You're asking how sensing the tree produces the feelings you have. The answer is that the external effects from the tree fire nerve endings of various sorts which trigger other neurons, the collection of which, coupled with the feedback you get from your further interaction with it and your social environment, is what it is for you to experience seeing a tree.

What I'm not getting is why that isn't a satisfactory answer. Oddly though it seems as if were I to say "light hits the neurons on your occipital cortex and they turn brown", that would somehow satisfy you. But then who looks at the brown neurons and how? — Isaac

I mean, first off, in manifest reality, you need intentionality, you need to be in front of a tree for those effects to come into play. If you had no intentionality or "aboutness", there would be nothing to produce the effects, or being more accurate, there would be too many factors coming in to distinguish anything from anything else.

No, neurons turning brown or looking like trees wouldn't explain how the brain does what it does, you are correct. But I'm speaking of the mental, what you are seeing right now, as you read these letters and whatever examples come to mind as you think of a reply. You are saying that this is caused by neurons, I don't deny they play a crucial part. Ok, when someone loses functionality in Brocas area, they can't speak. So Broca's area causes speech or is intimately involved. But there's much more to speech than what can be accounted for by looking at Broca's area, or vision for that matter in the occipital cortex.

The issue would be how rich the reply is, given how little we understand about brains. There is much more complexity in manifest reality than what can be said by appealing to causes in the brain. There seems to be a massive gap in our knowledge when we go from the brain to our picture of the world.

Also "knowing a tree", "speaking of trees", "classifying trees" aren't explained by anything in current brain science. I can't be much clearer than this.

What would an answer to that request be like? I mean how would you know you've had such an answer. I could say - your occipital cortex starts a chain of neural firings which, on average, lead to reports consistent with what we describe as 'seeing a tree'. Why isn't that an answer, what's missing? — Isaac

The general idea would be, that by your reporting that neural firings in the occipital cortex are consistent with me seeing a tree, you haven't said how is it possible that neurons could possibly resemble or explain being in a state such as "seeing a tree".

Simply put: a neuron looks nothing like green or brown, it doesn't smell anything and by itself, it sees nothing. So there is a gap between quantity like number of neurons involved and location of brain module and experience.

I'm not denying that consciousness arises from the brain, it clearly must. I just don't think we know how it could be possible that it does, as is the case.

The difference is between experience and non-mental matter.

Though, to be fair, effects do things that go way beyond there cause. Water being the effect of interacting molecules goes beyond out theoretical descriptions of it, in terms of what we can do with water, how we interact with it, etc.

For the moment the traditional model will do. Nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, even prepositions we are too familiar with to properly question. So your choices are significant as being none of these.

Without further consulting the grammarian, what can be said of them? That they serve as linguistic lubricant, as function, process, structure, and without being part of the substantive meaning of the sentence. Part of the machinery.

More interesting, it seems, is the differences in the "rules" for understanding the two realms of mind-dependence and -independence. Existence itself of course a major pitfall and trap for many. — tim wood

I suspect something along these lines are correct in relation to entities, meaning such words "and", "but", don't tell things us about the world. Which is interesting and should highlight what you said, the mind-dependent character of words. They're important for sentence structure but of course, sentences and the world are two quite different things, or so it seems to me.

Existence is a major problem. The only property I can't think away from the world is extension. Everything else is very much subject to our mental architecture, specifically manifest, experiential qualities.

Aye! I think much of "manifest reality" isn't physical strictly speaking; as in you don't gain too much knowledge about a social institution from the thought that its office buildings are made of atoms. Much comes from the arrangement and interaction of things. I think there's more stuff in the scientific image than physics, eg the social sciences, neuroscience, genetics, engineering, anthropology. — fdrake

100,000%.

Sometimes in other forums, philosophy of mind sections are literally only about neuroscience. It should then be called brain philosophy, which is fine. But so far as I can see, current brain science says very, very, very little about the mind. Which is strange, admittedly. Still, if we "reduce" mind to brain, we lose out on almost everything.

I sometimes ask, in all sincerity: give me one example of how a brain state produces a qualitative state, such as seeing the sky or a tree. Nothing fancy. I'm not asking them to tell me how I'm able to see the universe through a telescope. They can't give one example. How is this philosophy of mind?

