Printing money to provide stimulus in 2009 did not result in inflation(that's not the only counterexample either). Printing money in 2020 to provide stimulus purportedly did.

Here's a striking and the key difference... the stimulus in 09 overwhelmingly went to financial institutions and huge corporations, whereas the stimulus in 2020 overwhelmingly went to small businesses and individuals under 150k annual income.

It makes no financial sense to raise prices beyond the affordability of the consumer base. That would result in losses. In 09, people did not have money. So, even though all sorts of money was printed, there were no consumer cost increases to speak of. In 2020, lower wage earners were given stimulus money to offset losses in regular earnings. 'Regular' people were given money and tax advantages. Consumer costs went through the roof.

It's not a coincidence that inflation immediately followed the latter but there was none whatsoever following the former.

Whatever the market will bear. Or as ssu just put it... boil the frog on low... so it won't jump out of the pot.

Let's do...

Add to the hypothetical one caveat... it's all done in secret. Sellers have no idea.

Do you really think that the addition of the money alone is the cause of inflation?

Ah... so ad homs supplant argument, valid objection, or adequate explanation.

For whatever it's worth, your assumptions about me are as wrong as your attribution of cause concerning inflation.

My analogy assumed that rattlesnake does indeed taste like chicken. If that is the case, I know quite a bit of what eating rattlesnake will be like: like eating chicken. Escargo tastes nothing like venison. Furthermore, one is a mollusk, the other is a deer. — RogueAI

If the experience of eating rattlesnake only includes the taste, then sure, you'll know quite a bit of what eating a rattlesnake will be like, if you already know what chicken tastes like.

I'm pointing out that the experience of eating a rattlesnake includes so much more than just the taste, and that all those other elements are not like eating chicken. Furthermore, there are all sorts of completely different experiences, all of which include eating chicken. Those are not like one another either, despite the fact that they could all be labeled as "eating chicken".

I think it targets certain positions that share that presupposition...

They're both putting meat in your mouth and chewing...

Is it your contention that the experience will be similar to Mary seeing color for the first time? — RogueAI

Mary's room is based upon the all too common inadequate academic notions of thought, belief, knowledge, and perception. It presupposes that it is possible to know everything there is to know about seeing color without ever having seen it. That is a false presupposition.

There will be some differences, but it's still just putting chunks of meat in your mouth and chewing. — RogueAI

Eating venison is like eating escargo... by that standard of "what it's like"...

Some of us think inflation happens when you print too much money, or simply create from nothing new debt to pay back the old debt. — ssu

Those of us who believe that would be mistaken. Recent history shows otherwise. The financial crash at the beginning of the Obama administration proves that. All sorts of money printed. No inflation to speak of. What more does one need to prove that printing money does not cause inflation, than a time when it was printed and no inflation resulted?

The reductive physicalist can identify and thoroughly explain how all sorts of 'the parts' commonly associated with conscious subjective experience work physically(See Dennett's Quining Qualia). The opponent will simply state that the hard problem hasn't been solved, or say "that's the easy(soft) problems"... Yada, yada, yada.

It's akin to the physicalist pouring hundreds of thousands of grains of sand onto the floor and pointing at the result, while the opponent says... that's not enough to count as a pile of sand. — creativesoul

This was my first reply here. The reader can read through the thread and judge for themselves how true it rings...

Oh... and you're equivocating terms to an extent I've not witnessed in quite some time. Particularly the term "perception(s)". In addition, it seems there's a fair amount of anthropomorphism going on as well.

I'm afraid I simply do not have the time to make all this explicit. So, I'll just have to leave it all as bare assertion, but not for the lack of empirical evidence throughout the thread. Rather, due to the lack of time and personal priorities...

:meh:

Hmmm... but you explicitly forbid physicalist accounts from appealing to obscurity???

I understand that prima facie it seems hypocritical, but let me clarify. I am fine with soft problems having obscurities in their explanations but not hard problems. That is the difference. — Bob Ross

Is that the acceptable standard for all accounting practices, or just some of them?

Are you claiming that the position you're arguing in favor of successfully accounts for the hard problem without obscurities?

Fair enough, let me try to elaborate on those terms.

