In my book, however, this is not a simple empirical question. As far as I can see, it is fair to say that our paradigm (NOT definition) of a person is a human being (under normal circumstances). Animals are like human beings in certain respects such that it seems most reasonable to think that they are like people. — Ludwig V

All people are human beings. All human beings are people. Two names for the same thing. If animals are like all human beings in certain respects, then all people are like animals in certain respects.

Makes sense.

Crucially, it is clearly possible for human beings to form relationships with animals that are, or are like, relationships with people. But it's a balance. Some people do not go far enough and treat them as machines which can easily result in inhumane treatment. Other people go too far and get accused, sometimes rightly, of anthropomorphization. — Ludwig V

The thing to be avoided is a conflation between kinds, a blurring of the differences between the capabilities of humans and other creatures. Innate and learned. A lack of knowing what sorts of thought requires which sorts of prerequisites results in an inherent inability to draw and maintain the necessary distinctions. These differences are afforded to us by dumb luck. Are we lucky in that regard? I think so. It's not like it's something that we had to work hard for. It is not as a result of our own actions that we were born replete with wonderful capabilities that only humans have. We don't pick out all the different biological structures/machines within us. The crows don't either. They are lucky in the same way. Perhaps luckier, in some cases. Ontologically objective biological structures allow all of us to have uniquely individual subjective experiences.

We do not pick the socioeconomic circumstances we're born into. Those help shape the way we look at the world. We do not pick the most influential people around us while we're very young. They are often mimicked, for good or bad. We do not pick the cultural atmosphere. Those are nurtured - or not. Today seems lacking. I digress...

We do not pick the world we're born into. Nor do dogs. We can pick to do good while in it, for the sake of doing good. Dogs... not so much.

The aforementioned biological structures(biological machinery) were there long before we discovered them. We have come to acquire knowledge of the role they play within all verifiable individual subjective human experiences. It's a role of affordance. Allowance. Facilitation. Efficacy.

Other critters share objective and subjective aspects of experience. All subjective aspects of experience are existentially dependent upon physiological sensory perception. Physiological sensory perception is ontologically objective. I digress...



Looking forward to this Thursday is something that all sorts of people do, for all sorts of different reasons. It is looking forward to a sequence of events and this requires not only the objective influence that time passing has on life, but also the subjective private, personal - all that which is subject to individual particulars. Hence, it requires a creature with certain capabilities. Being able to keep track of the time between one week and the next - by name - is a bare minimum. Developing, having, and/or holding expectation about a construct of language seems to be required. I see no reason to believe that any other creature could do that.

Thursdays are creations of man. Cosmological systems/cycles, not so much.

Avoiding the fallacy of attributing uniquely human things, features, properties, creations, attributes, characteristics, etc., to that which is not human requires knowing which group of things are uniquely human and which are not. We know that no other known creature is capable of knowingly looking forward to Thursday. We cannot check to see if that's the case. But we can know that it is.

That kind of thought/knowledge requires naming and descriptive practices. All naming and descriptive practices are language. Deliberately, rationally, and reasonably looking forward to Thursday is an experience that can only be lived by a very specific type of language user. Us. Knowing how to use the word is required for having the experience.

All humans are extremely complex rational creatures, if by that I mean that our actions are influenced by our worldviews and societal constructs, and those are very complex systems.

All humans are also simply rational. We look for lost items where we think they may be. We believe that our actions will help bring about some change in the world. Language less creatures can do the same. Language less creatures can learn how to take action in order to make certain things happen. They cannot know that they are. They cannot say that. We can.

In defense of personification...

I've not read enough beautiful anthropomorphic terminological baptisms. I've not read enough graceful words bouncing in pleasing cadence; bringing smiles for all the right reasons. The personification of things not human can make for some of the most beautiful reflections.

The only way to avoid anthropomorphism is to know the differences and similarities, between human thought, belief, behaviour, and experience and other creatures'.

Language less rational thought must be meaningful to the thinking creature. The process of becoming meaningful must be similar enough to our own in order to bridge any evolutionary divide between language users' thought and language less creatures' thought(I'm 'ontologically nihilistic' on meaning/there is no meaning where there is no creature capable of drawing correlations between different things).

All thought is meaningful to the thinking creature. Some language less creatures form, have, and/or hold thought. Not all meaning emerges via language use. This demands a notion of meaning capable of bridging the evolutionary gap between learning how to open a gate and knowing how to talk about what one has just done. The gate is meaningful to all the creatures that know how to open it.

To believe that only humans are capable of any rational thought requires not believing one's own eyes.

The difficulty it seems lay in how to best go about taking proper account of all this.