I think of ontologies as metaphysical tools. I envision my trusty tool box. I have a problem, I open it up and pull out the one that's most useful in that particular situation. Example - I'm an engineer, so in my work life; knowing things, knowing what I know, and knowing how well I know them is important. A scientific world view often works well for that. On the other hand, a scientific world view has significant weaknesses. It focuses our attention tightly and things tend to be left out. See the ongoing discussion of mysticism. — T Clark

That sounds very much like pragmatism, along the lines of William James.

The issue is what to do with entities that initially may appear to be of little use, such as speaking about Pegasus or Alchemy. Of course, one can reply by saying those are useful in certain contexts such as mythology and history, respectively. Then I'd only add, that while that makes sense, I'm skeptical of believing in innumerable contexts for every term, perhaps finding out how we organize such talk can help us see how we think a bit better. Or perhaps it's a waste of time.

Yes, we are often left to speaking about many areas of life in terms of mysticism. Alternatively we can read novels. Which is fine and nourishing and reassuring. I suppose my interests at the moment is giving visibility to knowledge or the manifest image, in a manner that is roughly intuitive. This often leads to discussions of phenomenology, clarifying a bit how different aspects of our consciousness interact with the world.

Inferring what exists from what we do seems backwards to me. Like "If you wanna know what exists, look at what people do!". But like... I wanna change what I do based on what I think. — fdrake

If we were to stick to that standard, we'd probably still be living in animism, or something along those lines. It's somewhat akin to that saying "you only see what you know." From that, it simply follows that if we don't know, we won't see.

You made some comments about the manifest and scientific image, in those terms commitment ontologies feed the manifest image into an ontology, whereas it seems philosophy when it's working well can be a bridge between the scientific and manifest image as well as a handmaiden in both domains. — fdrake

Yes, that's a noble goal. We still can't get rid of our common sense, like seeing the sun rising and falling, or thinking we are the the center of the universe, but now we know better. What's frustrating is when despite the enormous progress in physics, specifically in the quantum domain, we learn almost nothing about manifest reality. It's better than nothing though.

You seem to have a natural grasp for expressing these things in a simple and direct way that I envy. — tim wood

Thank you. It's the product of constantly being embarrassed by talking to people much smarter than me. And much conceptual anguish. All the time. :)

I find shitting on Deleuze from afar distasteful, what I found distasteful about the seminar - though it is wonderfully Deleuzian in form - was that Deleuze's metaphysics was being taken as simultaneously a metaphor and an explicans for tuber root branching processes. — fdrake

To be clear, I think Foucault is fine and Deleuze is quite creative, though I still think that some of the observations made by Sokal and Bricmont merit a reply. Deleuze is instrumental, for example, in the novels of Michael Cisco, who is totally unique and mind expanding. But I can't extend being charitable to Derrida or Lacan. I know others will strongly disagree, but it's just not for me.

But they both seem to be part of social customs, and they're both not real... So perhaps in some umbrella term way they both exist as social constructs! — fdrake

I think that is reasonable. I'd maybe switch around "real" and "existent", we could say Frodo is a real fictional entity, that is, you find him in Lord of the Rings as a character. But he is not an existent entity, not a person you could signal out as being Frodo from Lord of the Rings. I don't know enough about Santa Claus to say much about him, in terms of his origin story. But saying they are social constructs makes sense to me.

I think perhaps you're focussing on the statement and what entities it quantifies over and whether the nouns in it have referents. That's one way of interpreting existential commitment (a Quinean way), and you can find what someone's committed to from what statements they make ("to be is to be the value of a bound variable"). Another way is to imagine what must be the case for someone to believe what they do irrespective of the propositional form of the statement. Like when someone says "I do" in a wedding, that entails a host of things exist in a myriad of ways - like a partner, wedding as a social custom, romantic relationships, courtship, contracts, rituals... But none of those are quantified over in the text of the speech act. — fdrake

Yeah, I'd like to avoid commitment ontologies actually. What I think there is may change as I learn new things or change.

I'm more sympathetic to thinking that beliefs need not be propositional, although we need to speak about these things to get a better idea about them. At any one moment, we have a myriad of "dormant" beliefs, some which are possibly impossible to put adequately into words.

