1. There is something it is like to be a bat.

2. However much I learn about the objective world I can never know what it is like to be a bat.

3. Therefore there is something in reality that is outside of the objective world. — Aoife Jones

1) Suppose there is something that "it is like to be" in general. Now the question can be framed: what's it like to be you? Can you say what this consists of?

When asked this question, I go kind of blank. That's way too hard a question to answer. I think I can tell you in a vague and general sense, what it's like to be sad or happy or confused. But I couldn't tell you what it's like to be me. And I believe in the reality of consciousness fully.

2) This is true, because the question is not well phrased. You can ask "do bats exist?" or "are bats conscious" and related question. But if you can't say what it's like to be you, it is hard to make sense of what it could be like to be a bat.

3) It doesn't follow. The issue of "internal" and "external" is quite slippery. In one sense, everything that isn't your immediate consciousness is "outside of you". So the computer screen you are looking at right now is part of what's called "external" to you.

Another option would be to say what's external from a human being is likely what the sciences describe, specifically physics. In this sense a bat or a computer or anything else in ordinary experience is internal and not part of the mind-independent world.

It's tricky.

some of that not too bad — tim wood

Lucy Allais' Manifest Reality is so, so, so good. :starstruck:

But can it be said that the ordinary daily struggle for survival really is about acting in bad faith?

If we accept the Theory of Evolution, and with it, the idea of the evolutionary struggle for suvival, and along with that, Social Darwinism, then doing whatever one can in order to get the upper hand isn't acting in bad faith anymore. It's a necessity and it's normal. — baker

It's a bit complicated. If the person is tricking another person for sake of power, it's not good. On the other hand, some people tend to believe almost anything, so they're getting what they seek.

But knowingly bamboozling someone feels off and can also be quite dangerous leading to cults and the like.

The whole Social Darwinism is one angle in which to interpret the theory, there are others, such as Kropotkin's idea of "mutual aid", which is at its most basic: you help me, I'll help you, we all benefit as much as possible given what we have. This type of framework, as well as evidence given to support such claims, is given by John Hands' in his magisterial Cosmosapiens.

Yes. It's takes a while for cognitive biases to develop and to become firm. The man who cut in front of me in the waiting line said, among other things, "Who do you think you are?!" I'm guessing he operated from the bias that he's not going to allow a person visibly younger than himself and a woman at that tell him "how things really are". I never stood a chance. Showing him that there were still items on the counter from the customer before me was irrelevant — baker

Damn.

Cases such as these, besides being annoying, are intriguing in that one would think a person with such an attitude would've encountered people telling him to calm down and confronting him for having such beliefs. It's just very hard to navigate these issues....

He sure is justified. But I'd like to note that he may be the first to explicitly postulate the noumenon, he was not the first one to express our inability to know "things in themselves". This essay by Arthur Lovejoy is suggestive, but it should be taken with a grain of salt.

He was apparently very Anti-German, why this is so, is not clear. The most interesting pages are these ones, to me anyway:

https://archive.org/details/essaysphilosoph00unknuoft/page/272/mode/2up

I very much belong to a roughly Kantian-Schopenhaurian line of thinking, but Cudworth should be noted too.

I think the biggest battle is the one we fight with our own preconceptions. The fact that background beliefs become pre-judicative makes them very resistant to excavation. — Pantagruel

And that's the big problem. Given how much time we may invest in a certain way of thinking that adopts certain belief sets, how are we going to discern when it is worth un-attaching ourselves to these beliefs, taking into consideration how much more time and effort is required to readjust ourselves? I think the younger we are, the easier it is to go through such big changes - not that it's easy in that case either.

But the more years accumulate, the more difficult it's going to be to change as you've spent more time with your beliefs while not yet seeing a good reason to abandon them.

And perhaps that's recreational? I mean it doesn't give you a living wage most of the time, but it sustains you, no? It lets you keep going, it imbues the remainder of life with a significance and impact that it may not have had otherwise. It seems to me, if you've got the temperament, philosophy is very close to meaning of life stuff — fdrake

:100:

Still, there must be a spectrum of types of belief and I think, if we excavate deeply enough, it may be possible for anyone to reach the point at which we are no longer believing something, but only wishing to believe it. Do I really believe in that the essence of my consciousness is a transcendental entity, or do I only wish — Pantagruel

Ah. I think I understand now what you have in mind.

