La invención de Morel by Adolofo Bioy Caseres

We don't know. Akin to the status of time "before" the Big Bang. May even be a meaningless question we try to provide an answer, but hit upon a cognitive wall. Then we realize we are not asking questions about the world, but are instead asking questions about our form of understanding.

Which is why his book is called "Consciousness Denied".

He has some fancy neuroscience; he does write well - but the people who agree with him are just tiny.

It's a useful tool to oppose, and for that we should be grateful. But outside of seminars, who believes it?

If a person breaks an arm, or gets shot or something horrible, would Dennett say "oh, that's just a broken machine, it's nervous system is sending pain signals to the brain, nothing to worry about".

Of course not, he would likely call for help, because what he is experiencing is reality, not illusions or dispositional behavior or a magic trick.

He has always been extremely cringe-inducing in this topic. The level of irrationality and utter disregard for the most evident, clear, best understood phenomena out of everything there is, is just beyond words.

I suppose it's a balancing act, if you (or anybody) are harsh to all these enlightened posters, then less people might be willing to engage. But it can help the odds of conversations retaining a high quality, but that's not guaranteed either.

It's annoying more than anything because of the "I know Something you will never see" attitude, but, whatever.

What is the point with debating a supporter of a paranoid, ethno-supremacist, racist, genocide enabling state?

Is it worth pointing out trivial facts? Or should we entertain supporters of a country which has utterly overwhelming global condemnation, quite often isolated with the US in the UN.

Of course, you do you.

Israel may laugh soon. Blowback will come and it will be brutal.

Agree with a good deal. Especially on the point of some newer members coming in with a ToE pretending great wisdom and exhaustive theoretical depth, which, when ever so slightly pushed, collapse.

This is not to say that I think it makes to delimit what a philosopher ought to do, but "taking things down" or "breaking them apart" is good mental hygiene.

Beyond that, when evidence is lacking to settle a case, the merits should be decided on the strength of given reasons. However, we should also be aware that in many respects, our own inclinations in philosophy could be off the mark.

Great post Wayf. I may be nerding out again, but I think there's a very interesting argument to be made against positivism, that is in my opinion devastating for positivism, which is Michael Polanyi's argument on tacit knowledge.

Granted, he's not super well-known in philosophy, sadly, but his arguments I think are more convincing than ever Popper's.

Just my brief two cents. :up:

Finished The Tacit Dimension by Michael Polanyi.

The first part of the book was quite impressive, it's been quite a while since I found something new in philosophy which is very interesting. The rest of the book was also quite good, but less so than the first third of it.

Currently reading The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector, very very good.

Well, a country is quite a complex idea. It's not something that is easily pointed to in the way a rock or a river can be pointed to.

I think there is a fact of the matter, that is, is nominalism true or not? If we only distinguished particulars, we would never develop a concept, no matter how many interactions with objects you'd have.

But what's the threat of realism? There is a world out there, and we try to make sense of it. That someone believes in universals is not a threat against realism. It only implies that we understand things better through universals than particulars.

The only danger from realism I can think of that is any way a "problem" would be a denial of a mind-independent world. If that's true, then we are all idealists' way beyond anything Berkely could have imagined.

But even were that to be true, what's the problem?

De Veritate by Lord Herbert of Cherbury

Sure but you are assuming we have a final theory of physics. We don't.

That's a much better way of understanding the issue and I think your explanation is quite sensible. Of course, it becomes very tricky to argue that certain artifacts (or all of them) should not be thought of in terms of forms or ideas, because one can easily reply, "Ok, no books, but why a horse and not a donkey?"

It's true that the problem then becomes, well if everything has to have a form we will have infinite forms. Then we'd have to say something like certain ideas are the basis for other ideas. And we'd want to have a fixed number of ideas.

So, principles do make more sense, albeit still problematic.

Up to interpretation, but as I take it, it's an attempt to make sense of concepts which we experience in individualized actualizations: we see a horse, or horses, flowers, a book, etc.

But how can we recognize these things as such without having an idea of them, more perfect than what we encounter in real life (which are defective: the book may be worn out, the horse may look a bit ugly, etc.)?

You postulate an idea to explain how many things can be one, in a sense.

This may not be scholarly interpretation, but certainly appealing, if not correct as originally stated. Its influence has been astonishing.

