It is. But that's the thing, almost anything is conceivable (if not everything), but that leads to stuff like the simulation hypothesis, which makes no sense at all. It is conceivable, of course, but other intelligent beings would have to be really, really bored to do such an experiment.

Well, we speak in terms of "my mind" and "my body", but one should be careful in thinking that "my" and "mind", in the phrase "my mind" refers to two different entities an "I" and a "mind", it's one thing.

As for monism, yes, metaphysical monism has the problem. We have experience and we have non-experience (rocks, tables, wood, particles), but they all belong to the same world. So far as I know, I can't think of something that's better than dual-aspect monism, meaning same world.

Or, if you are an eliminitavist, you can say consciousness is an illusion and try to argue that really, there is only non-experiential stuff, but that's irrational in the extreme, to me.

:sweat:

I didn't have you in mind actually. No, of course, I perfectly well understand and respect disagreement with anyone, that's fine. If you aren't challenged, it's harder to learn.

I like Heidegger (Chomsky doesn't) and think that Chomsky at times uses the example of physics too frequently in other arguments, which I think is unsatisfactory.

More than anything is the rhetoric that bothers me a bit.

For instance, I really dislike Dennett's philosophy of mind because I think it is pretty wild. But I say that I don't like Dennett beforehand, and don't usually discuss much of it, because I just get mad and piss other people off.

On the other hand, when he says interesting things about neuroscience or says something useful about free will, I'll engage.

It's temperament related, but if I say something is "nonsense" or "idiotic", I usually let go of some of my rationality, because I expect a fiery reply. I reserve those for very specific occasions.

Nevermind. I don't want to get into endless debate.

There's no problem if people disagree, in fact, it's welcomed. Others can build ideas on disagreements.

I'll be here for anyone who has questions on the essay, or would like clarification or other sources, or would like to talk about any of the other topics raised in this essay, such as Strawson's panpsychism, Priestley's materialism or Descartes, Locke or anything else mentioned.

Anything Chomsky related, I'd be happy to help, minus the technical linguistic aspects, which are too technical for me.

Well, if you have in mind anything like certainty, then all rules are off. I mean, it seems as if the only consistent "hard nosed" attitude is to be a hardcore solipsist, as in I know I exist now, in the "specious present", and that's it, anything before or after, like, 3 seconds, could come out of anywhere, and then anything is possible.

But if we go on to try and be a bit more systematic with our impressions and experiences, we begin to form a picture of the world, such that yesterday at this time I was doing so and so and tomorrow I'll be doing so and so in the morning. It's a story, surely very misleading in some respects, but something we just do.

If I don't postulate something in the objects that is not created by me and my cognitive capacities, then the only option I have left is that everything depends on my mind. This would mean that before we as human beings arose, there was literally nothing at all.

Secondly, if everything were dependent on mind, I don't see what prevents me from simply introspecting any object in perception and know all the truths about it. As in, I think of a stone and merely by thinking about it, I'd know what minerals made it up, I'd know that it's made of atoms, etc.

I could also introspect and know everything about human psychology, etc. But if I say, I think there is something in the world which does not depend on my mind, then I can say, that there was something here before me, that I do not know what that stone is made of, I do not know much about human psychology by introspecting, etc.

I don't think anything in Darwinian theory provides a necessary explanation for mathematics. A general explanation, yes, in the sense that h. sapiens evolved to be able to count and abstract, but the only rationale Darwin provides for it beyond that is in terms of adaptation, 'what works' from a survival p-o-v. — Wayfarer

Absolutely. We don't even know why certain things were selected. We can say retroactively, that X thing helped for survival, but that may be false. In terms of cognitive faculties, we don't really know why we have the ones we do.

It's only that now, we could say that something adjacent to the capacity for mathematics was selected, for some reason, which led to our capacity to do theoretical science.

Needless to say most life by far, consists bacteria, with no need for much of anything by way of mental processes.