Are entities only the ones we can name, like river, phoenix or bed? What happens with such things like "and", "despite", "furthermore", "but" and such words. They don't imply entities. Yet I said I wanted to talk about things and not words.... Oh well...

They seem to have "earned" their place. One may have to take some care with what is then said of atoms as mind-independent entities, but care in all cases is necessary.

But everything is mind-dependent some may say. Or alternatively, mind-independent. To me at least this division seems fundamental. And it implies some constraints on possible claims. That is, it may be viewed as a reasonable game with reasonable rules. And people can play any game they like, but they just have to remember they're playing their own game and it may have nothing whatever to do with any reasonable game. — tim wood

I agree, this distinction is fundamental and it can help constrain us in some manner. If something is mind dependent, it seems to me that one is less constrained: one can add or subtract to an entity anything you deem reasonable, which other people may disagree with. Mind-independence, on the other hand, seems to follow from the evidence, we can't assign any arbitrary equations to particle physics.

And yes, what constitutes a reasonable game is very elastic. Someone like Rosenberg would play a game that only like three people follow, for example.

That leaves mind-dependent. Is X a member? If no mind then no X, then X is a member. A great trouble with many of the Xs is general confusion as to what they are. Truth, justice, God, seven, The America Way are very often considered, treated, discussed, even claimed to be, in the mind-independent category. Which is pigs and unicorns. — tim wood

I'm not following the "If no mind then no X, then X is a member".

I believe this could apply to say particles or cells. God, for those who believe in him. Seven seems to be mind-independent, somehow.

Not so much with "The American Way", that seems to me to belong to persons and their ideas. Absent all people, "The American Way" doesn't seem to have any meaning to me. Sure, you could say the same thing about atoms, and that's a hard problem, but a bit less obscure.

No doubt the membership of some things is tricky, but most of that difficulty resolved through the careful work of definition, meaning figuring out just what it is exactly one's thoughts are. Those, of course, subject to criticism. — tim wood

Which is quite paradoxical. We think we know what many of these terms and ideas mean, but as soon as we subject them to scrutiny, we find out we have much more to say than what we initially thought.

God doesn't exist vs God does exist but only as a social construct vs God does exist but only as an idea?

That's the kind of thing that depends on the weather and starting point, right? Questioning the question is utmost importance with ontology. — fdrake

It does. I'm far from confident in what I'm saying, I'm just trying things out. So let me pose to you the following question, given that all of this depends on the "starting point", what would you leave out in your
system? As an example that could frame the conversation, how would you deal with fictitious entities like Frodo or Santa Claus?

It's more than the things themselves strongly underdetermine how they are interpreted; so a large part of ontology is finding an appropriate angle of attack on what you're making an ontology of.

EG, imagine these parody paper titles:

Mereological nihilism and the impossibility of community action
The Rhizomatic Ontology Of Tuber Roots (this one's actually got real seminars on it, fuck)
Kant and the Impossibility of Experimental Science
The Irrelevance of Belief to Human Decision Making: propositional content from Aristotle to Gadamer.

The angle of attack on "what is there" strongly influences what is concluded about it. And that doesn't stop there being wrong answers, better answers, worse answers, irrelevant questions... — fdrake

I'm assuming The Ontology of Tuber Roots was discussed by some Deleuzian? :lol: One has to keep one's eye's open for the Paris Postmodernists, they come up with the fanciest of ideas.

Let's take that excellent classic, underrated Kant and the Impossibility of Experimental Science. Here things get tricky: how would the phrase after "Kant" form an entity in the world? "and the" don't seem to be entities, "impossibility" can be thought of obscurely such as a squared-circle or the like. "Experimental Science" on the other hand, seems to me to be a concept which we can apply by pointing to instances of it.

I get the point, that "impossibility of experimental science" doesn't make sense. But would the things discussed in such titles eventually lead to mental entities, concepts or what? Taken as titles, only one word in the title speaks of entities "tuber roots", as I understand them. Well, "Kant", "Aristotle" and "Gadamer" were persons, which I suppose are concepts (?) as well.

And apologies if this type of talk sounds totally crazy, confused or unintelligible, I want to see how other think these things out, if at all.