Honestly? We would like to think that we are rational, open-minded people and that if some evidence comes along showing that one or several of our deeply felt beliefs are wrong, we would not have a choice but to change accordingly. Perhaps this is the case in some instances.

But I think we tend to follow thought patterns or traditions that we tend to find attractive or useful or meaningful in some manner or other. In this deep sense, I'm much more skeptical. It's not as if constantly having to change our deepest intuitions, values or traditions is easy or even in some cases desirable. It takes time and commitment to reach one's views in these matters.

A good, liberal press, stood back and chewed their nails. They should have stood up on their hind legs. Credibility is a strange thing: hard to earn, easy to lose, and even harder to get back. — James Riley

That's true. It's not easy to find sources one believes to be reliable, but with some looking around it's achievable. Bias is probably impossible to avoid and that's not necessarily a bad thing, I don't think.

Would my absence have meant shit to anyone, including me? The answer, of course, is a resounding NO! In fact, the lack of jet trails in the sky would possibly have been the only thing I noticed, and that would have been a good thing. So natural should be such a state, that maybe I would not have even noticed that. — James Riley

Also true. But then we could've had a similar attitude to WWII, Vietnam, heck, even events in Ancient Greece. There's nothing wrong with not caring much or finding it less useful or valuable. But are such events important? I'd be hard to argue otherwise.

Too each his own, I reckon. — James Riley

That's what really matters at bottom.

I mean if you find something interesting or important and other people do not, what can you say aside from platitudes: "I think learning how we got here is Important", "We should be concerned about Global Warming or Nuclear Wars or wars in general." (?)

But as you said to each his own. It would be boring if we all agreed on everything or had the exact same interests.

The question is, is there a difference in the subjective experience of the believer who tends to believe in true beliefs, versus one who tends to believe in false beliefs? Is someone who believes in false beliefs guilty of the sin of bad-faith, that is of believing something which he knows at some level to be not worthy of belief? — Pantagruel

A very good question. To answer your first question, we'd have to be aware that we currently have no false beliefs or thoughts. I'd think that it is incredibly unlikely that we currently don't have (at least) many false beliefs. Given that it's very likely that we do have false beliefs, I don't think that there is subjectively any difference between having a false belief or a true one.

A different question is if someone knows or is aware that they are bamboozling someone on purpose. In these cases you can say it's bad faith.

Not if philosophizing/reading/writing/lecturing is what you are. In that case, your life might be in order. At least as far as we can, considering we are human. — James Riley

Excellent point.

For example, I read several papers every morning. Why? To stay informed about what's happening in the world. I consider that important. I often think about it. But so often that's the extent of it -- it has taken up my time, and has no effect on my life otherwise. I don't write about it or discuss it with others in any way, I take no action to change any of it (nor can I, most of the time), and so I often wonder whether this is the best use of my time. — Xtrix

I do the same thing and feel somewhat similar. But you answered your own "wonder": "To stay informed about what's happening in the world."

"I consider that important." It is.

Now let's turn that around: only do those things that have an effect on your life, using whatever metric you think fulfills that goal. I assume this means, focus on family, work, exercise and the like, but put aside the world and "philosophy."

Would you be happier or more satisfied?

As for me if, If lose philosophy, novels, music and news, I don't think life would be worth much to me. To some, all these aspects could be considered impractical. Then most excellent to impracticality. :)

I see your perspective on being lost in abstract thought. On the other hand, we are gifted in having the capacity to think as elaborately as we do. It's one of the aspects that makes us most unique. To not engage with it some manner, would be a bit sad, I think.

We are here on some cosmic fluke. To try and not engage with this miracle would be "worse than a crime, it would be a mistake."

Are we Sisyphus? Are anti-natalists Sisyphus? — T Clark

:chin:

Reason seems like a very complicated thing to postulate.

The most common form of life are single celled organisms. If anything, reason could be considered a dangerous thing to have: you either react quickly, or you die.

"Cruel" tends to imply suffering of some kind. But if forced to choose between a thermostat and a person, I wouldn't see the problem in choosing at all. Likewise between a thermostat and a dog or a bird or a lizard.

