This would be the tree in the forest problem? If nobody sees it, does it fall? — Pop

Well, something changes doesn't it, such that if we were to be there after it had happened, we would see the tree fallen?

If it's true that the vaccines minimize infection rates compared to the unvaccinated and if variants are more likely to arise when more people are infected, then the vaccines won't stop the arising of variants but they will slow it down.

Physics seems to be coming to the realization that there are no intrinsic and non-relational properties in the world. — Joshs

But the world is brimful with relations that don't require us to be noticing them, or even involve us at all, in order to exist.

there is no way to reduce
e software language to a hardware language of physical causality without losing what is essential to the software description. But if software language is only secondary and derivative , there should be a way to convey all of the meaning of the software language via a hardware description.

This has led semiologists to conclude that codes and patterns are intrinsic to nature ( genetic code) , not just to minds. — Joshs

:up:

The codes and patterns that are intrinsic to nature that you assert in the second passage quoted above are the intrinsic relational properties of the world, which nonetheless do not need us to create, or even mediate, their existence it would seem.

Then the question is whether if you were vaccinated, caught covid and survived you would still gain natural immunity as you would if unvaccinated. If so, vaccinate. If not it becomes harder to judge.

Patterns are not real in nature, only individual events exist. It is language concepts, then, that reify patterns such as ‘the sun rising’. — Possibility

What, your seeing the sun come above the horizon is not an event in nature? Or is not ;the earth becoming progressively illuminated also an event, even if not seen?

It's looking that way, and I think all the more due to what seems to be a growing social discord opening the possibility of conflict and even some violence.

Yeah, funny that!

Likewise.

The risks are minimal though it seems, unless you are privy to some evidence which has escaped my attention. And if by "cost" you are referring to the cost of vaccination, well I guess the governments are going to pay for that (although they ought to take 90 % or some reasonable amount out of the profits of the pharmaceutical companies). It is appalling that they are making massive profits out of this emergency. "Oh, but what about the shareholders" I hear them braying. Well, fuck the shareholders!

I love his work!

That is an Anselm Kiefer painting, no?

We've two goals. 1. vaccinate 70%, and 2. minimize inequality in vaccine distribution. — Isaac

The Australian government based on its medical advice advocates 80%. I agree with you that resources should be shared equitably, but if supply is not adequate and the vaccine was shared equally across the world then perhaps no communities would reach an adequate level of vaccination fast enough.

I'm not sure what point you are making here, Josh.

Good point about art history making sense!

. Except in the realm of technique, the transition between one stage of artistic development and the next is a transition between incommensurables. — Joshs

I don't think that's true at all. Technique obviously differs with the materials that are used and the aims of the artist. Different mark-making will be found with the use of different materials, and to some degree, although not necessarily, with different subjects.

Composition is most important in all genres, and the aesthetic concern with the balance of hues and tones and shapes on the surface of the canvas, board, paper or wall is common to all genres.

That's interesting. Odd that it seems to contradict the other study. In any case the question that seems to arise if the findings of this study are accurate is as to whether a vaccinated individual who suffers a breakthrough infection and survives would acquire natural immunity just as an unvaccinated infected individual would. Because if the answer were 'yes' to that question then there would be no downside to being vaccinated, but if the answer were 'no' then there might be a downside to being vaccinated for very low risk individuals..

It'll give immunity to almost anyone, but some people already have some immunity, others can acquire immunity using their own antibodies without suffering too much harm. Others will not get sufficient immunity, the vaccine is not 100% effective. — Isaac

This study seems to indicate that naturally acquired immunity is not as effective as vaccine acquired immunity: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34103407/

It's not a trivial issue. There's still hundreds of very serious medical conditions which need to be monitored and the mismanagement of admission data confuses the picture to no benefit. — Isaac

OK, maybe I didn't read the article closely enough. I agree with you that it's important to get the information as to why a patient has been admitted to hospital right.

