If neuroscientists can connect a computer to a brain in such a way as to allow a patient to move a mouse cursor by thinking about it in their mind, it would seem to me that they have an understanding (at least a basic understanding) of both. — Harry Hindu

A basic understanding yes. Some structural understanding probably. But notice that these things tell us little. For instance, an anesthesiologist can make someone lose consciousness, but it is not known how this is done. Some liquid enters the bloodstream does something to the brain and we lose consciousness. It's functional in the sense you are using it, and it says something but it's not well understood.

What are the primary and secondary functions of a brain? What are the primary and secondary functions of a computer? Are there any functions they share? If we were to design a humanoid robot where its computer brain was designed to perform the same primary and secondary functions as the brain, would it be intelligent, or have a mind? If not, then you must be saying that there is something in the way organic matter, as opposed to inorganic matter is constructed, (or more specifically something special about carbon atoms) that allows intelligence and mind. — Harry Hindu

Again with function. Why not just say capacity? Function implies it does one main thing, but it does many things. We'd consider the capacity to be conscious to be primary, but that's from our own (human) perspective, not a naturalistic perspective, which I think ought to treat all things equally.

A computer does what the coding is designed for it to do. But here we do become bewitched by terminology. You can say that a computer "processes" information, or "reads" code or "performs calculations". That's what we attribute to it as doing.

With people, the difference is that we are the ones categorizing (and understanding) everything, so we have a quite natural bent to interpret things in ways we understand. As for organic matter, it's a difference, billions of years of evolution and a complexity that is mind-boggling. It goes way beyond crunching numbers and data. The capacity to recreate a human brain in non-organic stuff, may be possible, but the engineering feats required to do so are just astronomical.

I just want to make sure that you're not exhibiting a bias in that only human beings are intelligent without explaining why. What makes a human intelligent if not their brains? Can a human be intelligent without a brain?

If you want to say that intelligence is a relationship between a body that behaves in particular ways and brain, then that would be fair. What if we designed a humanoid robot with a computer brain that acted in human ways? You might say that ChatGPT is not intelligent because it does not have a body, but what about an android?

The point of my questions here is I'm trying to get at if intelligence is the product of some function (information processing), or some material (carbon atoms), or both? — Harry Hindu

Brains make people intelligent... I mean yeah that's one way to phrase it. But so does education, culture, learning, etc. Yes, that gets "processed" in the brain, but we cannot reduce it to the brain yet, in principle it has to be there, but in practice, I think we are just massively far from realizing how the brain works with these things.

Also, a kind of trivial example: a person may have a brain and be completely "stupid". They could be in a coma or brain dead. There's something kind of off in saying this person is stupid, because his brain is not working. There's something to work out in this.

Take ChatGPT, how does it work? It goes through a massive data base of probabilistic words to give the most likely outcome of the following word. But look at what we are doing now. You don't read (nor do I read you) by remembering every word you say. It would be a massive headache. We get meanings or gists and respond off of that. That's the opposite of what ChatGPT does.

Yeah, I think other animals are intelligent. No doubt, but in so far as I am saying that about them, it's related to the usage of them having capabilities that allow them to survive in the wild. That's kind of the standard as far as I know. But there are other aspects we may want to include in intelligence when it comes to animals.

Let's be patient. I think trying to do much in one post will cause us to start talking past each other. Let's make sure we agree on basic points first. — Harry Hindu

That sounds good to me, I'd propose we take the ordinary usage of the word "intelligence" as the starting point. What people tend to say when they use the word in everyday life. Unless you have something better which I'd be glad to hear.

It is only when we approach the boundaries of what it is we are talking about (which is typical in a philosophical context) that we tend to worry about what the words mean. — Harry Hindu

Yes, correct.

We have developed the ability to connect a computer to a person's brain and they are able to manipulate the mouse cursor and type using just their thoughts. Does this not show that we have at least begun to tap into the functions of the mind/brain to the point where we can say that we understand something about how the brain functions? Sure, we have a ways to go, but that is just saying that our understanding comes in degrees as well. — Harry Hindu

"Understand something", yes. This would be activity in the brain. I don't, however, see this having much to say about the mind. We could, theoretically (or in principle), know everything about the brain when we are consciously aware, and still not know how the brain is capable of having mental activity, which must be the case.