Maybe it's an emergent phenomenon, as some theories in physics imply.

Or maybe it's irreducible and hence not explainable by anything else other than our interpretation and experience of it.

This question can be misleading, as real, in English, is an honorific term: "Here's the deal." vs. "Here's the real deal."

There aren't two deals, one false the other true, it's a point of emphasis.

Perhaps you might get more mileage out of existence and perception. Some things are anchored to the external world; some things are not.

Imagination in Hume's Philosophy: The Canvas of the Mind by Timothy M. Costelloe

That question goes beyond our capacity to provide an intelligible answer.

One can say anything and probably be wrong about it.

It can be an interesting exercise so long as you are aware that it is what you are doing - a kind of poetry with some distinctive philosophical value which, if pressed, is hard to clearly defend - at least for me.

Perhaps the best example that comes to mind for me is Plotinus' and his thinking of the One as beyond being and beyond thought. But then using "as if" or "like" language (like thinking, like seeing, as if it were overflowing or as if guiding, etc.) to help us grasp some vague like conception of what it could be.

It can be very enlightening on occasion. But at the same time, one should not then mistake the poetry for the fact of the matter.

Am reading several papers on Salomon Maimon, probably going to read his Essay on Transcendental Philosophy sometime this year. Very interesting stuff, if not a bit too technical for my tastes.

You can't.

And if you could, you can never be certain.

Moral systems are meant to be an ideal to strive for, more so than something that has to be adhered to 100% of the time all the time. It is supposed to guide behavior.

The tricky part is that all of us fail at some point or another. It's impossible not to. The problem here is that if a person makes a mistake or does something wrong, then they throw away the baby with the bathwater.

Also - there is always the risk of moralizing. It's not very useful or helpful, most of the time.

Yes, 'substance' is an idea—the question is whether the idea refers to something real or is merely an idea. How could we find out? — Janus

If no evidence can be provided that makes the concept obsolete, then it could be an indication that is mental only.

Alternatively, if we cannot but help to think of the manifest world as being composed of things that have properties, and even if we break an object apart, we still think in terms of substance that's also a sign.

The question is how can we prove it isn't mental only? We'd have to all agree (as physicists would) one what counts as a substance. But I'm thinking out loud here.

I'm a substance, you're a substance and your cat is a substance and so on. — Janus

This is me asking:

Is the self a substance? If so, then that's a very interesting connection. If we could provide evidence that selves exist (not apart from body), but as facts of the world, then that could be a hint of a substance.

But then microscopic and subatomic particles are thought to have properties too.

The other idea of substance, as I said earlier, is 'the ultimate constituent of things'. That could be energy, for example, or mind if you're an idealist. — Janus

Yes, but does it make sense to think of an atom as a substance? Despite it having other particles fundamental to it?

I do like the "ultimate constituent of things" - probably what Locke had in mind. Yes, maybe energy, maybe motion, maybe mind or I know not what.

it is hard not to think of the extramental world as consisting in something. The problem is how could we ever know we had found the most fundamental constituent of things when it is always possible that there could be something more fundamental that eludes our grasp. — Janus

But is this something remaining a substance or a thing? I'm not sure these terms are the same. Maybe the extra mental is made of X-"stuff", not things. Or maybe events.

As for the final question, my intuition is that we'll never reach it. It's of a different kind of knowledge than what we have. But that would be a very long digression.

It's a good question. I'd start conservatively and argue, what do we know about substance? Well, for one thing it is a concept, and in this regard is mental.

Beyond that? Well, traditionally, it was argued that it that which binds things (properties) together, so that we don't have a kind of Humean world: just properties all over the place.

If we go down to the microscopic level, I think it's not coherent to say that say, atoms or fields are substances.

I suppose we should refine it a bit more. But there's a possibility it's just our commonsense way of viewing the world, and thus not literally true, that not something in the extra-mental world.

Hard to say.

It might be atoms, or quantum fields, or something more fundamental. I was not suggesting we know what substance is, but that the idea of substance is not hard to understand. — Janus

Ah gotcha. Correct.

What like atoms? Or something along those lines? If so, that's a bit different from substance as Locke (and others) talks about it.