Again, you’d be mistaken. Just read this passage again and tell me what you think Nagel has wrong when he spells out what Dennett says and what he thinks is wrong with it. That review is titled ‘Is Consciousness an Illusion?’, which is a constant theme in Dennett’s writing. — Wayfarer

'Curiously, then, our first-person point of view of our own minds is not so different from our second-person point of view of others’ minds: we don’t see, or hear, or feel, the complicated neural machinery churning away in our brains but have to settle for an interpreted, digested version, a user-illusion that is so familiar to us that we take it not just for reality but also for the most indubitable and intimately known reality of all. — Thomas Nagel, Is Consciousness an Illusion?

Above is what I presume to be a passage from Dennett quoted by Nagel in the passge you asked me to look at again. As I read it Dennett is saying that we don't perceive the processes that produce what we call our 'first person experience'; we are blind to its origin. We know intimately how it seems to us, and from that basis we interpret it as a kind of independent non-physical reality, whose nature we are certain we correctly intuit. It's the interpretation of consciousness that Dennett is questioning not the consciousness itself.

So this:

"Dennett asks us to turn our backs on what is glaringly obvious—that in consciousness we are immediately aware of real subjective experiences of color, flavor, sound, touch, etc. that cannot be fully described in neural terms even though they have a neural cause (or perhaps have neural as well as experiential aspects). And he asks us to do this because the reality of such phenomena is incompatible with the scientific materialism that in his view sets the outer bounds of reality. He is, in Aristotle’s words, “maintaining a thesis at all costs.”

I think is quite mistaken because Dennett is not asking us to turn our backs on our experiences of " color, flavor, sound, touch, etc.", which no sane person could deny we enjoy, but to question the naive interpretation of those experiences which purports to tell us what the true nature of the perceiver is: an independently (from the body) existent non-physical substance or essence or soul. Of course, as you say the "cogito" by itself is not a reification; it is the "ergo sum" which is the reification.The fact that Descartes' formulation may have been a "milestone' in the sense of being influential in the course of modern philosophy doesn't make it right. Spinoza was already onto Descartes' error long before Damasio.

He thinks the first-person perspective is an illusion, or no different in meaning from the third-person perspective. — Wayfarer

Again I have to disagree. Dennett thinks the first person perspective is not what we think it is, not that it is an illusion. Our perceptual and affective experiences are real (what could be more real?); it is what we naively think they are which is an illusion; a kind of reification.

The term naive realism applies equally to the reification of the experiencer ("cogito, ergo sum") as real 'non-physical' entity, as it does to objects as real physical entities. We are, naively, reification machines.

Otherwise as the infection becomes endemic we are going to be frightening ourselves with very high numbers that actually don’t translate into disease burden — Prof Paul Hunter, University of East Anglia speaking at the the UK All Party Commission

I;d say he's biased. If he wasn't he would have said "numbers that actually might not translate into disease burden (since he is speaking about studies that he thinks we should do but have not yet done).

I judged that comment I made 'too sarcastic' and deleted it. I try to avoid sarcasm. — Wayfarer

It's still there on my computer. The universal mind must be malfunctioning.

Wouldn't you say the world must have been created when the first humans arose somewhere around 300,000 years ago?

I've been telling him that – less well said – for over a decade. Some woo-folks just seem to "feel" objectivity is a bug rather than a feature of modern science (or naturalism). — 180 Proof

I don't know about the "less well said", but I agree that the objectivity of science seems to unsettle some. I don't see it as diminishing anything "spiritual" because for me the spiritual consists entirely in affective response ( the right kind of course: so, compassion for other beings and a feeling of reverence for life; that kind of thing).

