I’m not all that capable of spotting incoherences, so you’ll have to help me with this. I consider all information to be meaningful, but only insofar as ‘all possible information’ is both meaningful/meaningless. This I consider to be a self-contradiction at the core of existence.

So, yes - you could say that I do presuppose meaning at the sub-atomic level of existence, but not with any certain or objective sense of definability. There is no distinction at the sub-atomic level between meaning, value/potential, action/change, substance, shape or distance. An electron correlates with a proton at a probabilistic distance, which may result in atomic structure. Meaning for a sub-atomic particle, though (in my view), is an arbitrary binary relation between existence and non-existence: matter/anti-matter. — Possibility

:point: I'll leave you to that...

Philosophical Zombies...

Describing differences that we cannot distinguish between....

:meh:

I think we already agree that humans and zombies are functionally equivalent but that zombies lack phenomenal consciousness... — Luke

Not because such circumstances are actually possible, but rather simply because we can assert that they are.

Biosemiotics recognizes this matter-symbol problem at all levels of life from natural languages down to the DNA. — Howard Pattee

Swap "recognizes" with "presupposes".

Because in comparison to all of the functional differences between a human and a rock, that difference between a human and a zombie is tiny. — Pfhorrest

What I'm having trouble figuring out is why you place so much importance upon the notion of philosophical zombies, and Mary's Room, and(I suspect) what it's like to be a bat... These are all thought experiments, and while some have proven very helpful in expanding human knowledge about the world and/or ourselves, most result from gross misunderstandings of what human thought and belief is and how it works.

Brains in vats do not do anything.

The difference between the human and a zombie is wholly determined by an imaginary and stipulated entity called a "philosophical zombie"(which we cannot get wrong, aside from an accounting malpractices of earlier and/or current conventional standards) and human experience(which we can get wrong because that existed in it's entirety prior to our awareness of it). The differences between humans and philosophical zombies are established solely by virtue of comparison/contrast; a comparative analysis of both. That requires knowing enough about them first.

As previously mentioned:Humans existed in their entirety prior to our talking about it. I find no reason at all to believe that the same holds good for philosophical zombies. Rather they are an idea that rests it's laurels upon logical possibility alone. Logical possibility alone does not warrant belief.

Aside from that more than adequate rejection, if one already knows enough about human thought and belief, one can also know that A.)being indistinguishable from a human and B.)not having first person experience is an impossible combination. It's like proposing an apple pie and a zombie apple pie and further claiming that they are indistinguishable aside from the zombie having neither filling nor crust. The difference between the two would be blatantly obvious. Those two things are mutually exclusive.

There is no such set of actual circumstances. Being indistinguishable from a human means that we cannot perceive any difference. The problem, of course, is that a creature without a mind does not do anything, and as a direct result, and we would take note of the differences immediately. Our apple pie would be devoid of crust and filling.

Experience is not equivalent to first person perspective. The latter is a kind of the former; experience from a human's point of view. More pointedly, not all human experience is on equal footing either. Language acquisition and use quite literally changes how humans experience the world. First person perspectives are descriptions, first hand accounts, of one's own experience. Thus, first person perspectives consist in part at least of naming and descriptive practices. They are certainly existentially dependent upon language use.

All joking aside.

First person perspectives are self reports. All reports require language. First person perspectives require language.

Rocks have none.

There is another sense of the word that means awareness of something, or knowledge of it; that topic is not directly relevant to philosophy of mind, but rather to epistemology. — Pfhorrest

Given that minds consist entirely of thought and belief, and all knowledge consists of belief, I would think that anything directly relevant to knowledge is directly relevant to minds.

...everything has a first-person perspective, because the alternative is either that even we do not, or that something is metaphysically special about us. — Pfhorrest

I suggest that our ability to talk about our own thought and belief as well as other people's is special enough. I've no idea what "metaphysically special" is supposed to mean. I've a good idea that rocks cannot think about their own thought and belief as well as other rocks'.