Like us, animals have brains composed of complex neural networks, which enable complex responses. Based on such physiological similarities, I would think it naive at best, to be dismissive of the possibility of cognitive similarities. — wonderer1

Yup.

It has become even clearer now...

What counts as thinking? What counts as rational thinking? The answers need a minimal criterion, which in turn, requires the right sort of methodological approach. Do you have a minimum criterion which, when met by a candidate, counts as thinking? Rational thinking? If not, then upon what ground do you rest your denial that some creatures other than humans are capable of thought, rational or otherwise?

Is learning to open doors and gates rational thinking, or does it not meet that criterion?

I've watched cats go back to the place where their captured rodent had escaped hours earlier. If that does not count as that cat thinking about that rodent, despite the rodent no longer being present/visible, then nothing will.

I've watched both, cats and dogs, learn how to open doors/gates by watching people do it, much to the dismay of their humans.

If that does not count as thinking, then nothing will.

Clearly, not all thinking is existentially dependent upon words.
— creativesoul
That's the minority opinion — Vera Mont

Perhaps, but it's the correct one.

Competing notions of "thought" and "rational thought" can be assessed by how well they 'fit' into what we know to be true, as well as their inherent ability or lack thereof to explain things(explanatory power). Evolutionary progression is paramount here. There are all sort of philosophical positions which must reject the idea of language less thought/belief, on pains of coherency alone.

On my view, that is prima facie evidence that they've gotten some things very wrong.

The words have no fixed meaning, apparently. — Vera Mont

Language less creatures have no words. Yet, they think about the world. Clearly, not all thinking is existentially dependent upon words.

Depends on one's philosophical stance, doesn't it? — Vera Mont

No, it doesn't. Creatures capable of thinking about the world were doing so long before we began talking about it. Hence, the need for the aforementioned methodological approach and bare minimum criterion.

What counts as thinking? What counts as rational thinking? The answers need a minimal criterion, which in turn, requires the right sort of methodological approach.

An adequate theory of realism would have to treat the perceiver as a genuine agent, not an entirely passive recipient of a purely objective world in all its glory.

Hence, why I think critical realism and new realism are better positions since they're seeking a better understanding of what it even means for something to be real. A realist account of perception will have to consider what the agent themselves brings to the encounter in terms of subjectivity, context, history, affordance, cultural sediment etc. — Bodhy

Searle fills that bill nicely.

Yep.

Seems to me that physical events cause mental events and mental events cause physical events. Not one or the other. Both.

Man, it would have been nice to have Bernie up there with Trump just once.
3 hours ago — Mikie

Clear lines in the sand are Bernie's strongest suit. That would have been reeeeel nice.

She was nervous, but delivered okay. Trump can sling a lot of shit around in a short amount of time.

The Haitian immigrant fiction is particularly interesting to me. Against what the city manager says, Trump presupposes he is somehow, in some way, privy to much greater knowledge about that city than the guy who manages it. This is akin to his claims that he knows more than the generals in the armed forces. Unbelievable...

I knew an old finish guy who saw reds and greens in atypical fashion. I think he called himself 'colorblind'. Perfect color matches on additions to an existing jury box made from very old walnut that had been originally installed into a Federal courthouse before the turn of the 20th century. Amazing.

Uncle Harry.

I'm gullible. They all coulda been pullin my leg.

Right. I'm just reinforcing the idea that red apples can also be grey apples for the appearance of color totally depends on both, the biological structures(biological machinery) of the observer as well as the physical properties of distal objects.

The red apples are the exact same apples as the grey ones, for the appearance of color is inherent in neither, the distal object nor the observer. Consider this: "That's a red apple" and "That's a grey apple" are both perfectly true when spoken by two people. All it takes is one with the condition you've put forth, and another more commonly/typically functioning individual asserting those claims while ostensively pointing at the exact same apple. The atypically sighted person would have to be informed that what they see is called "grey" by normally sighted individuals, but I've labored this point enough. Save that, and they may call it by the same color name.

There is no correct way to see color. There are typical ways. There are ways that most normally functioning adult humans see colors. Because the same objective physical properties combined with the same outside circumstances/conditions can result in the exact same objects appearing to be different colors to different people at the same time, from the same vantage point, we can know that color does not belong to objects and objects alone. The power to cause color experience in a creature so capable does.

I don't think anything I've claimed is incommensurate with our current scientific knowledge base. Although it may contradict some ancients who believed in things like ether, sensations, and what have you.

For example, is the grey of a ripe tomato distinguishable from the grey of an unripe tomato? I don't know, but it would surely be more difficult than distinguishing a red tomato from a green tomato. — wonderer1

Hmm. Hesperus and Phosphorous. Evening Star. Morning Star. Venus over time.