This essay by Richard Lewontin, is most interesting:

The Evolution of Cognition: Questions We Will Never Answer

https://langev.com/pdf/lewontin98theEvolution.pdf

That's true and my speculation may be totally wrong, things could simply emerge. Granting that, I must point to how counter intuitive this is, which says nothing about its being true or false. I doubt most rational people would deny that animals have qualia too, there own way of interacting with and dealing with the world. They obviously lack the capacity for science.

So somehow, we develop a system which tells us some things about the mind-independent world, yet it tells us almost nothing about what we directly are most acquainted with. Yet it's been through our experimental engagement with light that we've made remarkable discoveries.



I think we should now say that spacetime is what exists, and is what is given to us by virtue of being cognitive creatures.

Sure, location depends on a human being, this is kind of like the whole paradox of asking where's "up" and "down" in space, there is no up and down. But bring in a human being, then they immediately understand where up and down are.

I don't have a problem with that. I would have to grant other living creatures with experience too, at least those creatures that seem conscious to us, say, a dog or a dolphin. Once you have that, you have a world, properly speaking.

Sure, what Lindei says in that interview is interesting, and obviously speaks to my rationalistic idealist tendencies. But all I'm claiming is that there is something there, independent of us.

Sure, you can reply (if you would, which I don't think you would, or am not clear) that how can we say there is something independent of us, if we are the ones postulating it? I can only say that I can't render metaphysics intelligible if I don't postulate something external to me, that has powers.

But as for location, or universes and all that, I don't have a problem with what you're saying.

[Deleted]

Yes, exactly. I speculate that, a being with more acute senses and intellect than us could perceive how physics leads to biology "up" to qualia.

We don't.

I'm guessing there could be possible sciences, say, in between physics and chemistry, and between chemistry and biology that we can't engage in. It's kind of a freak accident of nature that we should be able to do any science at all, not to mention rational enquiry into other areas of life.

Something essential to survival probably had the hidden benefit of being able to do science, as a by-product of a mutation, like maybe language leads to math, which leads to physics.

It's something like this, yes, the exact details in minutiae may vary from person to person, Mww would likely bust out a sophisticated vocabulary here, but it's a very good formulation.

As I see it, the objects we encounter in everyday life are both ideal and real, they're ideal in so far as they become manifest to creatures like us, they're real in so far as everybody can see and interact with them and will be similarly affected by the objects.

I think that "things in themselves" ground objects - they can't be relational "all the way down". Substitute "things in themselves" for "structures", as you said the other day, and we essentially agree.

I think there is something non-relational to objects, that is not revealed in the physics we do. If we all suddenly vanish, and that tree out there remains, it hard to think that all that remains are a "bundle of particles".

Different interpreters tend to downplay certain aspects of his philosophy. Some don't particularly care for his idealism, others don't like to consider his metaphysical claims, some say he is a phenomenalist, or think things in themselves are merely a limiting notion, etc.

It's an interpretation based, at least in part, on arguing against why others have misread him in some aspects, such as Allison or Langton or Guyer, etc.

Same thing happened to Hume with regard to causality or to Descartes with innate ideas. If you read them, you see that a good deal of the commentary is very mistaken.

So the benefit is to show why idealism is necessary to Kant, as well as realism and things in themselves.

That is the argument that Kant elaborated in his 'refutation of idealism', which he added to the second edition of his Critique of Pure Reason, after some of his critics compared his ideas to Berkeley's. So again I don't believe Kant's variety of idealism holds to anything like that 'the world is all in the mind', but that is how it seems often to be interpreted. — Wayfarer

Yes, there's an excellent discussion of this topic by whom I consider to be the best Kant interpretation (who incidentally Strawson recommended to me) Manifest Reality by Lucy Allais. She not only clearly establishes that Kant was a transcendental idealist, but also an empirical realist.

Cudworth says something very similar.