The issue here, as I see it, is how much this "something" amounts to. I'm not too satisfied with the word "function" to be honest. It seems to suggest to me a "primary thing" an organ does, while leaving "secondary things" as unimportant or residual. This should cause a bit of skepticism.

Which of your organs involved with reasoning? Your brain. Your brain is a mass of neurons. Your mass of neurons reasons. Does a mass of silicon circuits reason?

Let's start off with a definition of intelligence as: the process of achieving a goal in the face of obstacles. What about this definition works and what doesn't? — Harry Hindu

I don't want to sound pesky. I still maintain that reasoning (or intelligence) is something which people do and have respectively, not neurons or a brain. Quite literally neurons in isolation or a brain in isolation shows no intelligence or reasoning, if we are still maintaining ordinary usage of these words.

You say neurons are involved in reasoning. But there is a lot more to the brain than neurons. Other aspects of the brain, maybe even micro-physical processes may be more important. Still, all this talk should lead back to people, not organs, being intelligent or reasoning.

What if we were to start with the idea that intelligence comes in degrees? Depending on how many properties of intelligence some thing exhibits, it possesses more or less intelligence.

Is intelligence what you know or how you can apply what you know, or a bit of both? Is there a difference between intelligence and wisdom? — Harry Hindu

It may and probably does come in degrees. However, notice, that neither you nor I have defined what "intelligence" is. I think real life problem solving is a big part. And so is reasoning and giving reasons for something.

But this probably overlooks a lot of aspects of intelligence, which I think are inherently nebulous. Otherwise, discussions like these wouldn't keep arising, since everything is clear. Wisdom? Something about it coming as we age, usually related to deep observations. Several other things, depending on who you ask.

That's even more subjective than intelligence.

So what else is missing if you are able to duplicate the function? Does it really matter what material is being used to perform the same function? Again, what makes a mass of neurons intelligent but a mass of silicon circuits not? What if engineers designed an artificial heart that lasts much longer and is structurally more sound than an organic one? — Harry Hindu

We can replace hearts and limbs. If function - whatever it is - is the main factor here, then aren't we done studying the heart or our limbs? I doubt we'd be satisfied by this answer, because we still have lots to discover about the heart and our limbs.

And these things we are still studying say, how the heart is related to emotion or why some hearts stop beating without a clear cause, are these not "functions" too?

I don't understand what it means to say that a mass of neurons is intelligent.

What these points convey to me is that we need a definition to start with. — Harry Hindu

I don't have a good definition. Problem solving? Surviving? Doing differential calculus? Tricking people?

It's very broad. I'd only be very careful in extrapolating from these we do which we call intelligent to other things. Dogs show intelligent behavior, but they can't survive in the wild. Are the smart and stupid?

It's tricky.

How so? If we can substitute artificial devices for organic ones in the body there does not seem like much of a difference in understanding. — Harry Hindu

Sure, we have a good amount of structural understanding about some of the things hearts (and other organs) do. As you mentioned with the Chinese case above, it's nowhere near exhaustive. It serves important functional needs, but "function", however one defines it, is only a part of understanding.

And of course, thinking, reflection is just exponentially more difficult to deal with than any other organ.

You were talking about people that attribute terms like "intelligence" to LLMs as being deluded. My point is that philosophers seem to think they know more about LLMs than AI developers do. — Harry Hindu

No, they do not. But when it comes to conceptual distinctions, such as claiming that AI is actually intelligence, that is a category error. I see no reason why philosophers shouldn't say so.

But to be fair, many AI experts also say that LLM's are not intelligent. So that may convey more authority to you.

What is understanding? How do you know that you understand anything if you never end up properly mimicking the something you are trying to understand? — Harry Hindu

Understanding is an extremely complicated concept that I cannot pretend to define exhaustively. Maybe you could define it and see if I agree or not.

As I see it understanding is related to connecting ideas together, seeing cause and effect, intuiting why a person does A instead of B. Giving reasons for something as opposed to something else, etc.

But few, if any words outside mathematics have full definitions. Numbers probably.

We can mimic a dog or a dolphin. We can get on four legs and start using our nose, or we can swim and pretend we have capacities we lack.

What does that tell you though?