Those who see red and green as grey ARE picking between the same apples. The red apples look grey to some. So do the green ones. I agree that distinguishing between shades of grey could be more difficult than distinguishing between a red apple and a green one, unless you see red and green as grey. Then you are distinguishing between the same apples. The red apple is also grey.

The apple is ontologically objective. The color of it, not so much. The color of it causes the subjective color experience of the creature capable of having color experience. Color has to be meaningful to the candidate under consideration. This demands a theory of meaning that is capable of taking that into proper account.

Evolutionary progression is key. We have to be able to at least outline the color experience of language less creatures and ourselves alike and we must do so by acquiring understanding of how things become meaningful to language less creatures.

We see color before language acquisition begins in earnest. Color is not borne through language. Calling colors by name is. Further differentiation between is. To even think that color is completely independent of the external world is mad in light of the relevant facts.

The ball just has a surface layer of atoms with an electron configuration that absorbs and re-emits particular wavelengths of light; these wavelengths being causally responsible for the behaviour of the eye and in turn the brain and so the colour experienced.

Physics and neuroscience has been clear on this for a long time. — Michael

Yup. Red balls cause color experience.

We might talk about the ball as having a colour but that's a fiction... — Michael

Not "a" as in singular, but rather 'a' as in a two sided fiction. One side claims color is in visible objects. The other side claims color is in the brain.

They are both half-ways right, and completely wrong. Color - as we know it - is within color experience. Veridical color experience includes red balls. The 'scientific' account in the above quote is commensurate with that.

Hallucinating red balls is one kind of color experience that never includes red balls. The 'scientific' report in the above quote does not take that into account. According to that report, hallucinating and or dreaming about a red ball is not a color experience. There is no surface layer of red ball atoms within one's dream. There are no red balls in hallucinations thereof.

What you've put forth in support of your own claims stands in direct contradiction to them.

Isn't one of the issues here now "What is to count as seeing?"

Kinda where we came in. — Banno

I thought that that 'issue' had been long since resolved. Seeing. Dreaming. Hallucinating. The former always includes some thing, whereas the latter two never do.

The factual explanation is that the colours we see are determined by what the brain is doing.
— Michael

The bolded word is where Michael oversteps... — Banno

Yup. My reply was "in part"...

We see colored things before learning the names of colors. We learn how to use "red" by picking out red things. Language is unnecessary for seeing red things.

The question is whether there is an ontological difference that impacts the truth value of the judgment that requires differing descriptive words. — Hanover

Indeed. The question is whether or not there is an ontological difference between veridical perception, dreaming, and hallucinating.

The difference is the things. In the first, they are always included. In the second and third, they are never included. Seeing rainbows always includes rainbows. Dreaming and hallucinating rainbows never does.

Pretty simple.

Same with hearing voices, hallucinating voices, or dreaming them. The voice is absent in the latter two, but always present in the first.

An unseen tomato does not look red it is red. — Janus

I agree, if by "is red" we mean is capable of causing red experience in those capable of having them.

Well, they're different sets of meaningful marks(names). For me, the last two are inseparable, whereas they are both existentially dependent on the first.

Unless having already seen red is necessary for the illusion to work.
— creativesoul

By this do you mean that 620-750nm light must have stimulated my eyes for me to see the colour red? — Michael

Must have already in past...

Why do you think that?

That's how gestalts work.

What’s the relationship between 650-720nm light and the colour red?

They're both elements for the emergence of red experience(s).

What matters is that both a) I see a can of red Coke and b) the photo does not emit 620-750nm light are true. So one’s account of seeing the colour red cannot depend on 620-750nm light. — Michael

Unless having already seen red is necessary for the illusion to work.

The factual explanation is that the colours we see are determined by what the brain is doing. — Michael

In part.

And now they've been convinced to be mad at all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons.

Threats of violence are not a part of informed willful consent. Call it "manufactured consent", if you like. I won't mind that. The American public have been convinced to consent to all sorts of things that were harmful to them, in the financial sense. Quantifiable financial harm. "What are the damages?" That's a common question.

Look at the spread of wealth around the world after WWII. Pay particular attention to the flatline in real blue collar wages. Watch the power of their dollar wane over time. Watch the under 100k blue collar lifestyle require more than one income. Watch the companies who treat their workers worse obtain a financial advantage for having done so. Much easier to do without legal enforcement of binding arbitration agreement. Ronnie Raygun started that. Much easier to do if enough people portray working folks' unions in nothing but a negative light. Do it long enough and vwahlah. Magic. People are convinced that one of the best things for them is not. Watch the birth of many ghost towns, replete with walking zombies.