Very good OP, but I prefer the not so easy question: what is necessarily not there? (re: members of the empty set) — 180 Proof

Could you expand on that?

Like listing some examples, or describing how such an approach works, more or less.

...is actually driven by a different subject matter; the hows, the frames. The latter, IMO, is the appropriate level of discourse for ontology. — fdrake

That's fair. But would a framework of yours try to do away with certain postulates, or would you try to keep as many things as possible?

Bascially, who cares whether we say it exists or not, how it works is the important thing. EG, does someone who believes God exists as a social construct and myth disagree with a hardline atheist on the appropriate ontology for God?

Doctrinally, "What is there?" is answered by "How we imagine what there is". — fdrake

Well, we can speak of God, but he needn't exist: he'd be a fictitious entity for an atheist and the Supreme Being for a believer. Thus we could retain God in a manifest ontology, i.e. at least a mental construction.

Your answer is true, on a person by person basis. My initial reaction would be that of being careful not to do away with things, unless we can show such things to be of no use, which is admittedly a very broad goal. It would be nice to reach some agreement on this area, but it's extremely difficult, given how different we all are.

Why? It's symbol system with a grammar and axioms. That's language. Ask a mathematician. — Zophie

Saying math has a grammar, like English has a grammar, or French or Mandarin is to expand the word grammar a bit much, I think. I guess I'll have to ask a mathematician after all...

Yes, I merely need a list of every object you think does, can, or must exist. — Zophie

What's your ontology?

I think this varies by person. In my personal case, it has not been of much use. For you it seems to be different. Same with moral leaders.

I agree, truth is often useful. I don't understand you fully in the last part though. What do you mean by an obsession of Truth? Do you refer to liars like drug addicts? — FlaccidDoor

That was poorly phrased. All I meant was that most people throughout history have been wrong in there beliefs. They thought the there were many gods and through these, that's how the world works. If it rains it's because the gods are pleased, if it's dry the gods are angry, etc.

As we've progressed and left that type of thinking behind, we began having theories or sorts. Most of them have not been true, as applied to how the world works. We likely are in a similar boat in that, someday we might discover our theories are incomplete and that out beliefs are mistaken in some big manner.

Obsession with Truth meaning the final word on the subject, the absolute end all of questioning because we have the answer. There's always more to find out and discover.

Yes. Goodman took his own philosophy very seriously, maybe too much.

That's part of it, but he mentions that specific point in many places.

He also discuses how Hume concluded that Newton's greatest merit was that Newton "seemed to draw the veil from some of the mysteries of nature, he shewed at the same time the imperfections of the mechanical philosophy; and thereby restored [Nature’s] ultimate secrets to that obscurity, in which they ever did and ever will remain."

He talks about how Locke saw no contradiction in God "supperadding" thought to matter. He describes Russell's idea that Physics "seeks itself seeks only to discover "the causal skeleton of the world, [while studying] percepts only in there cognitive aspects; their other aspects lie outside its purview" - though we recognize their existence, at the highest grade of certainty in fact."

And much else. If these ideas sound familiar, then you probably read it. If not, whenever you want, I can send it to you.

Emergence meaning a totally new property arising from what went before. Some go as far as calling it radical emergence, which means that we have no idea how this happens in nature. Chomsky, for example, takes it as a given, as did Priestley.

Priestley was writing this as a reaction to Newton's work. So it's totally because of science that Priestley said what he said. And now we have quantum physics which goes way beyond anything Newton could have dreamed of. Again, this is well documented by Chomsky. I can send you the essay, if you like. It's extremely interesting, I think.

Newton was shocked that the matter he thought existed, is not that matter of which the world is made of. As he famously said:

''It is inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of something else which is not material, operate upon and affect other matter without mutual contact, as it must be, if gravitation in the sense of Epicurus, be essential and inherent in it.... That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it."

Notice he said "is not material" meaning mechanical. We have not recovered from that insight. Yet any scientist today will tell you that gravity is physical.

Arithmetical proofs, and logical arguments, and many of the other aspects of mental operations, are not phenomena, phenomena being 'appearance'.

