Will they ever be able to say "the firing of this specific number of these neurons in this part of the brain will produce this specific intensity of this emotion"? — Gregory

No, each brain is unique. Vastly 'more unique' than the differences between our fingerprints.* Rough generalizations are a more realistic expectation.

*Edit: Talking about human brains. (In before some pedant brings up C. Elegans.)

That strikes me as being closer to the spirit of indirect realism than direct realism. — Michael

I can't say I am particularly interested in fitting into either box, let alone fighting for one of them.

Perhaps Scott Atran's book, "In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion, Oxford University Press, 2002".

That phenomenal consciousness is "of" distal objects? What is the word "of" doing here? If, for the sake of argument, phenomenal consciousness is reducible to brain activity then this amounts to the claim that brain activity is "of" distal objects. What does that even mean? — Michael

Maybe replace "of" with "about"? In the sense in which intentionality emerges from our brains with 'mental objects' being about distal objects?

:up:

Yes, and yes. Primary qualities or attributes are just those which are measurable, and, crucially, those that are said to be mind-independent. A hue may look different to different observers - although that’s hard to tell - but any value that can be measured objectively is not subject to opinion. Principally: mass, charge, velocity, dimension, and location. Just those elements of matter and chemistry which are said by materialism to be the foundation of all else that exists. — Wayfarer

Though I am loath to wade into this discussion, and two pages behind, I can't resist pointing out that the optical absorption spectrum of a tomato, and the emission spectrum of light illuminating a tomato are both measureable.

But carry on.

Care to expand? Any examples of how metaphysical imagination is used? — Amity

At the moment, the things which come readily to mind are either mind-numbingly technical, or more personal than I feel comfortable talking about on the forum. Let me allow the question to rattle around in my subconscious for a bit, and we'll see what comes out.

My observation is that people's intuition is wrong as often as right. It often seems to be someone's "feeling."

Other times the answer someone's intuition gives them is the answer they get when they consider it and explain reasoning behind it. And a lot of people have some pretty faulty reasoning. I assume a lot of people here will be happy to say mine is faulty. :grin: Perhaps others think I generally do ok. Mainly, we will say someone's intuition is wrong when it leads them to an answer we disagree with.

I guarantee my intuition leads me astray at times.

In short, I don't consider intuition to be very useful. But I don't know what wonderer1 has in mind. — Patterner

To a significant extent I agree:

Absolutely our intuitions can fool us. And logic is subject to GIGO, and can fool us as well. — wonderer1

And yet our intutions (or what Kahneman refers to as fast thinking) provide a necessary basis for us to be able to think at all, and logic (Kahneman's slow thinking) can work synergistically/critically with our intuitions, and lead to us developing more reliable intuitions. For me, understanding 'the scientific method' and the role of observations in testing the reliability of intuitions, and achieving recognition that one of my current intuitions is faulty has been something which had enabled me to improve the reliability of my intuitions over the long run.

I'd suggest not being too dismissive of the value of one's own or other's intuitions, or their potential for improvement. That said, I also advise keeping a grain of salt handy. :wink:

'Metaphysical Imagination' - what do you think it is? How have you used it?
In the meantime, I found this: https://philarchive.org/archive/MCSMAE — Amity

Wonderful find! :up:

That really resonated with a lot of my thinking. I especially appreciated the contrast of understanding with truth.

So we should stand by and watch someone brutally murder several innocent people because it is 'bad' to harm the murdered. :D — I like sushi

Having, once upon a time, taken a piece of brass rod (well suited to wrapping my fist around) to what I was afraid might become a gun fight, the OP does suggest a tendency towards scrupulosity to me.

Sorry, I am late getting round to replying to you because I started at the bottom of replies. — Jack Cummins

No apologies necessary. I much too often fail to respond to others who merit a response, to judge anyone for that. Off the top of my head, I can think of recent posts from @Tom Storm, @Patterner, @schopenhauer1, and @Joshs that I have wanted to respond to, but haven't gotten around to.