AI developers are calling LLMs artificially intelligent, with the term, "artificial" referring to how it was created - by humans instead of "naturally" by natural selection. I could go on about the distinction between artificial and natural here but that is for a different thread: — Harry Hindu

Yeah, it is artificial. But the understanding between something artificial and something organic is quite massive.

Why? What makes a mass of neurons intelligent, but a mass of silicon circuits not? — Harry Hindu

Masses of neurons are intelligent? People are intelligent (or not) and we try to clarify the term. Maybe you use an IQ test, or "street smarts", the ability to persuade, etc.

To say that AI developers and computer scientists are deluding themselves you seem to imply that AI computer scientists should be calling philosophers to fix their computers and software. — Harry Hindu

We are talking about LLM's not problems with software.

Cardiologists do not use a computer to simulate the pumping of blood. — Harry Hindu

That's the point.

You seem to think that mimicking something is the same as understanding it.

Then are we deluding ourselves whenever we use the term "intelligent" to refer to ourselves? — Harry Hindu

We could be. We use these terms as best we can for ourselves and others, sometimes to animals. But of course, we could be wrong.

We have to deal with life as it comes and often have to simplify extremely complicated actions to make sense of them.

The point is that mimicking behavior does nothing to show what goes on in a person's head.

Unless you are willing to extend intelligence to mirrors, plants and planetary orbits. If you do, then the word loses meaning.

If you don't, then let's hone in on what makes most sense, studying people who appear to exhibit this behavior. Once we get a better idea of what it is, we can proceed to do it to animals.

But to extend that to non-organic things is a massive leap. It's playing with a word as opposed to dealing with a phenomenon.

You are correct to say that it is not that the idea of artificial intelligence doesn't really reach 'intelligence' or consciousness. The problem may that the idea has become mystified in an unhelpful way. The use of the word 'intelligence' doesn't help. Also, it may be revered as if it is 'magic', like a new mythology of gods. — Jack Cummins

I can understand that. But again, why aren't we mystified by human lungs? You can make the same argument, since we can't replicate it on a computer it is now mystified.

Magic, I mean, sure we are the only creatures with the capacity for self-reflection (so far as we know).It makes sense that we would want to understand it, but to do so you should proceed with human beings, not computers.

Transhumanism is a lot of hot air, imo. But I may be wrong.

I don't think it does raise any questions about intelligence or consciousness at all. It is useful and interesting on its own merit, but people who are taken by this equaling intelligence I think are deluding themselves into a very radical dualism which collapses into incoherence.

To make this concrete and brief. Suppose we simulate on a computer a person's lunges' and all the functions associated with breathing, are we going to say that the computer is breathing? Of course not. It's pixels on a screen; it's not breathing in any meaningful sense of the word.

But it's much worse for thinking. We do not know what thinking is for us. We can't say what it is. If we can't say what thinking is for us, how are we supposed to that for a computer?

So sure, engage with "AI" and LLM's and all that, but be cognizant that these things are fancy tools, telling us nothing about intelligence, or thinking or consciousness. Might as well say a mirror is conscious too.

We can't.

The best we can do is to get better approximations, while acknowledging that the "ultimate" nature of reality is beyond us.

Absolutely, such experiences very much can mark one's life and create special memories.

It's tempting to say that beauty is an objective thing "out there", which we have the privilege to access to on occasion. But I don't think it's quite right.

At its most basic, what's beautiful is what strikes as being beautiful at a given occasion. For whatever reason some occasions happen to be far more profound than others. But I don't think we can universalize from ourselves to the world at large.

We see examples of animals finding certain things at least attractive (if not beautiful, then close to it) which we can't make much sense of. How dogs greet each other, or how certain birds look for mating partners etc.

We find it puzzling to see such behavior, but I'd wager other creatures can't find beauty or attraction, in many of the things we find them in. Maybe there's some overlap somewhere, but it's hard to know.

LLM's become even more complex too, because if one believes that the words it uses to make sentences refer to things, then naturally some can believe this indicates such things have some kind of "inner mental life".

But yeah, in this case statistical correlation makes sense. I'd wager it's different with biological systems, like ducks or tigers or foxes.

The issue, I see it, becomes significantly harder the more complicated a model is.

