pardoning scientific theories. Once one realizes that we are fundamentally engaging in some speculation no matter what, then it really becomes a question of how much is too much. — Bob Ross

I see the speculative part in science as consisting in abductive reasoning, and I would say that even those speculative aspects of science are informed by the general picture of the world that is yielded by science, or else they may be informed by mathematics.

I can't think of any speculative what we might call "pure metaphysics" that is like this, but that doesn't mean there isn't any. I'm open to learning about things I was not aware of.

The main thing I have against Kastrup's metaphysics is that "will" or "mind at large" are notions derived from our understanding of the human and some higher animals. @Apokrisis refers to global constraints (i.e. entropy) as 'desire' sometimes, but again, in that context entropy is a scientific idea that does not derive specifically from the human. I guess we can't help being somewhat anthropomorphic in our thinking, since our thinking itself is "human-shaped".

Scientism is the idea that we only gain knowledge via the scientific method; and, thusly, that all other forms of inquiry (such as metaphysics) doesn’t get at the truth. It sounds like you may be in agreement with me that we can come to know things without the scientific method (e.g., ethics). I would merely add metaphysics in there too. — Bob Ross

Right, except I don't count ethics as knowledge. I also think ethics can be framed as "if we want to achieve that, we should do this" and ethical action can be understood as what promotes rather than detracts from human flourishing. Human flourishing is hard to quantify scientifically, but I think we can all more or less recognize it. I think it counts as a kind of 'know-how' as distinct from being determinate propositional knowledge.

I can think of analogies between ethics and aesthetics, but I can't think of analogies between ethics and metaphysics. There is a modern post-Kantian metaphysics associated with analytical philosophy and modal logic, but I'm not much interested in that, because I think it only represents what is coherently imaginable, and I think it is unnecessarily laborious and not needed for that task.

I do think we can only gain definitive knowledge from observation and logic.

I don't read a lot of fiction nowadays, but Steppenwolf, Narcissus and Goldmund and The Glass Bead Game by Hesse, Forbidden Colours and Death in Midsummer by Mishima, Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky, Dead Souls by Gogol, Madame Bovary by Flaubert, Le Pere Goriot by Balzac came to mind straight away, along with many others impressed me greatly when I read them in my late teens and early twenties. And poetry too of course, Blake, some of the Romantics, the Beats, Wallace Stevens, T S Eliot, just to name a few. I do read more contemporary poetry these days and when I read fiction (rarely) it is often sci-fi.

I think the great novelists are perhaps better phenomenologists than the phenomenologists; they are generally more readable at least, and they could be argued to be better at capturing the nature of human experience than the philosophers are.

I think the best fiction and poetry can provide a wise feel for or understanding of the human condition or the natural world: we can learn much from it, but what is learned may not be able to be precisely formulated. Nonetheless it can certainly change the way we see things.

Sure. They signed up for the tax cuts, but stayed for the invasions. Exactly like religion. They converted for the promise of eternal life, but stayed on for the witch-burning. — Vera Mont

Yep, I think that's pretty much the way of it.

No... just to support their religious leaders' right to do those things. Much like the political extremists: most of us don't actually do it; all we do is vote for it, finance it and defend it. — Vera Mont

Of course, you are right that this sometimes happens, and that some of us vote for, and defend military action and spending on "defense". But I think it should be acknowledged that some of those who vote for political leaders who opt for military involvements in other countries and promote massive defense budgets, may not have specifically voted for those things, but voted on the strength of agreeing with their favored party's policies on other issues that concern them more.

I somewhat agree, we are certainly in the business of plausibility and not certainty; but this is also true of scientific theories: — Bob Ross

The difference is that scientific theories are testable by seeing if the phenomena they predict obtain. Of course, that doesn't prove they are true.

This is dangerously close to scientism (to me): no, we do not only gain knowledge via empirical, scientific tests. — Bob Ross

As I understand it, scientism is the claim that science can answer all our questions and will save us. Of course, there are ethical and existential questions that science cannot answer, although it may certainly inform them.

I'm not defending the right of such aberrations to exist, but they will exist nonetheless, and all kinds of horrors driven by ideologies, not to mention horrors which have nothing necessarily to do with religion or any other ideology, such as serial killers and pedophiles.

I'm with you on that, not being a believer myself. But I think it's fair to say that the majority of believers have never been asked to do those terrible things by their god.

Metaphysics is in the business of trying to give the best general account of what reality is — Bob Ross

I don't think that is what metaphysics is, I think it is a purely speculative exercise of the imagination; that is it consists in what we are capable of imagining might be the nature of reality. In the absence of ways to test these speculations, we have no possibility of determining what could be "the best general account of what reality is", Each person will have their own preferences, which will depend on what their basic presuppositions are. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that what their presuppositions are will depend on their preferences.