'Locke explicitly analyzes it as an empty notion of an I-don’t-know-what; and soon after the word is laughed out of the vocabulary of serious philosophic endeavor.' But this is because, according to the article, the original translation as 'substantia' was in many respects a mistranslation. The author (Joe Sachs) remarks 'It is no wonder that the Metaphysics ceased to have any influence on living thinking: its heart had been cut out of it by its friends'. — Wayfarer

Probably. I think after Hume, substance became very problematic, Hume of course denied we had a concept of substance. Interesting arguments for sure, but, not persuasive.

Then we get Kant saying that substance is a category of the understanding and deflates the impact of the term a bit. In fact I don't see a massive difference between Locke and Kant in terms of Locke treating substance as kind of "things in themselves", whereas Kant does not. But I think, technicalities aside, it's a very similar idea, dressed differently.

You might enjoy my recent essay on spooky action. — Wayfarer

Thanks. Will take a look!

I've always been a fan of Locke's discussion on substance, it's phenomenal:

"So that if any one will examine himself concerning his notion of pure substance in general, he will find he has no other idea of it at all, but only a supposition of he knows not what SUPPORT of such qualities which are capable of producing simple ideas in us; which qualities are commonly called accidents. If any one should be asked, what is the subject wherein colour or weight inheres, he would have nothing to say, but the solid extended parts; and if he were demanded, what is it that solidity and extension adhere in, he would not be in a much better case than the Indian before mentioned who, saying that the world was supported by a great elephant, was asked what the elephant rested on; to which his answer was—a great tortoise: but being again pressed to know what gave support to the broad-backed tortoise, replied—SOMETHING, HE KNEW NOT WHAT. "

But to be clear, Locke did believe in substances, but he just says he doesn't know what they are. They are obscure to our understanding.

And as for the Ghost in the Machine, your right, that's the popularization. But I think careful consideration of the phenomena involved should lead us to conclude, that it's ghosts all the way down. Consciousness is surely more "ghostly" than "mechanical".

And if our best current physics is not "ghostly" ("spooky" as Einstein protested), then I don't know what is.

They can be doubted too. But without a goal in mind, you're just left with skepticism, and you get stuck.

It's tricky.

Populism can (not necessarily) lead to authoritarianism in this specific version (neoliberal capitalism) of the economic system we have. It has been much better, as it was during the 1950-70's when a lot of the world had good pay and great social benefits.

But ever-increasing privatization, endless pursuit of life-destroying growth and so social alternatives which could even the system out a bit, will lead to what we have.

We don't know. We have guesses related to problem solving, or the brain "repairing" itself, but this is completely speculative.

The richness of the phenomena way exceeds the proposed explanations. Sure, one can see the appeal that a dream is often related to something we are thinking about, sometimes unconsciously - but the weirdness involved is quite striking (in my case anyway).

I suppose one could point out something similar, which is that if you are daydreaming, it's often the case that we do not notice the transition between daydreaming and being awake.

Maybe the differences we can describe when awake, are not so large as they seem. Perhaps there is something to that often-corny phrase, that life is a dream.

Certainly, the first instant of remembered conscious experience is quite dreamlike, waking from an eternal slumber.

So you are asking the big Why! — MoK

It wasn't a big why. It was admittance of the intrinsic unintelligibly of the world. And what was considered problematic by Descartes, Newton, Huygens, Locke, etc., was motion. That's way simpler that consciousness.

But it is unintelligible to us. We simply proceed to do science through theories, and we have dropped the expectation that the world will ever make (intuitive) sense to us. And as with motion, so with consciousness, as John Locke (certainly no pushover) astutely observed:

"Whether Matter may not be made by God to think is more than man can know. For I see no contradiction in it, that the first Eternal thinking Being...should, if he pleased, give to certain systems of created senseless matter, put together as he thinks fit, some degrees of sense, perception, and thought... For, since we must allow He has annexed effects to motion which we can no way conceive motion able to produce, what reason have we to conclude that He could not order them as well to be produced in a subject we cannot conceive capable of them, as well as in a subject we cannot conceive the motion of matter can any way operate upon?"

Substitute "God" for "Nature."

We don't understand why gravity works as it does, but we know that it does work without material contact, through Newton's theory of gravitation.

We don't understand why matter could think, but we know that thinking depends on matter, as shown by the fact that no person lacking a brain can think.

Bohmian interpretation is paradox-free so it is the correct interpretation. — MoK

I suspect some physicists might disagree. But we can put that aside.