If the model is about a particle, well, there's is only so much tinkering you can do, beyond a point, given the simplicity involved, the thing described by the model, is probably a very good approximation to the thing itself, again because it is so simple.

And much to our great Suprise, the model in simple systems show quite mind-boggling behavior, that we are still debating the foundations of such experiments 100 years later, apparently no closer to a resolution now than back then.

But this complexity just becomes overwhelmingly difficult with things like insects, much less ducks.

We have very little reason to believe that just because a thing we create walks like a duck and quacks like one, is actually a duck (famous phrase aside).

At best, if we get the physiological properties more or less right, then we could say something about flying or ability to withstand environmental conditions.

But whatever is going on "behind the eyes", well, models will tell us almost nothing. What matters to understand a duck, is how the creature is interpreting the world. Behavior tells us almost nothing, especially is the duck is a mechanical construct, we are leaving out way too much.

So, chairs exists and numbers subsist? Is that a common understanding? — Art48

Chairs are mental constructions; they do not exist in the mind-independent world.

Numbers are strange. They are discovered through our minds but seem to be independent of it.

But natural numbers are not constructed the way chairs are. For one thing they are among the simplest things one could image.

Yeah. Let's leave it there for the time being. It was still an interesting chat. :up:

I see him reacting in different ways to is consistent with the qualities I perceive in those different things. That's all I'm claiming. — Janus

Which is fine. But why would you expect otherwise? What epistemic access do you have to compare your view to something else's? So of course, you will interpret the world and other creatures' behavior, in a way that makes sense to you.

They wouldn't react that way if they were blind and felt no bodily sensations, though, would they? If not then we can conclude that they feel the heat and sense the height just as do. I don't know if this is universally true, but it is said that dogs already react instinctively to snakes when they are very young, but would you expect them to do that if they could not sense the presence of the snake? — Janus

Yeah, it would make sense for them to perceive threats for survival. Otherwise, we wouldn't have dogs, which would be bad.

we know they have sense organs and bodies not all that different to ours give us reason to believe that they at least see the things in the environment that we see, and that those things exist independently of us and the dogs, whatever the ultimate nature of those existences are. So, I don't see that I'm claiming anything which is not consistent with our experiences. That said of course we cannot be absolutely certain of anything. — Janus

Yeah, I am not denying that the use experimental medication on mice, then they move on to humans.

But we should be cautious in paying to much attention to outer features (eyes, organs), with inner experience.

But is it not most reasonable to think they are responses (whether innate or not) perhaps to survival, or perhaps to enjoying themselves or whatever, to different things in different situations? — Janus

Of course, there is no doubt, they react to things and are often happy with humans and other dogs, sometimes even with other creatures.

I mean you seem not to want to admit that the dog sees a ball, and yet you say the dog sees me making a gesture or movement. So my dogs see me and I'm an object in the environment. My dogs recognize me—of that there is no doubt. Now they may well not see me in the same way as people do (but then different people may not see me in exactly the same way either). — Janus

You seem to want to say that you know what dogs see. I don't claim to have that level of epistemic access, that is why Nagel wrote and people debate "what it's like to see a bat".

Let me speak in your terms, yes dogs see certain balls they play with. How they see it and most importantly, if it is similar to the way I see it, I cannot say - it's not possible to say because we are not dogs.

I am not denying they see things and play with things. I just think you are claiming to know more than what is possible for us to know. Maybe I am wrong - I freely admit that. Maybe dogs do see balls very similarly to the way we do and maybe dogs see you in a way that other people do. I would be extremely skeptical.

When you say other people don't see you in the exact way - well, I mean - if you mean "exactly the same way" for other people is somewhat akin to a dog also seeing you as other people do, but in a slightly different way, then I don't know what to say here. These seem to be astronomically different.

And again, no bullshit or false modesty or anything, I could be completely wrong. I only say that I just don't find it convincing.

Also you say that dogs will not jump into a fire or from a high place—so it follows that they perceive fire and high places. They also do not bump into trees or walls (unless they are blind which was the case with my mother's cocker spaniel when I was a kid). They behave differently and consistently towards different things in the environment and that behavior makes sense in terms of how we perceive those objects. I don't know what else to say. If you remain unconvinced then I have nothing further to add. — Janus

They do not jump from high places or don't go into fire as soon as they are born! If that is not innate, I don't know what is. So, they don't do something before they even develop into a mature animal. Clearly, they do many things at the very moment they perceive the world, there is no time for "learning from perception" here, it's at first instance.