I certainly don't agree there is nothing real - that is nihilism, which actually has taken quite a strong hold in today's culture. Bu I don't believe anything like that. I believe that reality is of greater depth and extent than the objective sciences can grasp but I'm definitely not nihilist. — Wayfarer

I didn't have in mind nihilism at all actually, more like irrealism of the kind Goodman defends, that there are only "versions", various descriptions of the world.

I think I'm the opposite, as in, yes the sciences can grasp important and interesting and useful aspects of the world, but the richness is in our nature, not so much the world.

It's an interesting topic, that can become a bit technical.

I don't think there are settled questions in metaphysics - it belongs to the field. I'm essentially a Neo-Kantian or a Rationalistic Idealist like Cudworth or Chomsky.

Which means I accept most of what you say and argue for, though I have a different emphasis and concerns.

What I'm saying is that there is something external to me, which is the cause of my representation. Everything I access to, including physics, are appearances, but I add to it that there must be grounds which are non-representational "real", independent of me, which feeds into my ideal image of the world.

If I don't postulate a cause external to my ideas, then I have essentially a modified Berkelyianism, which I don't think is true.

There may be nothing real. That not were my intuitions take me.

I'd have to do away with qualia as well as manifest, "ordinary", human concepts. Scientific concepts, if they are "on the right track", attempts to show some aspects of mind-independent reality, but how to make sense of this, absent ordinary concepts and qualia, is impossible to understand.

I have to read much more of him to be able to say much, but I suspect Whitehead was onto something when he described the world as being one of processes not things, so some activity, some happenings occur absent us.

Why nature would bother with differentiation is very strange. It seems to me that nature, on all levels, tries to be as "lazy" as possible, so I don't know why it would bother to take different forms... perhaps it is more expedient to do so.

Maybe in terms of emphasising a word or putting a bit more weight to one thing vs. another, but nothing big.

I get you. These actual things are really weird, what some abstract fields are at the bottom of everything, how the heck do we tell differences apart based on what physics says?

Sure, I agree, but I must grant "powers" (to use Locke's vocabulary) to the objects, such that they cause in us experience so and so, repeatedly. These "powers" are only considered as such, for creatures with experience, of course.

Thus the same structure causes two different (or many) "realities" to different creatures. But if I don't postulate a structure behind the experience, I'm forced to say that I'm causing my own experiences of objects.

But that says nothing about whether the actual structures would remain; and that is all I've been claiming. — Janus

:lol:

I enjoy arguing with you and @Mww, because, so far, it's always been pleasant we may agree to disagree without feeling mad or anything.

I don't think I've disputed that structures remain. We agree here.

What do you gain by saying "actual" structure? I ask because, I could imagine another intelligent being, conceptualizing the same thing, in a way we would not. For example what we call a "pond", could be bed to that creature.

The same structure causes us to see a pond, causes an alien to see a bed.

Well, if a previous culture was gone, and we recover it, we reconstruct (or attempt to) what we think their symbols meant, that's granting the point that the culture we retrieve is human (like-us), otherwise, I'd be skeptical that we could make much sense of what it left.

Why would there have to be creatures with "these concepts" in order for physical structures in various forms to exist? — Janus

No, I don't doubt that some kind of structure remains. But I think a structure can only make sense to a creature that makes sense of it. I can't well say that a physical structure makes sense to itself.

It very likely exists it some manner, I don't doubt that, but what can be said of this existence, absent people is very little.

For instance, I don't think a feline creature or an insect, would make sense of a building, and if the only creatures that remained after a nuclear holocaust were insects, then there'd be very little world to speak of, it would be something like an undifferentiated mass, with places to go to and maybe some food.

Say humanity was instantly and totally wiped out somehow; you don't think all the buildings, roads, furniture, cars and so on would remain? — Janus

Something would remain, yes. That's the belief in the external world.

But what would remain would not be "buildings", "roads", "furniture" nor "cars". They would be "things", or some other very general, abstract term.