I disagree. QT has onlu "undermined" John Dalton, not Democritus. This old canard is idealist – anti-realist – preaching-to-the-choir at best. As a reflective metaphor, classical atomism (re: the Cārvāka, Democritus-Lucretius), especially with respect to the concept of 'void' in comparison to the concept of 'field', quite anticipates QFT (even the Standard Model) & statistical mechanics in broad strokes (without, of course, the theoretical details) as I've pointed out quite a few times without challenge by any of the usual suspects from TPF's *quantum-woo brigade* (QWB). :roll: :sweat: — 180 Proof

:up:

But, in calling Consciousness an "illusion", he was basically explaining it away. He's saying, C is not what you think it is. And for most people it's the Soul (the essence of me). — Gnomon

There is that mistake again; Dennett does not say consciousness is an illusion, he says that the intuitive notion of what consciousness is is an illusion. Yes, he's saying consciousness is not what you think it is.There is nothing wrong with the poetic notion of soul; the question is do we have any good reason to believe that there is an essential entity, the immortal soul?

I really don't know, — Janus


Plainly! So stop telling me that I don't understand what I'm talking about. Thomas Nagel is a serious philosopher, with a long publishing history. Daniel Dennett is a one-trick pony with only a single string in his bow. — Wayfarer

Who is dispensing ad homs now? I said I don't know whether Nagel genuinely or willfully misunderstands Dennett. That is not an ad hom; it is just me being honest: I don't know the man. I read The View From Nowhere about 25 years ago; it's still on my shelves somewhere. I wasn't that impressed with it because I think it misunderstands the idea of objectivity. For me what is objective just is what can be corroborated inter-subjectively, so it's not a view from nowhere, but from nowhere in particular. To be objective is to be free from bias and wishful thinking.

I did say that perhaps he is doing that. I really don't know, but if he claims that for Dennett consciousness (or agency or free will) don't exist then he is mistaken. For example there was a well-known debate some years ago between Dennett and Sam Harris, with the latter arguing that free will does not exist and Dennett arguing that it does exist, but is compatible with determinism; that is he argues that free will, like consciousness, is not what we intuitively think it is.

I don't deny that Dennett is a reductionist, so we can at least agree on that. :smile:

It doesn't matter how well-known Thomas Nagel is. He's just another human like you and I. There is little point making appeals to authority; we need to use our own reasoning. If he misunderstands (whether willfully or not) he misunderstands.

I've explained why I think it is a misunderstanding; it seems plain to me. If you think I'm wrong then you could provide another explanation of the text that aims to show it to be saying what you claimed it does. I'm prepared to listen and give a fair hearing.

I'll put it another way: in that quoted passage Dennett says that molecular machinery is the basis of agency, meaning and consciousness in the universe; he doesn't say that agency, meaning and consciousness don't exist, because if they didn't exist they wouldn't be anything that molecular machinery could be a basis of.

From the article you linked:

The problem is that such metaphysical inference is untenable on several grounds. For starters, there is nothing about the parameters of material arrangements—say, the position and momentum of the atoms constituting our brain—in terms of which we could deduce, at least in principle, how it feels to fall in love, to taste wine, or to listen to a Vivaldi sonata.

This is old news; it is just stating what I think should be obvious to any thinking person; that explanations given in subjective, qualitative terms are not commensurable with, or translatable into, explanations given in objective quantitative terms. Why should we expect them to be? They are different dimensions of human experience and understanding. How it feels to be in love cannot be explained or "deduced"; that is a silly idea. It may be described or evoked in literature, but it will obviously never be a part of physics. Who would ever imagine that it could be? It would simply be a category error. Spinoza understood this point nearly 400 years ago.

Love it or hate it, phenomena like this exhibit the heart of the power of the Darwinian idea. An impersonal, unreflective, robotic, mindless little scrap of molecular machinery is the ultimate basis of all the agency, and hence meaning, and hence consciousness, in the universe. — Steve Talbott, Evolution and the Illusion of Randomness

He says there that the basis of consciousness is material, he doesn't say it is an illusion, You're making my argument for me; his claim is that our intuitive or "folk" notion of consciousness, that it is not materially generated and based is an illusion, he's not saying that consciousness itself is an illusion. That's the subtle, but important, distinction I referred to earlier; if you don't get that then you will be misunderstanding Dennett as Nagel apparently does.It seems surprising that Nagel would misunderstand him; which makes me think it is perhaps a wilful misunderstanding that affords Nagel a good sensationalist target that he can then seek to refute in a (he might hope) best-selling book.