If you then ask if I had to choose between thermostat or a silver coin, I couldn't make a distinction. I'm sure someone would argue they have equal value.

At least that's how consciousness seems to me. And sure, I'm almost certainly espousing some kind of human exceptionalism. But I'm human, or so I think.

He has received strong criticism from his peers and has not addressed any of them yet. I wouldn't get my hopes up about geometric unity.
Timothy Nguyen for example has pointed out some major issues with Weinstein's GU. — emancipate

He can always say "they misunderstood/misconstrued" my work. I think some of the things he discusses are interesting, but some of what he says in relation to politics specifically is quite silly. In either case, I can't understand the math. But as you point out, if many serious mathematicians think it's mistaken, then it's probably mistaken.

So I'm not a fan or not a fan.

I'll take a look at Nguyen's site. Thanks for letting me know. :up:

IMO, we are great at using the word in ordinary life. Philosophers tie themselves in knots when they try to pin down an official or absolute meaning, which is like catching the wind in a net. — j0e

Absolutely. It's hard not to confuse the words we use with the things we are talking about.

As for Geometric Unity, I'm clueless. — jgill

Hah. So no one can actually say if Weinstein is being legit here with his arguments. That's odd of him, I'd think he would want to let other people see his work even if outside academia...

Incidentally, you might think peer review certifies results that are published, but in math at least if what's being published is not of popular interest in mathematical circles you really can't be sure of complete accuracy. — jgill

I can only imagine how hard some of those equations and problems can become.

Oh well. I suppose there's much left to study that's not math. ;)

I'll have to talk to @jgill sometime.

You're a mathematician? I'm envious.

I know that Weinstein thinks highly of Anthony Garrett Lissi, calls him his "rival". Apparently Lissi takes Weinstein seriously, though they disagree on fundamental issues in physics.

I know nothing of math, so I cannot judge any of this.

↪Manuel I see it as one coin with two faces .. a diamond with many facets ... a terrain with many paths / maps ... (re: Complementarity, plurality, irreality – "the many" aspects of "the one") — 180 Proof

That's my type of language. :cool:

That's one way to think about it. It's curious that even if we want a single property, we can't escape having to postulate two.

I don't think that there are any easy answers, even with the help of neuroscience. — Jack Cummins

I very much agree. It would be boring if it were easy!

According to the theory of living systems, mind is not a thing but a process_ the very process of life. In other words, the organizing activity of living systems, at all levels of life, is mental activity. The interactions of a living organism_ plant, animal, or human_ with its environment are cognitive, or mental interactions. Thus life and cognition become inseparably connected. Mind_ or, more accurately, mental process is imminent in matter at all levels of life.'

I am not saying that this solves the problem, but I find what he is saying to be helpful. — Jack Cummins

That's sensible and likely on track. Not only based on the word he uses "process", but it reminds me of Whitehead to an extent. Based on what you quote there, that still leaves room for non-mental being. If life "plant, animal, or human" are mental activity, what do we do with rocks and rivers? We still have non-mental being.

But I hadn't heard of Capra before, I'll have to check him out. Thanks for the recommendation. :)

↪Manuel Hypothetically, if it's unfair to say a thermostat in an activated and autonomous state is really analogous to an organism in a vital and conscious state, then by what reason are either vitality or consciousness not 'merely verbal' conceptual expressions of situated human exceptionalism? — Zophie

Well I can't express myself in this context absent words. Sure, I could use memes or emoticons but that would be a little hard.

Permit me to dramatize the situation a bit, to make the issue vivid: the difference between smashing a thermostat and killing a person in relation to consciousness doesn't look merely verbal nor a case of human exceptionalism.

Dual-aspect monism. There's only physical stuff with mental and non-mental components.

I'd like to get to one property, for the sake of parsimony. But I'm unable to do it.

As applied to the world? That's undoubtedly the case.

However, the issue of there being two properties as opposed one seems substantive.

I don't.

Nevertheless, I have different ways of considering the situation. You could be an AI and you'd be, by far, the smartest AI I've ever seen. Or, you could be a person, like other people I know in real life, who also use computers to do many things, including, writing in forums.