I very much doubt another creature has these concepts, nor knows what these things are.

OK. :ok:

then have the gall to suggest that the world is incomprehensible because of that. It's incrediblely unbelievable. — StreetlightX

No. The gall is suggesting that mere animals can understand everything. We've gotten rid of God in most philosophy, but the idea of being all knowing still persists.

As far as I know, in a mere 300-400 years, our innate, inborn given natures have not changed. I may be wrong in that, we may have advanced conceptually by leaps and bounds, but the evidence suggests babies and children have the intuition that Descartes had about the physical world.

We can't get rid of our intuitions. You can't tell me you don't see the Sun rising in the east and setting in the west even if we know the Sun does no such thing, we can't help but see it.

Like I said, imagine a post-scholastic Chomsky saying: "we don't know how essence, or attribute, or mode, or [insert outdated vocabulary which no one uses anymore here] works, and it's unlikely that we will ever know. We'll just likely 'move on'!". One would laugh. One does laugh. — StreetlightX

Let's translate then. Essence to fundamental, attribute to property and mode to way of acting.

What's fundamental to matter? Many things, but if you want to be strict, you can say quantum fields, everything else is an illusion. That seems to leave out a lot of fundamental stuff, oh well.

Property. Can you explain to me how a photon turns to the colour we experience when we see an apple or the sky?

Way of acting. Depends on how it's applied, it seems to me that's what we study, how matter acts, not knowing what it is.

Laughable is the folly of creatures who think they have no limits. Literally.

"It has become standard practice in recent years to describe the problem of consciousness as “the hard problem,” others being within our grasp, now or down the road.I think there are reasons for some skepticism, particularly when we recognize how sharply understanding declines beyond the simplest systems of nature."

p.177

"History also suggests caution. In early modern science, the nature of motion was the “hard problem.” “Springing or Elastic Motions” is the “hard rock in Philosophy,” Sir William Petty observed, proposing ideas resembling those soon developed much more richly by Newton. The “hard problem” was that bodies that seem to our senses to be at rest are in a “violent” state, with “a strong endeavor to fly off or recede from one another,” in Robert Boyle’s words."

178.

"The “hard problems” of the day were not solved; rather abandoned, as, over time, science turned to its more modest post-Newtonian course."

179.

Very arrogant...

Unless one thinks that mysterianism is either 1) not true in principle or 2) The we don't know yet argument, which misses the point the article is establishing.

Option 1 , suggests that we have no limits in principle: we can know everything there is to know, we just have to work hard enough at a problem. That removes us from biology and nature.

Aside from not understanding (intuitive understanding) how gravity works, we can point to other obvious mysteries: free will, how the world produces qualia, creativity in ordinary language use, imagination, how matter can think and so on.

One can deny free will, to make it less problematic, though no one alive would accept the practical consequences of denying such a thing. One can deny we have common sense intuitions, because we aren't biological creatures.

The we don't know yet, sure, a lot too. We don't know what dark matter/dark energy is, we could find out, or we could not. We don't know if the universe had a beginning or if it is eternal, we could find out, or not.

I think the arrogance is in the opposite view, that we can know everything, that's a theological view of human beings. We should be grateful that we can do what we already can.

It's now part of a book called What Kind of Creatures Are We? which speaks of different topics concerning human nature, it begins with an essay called What Can We Understand? What is Language? and What is the Common Good? ending up with this one.

Since I've read this essay, many, many times, I don't find it confusing, though it can be dense given how much he cites. If you have a more specific question, maybe I can help out. But I think the point here is to show how we've had to lower the standards of intelligibility in human enquiry, because we know much less than we thought.

I cannot be grateful enough to Magee, he set me forth into philosophy, without him, I wouldn't have been were I am.

He points out that the problem with empiricism or "transcendental realism", is that it "mistakes an epistemology for an ontology". He's right.