Forgive me if I don't believe you. All I've asked is for you to quote some text from Dennett himself that says what you claim he says. How hard can that be if you are speaking the truth?

They're killing dogs because they're scared shitless. — frank

They're killing dogs because they are callous shitheads. Unfortunately many country people see dogs as nothing more than a "standing (or more accurately running) resource"; it's truly horrifying to think of the kinds of lives many dogs must have in the country.

It is exactly what he says. — Wayfarer

Quote the relevant text then.

You always run away when you are presented with good arguments against your position. I have actually read Dennett's Consciousness Explained, have you? I'm not saying that I agree with all of Dennett's conclusions either, but I don't like seeing would-be critics accuse him of claiming what he doesn't claim; particularly when it is obvious they haven't even bothered to read him; it's intellectually dishonest.

The so-called "Hard Problem" exists because we can't imagine how what we intuitively take consciousness to be could evolve out of what we intuitively take matter to be. If either or both of those intuitions are mistaken then the problem itself is an illusion, or to put it another way it is more a problem of the limitations of what we are able to imagine than anything else..

You obviously haven't read Dennett because that is not what he says at all. How could our sense of being conscious be an illusion if we actually have a sense of being conscious? It is what we think that sense of being conscious tells us about the nature of consciousness that Dennett says is illusory. It's a subtle, but important distinction.

I'd say Nagel's got Dennett all wrong. Dennett doesn't deny that we are immediately aware of experiences of colour.(I left out the 'real' and the 'subjective' because such experiences are real by definition just on account of the fact that we have them, and subjective by definition just on account of the fact that we are classed as subjects which means those two qualifiers are redundant). What Dennett denies is that the ideas about those experiences of colour that we form intuitively tell us anything about the real nature of consciousness, any more than they tell us anything about the real nature of colour. Of course that is not to say that we don't know the nature of our experiences of colour, because the real nature of our experiences of colour is just our experiences of colour.

Hence, they might agree with Dennett that Consciousness is not Real. Which is a truism, because it's Ideal. — Gnomon

That is a common misunderstanding of Dennett by his critics who apparently haven't even bothered to read his works. He doesn't deny that it's real, he just says that it isn't what we folksily think it is. If you say consciousness is not real then you are actually committing the very error you mistakenly attribute to Dennett. What could it mean to say it is ideal other than that it is merely an idea?

Yes, I agree it certainly doesn't seem clear for people in that age group.

Fair enough. I haven't been focusing so much on the moral argument; the closest I've really come to it is considering whether someone, anyone, is more likely to be more infectious if vaccinated than if they are not vaccinated, and less likely to be hospitalized if vaccinated than if not. I don't know the answer to that specific question even though I think the answer to the general question seems pretty clear. I tend to respect someone's right not to be vaccinated if they don't want to in any case, though.

Less infected and infectious than a healthy young adult? What reason have we to assume that? — Isaac

No reason, I was only saying that it seems plausible to think the vaccinated in general would be less infectious than the unvaccinated in general.

The chances are bigger that the vaccinated make me sick. — Prishon

If vaccination on average reduces transmission then an unvaccinated person would be more likely to infect you than a vaccinated. On the other hand if there are sufficiently more people vaccinated than unvaccinated then that ratio even against the greater statistical likelihood that, all other things being equal, an unvaccinated person is more likely to infect you, might mean that you are more likely to be infected by a vaccinated person. If that seems unclear, then think of it this way; in the extreme case that everyone except you is vaccinated then you could only be infected, if at all, by a vaccinated person, and the likelihood that you would be infected by an unvaccinated person would then be zero.