I reacted against that other Darwin statement because it's classical materialism, 'the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile'. If that were true, then the same 'horrid doubt' should apply, because if to accept something purely on the basis of chemical necessity is to reject the sovereignity of reason. — Wayfarer

I wouldn't think about it that way. I don't see any contradiction between brain secreting thought and reason being sovereign. You can think of emergence, if that helps. I probably, a while back shared this quote to you, maybe not. I think Priestley has is correct when he says (this is taken from another thread):

"It is said that we can have no conception how sensation or thought can arise from matter, they being things so very different from it, and bearing no sort of resemblance to anything like figure or motion; which is all that can result from any modification of matter, or any operation upon it.…this is an argument which derives all its force from our ignorance.Different as are the properties of sensation and thought, from such as are usually ascribed to matter, they may, nevertheless, inhere in the same substance, unless we can shew them to be absolutely incompatible with one another.”... this argument, from our not being able to conceive how a thing can be, equally affects the immaterial system: for we have no more conception how the powers of sensation and thought can inhere in an immaterial, than in a material substance..."

(Italics mine)

"...there [is] in matter a capacity for affections as subtle and complex as any thing that we can affirm concerning those that have hitherto been called mental affections."

So I don't have a conception of matter that excludes thought at all. This plays no contradictory role for me when I speak about Platonism, for example.

Darwin also said

But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?
[To William Graham 3 July 1881] — Wayfarer

Sure. It's the phenomenon we are most intimately acquainted with, it's awesome. But I don't see how this quote contradicts his earlier point at all.

Quite a good story. And correct, or so it looks like to me. Thanks for sharing.

Dogs have cones, but do they have a "rainbow" of distinct colours? — bongo fury

We'd have to assume that what the science tells us about dog vision is accurate, in the sense that if we had some device put in our brains, that could simulate dog vision, we'd see as they see.

They can't see red, apparently: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/canine-corner/200810/can-dogs-see-colors.

Yes, paradoxical when set against his (seeming) eliminativism about mental entities (previous link). — bongo fury

It is. He was an empiricist of sorts. He even got so mad at Chomsky for believing in innateness that he stopped talking to him for life. And prior to that they were friends.

Hence it becomes the application of heuristics - Muddling along, if you prefer. The best that can be done is to try to do better each time.

Virtue ethics, then. It's about growing, becoming better. — Banno

Sure. If we commit ourselves to some extremely high moral standard, we are likely to fall short of it. This issue of looking to "moral leaders" and the like, is a big mistake. As you say, we can only try to be better, while acknowledging that in some respects, we will be way off the mark.

There is a very long conversation to be had here. I think Joseph Priestley made the correct observation when he said that:

"It is said that we can have no conception how sensation or thought can arise from matter, they being things so very different from it, and bearing no sort of resemblance to anything like figure or motion; which is all that can result from any modification of matter, or any operation upon it.…this is an argument which derives all its force from our ignorance. Different as are the properties of sensation and thought, from such as are usually ascribed to matter, they may, nevertheless, inhere in the same substance, unless we can shew them to be absolutely incompatible with one another.”... this argument, from our not being able to conceive how a thing can be, equally affects the immaterial system: for we have no more conception how the powers of sensation and thought can inhere in an immaterial, than in a material substance..."

(Italics mine)

"...there [is] in matter a capacity for affections as subtle and complex as any thing that we can affirm concerning those that have hitherto been called mental affections."

On this view, mind is matter. So there aren't thoughts as opposed to matter.

As for you later point, all the evidence so far shows that these types of phenomena don't happen, we can't manipulate objects just by thinking hard about them.

Morality is too complicated to base it on iron-clad rules. What we would do in one situation with some people - strangers - we wouldn't do with other people like family and friends. This generalizes to most cases.

The real problem is actually being in such a situation. We can speak all we want, but when it comes to action, it's a whole different story. If I had to guess, I'd blow up the fat man. I'd feel like utter crap for quite a long time, but I want to live and there are more people with me.

Goodman is fascinating, his Starmaking is very thought provoking to me, though I wouldn't go as far as Goodman does.

You are correct, innatism is not nuanced, I think, because so little is known. I don't see how one can get around it, unless one adopts a quasi Lockean or Humean approach to the mind. It's assumed to be true for all other animals: dogs, turtles, lions, etc. Why would we be the exception?

