What I should have said from the outset, is that I'm essentially formulating Priestley, Galen Strawson and Chomsky in slightly different terms, but the main point is, is that everything is physical. The brain is modified physical stuff, the universe is physical and so are the creatures within it. That is, if we are going to refer to the thing out there, and use a word to describe it, then it seems to me that "physical" is a good word to use.

I wouldn't say that the term "mental" is just as good, if we are simply going to use one term to refer to the whole of reality. Why not? Because I don't believe that everything is mental, or depends on mind, such that even if human being disappeared, nothing would remain in the world. I don't think that is the case. By using "physical" in the way Strawson does, it serves to highlight the ignorance we have of the nature of physical reality. But we are acquainted with the experiential character of consciousness better than anything else in the world, this is a given.

But I would also say that consciousness always presents itself to us in a certain way. We do not know its nature apart from experience, or how it comes about. I don't think experience is all there is to consciousness, one needs a brain too as well as something for the consciousness to react to. Schopenhauer argued, perhaps plausibly, that the nature of the world is will, consciousness does not show the nature of the world "in itself" - for him - but it helps us approximate what it could be, which in his case was "will". With consciousness and the aid of the intellect, we gain some understanding of it, but its nature in itself, we do not know, though again, will is the closest approximation we have.

It seems to me that although it is very hard to argue about what type of aesthetic activity constitutes something as being more "objective" relative to another aesthetic activity, some very general things can be said here, although they are quite broad.

Given that we are constituted the way we are, there must be aesthetic activities, in principle, that could exist that we could not appreciate, in the same way a Bonobo won't stare at Picasso or Kandinsky. We even have interesting cases in our ordinary lives: we may like certain genre's of music. But then we hear something on the radio, and it sounds like total noise and maybe even gibberish. I don't think it's the case that in all musical styles we don't appreciate, it's only because of a lack of exposure that we don't understand it. This is sometimes the case, but far from always.

But from saying this, to arguing that, for example, Mozart is better than The Beatles or that Pollock is inferior to Van Gogh, is practically impossible, however strong we may feel about a specific case.

Reminds me of Raymond Tallis' On Time and Lamentation: Reflections on Transience to a large extent. That constructive project you describe is quite coherent, it even reminds me of some aspects of Whitehead as well. And Husserl, under this interpretation, would be quite right in that our structures and constructions of the world, under the guise of something like a natural attitude, simply cannot be explained in the terms used by science.

I only want to highlight that it can be misleading to use "physical" in contemporary philosophy and science, as it tends to have connotations related to scientism and the idea that everything will, one day, be explainable from such a framework. If that's what "physical" is used as, then that's not the physical the pertains to nature. Because consciousness is the most certain aspect we have of physical reality, and it certainly isn't an illusion.

It's strange that some people insist on attempting to do reduction in science. It makes no sense. And in this respect Husserl, I strongly suspect, would be appalled that someone like Dennett or the Churchlands are taken seriously.

Yes. We'll probably not find much by way of agreement here. I don't think metaphysical dualism is tenable, maybe a kind of dual aspect epistemic dualism at most, but I'm unsure about that.

Physicalism, as is it commonly used today, means whatever science (especially physics, but not exclusively) call tell us about things, though I think using that word is misleading. I think science, though without a doubt our greatest intellectual achievement, is quite limited in terms of what it can give insight to. In this respect "physicSalism" tells us almost nothing about human beings.

I think, like Russell, Strawson, Schopenhauer, etc., that consciousness is the phenomena in nature we are most acquainted with out of everything, it's rich, vivid, extremely sophisticated and complex. Dennett denies qualia - that's insane. It's totally irrational to me to even consider this view.

As for emergence, our disagreement is plain. I think it's something that happens in nature, and we have no idea how it happens, another mystery. One of many.

Well, can "physical laws" say anything about psychology or literature or even the consciousness of a dog? Yet it seems to me that psychology and dogs are physical phenomena, and the laws of physics work quite well, in the domain where they can be applied, which is limited.

By saying "mental", I'm following Galen Strawson here, we merely want to say that within physical reality, which encompasses all reality, we are focusing on the mental aspects of the physical, instead of the chemical aspects. This emphatically is not "eliminitavism", or anything like that, the physical is not physics, it's everything. Which is to say that the physical is much stranger than what we initially suppose.