And that goes for many animals, turtles racing to the ocean as soon as they hatch, birds reacting to mother giving them worms before they can see, etc, etc.

Now, if dogs see fire and high places like we do, again, I don't know. Maybe.

Sure, again, they don't run into concrete things, no animal does that I know of. I am not saying they don't see a world and react to it. But that it makes sense to you (or me, or any other human being alive) says very little about how the dog actually experiences the world, that's a massive leap into claiming knowledge about a different creature.

Ending on a point of agreement, I hope: they may have some basic "ideas", such as play, prey, anger, protection, the basic things all animals need for survival. In so far as we also have these basic notions, there is some overlap, sure. Clearly food, mating, danger and like basic emotions we also have, beyond that, I don't know how they see and experience the world. I can guess, but that's the best we can do.

I can't imagine why anyone would want to deny animals even a minimal amount of intelligence. I have to stress I don't believe that conceptualization is some amazing special ability. The amazing ability here is syntactic language, conceptualization is merely a part of describing language-use. — goremand

That's interesting to me. I think conceptualization of any kind is quite remarkable, even proto-conceptualization. But language is a unique instance, so far as we know, so it is, in a sense, more "special".

The thing is, if you go down this road of "creating associations always involves the use of concepts" I believe you will end up attributing powers of conceptualization to very simple organisms, including machines. — goremand

It's tricky to know where the cut-off point between explicit consciousness (such as elephants or monkeys) stops and mere reaction kicks in, maybe a fish or an oyster. But I do believe there is such a point.

To talk in this manner about machines, is to play with words, it's not substantive as I see it. So, we agree here.

I have tried throwing sticks too large for the dog to pick up. Or bricks. He will chase them but as soon as he realizes it is too big or hard to pick up in his mouth he loses interest straight away. In any case when you say the dog chases movement it seems you agree that the dog and I both see something moving at the same place and time and in the same direction and the same distance. — Janus

Ok, so we can guess that what initially gets them going is motion associated by a gesture you make which is related to "play time". Once the reach the object, maybe they try to life it up, maybe they get confused for a moment and then they look at you or ignore the object.

Here's the issue: why don't they pick up the object? Is it because they experience its structure as being too big and then retreat? Or is it an innate predisposition that makes them realize that this thing is too heavy (not related to structure) ?

I don't know. I think we can agree that the best we can do in the human case, which is the case in which we have the most data, is to try to understand a little why people do what they do - and even that is very hard very frequently.

When it comes to other animals, we are effectively guessing. Maybe they don't pick it up because they perceive a structure that's too big, maybe it's an innate response related to heaviness or pain avoidance.

I have never denied that the dog has a different experience of the world. I have no doubt he experiences the things I experience differently, but the difference is not all that radical and can be made sense of by considering the differences between my constitution and the dog's constitution. The dog sees his food bowl as 'to-be-eating-from' and his bed as 'to-be-laying-in' and given the way I experience those things in terms of size, shape and hardness the dog's behavior towards those things is consistent. — Janus

Here is where we disagree, and I don't see a remedy. I think the experiences are, in large part, very different. Sometimes there can be overlap - no creature is going to run into a fire or jump from a large distance. But whereas I think you are attributing this to shared structure, I think it's an innate response (not conscious) related to survival.

How much we share is very difficult to ascertain, but I think we could be misleading ourselves if we take ourselves to be reliable narrators of things outside us (the world, including other animals). It was no until we began to doubt our shared experiences, that modern science arose.

Also, one should mention dogs are the creatures which we have most co-existed with out of all animals, making them particularly misleading, imo.

Of course animals have intelligence and memory, but how does that necessitate the use of concepts? Memories are just impressions made by particular events, for example an animal doesn't need the general concept of a "child" in order to remember that they have children to feed. — goremand

True. I should have been more careful. I don't know if animals have concepts per se, maybe they have some sort of pre-conceptual awareness.

But they have representations unique to them. The issue I wanted to highlight is that I think it's kind of hard to imagine having perception without some minimal intellectual capacities, because then it seems to me it would be hard to retain the perception.