..between magic happening, us being zombies, or everything “having a mind” in some trivial way that has no bearing on their function in the real world, the last seems least absurd. — Pfhorrest

I would think that given what we already know about the evolutionary progression of life on earth, minds would slowly emerge. The manifestation of the human mind has been happening all along the timeline of human evolutionary progression.

If we want to talk in terms of a light switch, the light bulb of our mind did not suddenly go from no power to full power. Much better described with a dimmer switch, and a very long time frame between our being content, comfortable, and/or safe(r) in certain circumstances than we are in others, and our making it a common practice to talk about our own thought and belief.

Philosophical Zombies can do neither of those things.

Let's discuss either your position or mine. Attempting to cover both simultaneously is asking for trouble, especially when our respective positions use the same term in remarkably different ways...

I'm a bit disappointed. I was looking forward to reading your answer to the question I posed. Now, it seems that there are more pressing issues rearing their ugly heads...

...Correlation, as I see it, is the process of establishing a mutual relationship or connection between two things... ...The process as a structural relation exists without any resulting ‘correlation’ being manifest as such. When one is manifest, it informs the system’s most complex organisational structure, whether it’s as a causal correlation or a conceptual one. — Possibility

Causal physical systems/interactions ARE correlations. — Possibility

The above doesn't work(it's incoherent, self contradictory, and/or an equivocation fallacy). It also presupposes meaning at the subatomic level of existence, or it presupposes that not all information is meaningful.

The problem with other minds is a problem born of gross misunderstanding of what minds are, what they consist of, and how they emerge. It's also based upon an all or nothing criterion. Off/on. That's not how minds have evolved. That's not how it works.

Get human thought and belief right, and it will go a long way towards clarifying the problems of other minds. That's actually a good litmus test for ones theory of mind.

:lol:

So, where does the problem arise with them? Or.. how?

Philosophical Zombies are no different than Santa Claus.

If Biden comes out firmly against court packing, I might consider him. — Hanover

What if he comes out firmly for court balancing and points to the last five years as an example of what court packing looks like?

:brow:

If Mary's Room tells us anything at all, it is that we are capable of posting/stipulating an impossible set of circumstances. Mary's Room works from a gross misunderstanding of how human thought and belief about red stuff works.

It is physically impossible for one to know everything there is to know about the color red; to understand the current conventional standards; to be somewhat familiar with any ongoing and/or historical issues and/or philosophical 'problems' that may emerge within our discourse about these things; etc.; etc.; etc... if the candidate has never saw and discussed red things.

Knowing everything there is to know about the color(bandwidth/frequency of visible light) we call "red" requires having already seen and talked about red things. We're already talking about red stuff. We can pick out red things. We all pick out mostly the same things too; the red ones. We do all this long before we begin talking about the fact that we have and do. We have all sorts of thought and belief consisting of meaningful correlations drawn between red things and language use long before we begin taking those events into account.

These sorts of behaviours were happening on a grand scale long before we ever invented and/or otherwise acquired the technology that allowed us to begin talking about red things in terms of visible light frequencies and/or spectrums.<---------- That's not the beginning of the process of acquiring knowledge of red things. That's some of the discourse that emerged as a result of our already having picked red things out.

Mary's Room asks us to not consider the fact that knowing all that there is to know about red is a process that always begins with using the term "red" to pick out red things.<-------That requires seeing red things. Mary has never seen red things. Mary cannot possibly know everything there is to know about red.

It's said that an unborn child becomes familiar with the sound of it's own mother's voice. That familiarity is the result of correlations draw between it's own contentment/discontentment and the mother's voice. I see no reason to say that that unborn child has distinguished between it's own physiological and biological processes and the sound of it's mother's voice.
— creativesoul

You see, you've proven my point. You are incapable of even speaking of any correlation between things without first making a distinction: viz. child and mother. — Merkwurdichliebe

If your point is that I must distinguish between the child and mother when talking about the child and mother, then I must say that I agree, but it's totally irrelevant to what I've been claiming here. There is an actual distinction between what my report of the unborn child's thought and belief takes(is existentially dependent upon ans/or consists of) and what the unborn child's thought and belief takes. You're now focused upon the former for some reason. The focus was on the latter.