Then, the important problem is how we could have mental experiences where therein options are real while the the physical processes are deterministic. I think the solution to this problem is that we are dealing with neural processes. So I think the result of neural processes in the brain can lead to the existence of options as mental phenomena. Think of a situation in which you are in a maze. Although the neural processes are deterministic in your brain they can give rise to a mental representation in which options are real when you reach a fork. — MoK

But how can you say physical processes are deterministic? Some show regularity, others show randomness, and we see exceptions to rules quite frequently.

Free will is the ability to do or not to do something. That so called "physical processes" happen before we are aware of them only shows that most of our mental activity happens at an unconscious level, what we decide to do with that, is up to us. We can act on an urge or not.

No, I think we already agree that experience which is a mental phenomenon can not be considered to be physical. We also agree that the mental has causal power as well. That is all I need to make my argument. — MoK

You have asserted that the mental cannot be physical. There is no argument given as to why this has to be so. It's a semantic argument that "the mental cannot be physical, because mental phenomena are not physical phenomena".

But that does not solve a simple question: why can't mental stuff be physical stuff?

Seeing and hearing are extremely different from each other, but we don't assume these are metaphysically distinct things. We treat them as different sensations, even though, again, they are very different. So why should we assume that the mental is more radically different from the physical than seeing is from hearing?

If we can't give a reason why, then we are likely carving out a mistaken distinction.

An object whose motion is subject to change does so because it experiences a force. This force is due to the existence of a field, a gravitational field for example. — MoK

Yes. But the point is that we have no intuition as to how this is possible. That was Newton's famous "it is inconceivable to me" quote was all about.

To me, the De Broglie–Bohm interpretation is the correct interpretation of quantum mechanics since it is paradox-free. The universe evolves deterministically in this interpretation though. — MoK

That's personal preference, I have no issues with you choosing Bohmian interpretations as opposed to many worlds or relational interpretations. There's no evidence for any of them though, so we should not make arguments concerning freedom on the will on these things.

That is just a thought experiment. It seems paradoxical because it assumes that one can put a particle exactly at the top of the dome. This is however not possible since one in reality cannot put a particle on the exact point at the top of the dome. — MoK

Suppose that for the reasons you gave, that it is not possible in practice to do this experiment, then somehow, classical physics is deterministic. How does that say anything about free will? Sure, we are creatures of nature, but it's safe to assume that the laws of nature do not have imagination, yet no one doubts we do.

Physics is true in the sense that explains the changes in the physical world. It is however incorrect when it assumes that the only things that exist are physical. That is why I endorse a new version of substance dualism in which not only physical changes are explained but also mental phenomena are considered as well. — MoK

We are part of the physical world.

Saying that the mental is outside the physical world is like saying there is a distinction to be made between cows and animals. I think you'd need to say what is it about the physical that cannot lead to the mental, necessarily? Once the necessity is established or defended, there is little to do but accept it.

It's an especially hard problem for the generally-accepted forms of scientific naturalism, as they assume at the outset that whatever is real must be tractable in objective terms. The whole essay is a rhetorical argument against those assumptions. — Wayfarer

Some may assume that. It need not be accepted in these very terms. Naturalism can be taken as the view that all that exists is natural and no more.

The issue then, if such naturalism is not convincing, is to say why consciousness is either not natural or supernatural. The latter option is very questionable.

I don't see why one should take a view that consciousness is not a phenomenon of nature. Unless there are theological or metaphysical issues that must necessarily arise.

What is in motion that you cannot understand? — MoK

Not me, anybody - including Newton. How can there be motion without direct contact? We don't have this intuition at all. We assume that the only way a body can move is if another body contacts it.

we still have difficulty explaining how conscious phenomena, such as thoughts, feelings, etc., could have causal power. This difficulty is because the physical move is based on the laws of physics so there is no room left for the mental to contribute. — MoK

Ah yes. That's a good problem. It's utterly mystifying, way beyond theoretical understanding. Interestingly, according to quantum physics the universe is probabilistic, not deterministic. But classical physics is not deterministic either, as is proved by Norton's dome.

But probabilistic is not the same as willing at all.

The mental merely contributes the evidence for the theories that are used to supposedly prove that we have no free will, or that there is nothing but particles. It's a very poor approach to thinking about nature.