But that doesn't see that even the scientific picture is also a construction (vorstellung, vijñāna). Which is not to say that it's false or untrue but that its limitations need to be recognised. — Wayfarer

It seem probable that science is the intersection between our cognitive faculties (a science forming faculty) and some aspects of the mind independent world: it's interesting to note that the most direct avenue we have for our best science, physics, is mathematics.

And you know of Russell's quote here.

It's easier, cognitively, less taxing - to say those things I see, are out there, in a way not too dissimilar to what they appear to us. It's less confusing. The alternative, that these things are overwhelmingly (but in my opinion, not exclusively) a product of us, is really hard to grasp, I think.

Actually, I remember posting this recently, I'll repost it here, it struck me as a very nice quote from Hume, proving your point. Putting aside the dualism implied in the quote, for Hume, free will, is clearly a mystery:

"Is there any principle in all nature more mysterious than the union of soul with body; by which a supposed spiritual substance acquires such an influence over a material one, that the most refined thought is able to actuate the grossest matter? Were we empowered, by a secret wish, to remove mountains, or control the planets in their orbit; this extensive authority would not be more extraordinary, nor more beyond our comprehension."

- An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Exactly!

He tends to rely on quoting others, we interpret if we think he agrees with the person he's quoting.

Me personally, as I read this essay and say, Locke and heck, how I experience ordinary life it's pretty obvious to me (though I may be peculiar here), I don't have a clue how a colourless photon could create colour experience, or how sound waves could be interpreted as music, etc.

I mean, I know the phenomena happens, I can see the evidence. I can make no sense of it.

does not entail that things are mind-dependent. — Janus

Do you have in mind ordinary objects (tables and chairs) or scientific objects (atoms and electrons)?

I think there's a case for mind dependence on both, it just so happens that in the latter case, there is a chance convergence between out mental constitutions and the external world.

But I would not understand what you would mean to say that something like tables and chairs are in any way mind independent.

But in another and more important sense, our knowledge of it is dependent on our mind and on the capacities of the human cognitive apparatus and the categories of the understanding. Insofar as we know the world, that world - the world as it appears to us - is all that we ever know. — Wayfarer

That should be uncontroversial.

I mean, what other option is there? Unless we attribute actual cognition to the world.

I would tend to agree, idealism or physicalism, to me, are essentially a terminological quibble in terms of the actual state of affairs.

A whole different can of worms would be, say, realism (of any kind) vs. eliminitavism, I think that much has substance.

I see your point, and acknowledge that the question is not decidable (that of the mind-independence of things), but I'm obsessed with it, particularly the variant of "things in themselves", but the onus would be on me to show why this matters or should matter.

I agree that phenomenology can be very useful. And although Husserl is frequently referred to (likely correctly) here, I think Sellar's distinction between "Manifest" and "Scientific" images is actually quite important.

But I see your point, I'm not arguing against it, I guess its related to temperament.

Yeah, the problem would be in knowing how much mind-dependence to attribute to different aspects of the world, as in, obviously other animals would exist and have to be so "minded", but when we get to lower organisms or rocks, there are significant problems here in terms of what sense it makes to say that such things have an independent existence. I'm not saying they don't, I'm agnostic here, I think there's something there, but it's nature is unknown.

I see your point about performative contradiction. It's an extremely obscure territory to me.

In any case, thanks for sharing, interesting thoughts.

This isn't an attack or anything, but, since I'm roughly a Schopenhauerian, can you tell me or if not, share a post in which you say why you think he's wrong or in what parts?

I'd be interested.

Chalmers' says a lot of things, but I wouldn't be surprised if he accepted this formulation.

It may be abandoned in terms of being called the "hard problem", much like gravity's (or motion more generally) non-mechanistic effects had to be accepted: we'll have to accept the fact that matter thinks, without knowing why.

That's not to say that gravity or consciousness aren't "hard problems", they are. On this view, there are many hard problems in science and human understanding more generally.