The child may not be able to articulate it, but he definitely feels himself as distinct and separate from his mother. The correlations might (arguably) occur coincidentally with distinction, but they definitely do not precede it.

I work from the premiss that at conception, there is no thought or belief of any kind. If there is no thought or belief, there can be no mind. At conception, there is no mind. Feeling oneself as distinct seems to require a sense of self, right? I find no reason to believe that an unborn child has any notion of self; no self worth; no self wants; no self identity; no self love; no self hate; no thoughts of that kind whatsoever.

These are the contentious matters at hand, yes? I mean, when it comes to an adequate criterion for what counts as a mind, our proposed criterion - if it is to be considered acceptable - must be a basic minimalist outline amenable to evolutionary progression. The criterion must be rightly applicable to any and all minds, from the simplest to the most complex. In addition, I strongly suggest that it must be capable of explaining the emergence of minds as well.

Are we capable of acquiring knowledge of what language less creatures' minds consist of, and/or knowing how they work?

How is it possible to perceive different things without perceiving those different things as different things? — Merkwurdichliebe

My issue involves the all too common use of "perception" which conflates simple thought and belief with thought and belief that is informed by language. Perceiving a computer is not the same as perceiving a computer as a computer, and that sort of talk is to be avoided on my view. My cats perceive the ducks outside, and there are many of them, but I think it quite wrong to claim that they perceive the ducks as ducks.

Perceiving different things requires physiological sensory perception. Different things exist prior to being perceived by a capable creature. As I noted earlier, but you neglected to discuss, drawing a distinction between different things amounts to becoming aware of the differences between them. One must first perceive them prior to any comparison between them. That said, I do not think it's that important, and for the most part I probably will have no issue with granting the simultaneity of spatiotemporal distinction and perception. Both are required for minds.

The Pitcher Plant and Venus Flytrap are interesting examples. I would grant basic perception, but not the ability to draw distinctions between different things perceived. As far as I know, they'll 'behave' the same way regardless of the source of stimulus. I would not say that they have minds.

Correlation is dependent on distinction. Before we can draw any correlation between one thing and another, we must distinguish one thing from another, otherwise there would be no content to correlate. — Merkwurdichliebe

It's said that an unborn child becomes familiar with the sound of it's own mother's voice. That familiarity is the result of correlations draw between it's own contentment/discontentment and the mother's voice. I see no reason to say that that unborn child has distinguished between it's own physiological and biological processes and the sound of it's mother's voice.

That said...

A plurality of things presupposes spatiotemporal distinction. Perceiving different things is not the same as perceiving them as different things. I'm not sure the latter is required for all correlation between different things. I would say that it's not, at least not at a basic level.

One cannot even know everything that has been written about the color red without knowing what the term "red" picks out. If that correlation has never been drawn, as in Mary's case, the term "red" would be utterly meaningless for it would not have ever had a referent for her.

Seems you're using the term "correlation" as a synonym for any and all connections, including physical causal chains(causality) whereas I'm not. I do not think we're too far apart, but it's hard to tell. I cannot perform substitution without difficulty.

I'm gathering that correlation is not the result of a creature's drawing correlations on your view.

I wonder if the 2016 Bernie supporters who voted for Trump are truly happily with what they got. — Relativist

I cannot see how anyone who truly agreed with Bernie would. Most stayed home, I'm afraid, as did so many others who just assumed based upon all the political narratives at the time that Trump could not possibly win.

Quite a few warned otherwise, and a couple - at least - saw the increasing likelihood of a totalitarian style(anti-establishment) leader being elected years before it actually happened. That's the result of a vast majority of Americans sharing a deep-seated distrust of American government that has been confirmed and reconfirmed with each successive administration since Nixon. While at the same time, the opportunities for Americans born into less fortunate socioeconomic circumstances to earn, create, and/or otherwise legally acquire enough wealth to live comfortable lives have tremendously diminished.