Examples of animals suffering from abuse and being fearful of humans for a while seem to suggest some degree of association, which goes slightly beyond "mere" perception.

The point is only that given the way we perceive things the dog's manifest behavior towards those same things makes sense. — Janus

Of course, it would make sense for us we are analyzing the world through our human-centric perspective. One cannot help but see dogs chasing balls or peeing on trees, it absolutely makes sense for us to interpret animal actions in a way we can understand. It would be quite impractical (in everyday life) to attempt to "be a bat", to use Nagel's phrase, because we aren't.

The point is not the words, it's the animals experience. My point is not that dogs chase balls, but rather that dogs chase movement. You can throw any object you wish and most of the time the dog will chase it.

Likewise with peeing, we experience it as a dog peeing on a tree. The dog might experience it as marking territory in this place because of particular smell or an ingrained propensity to do this.

. We know we can chase balls but not walls or trees and so on. We can observe that dogs see the same things we do, and additionally there is a consistency there between how we see things and how dogs see things which is demonstrated by their behavior towards those things. I don't see how that can reasonably be denied — Janus

It can be reasonably denied if you assume, as I believe is correct, that dogs have a different experience of the world. This consistency we see with our interpretation of the dog's behavior does not mean that we are accurately describing what dogs actually do, it does describe how we experience dogs.

I should add, that going through a door and chasing a ball at best shows that concrete stuff (stuff you can't go through) is a real thing - concreteness exists. But this says very, very little about animal experience. That's why we need to do animal science, to try to understand, to the extent we can, why they do what they do.

Ok, here goes:

The dog sees the ball as something to chase, the doorway as something to walk through, the wall as something not to walk into, the tree as something to piss against, the car as something to get excited about going in.

So the 'somethings' have roughly the same characteristics for the dog as they do for us. "Wall, 'tree'. 'doorway'. and 'car' are just names, but the things they name certainly seem to be real mind-independent things with certain attributes. — Janus

Let's minimize human attributions to animals. The dog chases something, walks through something, pisses against something, etc.

What characteristics of something makes us chase it? Is it the roundness, the colour? Surely not, for then we would be chasing globes or round candy. We don't do that. These things are round (to us), but we don't chase them.

What characteristics of something causes us to urinate on it? Dogs urinate on other things as well.

We don't know if a dog experiences a ball as an object which is separate from the environment. It looks that way to us, but that doesn't mean it's something like the dog picking something up in a continuous stream of stuff or things. Maybe some things trigger the dog to go chasing and other peeing.

That doesn't mean there is a specific property that resembles anything we have that causes them to do what they do. They chase things that are thrown. They pee on things that make them mark territory.

That does not mean they chase something because it is like a ball or pee because it is something like a tree. It's a disposition in the dog to act a certain way given certain environmental cues. Maybe motion triggers the running, not the shape, maybe scent triggers the peeing. You can say ah, yes, but the scent is given off by trees, maybe, maybe it's the earth or concrete or anything else.

I don't think we will proceed much here. We going to keep going in circles.

I think that is a very strange claim, why are the use of concepts necessary for perception? I would not invoke conceptualization for any reason other than to describe the use of syntactic language, which is an ability only humans and arguably one or two other animals have. — goremand

I think there has to be a minimal intellectual component in terms of memory, otherwise I don't see how a creature could perceive without constantly forgetting.

They very likely have some primitive concepts. I don't think it makes much sense to postulate a creature having perception absent some minimal amount of conception.

But these are very very dark waters. We are quite in the dark as to the nature of animal concepts.

Yes, the claim should be trivial: reality can be (and is) conceptualized in different ways.

But no to the suggestion that matter can be observed without any conceptualization at all.

Yes. That's the working assumption.

if you were to say that all animals observe the same reality — goremand

Close, but not quite what I am saying. I am saying that each animal species (ants, birds, tigers, whatever) interpret the world the way each species does: ants will interpret the world in a certain way, birds in another manner, tigers the way tigers do, etc.

And of course, bats. Can't forget about them. :)

You may be attributing that, not me. I say they clearly see the things we call walls and trees, I'm not saying they see them as walls or trees. — Janus

They see something. What properties they attribute to these things we do not know.