From an analytic idealist’s perspective, one’s organs that correspond to those senses you listed (e.g., auditory, gustatory, olfactory, etc.) are extrinsic representations of those senses of the immaterial mind within your perception (and other’s perceptions). I am not saying that your senses exist only within your subjective experience, because subjective experience is synonymous, in the case of humans, with perception and your senses are not contingent on your perception to exist (however their extrinsic, physical representations do depend on perceptions). — Bob Ross

So, according to the position you're putting forth...

Organs are extrinsic representations of senses within one's perception. Senses are not existentially contingent on perception. However, the organs are existentially contingent upon one's perception.

Yeah...

I'm sorry, but that just looks like a word salad, to put it mildly.

As if one's organs do not exist without subjective qualitative experience. Seems to me to be the wrong way around. The experience, particularly the depth and breadth of human experience, is existentially dependent upon the biological machinery.

Yup. That article points to some of the results of all the deregulation over the last five or six decades...

The lack of antitrust laws...

Uh, but the price will rise because of the higher demand. It's the fundamentals of demand and supply. I mean, if a hundred people would desperately want something that costs 10$ and there's only one item left, you think that nobody of them would buy it for 11$ or even 20$? — ssu

Ah... whatever the market will bear...

What someone would be willing to pay(what the product is worth) is irrelevant to the point. Completely. The cause of the price increase is what's in question.

The price increases because the seller wants to increase it. The price does not go up because more people want the product. The cause of the increase is the desire of the seller to maximize profit. The short supply helps create/foster the high demand. Neither causes the price increase. Only the seller's desire to increase profit does.

An increase in consumer cost of good and services is inflation. The amount of money printed does not increase cost. Supply shortage does not increase cost. High demand does not increase cost.

The desire to increase profit margin is the only cause of inflation.

Wage increases are post hoc corrections for inflation. When the same goods and services cost far more than they used to, people cannot afford them any longer when and if they have the same earnings. To blame wage increases for inflation is to blame the bandaid for the bleeding cut.

Can I not be said to know that without knowing what the tree is as it is in its unperceived status? — Janus

Sure, you can draw a distinction between your perception of the tree and the tree. I'm just saying that that distinction is notably different than the one between Noumena and phenomena, and you do not need Noumena to do that.

But that line of reasoning is untenable. There is no way to compare noumena and phenomena in order to determine that the one is not the other.
— creativesoul

But I know that my perception of the tree is not the tree, right? My perceptions are constituted by phenomena: sights, sounds, tactile sensations and so on, but the tree is not merely a sight, or a sound (say wind in the leaves) or a tactile sensation (say the feel of its bark) or the sum of those. Can I not be said to know that without knowing what the tree is as it is in its unperceived status? — Janus

This is comparing the tree and your 'perception' of the tree. I thought we were discussing Noumena and phenomena. If the tree is a proxy for Noumena, and your perception of the tree is a proxy for phenomena, then you've just conflated Noumena and phenomena.

The tree appears to you, and as such is part of the phenomenal realm. The tree - in and of itself - is the noumenal.

You've added the notion of your perception into the mix equating it to phenomena, while equating the tree to Noumena.

If someone says that eating rattlesnake is like eating chicken, I know what the experience of eating a rattlesnake will be like. — RogueAI

Feathers and all...

If rattlesnake tastes like chicken, then you may know what one tastes like. The experience of eating the rattlesnake is more than just the gustatory aspect... is it not?

I'm struggling to make much sense of your taxonomy. It seems you're lumping thought, belief, perception, imagination, olfactory, visual, tactile, auditory, gustatory, and all sorts of things into the category of subjective experience. Then using more than one name or label to reference the set of things as well as individual elements within the group...

"Perception", "qualia", and "experience" are all terms you've employed at times as synonymous with each other, and other times as something else... something more specific and different...

My point was that the hard problem can only be accounted for by an obscurity, — Bob Ross

Hmmm... but you explicitly forbid physicalist accounts from appealing to obscurity???

:yikes:

I still have no idea what point you are attempting to make. — Janus

Hey Janus!

I think, and I could be wrong, that Srap was attempting to help you experience the untenability of the thing in itself.

I don't think of the ideas of noumena and in-itself as add-ons, but as qualifications marking the limits of knowledge. — Janus

Yup. It is my understanding that Kant posits the Noumena precisely as a negative limit for human knowledge. I take the general gist of it to be something like... we can know that we cannot know anything about noumena aside from that they are not equivalent to phenomena.