The ground was fertilized by decades of elected officials misrepresentation of Americans; of not acting in the best interest of the overwhelming majority of Americans when faced with the choice between what's best for the overwhelming majority, and what's best for the few.

Bernie began to educate the American people about all this, and he was silenced for the most part by the very establishments that Americans wanted to hold accountable for the unacceptable results of fifty years worth of progressively increasing despicable governance. Regular average everyday working Americans began to acquire knowledge of why things had turned so much for the worse.

That much became very obvious in both 2016 and 2020. Add to that all of the disinformation, lies, and propaganda that had Bernie supporters in it's sights(particularly in 2016), and all these seemingly disparate circumstances(and there are plenty more aside from these) certainly had an overall effect on the election by virtue of having an overall effect on the turnout.

The circumstances are now remarkably different.

The sad irony, of course, is that the swiftest and most reliable method for containing the pandemic required resources and actions that the United States government simply would not spend or take though it could have, should have, and ought still be spent and taken.

We are more than seven months into this, and are still not prepared to do what it takes to contain the virus while causing the least amount of possible harm to - mainly - the less fortunate Americans.

Nationwide stay at home orders, with as few exceptions as possible, while providing everyone who would be otherwise earning an income with an amount equivalent to their earned income for a period of time adequate to contain the virus. Widespread testing, isolation/quarantine, and contact tracing until the community spread has reached manageable levels.

We are still grossly unprepared for doing so. The president knows this, and thus is doing everything he can possibly think of to convince people to believe that the pandemic is nothing to worry about. That way, there is no focus upon the fact that the government is still not prepared to contain this pandemic. That is the first step to getting back to normal(life beyond the pandemic).

I'm not at all confident that what can be done, and ought be done, will be done, even if Biden wins in a landslide. I see no reason to believe that had such strict measures been taken, we would have already been long since past the negative effects/affects of this pandemic. I suspect that that is still quite true. Such actions taken now would result in containing the pandemic with the least amount of harm, much faster than the current method of approach.

Jackson's use of the word "knew" needs to be clarified. When Jackson claims Mary "knew everything physical about the color red" he refers to everything except the direct experience of redness — TheMadFool

That experience consists - in part at least - of physical interactions. Thus, Mary did not know everything physical about the color red.

That is a bit of a tautology. It makes more sense to say "Correlation is existentially dependent upon a creature capable of distinction of determinate forms." — Merkwurdichliebe

I do not mind working from a statement/premiss that is so obviously true. Distinguishing between things seems to me to require quite a bit more than just drawing a correlation between things. The former takes note of and/or sets out the differences between things, whereas the latter does not.

Not the way I see it. Correlation is existentially dependent upon a physical system capable of structurally manifesting evidence of that correlation.

Rock molecules manifest correlations with each other, transferring temperature changes, electrons, etc. If you break a rock, those molecules suddenly exposed to the air manifest a correlation with interacting oxygen molecules instead. The correlation may exist only in each instant of interaction, but there is physical evidence of its existence, nonetheless.

That evidence is relevant information to a creature capable of extrapolating the potential existence of correlations between different things. — Possibility

Seems to me that you're conflating causal physical systems/interactions with correlations, or more directly, conflating causality and meaning. The former is not existentially dependent upon a mind. To quite the contrary, minds are existentially dependent upon causality.

Fire causes pain when touched. The pain is the result of physical interactions between fire and body. It is not the result of correlations. When a creature draws correlations between it's own behaviour(touching fire) and the ensuing pain, it has rightly attributed and/or recognized causality. The experience of touching fire becomes meaningful to the creature as a result of those correlations. The creature will no longer touch fire as a result of drawing correlations between the behaviour and the pain, and that holds good regardless of whether or it it is capable of taking it's own experience into account. Contrary to Hume and those who hold his problem of induction so dear, such recognition/attribution of causality does not require repeated experience. Once is enough.