I could be an AI. But before I ever heard of AI or anything of this sort, I knew I was a person, like anyone else. We could then discuss the peculiarities of the word "know" and not go very far.

But you could also be a figment of my imagination or I one of yours. Maybe but unlikely.

Substance dualism or property dualism? I can understand not wanting substance dualism.

I personally don't see how one can get around property dualism, unless one is an eliminativist of sorts.

Really? Why would you want to lose consciousness? Life would be very boring...

So this is how Sisyphus felt? As the great American philosopher once said "That must be exhausting."

The problem is that the word "physicalism" tends to imply something like physicSalism. This need not follow. Mind is a physical phenomena and so is qualia. Unless someone can give a good reason as to why mind cannot be physical.

But if someone is uncomfortable with physicalism, they can use "neutral monism". If that's also problematic, one could use Peirce's "objective idealism": matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws.

All else failing, you can just use "monism", if you are one.

When talking about Newton's great achievements, Hume observed that:

"In Newton this island may boast of having produced the greatest and rarest genius that ever arose for the ornament and instruction of the species. Cautious in admitting no principles but such as were founded on experiment; but resolute to adopt every such principle, however new or unusual: From modesty, ignorant of his superiority above the rest of mankind; and thence, less careful to accommodate his reasonings to common apprehensions: More anxious to merit than acquire fame: He was from these causes long unknown to the world; but his reputation at last broke out with a lustre, which scarcely any writer, during his own lifetime, had ever before attained.

While Newton seemed to draw off the veil from some of the mysteries of nature, he shewed at the same time the imperfections of the mechanical philosophy; and thereby restored her ultimate secrets to that obscurity, in which they ever did and ever will remain."

[Italics mine]

So, who knows?

Is this more antinatalism?

Interesting answers. Thanks for sharing. :)

I don't know if videos are allowed instead of entire arguments, but I think this 7 minute (or 3:30 if you go double the speed :D) clip presents the two sides of the argument rather well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSQwBEL4mfQ

If it's not adequate, please delete.

What I think an important distinction people often miss in these discussions is the map and the terrain. A lot of it may come down to "what" exactly are properties. If mental states have properties like a photon or a gluon has properties, that would be an odd conclusion because that is saying mentality is just a brute fact of existence, quite the opposite of what materialist conceptions would like to think. Thus, often materialists unintentionality fall into ontologies that posit mentality as somehow fundamental. — schopenhauer1

I think you raise quite an interesting point. That's an open question, does matter, at the fundamental level have mental properties? We are aware of matter having mental properties, when modified in certain ways in some biological creatures, especially us, but we don't seem to detect it in physics.

But then, what we take to be a fundamental feature or property of the mental, consciousness, is not fundamental after all, it could be. It's hard to make sense of such a proposition.

On the other hand, it could be an emergent phenomenon, not found in the "lower levels". If it is, it's also hard to make sense of that. In either case, what you point out is problematic to solve, if at all possible.

The last book my dear departed mother gave me, as a Christmas present, almost 20 years ago, was Steve Pinker's The Blank Slate. I'm not at all disposed towards Pinker's philosophical attitude, but he has many interesting things to say about linguistics and evolution. — Wayfarer

I read part of that a while ago, I forgot much of it, but the little I remember was suggestive and I think proves the point of the title of the book. I have read The Language Instinct and The Stuff of Thought. I'll have to go back to that one. The chapter in The Stuff of Thought called Cleaving the Air is quite interesting: showing language in a quasi-Kantian perspective. How correct this is in terms of scientific evidence, I can't judge, but it sounds persuasive.

Myself, I feel that evolutionary explanations are only part of the picture. It seems obvious to me that infants are born with all kinds of proclivities, talents, dispositions, inclinations, and so on, and I don't know how much of a grasp science has on all that, or whether it all can be explained in terms of evolution and genetics. — Wayfarer

Yes, I share those exact same intuitions. This is very likely imbedded in our genetic code, though how it happens so far is kind of mysterious. Of course, if you take it that "this happens because of genes and evolution", that's not saying too much, I don't think.

Not that I'm saying I have a better theory, other than some vague sense of their being a collective consciousness of some kind, that takes birth in such forms. But I would never try and persuade anyone of the truth of such an idea. — Wayfarer

Hume thought that human creativity was beyond our scope of understanding. I've been learning the hard way that these types of "rationalistic idealisms" look like total hand-waving and maybe even irrational. Oh well.