So, it doesn't make sense to say - even if you admit that they don't see them as wall or trees - that this thing they see is in fact (mind-independently) a wall or a tree. It's not a mind-independent fact for us that walls and trees exist.

As I said before we see cats climbing trees not brick walls, birds perching in trees, not stopping and attempting to perch in midair. We see dogs trying to open doors, we see crows using sticks as tools to retrieve food and getting out of the way of oncoming vehicles. We don't see animals trying to walk through walls or birds flying into trees. There are countless examples. I don't know what else to say other than to ask why you don't think the examples I give suggest that we see the same things animals do. — Janus

And I keep replying that we are attributing walls, trees and brick walls to animals' cognition, WALLS, TREES and BRICK are concepts, not mind-independent things.

The fact that dogs try to come indoors or that cats walk on walls is nothing else than our attempt to make sense of what they do. Dogs push (or pull) something, they don't know it's a door. Cats walk on something; they have no concept of a wall.

The examples you suggest seem to me to be an anthropomorphizing of animal behavior.

I grant that there is something like concreteness or not being able to pass through things. But tress, doors and walls aren't things animals interact with, it's what we in our umwelt, interpret them to be doing.

I didn't mean to say that animals have conceptual access to microphysical structures, but that we know by observing their behavior that animals have perceptual access to the same things we do and if things are real microphysical structures then it follows that animals have perceptual access to microphysical structures, This does not mean that we or the animals have perceptual access to microphysical structures as microphysical structures but we both have access to them as macrophysical appearances. — Janus

I agree than neither we, nor other animals have access to microphysical structures. We have the advantage of "seeing" them through sophisticated experiments, or at least important parts of these structure.

We are stuck on the macrophysical issue. I don't think we have access to the same things. We, through concepts and perception do attribute identity to things - which require linguistic capacity (at least).

I don't think animals attribute too much to objects (not saying that you say they have concepts like we do). I think evidence suggests higher mammals can convey when there is prey, food or when it's mating season and the like.

But I don't see evidence that suggests they see the world in a similar way than we do, it seems to me based on what we know, they have very different experiences of the world - each subject to species-specific brain configuration.

I think it's rather deeper than that, but I'll leave it at that. — Wayfarer

Fair enough, we can pick it up some other time. I still think our areas of agreement are far more interesting than those areas we disagree.

Few people here have the respect and are merited by innate ideas after all. :cool:

As I understand, I asked what you meant by structure you told me:

"It's a general idea of form or configuration. Not qualia and shape is kind of abstract whereas structure suggest concreteness and boundedness (however loose). It could be thought of as a localised intensity of energetic bonding in a field that gives rise to chracteristic functions and interactions."

I replied by saying that I did not understand this as stated but guessed you could have meant a "microphysical structure".

Which you replied by asking: "Why not a microphysical thing? Must the physical be different than the metaphysical other than definitionally?"

I said I was not evaluating your claim in any manner, but merely wanted to know if the structure was microphysical. This then brought up a problem to my mind, namely that if we say there is a microphysical structure that exists which is common to all creatures, then there is a tension, which you anticipated by saying:

"I thought you were asking me to speculate as to what the structures we perceive as objects might be.It seems animals will not conceptualize structures in the ways we do or even conceptualize them at all. Perhaps I don't understand your question."

I agreed with this bold part, and I thought this meant we agreed on there being real microphysical things in the world.

But then I got confused when you said:

"OK cool it seems we agree. I think we and the other animals have access to the same basic structures."

Because for reasons you gave previously, animals can't access this microphysical structure.

In short, using Sellar's terminology, I am a realist when it comes to the "scientific image" (with important caveats), but am an idealist when it comes to the manifest image.

I don't know what part of idealism you know think holds true - if any of it. It seems to me you think qualia and other facets of the world are ideal, but others are real.

That's how I see it anyway.

What I explained is that it is the result of, a conclusion drawn from understanding the concept of matter. — Metaphysician Undercover

Who understands matter? What we have are theories of physics about matter in microphysical states. Once you enter biology, our understanding of matter decreases exponentially - we don't understand how matter could have the properties we experience in everyday life. That's lack of understanding.