But that line of reasoning is untenable. There is no way to compare noumena and phenomena in order to determine that the one is not the other.

So, as you said earlier, it's purely a conceptual or logical distinction. I think "conceptual" fits better, but that's just me being pedantic about what counts as being logical. Hence, the earlier scare-quotes around the term...

Personally I have no idea what it's like to be me let alone you, or a fucking bat! — Tom Storm

Exactly. It's not 'like' anything else... which is the point.

There is no sensible meaningful answer to it.
— creativesoul

Which I think overstates the case, for reasons I have spelt out. — Tom Storm

Yeah, you're right. On its face, it's false. I second guessed the wording when writing that, but wrote it anyway.

Not relevant to my point. As I said,

What is it like? This is a question that elicits a rich source of experiential data from people, the answers are meaningful, but the question probably doesn't elicit specific, verifiable data.
— Tom Storm

For instance, if you were involved in counselling or supporting people to recover from trauma (as I am) or a series of other similar activities, then the question 'what is it like' can be of immense significance in assisting people to navigate their experiences and identity. — Tom Storm

If your point is that such questions(what is it like to..) can be used in common parlance to generate meaningful discussion, then sure, I agree. If your point is that the question can be used to help people come to acceptable terms with past events, then again... sure, I would agree. That's beside the point I was making about the general thrust of the thread...

The context here, in this thread, is whether or not such questions support the charge that idealism is superior to reductive physicalist approaches when it comes to taking adequate account of human experience. The charge was made by the OP that reductive physicalist approaches cannot account for qualia without appealing to obscurity whereas idealist approaches presumably can. I was pointing out that idealist approaches are more obscure than reductive physicalist approaches when it comes to explaining experience.

The typical question posited to bring the so-called hard problem into consideration regarding the inadequacy of explanatory power inherent to reductive physicalist approaches is often one that begins with "what is it like to..."

I was pointing out that such questions are not indicative of any shortcomings of reductive physicalist approaches, but rather serve to muddy the waters and distract(add obscurity) because they are not well formulated questions to begin with.

The entire enterprise of qualia is fraught with ambiguity, obscurity, and untenability compounded by simile and metaphor. It makes for poorly done philosophy.

So, what is it like to watch a sunset?

When we ask, "What is it like to watch a sunset?", what exactly are we asking for?

:brow:

Does that question even have an answer? It seems clear to me that it does not! Watching a sunset is not like anything. To quite the contrary, each viewing is different. One could watch the sun set as many times as one likes, and each time it will be different. Likewise, each day, each moment, of one's so called 'subjective experience' is different from all the other days and moments as well.

Hence, it is the question itself that is problematic in that it is not a well formulated question to begin with. There is no sensible meaningful answer to it.

It is a foundational unprovable assumption/premiss, resting its laurels on terminological consistency(coherence) and/or 'logical' possibility alone(scarequotes intentional).

Indeed, there are all sorts of things that could be said to follow from it, if accompanied by some other premisses, but - by my lights anyway - 'logical' possibility alone does not warrant belief, and untenability is completely unacceptable.
— creativesoul

OK, I don't see it that way: I think that the attributes of things that can be revealed in perception could not be exhaustive of what they are unless some form of idealism were true, and idealism seems very implausible to me. So, it's as I said a logical or conceptual distinction between things as they are perceived and things as they are in themselves, but I don't see the idea that things have their own existence independently of perception as being a mere logical possibility. — Janus

Nor do I. My mistake for not being clear enough. What I meant was that Noumena is a conception that rests upon logical possibility alone and is untenable for the reasons previously given.

Some things are not existentially dependent upon us. Some things are. Some things are existentially dependent on us for their emergence, but their persistence is not.

What is the conscious mental experience that I have every day and every waking moment of my life?

Exactly what qualia are you referring to?

Is obscurity allowed now?