You'd need to explain why there needs to be something else besides the physical. So I don't see any inconsistency here.

That depends on if you think consciousness emerges, or if it's there at the beginning, which would be panpsychism. I don't find panpsychism convincing, although it of course is interesting.

I think it makes more sense to consider it as a part of a system of organized matter, when this organized matter perishes, so too does consciousness. This of course makes use of the idea of emergence, which I think applies to many phenomena in nature.

Even if there are elements of consciousness in the basic stuff of the universe, this doesn't apply to states such as dreamless sleep, or whatever "state" we were in prior to birth. So even if consciousness is fundamental, it doesn't explain absence of consciousness in many circumstances.

Sure intentionality is mental, but the mental is physical, no mental property suggest dualism at all, it only highlights ignorance. Our physical laws are incomplete, and it could be that, as they currently stand, they can't say much about consciousness and maybe they never will. But again, I don't see what's analogous to gravity or electromagnetism in nature either. We are simply talking about different aspects of nature.

How are they different in kind? It's not at all clear to me. We always presuppose intentionality, true, but it's all we have. So when we analyze gravity, magnetism and so forth, whatever behavior they may exhibit absent our framework of understanding (if there are any), we don't know. But it's still possible, that gravity and so forth do things we can't perceive. So if you say intentionality is something not found in all these other properties, we can't say more, because there's nothing to compare it to.

In other words, we can't compare consciousness with anything else, but we cannot compare gravity to anything else either. Is there an analogue in nature to any of these fundamental properties? I wouldn't know what such an argument would amount to. To be clear, I'm not denying the complexity of consciousness, but our bafflement in relation to it is relative to our nature.

And if you look at the history of gravity, as explained say, in Chomsky's What Kind of Creatures Are We?, you'll see that even Newton, and many of his distinguished contemporaries, were completely baffled about the properties of gravity. Newton even 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. 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." (added emphasis mine)

The thing is, we've accepted that we don't understand gravity, and simply move on with the equations that seem to work. But we've left behind the goal of understanding it. Again, Chomsky's book is quite insightful in these matters.

I may be way out of my depth here, but these are my initial thoughts. I suppose part of this depends on how you define "content", depending on the definition of a technical term, which by virtue of being technical , are subject to fitting a certain framework of understanding. Thus "content" can be defined as being in the head, in our statements, or in the world. Let's bracket the definition of "content", and see what makes most sense.

I don't see why content need be attached to anything external to the creature using the term, so talking about content in the world can be ruled out, we give/provide content, not the world. Of course, what's in the world helps guide what we say about it, but it's not essential to the meaning or significance of the term. It's of course not even necessary for there to be a world out there to even talk about content. We could be brain in vats. Of course, this is extremely unlikely, but raising the scenario serves as an illustration of not needing content to be "out there".

Now, do we want to say that content is found in the statements we say out loud, when put in a propositional manner? Suppose I see a dog running towards me, having escaped its owner's leash. I'd say "This dog is racing towards me", thus the content of the statement can be said to be given in the proposition. But is it necessarily so? Must content be said out loud, or even said to oneself in a propositional manner? It's very doubtful.

In fact, if we look at the world at attempt to do some very basic phenomenology we see that experience vastly outstrips my way of talking about it. So in the case of the dog, there is also the background of the owner being careless, of grass looking beautiful in the sunlight, I can also point to my physiology and notice my adrenaline pumping. The dog probably interrupted me from my train of thought, and so forth. Of course this exercise can go on forever, as I try to verbalize my experiences. But it's clear that the whole complexity of the situation cannot be grasped by a simple proposition. There's also more to say about the nature of thought and language, which are extremely complex, but this can be put aside. The content found in my expression is but a small portion of the total content I experience. Henceforth, content is not necessarily propositional in nature.

What's left then? Well, we can attempt to encapsulate the term content in such a manner that most of these considerations do not apply to the term, but this does not mean that the things mentioned aren't real phenomena that shape the content I experience. What must be true of content? Absent anything else, content is internal to the user, and seems to be an operation of the mind/brain that seeks to concretize the totality of my experience in a way that is communicable through words. But there are many other way to express content too: gestures, moods, paintings etc.