All attribution of meaning requires a mind capable of drawing correlations between different things. Purely physical causal relationships do not. All meaning is existentially dependent upon a plurality of things and a creature capable of drawing correlations between them. So, minds are existentially dependent upon both physical and non physical things.

You need to account for the mind-brain relationship. — Relativist

Minds are existentially dependent upon brains. Brains are one elemental constituent of minds.

For example, you say the mind is immaterial, but is it spatially located? If so, where is it? — Relativist

I do not say that minds are immaterial. Minds do not have a spatiotemporal location, at least not in the way that we usually mean that. Correlations between different things often include things that are light years away or thousands of miles apart.

My thoughts can cause me to raise my hand. Why can't my thoughts cause your hand to raise? — Relativist

They can. Imagine a classroom setting.

Thoughts draw on memories. Aren't memories stored in the brain? — Relativist

Memories are thought and belief. Thought and belief, consisting of correlations between different things that are not in the brain cannot be said to be stored in the brain.

Memories become lost, or at least inaccessible, when the brain is damaged by trauma or disease. How do you account for that? — Relativist

Certain brain structures are necessary for certain kinds of correlations. When such structures are damaged those correlations can no longer be drawn.

If memories are in the brain, how does an immaterial mind access them? — Relativist

Memories are not in the brain.

If my mind can access my memories, why can't it access yours? — Relativist

It can. Imagine a conversation.

"Show", as in... ???

And correlation occurs all the way down... — Possibility

No. Correlation is existentially dependent upon a creature capable of drawing correlations between different things. So...

If minds/consciousness consists of both physical and/non physical elements, then they cannot be properly taken into account in terms of one or the other.
— creativesoul
Sure, but you have the burden of showing that minds are things, not just a reified abstraction, and that these things have non-physical parts. — Relativist

Minds consist entirely of thought and belief. Thought and belief... correlations between different things. Correlations are not physical. Not much of a burden really.

There is no such thing as a selfish gene.
— creativesoul

That is correct. — Kenosha Kid

:ok:

If you're looking for me to defend the use of metaphor when doing science or philosophy, you're wasting your time. Metaphor is a poor substitute for either.

Being metaphorically selfish is being called "selfish" despite the fact that that which is being called so is not capable of being so.
— creativesoul

The emboldened part holds true. — Kenosha Kid

There is no such thing as a selfish gene.

Acting in one's own self-interest(being selfish) is not existentially dependent upon language use. Being metaphorically selfish is being called "selfish" despite the fact that that which is being called so is not capable of being so(despite the fact that what is being called "selfish" is not). Being metaphorically selfish is existentially dependent upon metaphor. Being selfish is not. You're conflating the two.

So there are no such thing as selfish genes.

Are genes capable of acting in their own self-interest?

If minds/consciousness consists of both physical and/non physical elements, then they cannot be properly taken into account in terms of one or the other. If one does not grant the existence of non physical things, and minds are non physical in part, then one cannot take proper account of minds. The same holds good of those who hold that minds are not physical, and minds are physical in part.

Minds existed in their entirety prior to our taking them into account. The approach is crucial.

What does it take in order for something to be metaphorically selfish? — creativesoul

Genes undergo mutations which may vary biological characteristics, and selection pressures choose from those characteristics, and thus those mutations, those that will be most frequently propagated via reproduction (e.g. the theory of natural selection). Thus metaphorically genes are adapting to propagate themselves. Even if the biological characteristic is altruistic, such as human altruism, the genes responsible for that altruism are individually adapting to increase their own longevity. This is a useful metaphor. — Kenosha Kid

What does it take for something to be selfish?

If one must admit that rocks have consciousness in order to save their philosophical position, then something else is horribly wrong somewhere along the line.

I've read this thread. I want you to answer the question, that way I will not misattribute words or meaning to you.

What does it take in order for something to be metaphorically selfish?

We are born from stuff that's metaphorically selfish. — Kenosha Kid

Gibberish.