No, sir. You're wrong. The smartest bipeds known to man are capable of being happily led to their own slaughter. No physical violence or threat thereof necessary for that to happen.

Yep. And understanding the order of events is paramount. The role that language can and cannot play in our lives; particularly early on. That seems crucial to me.

We are picking out color - to the exclusion of all else - each and every time we gather red things. We even use the same biologically activated structures(brain areas). Such activities go hand in hand - so to speak - with correctly, appropriately, and hence sensibly... uttering "red". There are other ways to use the word.

We are not picking one or the other. We are connecting them. All red things share that in common, even if the common denominator boils down to being capable of causing those capable of having subjective color experiences of red to do so.

I think Searle would distinguish between the subjective and objective aspects of experience.

Red things are not in the head even if they do not look red unless their being viewed.

I suspect a notion of 'violence' stretched beyond its breaking point to include mental violence.

To herd or control apes you have to commit violence against them, or proceed with the threat thereof. — NOS4A2

That contradicts both, current and historic facts. See the last post for the beginning of a list of things that happened, and/or are currently happening. It negates the statement quoted above.

A sheepdog gone rogue can herd a flock of sheep over a cliff without touching them.

How do they do with apes? — NOS4A2

Vietnam War. Iraq War. Consent to remove workers' rights. Consent to dismantle/defund public schools. Jan. 6 2021. Etc.

Pretty well, if the sheepdog is also an ape, or a few of them.

The reality of dreams and hallucinations demonstrates that your stated condition is really not required. — Metaphysician Undercover

I've already addressed this. I'm neither inclined nor required to go over it again. It's a matter of existential dependency and elemental constituency. Dreams and hallucinations are existentially dependent upon veridical perception. To the rest...

Of course it depends on the sense of the terms I'm using. As if that counts as a problem.

You've misunderstood.

Color experience requires both, colorful things(things capable of being seen as colorful by a creature so capable) and a creature so capable.

Things capable of being seen as red are those with physical surfaces reflecting the appropriate wavelengths of the visible spectrum. A capable creature is one capable of detecting and/or distinguishing those wavelengths.

We see colours "directly", just as we feel pain "directly".
— Michael

:lol:

We see our color percepts?
— creativesoul
It all reeks of a misuse of language. Where is the "we" relative to our colors? What use is the word, "directly" here? How does it help us understand the process? — Harry Hindu

Yup, and good points.

We see colours "directly", just as we feel pain "directly".
— Michael

:lol:

We see our color percepts?

Yup. There's the Cartesian theatre. Homunculus lives on.. — creativesoul

Feeling pain does not entail a "Cartesian theatre" or a homunculus, even though pain is a sensation, and seeing colours does not entail a "Cartesian theatre" or a homunculus, even though colour is a sensation.

You're arguing against a strawman. — Michael

Am I?

I'm saying that colour and pain are percepts. — Michael

Percepts are in the head.

We see colours "directly", just as we feel pain "directly". — Michael

:lol:

We see our color percepts?

Yup. There's the Cartesian theatre. Homunculus lives on...

...it's quite difficult to articulate this; put the green tomatoes in one box and the red tomatoes in another, and close them in - are the tomatoes in that box still red, despite being unobserved? Of course. — Banno

They are inherently capable of being seen as red by a creature so capable. They do not look red unless they are capable of being seen as red by a creature so capable and they're being looked at.

If there's nothing more to being red than being capable of being seen as red by a creature so capable, then they are always red, regardless of whether or not they're being looked at. I think that's where Searle is on that. What's below seems to support this. I'm fairly certain that I've listened to that series of lectures on more than one occasion. Many thanks to UC Berkeley...

"First, for something to be red in the ontologically objective world is for it to be capable of causing ontologically subjective visual experiences like this. The fact of its redness consists at least in part in this causal capacity (with the usual qualifications about normal conditions and normal observers) to cause this sort of ontologically subjective visual experience. There is an internal relation between the fact of being red, and the fact of causing this sort of experience. What does it mean to say that the relation is "internal"? It means it could not be that color if it were not systemically related in that way to experiences like this. Second, for something to be the object of perceptual experience is for it to be experienced as the cause of the experience. If you put these two points together, you get the result that the perceptual experience necessarily carries the existence of a red as its condition of satisfaction." — Richard B

If being red requires looking red, or being seen as red, then unobserved things that are capable of being seen as red are not red unless they're being observed. I think that's where I am.

Then is there a way in which Michael is right, that without the creature capable of seeing colour, there are no colours? — Banno

Well, I am agreeing with "without the creature capable of seeing color; there are no colors". Colored things are also necessary. Searle seems to say much the same thing.

Michael's not right. He's said there's no colored things aside from mental percepts.