So no, content is not necessarily propositional, though it can be defined in such a manner, if one chooses to do so, but I don't see what's gained by doing this.

That's quite fine. In so far as I understand what he's saying, it seems sensible. I mean, Bertrand Russell in Analysis of Matter says something similar, albeit less radical, given his empirical temperament. I'd agree that we can put aside or bracket all of the world, and be left with only pure conscious experience. It could be confused with solipsism, but I think something like it is the case for human beings, in that, we only have access to our thoughts, not those of others. Other people's thoughts are interpreted by us, and of course, we can only see the data of behavior, so far as people are concerned, in addition to whatever they say about what they experience. But I'm unsure if it makes sense to postulate "pure consciousness" absent a subject of experience- his "ego" I take it. I don't quite follow that train of thought.

I do quibble with the idea of "physical objects", if that is taken to mean a real distinction between the physical and the non-physical. I don't think that distinction holds up anymore. But on the whole, it seems to me to be on right path.

The hard problem more than presupposing dualism, presupposes that it's obvious that certain problems can be distinguished between "easy" and "hard".

Not that there aren't topics that we are more or less informed, relative to something else. There clearly are areas of research which are harder than others in terms of complexity. Psychology is harder than physics because there are too many factors involved, whereas physics, while technically very difficult, studies "simple structures".

But when it comes to foundational questions, it's far from clear that one can make an easy/hard problem distinction. Along with McGinn, and foreshadowed by many, of the classical figures, it looks to me that every aspect of nature is a mystery.

I used to not understand this point well, but I think it clear(er) to me now, as Darwin once said, roughly, that we shouldn't regard thought arising in matter as more marvelous than the properties of gravity, magnetism and so on, also properties of matter. It may be unbelievable for us, or extremely hard to accept. But that's then a problem of our nature, and thus an epistemological issue, not pertaining to the nature of the actual world.

Sure. But I meant the moment before conception, when there wasn't anything that could be thought of, not even potentially, as a person. I don't see why after death, it would be any different, they look to me about the same. But who knows?

The same thing that happens before consciousness arose, it is simply absent and ceases to exist. The state prior to birth should not be any different from the stage after life. Maybe there's some principle that might suggest that consciousness unites with the universe, or something along those lines. But there's no evidence for this, nor any solid reason to believe that consciousness is extra-natural in a way that gravity or electromagnetism or anything in nature cannot be.

I don't think so. This depends, to a large, extent if you agree with Kant, although others before him have also denied that we have access to reality "in itself". What we see and experience is a product of the interpretation of the mind/brain on occasion of experience. We interpret certain events in a human specific manner, which in most cases will be entirely irrelevant to other creatures, like ants or birds. This doesn't mean that what we experience is illusory in any way, what we see is what exists.

But it doesn't follow that all that exists is available for us to experience. We'll lack innate capacities other creatures have as a matter of fact. There's then the question of what is the cause of appearances? Some may say science and speak of physics, for example. But physics also conforms to our way of interpreting the world and is also an appearance. It just so happens that this appearance might hold true of certain aspects of the mind-independent world. But at bottom, I don't think we know what causes physics to behave the way it does. So the nature of the world is a mystery, on this view.

Though I suspect ideas concerning "things in themselves" could be developed that do not focus on Kant. It's one thing to talk about what Kant said that about this topic, but it needn't stay under his exact terms, nor is reference to him essential, however much he has done to popularize and develop these ideas.

It seems to me here that Chomsky and Haack are correct on this topic, namely the word "real" is honorific. When we say this is the "real" truth or the "real" facts, we don't mean we have two separate truths or two distinct set of facts, we use it for emphasis.

If the question pertains to matter of perception, it becomes very hard to talk about this topic, like, if I'm hallucinating and seeing a dragon, I can say I'm seeing a dragon. You may reply by saying that the dragon I'm seeing "isn't real". Then what am I supposed to say? That I see fake dragons? No. I'd say I'm seeing an image of a dragon, which is relevant to the occasion of hallucinations, but not relevant for "ordinary life". Something along those lines.