So my question is: Are truths useful? Aren't there falsehoods that are more useful? Is the truths that you pursue(d), if you pursue(d) them, useful? If they aren't useful, do you practice philosophy knowing that finding the truth is useless? Is usefulness the correct criteria to judge if we should pursue truth? — FlaccidDoor

This depends on the area of enquiry. In rational investigations, I'd say that people want to pursue truth or matters of fact, all the while keeping in mind that capital "t" Truth, may well be beyond our capacities as biological creatures.

The issue becomes difficult dealing with "ordinary life". There you need to consider context, situations, different persons and so on. In this domain, sometimes we need to lie, or be polite, or say half-truths and so on.

As with truth, so with usefulness. In enquiry, truth is often useful. In ordinary life, this depends on the person. I think it makes sense to have usefulness in mind, while keeping in mind that what's useful depends on your own interests. But any obsession with Truth, shouldn't arise, I don't think, we are likely to be wrong, as has been the case throughout history.

Yes. You could say philosophy attempts to problematize "the given". In clearer terms phycologists tend to work with certain assumptions, philosophy questions that.

There's also the problematic issue of science in that, since psychology deals with such complicated beings, there's much less theoretical depth for psychologists to investigate. One of the reasons I suspect physics is so successful is that it studies extremely simple structures in nature. What's a particle compared to a butterfly then compared to a person?

It's not that phycology can't be scientific, it clearly can. But if phycology were like physics, in terms of depth of explanation, none of us would have problems we'd just know what to do. But that's far from the case.

The different issues deserve separating. Happy to discuss the article. His internal definitions are confusing, and I'm not sure it's our fault. — bongo fury

I've read that article many times in the past, it was part of my thesis and yet I still have some problems with it, in that, I find that although I think he is correct that the word "red" does not refer to phenomenal, manifest experience, we assume that when such a word is used the other person understands us, and they usually do, as he admits.

We just can't prove that we are having the same experience. Then again, we can't prove almost anything. It's just a useful assumption about other people's experience. So I'm also confused, but I guess I like being confused at times.

Do you think the red type of internal sensation is determined innately, and/or independently of learning the word? — bongo fury

I know it was not issued to me, but I'd just like to say, that I think it's determined innately. I don't think learning the word tells us anything about the experience.

I'm glad you liked it. I find that it causes me some considerable mental anguish :rofl: It's like what the heck am I even talking about?

It's very hard to break away from common sense. But it's certainly fascinating.

:up:

You keep making good comments here. :)

I think consciousness is considered a difficult problem in philosophy because for hundreds of years it has proven impossible to explain how chemistry which is essentially nonexperiential produces the experience of "what it is like" to be someone — Enrique

You are correct, it is a hard problem. There are others too, mentioned by smart people:

As Darwin said: "Why is thought, being a secretion of the brain, more wonderful than gravity, a property of matter? It is our arrogance, it is our admiration of ourselves…"
— Charles Darwin

Or Schopenahuer: "The tendency to gravity in the stone is precisely as inexplicable as is thinking in the human brain, and so on this score, we could also infer a spirit in the stone. Therefore to these disputants [between 'spiritualists' and 'materialists'] I would say: you think you know a dead matter, that is, one that is completely passive and devoid of properties, because you imagine you really understand everything that you are able to reduce to mechanical effect. But… you are unable to reduce them… If matter can fall to earth without you knowing why, so can it also think without you knowing why… If your dead and purely passive matter can as heaviness gravitate, or as electricity attract, repel, and emit spark, so too as brain pulp can it think."

Finally Chomsky: "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."

That is my question I ask to all scholars who acknowledge science as the final truth?

How can you differentiate the reality of the external (World) and the internal (In your mind)? Is science able to discriminate the two? And what evidence must we search for to discriminate the two?

To answer these questions will validate scientific finding without doubt.

It’s a paradox that I struggle with in my mind and why I am on this forum. — SteveMinjares

The goal of science, or one of the goals, is to be able to describe what happens when no human being is around. It's far from trivial, being able to disentangle what belongs "out there" as opposed to "in here", there may be no neat cut-off point in this respect.