Why is it silly? We know that physics is true. — MoK

To deny consciousness, as Dennett does. If accepted, we have no reasons to suppose physics is true, as our evidence comes through experience of empirical phenomena.

What is mental to you? — MoK

Personal experience or "occurrent experiential episodes", as Strawson puts the issue.

He didn't say it was. In fact, the paper is called 'Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness'. It only came to be called THE hard problem later. — Wayfarer

He doesn't say it's a really hard problem? That leads to the natural reading that it is an especially hard problem. I would grant it with one crucial caveat. If mind coming from matter is incomprehensible, why is that harder than not intuitively understanding how gravity could possibly work absent direct contact between bodies?

At bottom most of these things are very hard, incomprehensibly so. Why is consciousness specifically harder than motion without contact? I sympathize with you in disdaining many aspects of Dennett and others, but I don't see why they should be engaged with in this topic. It's not worth refuting, because it is so silly.

Chalmers was contrasting his "hard problem of consciousness" with what he called "the easy problem of consciousness": finding the places in the brain that correspond to various subjective experiences. This, as we know, is indeed getting easier. — J

Some problems fit into science. Others are much harder. When it comes to the study of the will, we know almost nothing, no clue how the "strings are pulled".

The more complex a phenomenon is, the harder is to study in great depth. And the insights gained are arguably less surprising than what we compared to the consequences of the simpler sciences, like physics.

Within physicalism, the physical is believed to change on its own based on the laws of physics without any need for experience. Given this, I think we can agree that the experience is not physical since physicalism cannot accommodate experience as a physical thing. The existence of experience and mental phenomena challenged physicalists for a long time. Some physicalists even deny the existence of experience and mental phenomena! — MoK

I understand the usual monopoly on the term "physical", that's Dennett and the Churchlands. But there are others, like Galen Strawson (without panpsychism which I don't subscribe to) or even going further back Joseph Priestley, developing Locke's thought, that says that matter has powers inconceivable to me - like motion without contact. We cannot conceive it, but it must be true, because that's what theories show (Newton's theories, which he himself was in utter disbelief in).

If matter can produce effect like motion we cannot understand, why would we limit nature in supposing that it cannot combine matter such that it can be conscious?

Incidentally, Schopenhauer (a Kantian) says the very same thing.

If you take physical to mean whatever physics says, the point needs no discussion, for it is silly to argue.

But if you take physical to mean natural, then the physical is everything there is. The mental is the domain of the physical we know the best.

Because physical by definition refers to stuff that exists in the world, such as a chair, a cup, etc. The experience however is defined as a conscious event that contains information. For example, when you look at a rose you have certain experiences, like the redness of the rose, its form, etc. — MoK

Definition? I mean there is standard use "physical thing", sure, that usually means something we can touch.

But in epistemology it means "physical stuff", the stuff of the world. The mind is a part of the world, the part we know with most confidence, but I don't see the necessity of saying that physical has to be stuff you can touch.

s what David Chalmers describes as the problem of consciousness (usually called 'the hard problem') - that even though all of these processes can be described in physical terms, the experience of them - what it is like to see red, smell a rose, hear a sound - is not so amenable to physical description, because it has an experiential quality. — Wayfarer

As you know, calling it the hard problem is misleading, because it suggests every other problem is easy. So free will is easy, brain science is easy, physics is easy, sociology is easy, but we know that's not true.

Free will is a really hard problem. As was motion for most of the great 17th century philosopher/scientists. We never understood motion, we just proceeded to do theories about it without understanding it.

I think you can say that it is a hard problem, yes, but not the only one.

If by physical, you mean physicSal, then of course, the qualitative character is not described by physics or chemistry. But if you are biologist or an architect, you bet you are going to use qualitative character to explain the phenomena.

Because we have physical and experience of physical. These two are not identical. Physical exists whether you experience it or not. We have certain experiences when our subject of focus is on an object though. Therefore, the physical and the experience of the physical are not identical. What is the mind is subject to the understanding that the physical and the experience of the physical are not identical. — MoK

Why is experience not physical? I agree that things "outside the mind" - outside consciousness itself are physical things and hence mediated through experience. What I don't quite get is why experience is not physical?

What do you mean? — MoK

Why do you think mind cannot be matter or the opposite? This needs to be argued for, not asserted. If the argument holds, then we can talk about the issue in a more productive manner.