Without appeal to obscurity, reductive physicalist approaches can account for qualia at least as well as any other position. I would argue better than, especially if obscurity is unacceptable. — creativesoul

I disagree: it can’t account for it at all. — Bob Ross

Exactly what qualia are you and other proponents of the hard problem saying that reductive physicalism cannot account for? — creativesoul

...my claim is not that they can’t account for a particular subgroup of qualia but, rather, all of it. — Bob Ross

Well, as above shows nicely, you've just contradicted yourself. I'm not sure what you're claiming. Perhaps it's better to take this slowly. Our respective positions are very different, and that seems to be on a foundational/fundamental level. Right now, I'm just wanting to ensure that I am aiming at the right target, so to speak. So, I ask...

Exactly what qualia are you and other proponents of the hard problem saying that reductive physicalism cannot account for?

Right, it is merely a logical or conceptual distinction, and according to its own lights cannot ever be anything more than that. And yet the distinction seems to be the catalyst for so much speculation. Given the completely unknowable character of the noumena as it is defined can it provide any cogent grounds for such speculation? — Janus

Hey Janus.

It is a foundational unprovable assumption/premiss, resting its laurels on terminological consistency(coherence) and/or 'logical' possibility alone(scarequotes intentional).

Indeed, there are all sorts of things that could be said to follow from it, if accompanied by some other premisses, but - by my lights anyway - 'logical' possibility alone does not warrant belief, and untenability is completely unacceptable.

How do you differentiate between the thing shown and the thing as it is in itself? — Wayfarer

Cannot be done. Noumena are untenable. In order to know that what appears is not the way things are(the thing in itself), one must have access to both what appears and the thing in itself in order to perform comparative analysis, and determine that the one is not the other. Given that Noumena, by definition, are what we do not have access to... there can be no comparison. No way to know.

...the question you asked for: “can physicalism possibly account for qualia under its reductive physicalist methodological approach without appeal to an obscurity?”. That is essentially the question that expresses the hard problem of consciousness. If one answers not, then it is a hard problem; however, if they answer yes, then it is a soft problem. — Bob Ross

Without appeal to obscurity, reductive physicalist approaches can account for qualia at least as well as any other position. I would argue better than, especially if obscurity is unacceptable.

There's a need for you to elaborate on exactly what counts as qualia, for that is precisely what any approach is supposed to be taking account of. So, it seems we need to set out a bare minimum criterion for exactly what counts as qualia, such that if some candidate or other satisfies the criterion, then it counts as qualia.

The position you're working from and/or arguing in favor of presupposes that there is a distinction between biological machinery doing it's job and so-called 'subjective' experience.

I'm also quite unsure of the invocation of 'mechanical awareness', in terms of AI or something akin. I've not likened experience to that, nor would I. It's a red herring. Unnecessary distraction.

Exactly what qualia are you and other proponents of the hard problem saying that reductive physicalism cannot account for?

Could you put the "hard problem" in question form please? The question needs to have an acceptable answer, by my lights. So, if you could formulate a question that has a potential/possible answer that you would find satisfactory, it would be super helpful. I want to make sure we're on the same page.

The evolutionary advantages of human conscious experience are plentiful. Perhaps they can be summed up as a tremendous increase in human adaptability.

What are your guys' thoughts? — Bob Ross

Hello Bob,

What struck me immediately was that the OP presupposes that the purportedly "'Hard Problem' of Consciousness" refers to an actual problem, particularly for reductive physicalism. I think that that presupposition is based upon an ambiguous inadequate idea... regarding exactly what counts as being a problem. If there is no problem to begin with, then the entire exercise is moot.

Consciousness is emergent. As such, it is - as we know it - the result of millions of years of evolutionary progression. There is no "aha!" point or moment in time that can be pointed at, and then it can be said "here it is!". There is no magical combination or point in evolutionary progression that consciousness suddenly appears, resides, or has emerged as we know it. That's not how it works.

The reductive physicalist can identify and thoroughly explain how all sorts of 'the parts' commonly associated with conscious subjective experience work physically(See Dennett's Quining Qualia). The opponent will simply state that the hard problem hasn't been solved, or say "that's the easy problems"... Yada, yada, yada.

It's akin to the physicalist pouring hundreds of thousands of grains of sand onto the floor and pointing at the result, while the opponent says... that's not enough to count as a pile of sand.

Thank you for that! Cheers!

Bring on the indictments, for God's sake. — Wayfarer

They're not done... There's more than the public at large will ever be able to know. Trump was and is compromised.

Thanks Jeep!