I suspect the more math intensive something is, the less it corresponds to our own representation of the world. When we apply numbers to things in the world, what we seem to be doing is describing some structure and not what's "inside the structure". Russell talk about this, though the doctrine tends to be called "epistemic structural realism".

Why this seems to be true, as opposed to something else is not well known, so far as I've been able to see. It's one of the hardest questions of them all.

It seemed to me that McFadden's article and your explication were both based on the idea that we need some sort of special explanation for consciousness. That, for me, is just another way of describing the "hard problem." Maybe I misunderstood. — T Clark

No, I'm not convinced either that physics will tell us much about consciousness. But, I could be wrong so I like to follow different arguments, in so far as I can roughly understand them. I don't propose to have any answer, and what you suggest, in terms of emergence and biology, rings true to me.

I believe that reality is a function of an external universe of some sort processed through our particular human bodies and minds. If that's true, is it possible for us to know, understand, perceive anything outside those limits? — T Clark

Interesting. We have essentially the exact same "hard problem". I frame it in terms of "things in themselves", but it's the same problem, in essence.

I must admit, it don't get the whole "hard problem of consciousness" thing. For me, consciousness appears to be an emergent phenomena that arises through the interaction of physical and biological processes in the same way that life arises from chemistry. What's the big deal? — T Clark

I tend to agree very much with that view.

I only would add that I think there are many hard problems: gravity, life, matter, etc.

You don't have a personal "hard problem" in philosophy, meaning a question that is particularly difficult that you'd like to understand?

Not yet, though researchers will find ingenious ways to accomplish it. — Enrique

Perhaps. But it would make more sense to try and establish how other people have experience first. We take it for granted, but we can't find a way to test it, i.e. I can't get into your or anybody else's head. I

The elements of our frameworks (in this case verbs, sentences and whatever else) are not particularly relevant for their comparative analysis; I can just simply define them as a set, or a set of functions perhaps, and then eventually we would be speaking the same language -- a mathematical one -- in which eventually my arguments become sufficiently acceptable. — Zophie

Sure, you can do that. It's not to imply that math and language don't have anything in common. We all have to use language to some extent to get around. But math must involve some separate cognitive faculties than language use as in, doing some technical math work need not involve ordinary language at that level of technicality. Of course, when speaking to other people, or to a general audience, natural language enters.

I don't happen to know your ontology — Zophie

Ah. The easy question. :) At a first instance it makes sense to me to distinguish manifest ontology from scientific ontology. Manifest ontology would include "everything". As for a scientific ontology, that's really hard. Either one can accept that whatever science says is what there is, or one can be agnostic. Or I could bite the bullet and say that I think Schopenhauer is more or less correct and say that everything is a manifestation of will, which is what I gravitate to.

(Aside: Food science is a thing. :D) — Zophie

It sure is.

Saying "that person has cooking down to a science" is also perfectly fine, as a way of speaking informally.

Sure. Even if AI may not explain human intelligence, who knows what might happen as we continue developing technology? In either case we still discover something new.

What better explanation for qualia than the same wave synthesis mechanism that produces a visible spectrum? Solves the biochemistry to qualia translation problem rather simply: most matter has qualialike features at a very basic level. — Enrique

I can't go too deeply into technical matters, cause I'll get lost. So I'll try to keep it fairly basic, if that's OK with you. I can see the attractive appeal of linking "wave synthesis mechanism that produces a visible spectrum", but this presents several issues, quite apart from what mechanisms may be involved in such an act.

One would be that by staying at the visible spectrum, we are putting aside non-visual qualia, such as sound and taste. It's quite hard, if not impossible, to try and figure out how what we hear resembles anything in nature. With sight, the issue seems to be easier (but maybe it is not): the color red resembles that apple I see.

So what mechanism would have to be invoked that solves the problem of non-visual qualia?

I'm guessing that a bird's brain generates qualitativity in much the same way as our rather closely related human brains - emf/superposition hybridizing within a coordination of lobes - though the specifics of biochemistry are of course somewhat different. — Enrique

I think this could very well be plausible. Of course, we have no way of testing this, but there appears to be no logical contradiction here. Self consciousness, however, is particularly sophisticated with human beings. It brings forth, to my mind, significantly more complexity than experience by itself, which is also very hard to grasp theoretically.