However, your question is important. It does seem that materialism and realism have become fashionable. This is connected to the rise of science as at the centre of philosophy, with philosophy almost being seen as an appendix.

The rise of materialim may also be related to popular philosophy, especially thinkers like Daniel Dennett and his notion of consciousness as an illusion. But, fashions change and who knows what will come next? — Jack Cummins

I guess I don't see scientific understanding as so much a matter of fashion, and the direction that things are likely to take in philosophy of mind, to be so mysterious.

I see Dennett as someone who recognized the importance of science to understanding what we are, and as someone who has contributed substantially to philosophical thought on our natures as a result of his efforts at understanding, where the science he was apprised of was pointing.

Very well said. :up:

I suppose there is the author of Ecclesiastes and The Byrds as well.

Nice! :up:

It seems to me that the only way to justify self-defense is to either (1) abandon stipulation #1 or (2) reject #3.

What are your guys’ thoughts? — Bob Ross

I don't see stipulations1, 2, or 3 as cohering with my thinking very well. In any case, I would say there are times, when going with your fast thinking is crucial to the outcome of things, and a self defense situation is likely to be such a time. I'm inclined to think it is moral to be human, and act as one, without going around with one's head in the philosophical clouds at all times.

...I am not convinced that the primary nature of 'mind' and 'ideas' can be avoided. — Jack Cummins

"Primary" seems at best a vague word to use here. The nature of mind and ideas seems an awfully important thing to think about to me. Do you think it is those engaged with relevant scientific study who are the ones avoiding thinking about the nature of mind and ideas?

FUCKING MAGNETS, HOW DO THEY WORK? — SophistiCat

:rofl: :up:

What is useful to us cannot be whatever we currently think is useful, else we can never be wrong about anything. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Maybe look at it in more relative terms? We can improve our understanding of what is useful by degrees, on a wide variety of subjects. Undoubtedly we are wrong about a lot of things, and there is room for improvement in our understanding of what is useful in a variety of ways. We somewhat rely on each other to be experts in various ways. Don't we?

@Joshs

African elephants address one another with individually specific name-like calls

Maybe Wittgenstein's approach is more fruitful, "The apple is red"... — jorndoe

Clearly more fruitful.

If only there was an emoji to represent eyes being in the back of one's head. — AmadeusD

I'm afraid I don't have any idea what you are trying to say.

But is it? Who are the case studies for that view? I know of a clique of academic philosophers who are customarily associated with pretty hard-edged materialist theories of mind: they are P & P Churchland, a married couple who are both academics, Alex Rosenberg, and the late Daniel Dennett are frequently mentioned in this regard. — Wayfarer

The philosophers who are currently growing up amidst the development of AI, and noticing the relevance of what is going on in AI to the way our minds work, will be the ones to watch. The philosophers you mention above developed their idea during the infancy of neuroscience rather than the explosion of neuroscientific understanding, which will be coming due to the use of AI.

Of course, I don't expect you to be other than analogous to a flat earther when it comes to this subject.

But neural networks run on PCs are not concious, right? So being a neural network and processing outputs and inputs isn't enough, even if these outputs come from the environment via photoreceptors, microphones, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right. I expect anyone working on an embodied AI, which is structured to learn from embodied experience, is in an at least somewhat secretive lab. (Likely with military funding.) I don't think the hardware is there, to make this a reality real soon, but of course having a jump on the research when a new generation of hardware platforms arrives could provide a big strategic advantage.

(And if I disappear soon, and am never heard from again, you will know I was right.) :wink:

So again the appeal to the data/organ being of a "sensory" sort seems to do all the explaining. Why is an eye a sensory organ but the camera on a self-driving car isn't? It seems to me that the difference is that the former involves sensation. But then it looks like all we have done is explain what has conciousness by appeal to a term that implies something is concious. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm simply coming into the discussion thinking of eyes, cochleas, and olfactory bulbs as sensors. So I think it makes sense to consider the subset of neural networks in the brain, which primarily take input that is the output of sensors, to be neural networks that output sensory information. Sensation would be the result of further information processing by later stage neural networks which meld the sensory data with deep learning from other neural networks to yield sensations.