Right. So... They believe that their God is all-powerful, all-knowing, loving, merciful and benevolent. Except they're not sure enough to trust him/them with their lives. Ordinary guys in the trenches have more confidence in their comrades, children in parents and spouses in each other. Hm. — Vera Mont

They really want to believe all that, but perhaps even the least critical of us have trouble really convincing ourselves of that for which there can be no solid evidence. That said, there may be some who are wholly convinced and can face death with equanimity, feeling assured of their place in heaven.

Our faith in people is put in place by some solid evidence; they haven't failed us in the past and so on, but with a god who is unknowable there is no past experience to draw upon.

But you acknowledge all this is groundless speculation, right? There are no experiments we can do to confirm whether phenomena predicted by this conjecture are observed or not, right?

But if they truly believed that death is not dying, but a passage to something better, why would they be? — Vera Mont

As I said earlier there is no faith without doubt (or at least it is extremely rare).

There's no question that in a world packed with various forms of religious fundamentalism, which can significantly damage a culture and disrupt the world - from Trump's evangelicals, to Modi's Hindu nationalists (and let's not forget Islam) - these ideas are worth resisting, debunking, challenging. Just as the ideas of secular dictators are also worth debunking and challenging. — Tom Storm

Excellent point! I defend the right of individuals to hold any religious faith that suits them, and to congregate and commune with like-minded individuals, but when dogma arrogates to itself the right to trespass on the political realm it deserves to be critiqued and resisted, and hopefully, put back in its place.

I like this question. I suspect that Kastrup would say that consciousness manifests as a brain, in a skull, in a body, in a world when viewed across the dissociative divide. It's just the form it appears to come in. Given that legs are as illusory as brains, I guess the functionality implied in a 'physical' body is a kind of combined hallucination to begin with. That's all I got.... — Tom Storm

The interesting thing is that that is an untestable speculative explanation just as the idea that there are real mind-independent physical/ energetic structures is. The difference is that the latter seems to be more in accord with the whole consistent body of scientific knowledge as well as commonsense, while the former seems to be motivated by wishful thinking.

:up: The deadly infinite regress !

I haven't claimed that phenomenology and metaphysical speculation is without value; the problem is we have no means to confirm any of it unless and until it becomes science. I'm not a positivist; I'm with Popper in thinking that groundless metaphysical speculations have contributed to advances in science.

Also, I fully acknowledge the importance of groundless metaphysical speculation and belief in human life: many people simply need something more to believe in, and their lives would be impoverished without that.

I don't know how many times I will have to tell you this before it finally sinks in, and you stop with the emotively driven knee jerk accusations of "that's Positivism". :roll:

I'm inclined to agree that sentience won't arise in the sort of systems we see today, but I think it is highly likely that we ain't seen nothin yet. — wonderer1

I don't deny the possibility, but I don't think the evidence, even for the likelihood, is before us now.

But it has a broader remit than science, because its concerns include the subjective realm, it doesn’t stop at (read: 'include') the analysis of objects and forces. — Wayfarer

That's why all that remains in the realm of groundless speculation and faith. I'm with you in thinking that this will always be an important part of human life, but I also think it's important to be intellectually honest enough to call a spade a spade.

If we want to entertain metaphysics that can be taken seriously as philosophy and not remain as just faith-based speculation, then we must look to science; it's the best we have.

Nice analysis Mr Apokrisis!

:up: Lots of possibilities and hopefully not too many downsides...I haven't found myself attracted to using them much as yet...I wonder if I will

Yes, AI sentience, not to mention sapience, is a contentious issue. Where in the animal kingdom does sentience begin? I find it plausible to think it begins with a CNS, which AIs currently lack. I'll believe an AI is conscious when it spontaneously declares that it cares about anything. I don't think it is likely to ever happen, but I don't entirely dismiss the possibility. I think an AI would need to be able to feel pain and pleasure in order to care and to empathize. The cat's definitely out of the bag: no stopping it now, and we'll just have to wait and see how it all unfolds.

I don't find it at all plausible to think that a "creature" that looked exactly like a human, but had no internal self-model, would act like a human.

There is more nuance than some would like to admit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denominations_affirming_LGBT_people

And the thing is that religious institutions can change their official policies over time. Bigotry exists in every sphere of human life, some more than others, obviously.

Religion is not going to go away, and like anything that you cannot change, there is little point in whinging about it; if you really care then the point would be to try to educate those who are not too recalcitrant to be made to see reason to let go of their prejudices.

That sounds like a contradiction. Why would someone who believes he'll keep living after he dies hang on to a life he finds hard to tolerate? Why, for that matter, are so many Christians hanging on so hard to this sinful world, when their lord is calling them home? — Vera Mont

Most people are afraid to die. Also, I think for some of those who yearn for eternal life, the only negative thing about this life is pain and dying. Some people are lucky and die in their sleep without pain. I also don't believe most faith is without its share of doubts, but the phenomenon of religious fundamentalist suicide bombers demonstrates that if the faith is strong enough fear of pain and death can be overcome.