But again, I'm rather skeptical that it is only a matter of biology. Actually Chomsky has also written on this, Why Only Us? co-authored with Robert Berwick. I'm meaning to read that, but there's about ten thousand books I'm meaning to read. At least Chomsky approaches it with a satisfactorily awed appreciation, in my view. — Wayfarer

Yes. I'm in the same boat in terms of reading. Chomsky thought Ralph Cudworth had more interesting things to say about cognitive structure than Kant. Cudworth's an interesting case. He speaks of "native and domestic" ideas. But he is not well known at all.

So Plato's meno, Kant - anything else come to mind? This type of tradition is sadly not as active as I would like.

What kind of argument is that? It amounts to nothing more than "if you don't see things the way I do there's nothing to say". Well then I have to ask what exactly you thought you were going to get out of posting on a public forum? — Isaac

What I am looking for? Many things. Mostly ideas connected with innatism and strands of rationalistic idealism, I'm interested in that so I'd like to find more literature on it. Politics too, specifically international relations, would like to find more sources I have not been able to find. I'm also interested in seeing how other people think. I also find people's differing ethical views quite illuminating.

Again, what reading have you done on object permanence to be able to judge what it does and does not have to say? — Isaac

I've read some of it. It's intriguing to find out when a baby gets these intuitions and the variety they may have among them in terms of what's the upper limit for gaining these capacities.

Why? — Isaac

Concepts, our common sense intuitions arise from our genetic makeup, somehow, which is why, aside from philosophical discussions of language, there are no real disputes as to what trees or streetlamps or statues are. These are innate. When it comes to science, the kind of thing you're studying, there you do need to figure out what's relevant, what's not relevant to a particular study.

That takes considerable effort as you know, so it would make no sense to say that coming up with scientific theories is completely innate. If it were, it stand to reason we would already know how the world works, mind independently.

Nope, it's those exact claims I'm disputing. — Isaac

I don't think we are going to proceed much more here. It's equivalent to trying to show a determinist we have free will or vice versa. Or trying to argue with a materialist that idealism is true.

This has veered way off the OP. Which was for people to discuss what they think there is.

Hence the necessity of Platonic realism to the natural sciences. — Wayfarer

This is highlighted to some extent by Colin McGinn in his Inborn Knowledge: The Mystery Within.

I was wondering, which contemporary philosophers speak of this kind of thing, that is a-priori knowledge. Math and logic surely are a-priori, but I suspect even more may be a-priori than what we initially may think to be the case. Sure, we need contact with the world to activate our or nourish our innate capacities, but our exposure to the world is too brief to account for concepts based on learning.

How do you think about these things?

If you can't already tell we have will, there's nothing I can say that will make you believe that we do. I thought you were studying free will, not the "sensation that you have chosen to do so".

Object permanence highlights the point that was already obvious to people like Locke. It doesn't tell you how it arises, nor why we have it. You can call that "saying something" if you wish.

If statues and trees and everything else were subject to "learning", we would still be debating what they are.

I said:

"the complexity of manifest reality cannot be explained by neuroscience, we simply know way too little."

"brain science says very, very, very little about the mind"

Also "knowing a tree", "speaking of trees", "classifying trees" aren't explained by anything in current brain science.

I said that physics says virtually nothing about the mind.

Now you are mis-interpreting me.

By all means, continue with neuroscience and physics. I'm not stopping you.

Sorry for interrupting your conversation here.

I have to leave soon, it's way too late where I'm at. Nevertheless, I'd really like to continue talking about your ideas on this type of philosophy: it's the most interesting to me. I think, despite some differences we may have, they're insignificant given on what we agree.

I've got to pick your mind on many topics. So I guess I'll try to be around on one day that you'll be here for an hour or so - not that I need an hour to talk, but enough time to clear some things up.

Have a good one.

For what it's worth, 'proposition' is my preferred neutral unit. Information is too well-defined. — Zophie

I think it could potentially lead to problems, in that "information" could be taken to imply a person being informed as well as talking about books containing more information than other books. Maybe? But it's slippery.

Propositions are good. :)