This, despite the fact that an adult human does not consist of the same cells as it did as a baby human. — Thales

In the case of neurons, to the best of my knowledge, we do have a lot of cells we were born with. Certainly most of us have neurons that we have had since the age of 3 or 4 years old. Neuron based memory relies on long lived cells.

Fortunately or unfortunately, suffering is an inseparable feature of life! Fortunately, because we have a way to evolve. Unfortunately, because we have to suffer. — MoK

I don' know if your use of "evolve" is meant to refer to biological evolution, but if so, no we as individuals don't evolve. Species evolve.

So do you think it is the case that we simple aren't the species that God wants, and God is waiting for some species to come, and doesn't care about the suffering it takes to get there?

And yet modern AI does such modelling, presumably without consciousness. I think what makes brains conscious is that they are general informational processors whose interface to the world is the result of the modelling of sensory information you are talking. To brains, as far as they/we are concerned, such models are the subjective plentitudes we experience, they/we are wired to interface with the world in this way. Just as computers run on symbolic logic, our wet "computers" "run" on sensory experiences: we perceive, feel, imagine, and think to ourselves, all of which are fundamentally sensorial. It is these and only these sensations, externally and internally derived, that we are aware of, every other brain process is unconscious to us. — hypericin

:up:

What makes some information "sensory information?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

The fact that it is information arising from the processing in a neural network which has inputs which are largely the outputs of sensory nerves. (E.g. the optic nerves for vision, the olfactory bulb for smell, whatever nerves carry signals away from the cochleas for hearing.)

Something like this seems plausible, but it doesn't seem to me to do much as an actual explanation. Why are some systems conscious? Well, it isn't just that they are adaptive or respond to the environment. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'd suggest that some systems are conscious because they are in an ongoing process of melding incoming sensory information with what arises from deep learning, into a model of whatever aspect of the world the system is conscious of as a result of such modeling and model monitoring. Yes, we are talking about something vastly more complex than a thermostat.

Why do some forms of information processing result in first person perspective and other's don't? Why do these result in a phenomenological horizon centered on a specific body? — Count Timothy von Icarus

How about the following?

Because some forms of information processing occur in embodied systems with sensorimotor interaction with the environment. This results in the development of intuitions (deep learning) 'centered' on that specific body.

:up:

Humanist Pursuits: For humanists, meaning can come from scientific inquiry, the arts, and building technologically advanced societies. These pursuits aim to improve the human condition and advance knowledge, but they can still feel empty without a connection to something greater than individual or collective achievements. — schopenhauer1

This doesn't much describe what I experience as finding life meaningful, although there is an aspect of 'doing art' involved in the story below. For me what is most meaningful lies in human interactions, and cherished memories of such interactions.

I'm particularly high on finding life beautiful right now, due to a message I received yesterday. I want to share it, although I don't know if it will seem meaningful to you, and in fact I wonder if it will somehow make you angry.

To start off, there is this video game called Journey. It's a very artistic game designed with a goal of providing people with spiritual experiences via one on one interactions between two people, with the only means of communication between the players being via on screen 'body language' and repertoire of beeps. Typically you are playing with a stranger and don't find out the other player's screen name until the game is over. One playthrough of the game takes about two hours.

Five years ago I played through the game with someone, and afterwards I received a personal message that said:

Hi, sorry if this is weird or unusual, but you just went through a Journey with me, and I want to say thank you. This was my third play through and in my second I lost my companion through the [Spoiler omitted] Thank you for sticking with me and showing me all those symbols. For some reason this all made me really emotional. Thank you so much, that was an amazing feeling. I was thinking maybe some day I can help someone like that too. I hope I will. It's not just about completing the game.
That was something else really.