That is because matter is a principle assumed to account for the apparently deterministic aspects of the world, i.e. temporal continuity, while mind and free will are things requiring exception to that, i.e. temporal discontinuity.

Matter cannot be configured in a way other than what is allowed for by determinist causation. This I believe is the importance of understanding the relation between "matter" and Newton's first law. Newton assigns to matter itself, a fundamental property, which is inertia, and this renders all material bodies as determined. So mind, which has the capacity to choose, cannot be a configuration of matter. — Metaphysician Undercover

Do you mean matter as in physics or matter as in everything that is? Because physics does not show determinism, it at best suggests probabilities, which are very foreign to our debates on free will.

If there is emergence - brute emergence, "magical emergence" - which I believe happens all the time, then there is no problem in mind arising from matter, any more than anything else arising from it.

It seems we are an impasse here for the time being. I propose to park the conversation here and we can pick it up in some other thread, maybe by then we could understand each other better,

But I suspect we agree on something like 70% of the main topics, that is, if you still maintain some agreement with some version of Kant (albeit modified), if not then we may have drifted apart, which is fine.

I'll leave the proposal for you to decide.

Because it's materialism, and I reject materialism. — Wayfarer

Because you equate it with scienticism. It does not need to be so equated.

If you reject the scientistic association, then many problems go away. The only remaining issue then, would be if matter came before mental properties, or if mental properties came before material ones.

that is, wherever there’s life, there’s also something like mind, even if it’s not conscious or sentient in the way we think of it. — Wayfarer

That's fine. I call the stuff that the world is made of "physical stuff" or matter, you can call it "energy" or "idea" if you wish. It could cause terminological issues down the line, but content wise, there's not much of a difference.

If so, then complex minds in higher organisms wouldn’t just be the product of matter—mind could also be understood as a causal factor. The fact that mind is not something that can be identified on the molecular level is not an argument against it - as everyone knows, identifying the physical correlates of consciousness is, famously, a very hard problem ;-) — Wayfarer

They could be correlative - maybe.

Yeah, the "hard problem" (which is misleading, imo) is real. Because our understanding is just way too to know how matter could lead to mind - Locke pointed that out many years ago, quite correctly as I see it.

It's something akin to asking yourself does a dog understand itself? Well, not very well. We know more about dogs that they do about themselves, as it were, and we still don't understand completely at all - far from it.

To understand how brain leads to mind would require exponentially more intelligence than we have. I just don't see why I have any reason to deny that experience comes from modified physical (world, immaterial, neutral, whatever you want to call it) stuff.

But that is a stipulation that mind is above matter. What does that mean? Why can't mind be a specific configuration of matter? Is there a principle in nature that prevents mind from arising from certain combinations of matter? Not that I know of.

I agree that, in very crucial respects, we don't know what matter is. We only know a very specific configuration of it - the rest are postulates to make sense of the world.

I thought you were asking me to speculate as to what the structures we perceive as objects might be. It seems animals will not conceptualize structures in the ways we do or even conceptualize them at all. Perhaps I don't understand your question. — Janus

I thought you were saying that all creatures had access to same basic structure. If so, then I was going to reply by saying what you just said "animals will not conceptualize structures in the way we do...".

If so - then I think we are on the same page on this specific topic. Which may be good or maybe it's problematic, I dunno. :cool:

Why not a microphysical thing? Must the physical be different than the metaphysical other than definitionally? — Janus

I was not evaluating your comment, I was asking if this structure is what you think is the same for all creatures - as I did not understand your specific description.

Sorry I overlooked this. I am not following.

It could be thought of as a localised intensity of energetic bonding in a field that gives rise to chracteristic functions and interactions. — Janus

So, some microphysical thing?

What is important to note though, is that materialism is reducible to a form of idealism, not vise versa. This assigns logical priority to idealism over materialism. — Metaphysician Undercover

If experience comes from organized matter, then it comes from the brain of certain organisms.

I don't see these terms as polar opposites. I'm a scientific realist and a manifest idealist: I believe the ordinary everyday world of tables and chairs are mind-dependent. I don't think physics is, despite it being formulated through minds, it still exists absent us.

The only way a strict separation is possible is if you assume that matter cannot be mental in any respect, or that mind is above matter, which is not coherent until someone says what matter is, and where it stops.