Correct. That was poorly phrased, we can say that Newton's laws work on certain scales,

Einstein's "happiest thought" was essentially a thought experiment that helped him begin to develop a new theory, I doubt he had Newton is mind.

https://www.sjsu.edu/people/anand.vaidya/courses/c2/s0/Realistic-Monism---Why-Physicalism-Entails-Panpsychism-Galen-Strawson.pdf

pp.20-24 is the part you'd be interested in, top 3rd of pp.20: "What about the emergence of life?"

To save you much terminological hassle: E means "experiential", NE means "non-experiential".

Experiential is basically consciousness.

Non-experiential is everything that doesn't have experience: a table, a rock, wood (maybe), dry paint, particles, etc.

The topic of the bacterium is very interesting, my intuition doesn't reach that far, but I could imagine a very elementary reaction that could be an extremely rudimentary experience.

Sure! If you are interested, I can see if I can find you an article - or a part of an article - in which Strawson talks about the problem of life in relation to panpsychism.

The gist of it was (if I remember correctly) that all of "life" could be explained by our physics, chemistry and biology, but this still does not touch on the topic of experience at all.



Very astute concision.

Maybe I'm not as well versed on this topic matter; still, I don't find a necessary conflict between the idea of panpsychism and the idea of radical emergence: e.g., even if panpsychism, there would yet be a radical enough emergence of life from nonlife. Any idea of why the two would need to be contradictory? — javra

Strawson postulates panpsychism as necessary because emergence cannot be brute or "radical": there must be something in the phenomena by which new properties arise as they do (in this case consciousness or experience), otherwise it would be a miracle every time a new property arises in nature.

Since Strawson takes experience to be the most obvious physical fact of existence (Strawson's materialism makes him say that everything that exists is physical, he means everything), the basic building blocks of nature (he calls them "ultimates": maybe they are strings, or quantum fields, whatever they may be), must either constitute or realize experience.

There must be something, proto-experiential or experiential at bottom, or else experience is a miracle.

Chomsky takes the case that "radical emergence" is a common thing, such as when molecules combine to give rise to liquids. He says that liquid obviously emerges, but we don't know why. We have a theory for it, but we don't intuitively understand it.

So in the case of experience, Chomsky cites Priestley and says:

"Priestley rejects the conclusion that consciousness “cannot be annexed to the whole brain as a system, while the individual particles of which it consists are separately unconscious.” That “A certain
quantity of nervous system is necessary to such complex ideas and affections as belong to the human mind; and the idea of self, or the feeling that corresponds to the pronoun I,” he argues, “is not essentially different from other complex ideas, that of our country for example.”

p. 193

So there is something about physical stuff that leads, in very specific configurations, to experience, but we don't know what it is. Strawson thinks there's experience at bottom.

But what about relativity? Isn't it built on thought experiments that were later verified? At least some of our native reason works? — frank

Yeah. Einstein understood that Newton's laws could only go so far, it had problems it could not account for, such as the orbit or Mercury.

So Einstein's theory is better for many aspects of astronomy, including say, GPS. Though Newton's laws work pretty well for objects here on Earth.

That is correct. Chomsky, in this and other articles, thinks that Strawson's construction of materialism is one of the few that makes sense, given the definition and the claims made by the philosophy.

Stoljar too, to a lesser extent.

But, Chomsky doesn't agree with Panpsychism, because he believes "radical emergence" to be part of normal science.

Yes. Failing him and Hume, Locke, Priestley even, much later, Russell and many others.

Our common sense understanding doesn't reach into the depths of nature, but it was assumed to be true in some form, until it was proven false.

Now it may be easy for us to say "that's obvious", well, I don't share that. I don't think many of us (or any) would have come up with his equations and theory.

That the world doesn't make sense to us - in principle - was a big deal. But you still hear people talking about "materialism" and Newton's "mechanistic understanding" that was only disproven with QM.

That's the opposite of what happened, Newton overthrew materialism, and it has only gotten stranger since - further removed from common sense.