I'm not going to bother typing my response, but three months later she messaged again to say:

Hello, I wanted to say goodbye. I'm tidying up my friends list on here and removing anyone but my real-life friends and colleagues. I'm wishing you all the best. I hope you've been well whoever and wherever you are. I hope you'll always find joy even after dark times in your life. Be well and farewell, and maybe we'll meet again in Journey. Until then, take care, and thank you.

To that I replied:

Thanks for the kind words, and the same to you. And thanks for the best after Journey message I've ever gotten. There is nothing better I could have heard than that our journey inspired you to want to help people. Best wishes.

Yesterday, I decided to try another game of Journey, though the game is old and there aren't many playing these days. It can take a while to be paired up with a companion. When I logged on I found the following message:

Hey there, I played a bit of journey again, and was showing it to a friend. I mentioned you to her because after all this time I still haven't forgotten you. The playthrough was memorable to me. It really left an impression. I'm wondering whether you are fine and how you are doing -- I felt like we had talked more but I guess we didn't. I don't know where that memory came from. It's really strange seeing it now. I still think of you from time to time and hope you are well over there.

I guess my point, other than just wanting to share something very beautiful and meaningful to me, is that the nonexistence of cosmic meaning just doesn't seem very important to me. The human capacity for finding things meaningful exists, regardless of whether meaning exists. Furthermore the rather large percentage of the human population able to find such interactions meaningful simply isn't going to be argued out of finding life meaningful.

Thank you so much. That was beautiful.

Hilariously tragic. El-ev-en! :rofl: — Amity

Catharsis achieved? :wink:

They'd shoot you dead, just for being incomprehensible. — Vera Mont

Especially if you make us wait a long time for the fucking elevator.

But if causal closure is true the mental never—on pain of violating the principle—has any effect on behavior. — Count Timothy von Icarus

In addition to what I addressed earlier, I wanted to point out that there seems to be an implicit dualism behind this comment. It seems to assume that what we refer to as "mental" is something other than physical occurences. Admittedly such a dualism is at least deeply culturally engrained, if not to some degree a matter of biological biasing to our thinking. However, such dualistic thinking needs to be set aside if one wishes to critique physicalism successfully.

I don't think Plantinga's argument is air tight, but neither is it merely a strawman. It's been taken seriously because, even if it is a simple argument, there is something to it. — Count Timothy von Icarus

As I said earlier:

...I do think it brings up matters well worth thinking about. — wonderer1

And I'll admit it isn't merely a straw man, but a highly complex straw man brought up by a brilliant though (in this context) poorly informed mind.

There has been scholarly criticism of the argument, on the basis that Plantinga's P(R|N&E) is highly questionable in light of the possibility that what should be under consideration is P(R|N&E*) where:

E is Plantinga's simplistic conceptualization of evolution.
E* is a more thoroughly scientifically informed conceptualization of evolution.

I don't recall the name of the author(s) of that paper, and I lack motivation to track it down, but that paper is out there, and it does amount to strongly suggesting (using more sophisticated language) that the EAAN amounts to a straw man. It also meshes nicely with my objection that Plantinga neglects consideration of evolution occurring in a social species. (I.e. Plantinga's attack on E&N doesn't touch my E*&N.)

Maybe it depends on semantics of reliable - pretty vague word. — Apustimelogist

:up:

:wink:

probably because it's irrelevant. — Wayfarer

A straw man fallacy (sometimes written as strawman) is the informal fallacy of refuting an argument different from the one actually under discussion, while not recognizing or acknowledging the distinction.[1] One who engages in this fallacy is said to be "attacking a straw man".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

When he published his paper on the evolutionary argument against naturalism, a number of scholars responded critically to it, but, so far as I know, not along the lines that it was a straw man argument. — Wayfarer

And?

The ability to 'disseminate information amongst social species' - for example species that make sounds on the approach of predators, like meerkats, or that of bee dances - is obviously advantageous to survival, but what does that have to do with the issue at hand? — Wayfarer

Plantinga completely neglects consideration of evolution in a social species, so isn't presenting a seriously considered account of evolution. Ergo he is working with a strawman account.