This is what an idealist needs to do. Show how mind A can know about mind B via ideas in mind A. What is the connection between one mind having ideas of a body belonging to someone else, and another mind? How is that different from dreaming or imagining someone else's body (and behavior)? I dream of having conversations with people, but I've never had reason to connect that to someone else that's not part of my dream.

because if you're arguing for materialism then the mind is a physical thing, and so there shouldn't be a problem with saying that minds can interact with each other without any intermediary. — Michael

Is that like how software can interact with other software without an intermediary (hardware)? For a materialist, the mind is part of a living body, not separate from it. It would be meaningless for mind to mind interactions independent of a body.

What does it matter!? This running about for absolute certainty is a running after the horizon in belief that one can eventually hold it in one's hands. — javra

We can't be certain, but we can strive for reasonable beliefs. I'm arguing that idealism is less reasonable than materialism when it comes to other minds, because materialists have a plausible account of interaction via bodies that idealists lack.

To then affirm that in the movie Inception the other agencies were not “real” is then, I argue, a fallacy of reasoning (given the very metaphysical premises of the movie). Either you envision a body that is asleep/unconscious/etc. from which is produced multiple interacting agencies, or, else no such body and there being nothing but a communally shared dream between a multitude of agencies (as to the movie’s depiction of recurring personas, this in a way is no different than Shakespeare’s comments that all we are are actors/agencies/roles on a stage … playing out our roles on the sage of life (or at least something to the like)). — javra

But Inception does explicitly state that the people you encounter when entering someone else's dream are projections of the dreamer's unconscious mind. The only exceptions being the other minds who have entered the dream with you from outside via the machine that allows people to have a shared dream experience.

However, the main character Dom, played by DiCaprio, does have ongoing doubts as to whether he's ever actually awake, and one of the characters in the movie is actually a projection (his deceased wife).

This leads to the possibility that Dom is stuck inside a dream the entire movie, and all the other characters are his projections. Or he's being incepted from outside. But there's no way for him to be sure. In actuality, the director is incepting the audience, creating doubt in the viewer as to what's real, leaving it open to interpretation, similar to a philosophy discussion.

Those questions can be asked of the materialist as well. — Michael

It's like claiming that we're all dreaming. Take the movie Inception. On one interpretation, the main character is inside a dream the entire movie. If so, then he has no reason to believe anyone else he interacts with is real.

Contrast this with being awake. We have reasons to believe other people are real, and not just ideas in the mind. That's the difference.

I don't understand why you think bodies being of substance A can avoid solipsism but bodies being of substance B can't. — Michael

Because the substance of idealistic bodies is ideas in the mind of a perceiver, not a shared world of material objects.

Idealists don't have a body. They're in a similar position as the BIVs, minus the envattment. What they have is ideas in their minds of having a body and interacting with other bodies.

You need the idealist version of a Matrix to get around that.

And the idealist can say the same. — Michael

An idealist can say it, but I've not seen it backed up. What is it that connects the ideas in my mind of your behavior to your actual behavior, which I suppose are ideas in your mind?

BIV A has experiences of having a body, BIV B has experiences of interacting with other bodies.

But how does B justify interacting with A?

Materialism suffers from the same epistemological problem. — Michael

A materialist can say that it's inconceivable for a human being to act like they have a mind but not have one, since mind is necessary for human behavior.

But this is what (some) idealists claim is the case. So you're saying that idealism can't avoid solipsism because non-solipsistic idealism is false? — Michael

I don't know. It seems like it has an epistemological problem regarding other minds.

As an analogy, say both of us are BIVs. I have experiences of a world and people, and so do you. Let's say you're aware of being envatted. Now how would you know that I exist, and solipsism isn't the case for you? You would have to say that somehow we interact. But in order for that to happen, something has to wire our BIVs together in order to have a shared experience. So we can invoke the mad scientist as an analogy for Berkley's God.

But without the mad scientist, there's no reason to think that my experiences have anything to do with any other minds, other than as pure speculation. There's no way for me to know if my experience of you is anything more than an idea in my mind.

If we go for Hume's bundle theory, for example, our bodies are bundles of sense-data, and when these bundles of sense-data interact, you can directly perceive my immaterial body (as per a naive realist understanding of perception). — Michael

The problem here is that sense-data are sense-data for some perceiver, not an independent bundle that anyone can perceive. Unless you want to invoke God as the universal perceiver, there is no place for an independent bundle of bodily sense-data.

There is a huge epistemological hurdle to overcome here where mind A and mind B are somehow having a shared sense-data experience, where mind A's is of mind B's sense-data body bundle, and vice versa.

Come to think of it, why would mind A & B have sense-data body bundles at all?

You're a mental thing and I'm a mental thing. When we "touch" this elicits in you certain experiences. — Michael

So our minds touch? Or is it our perceptions that are touching?

It's the same sort of thing that happens for the materialist. When my physical body "touches" your physical body, this elicits in you certain experiences. — Michael

I don't think it is. Materialism does have difficulties with incorporating all aspects of mind, but not in this case. Having a body is how we interact.

The idealist claim that all things are fundamentally mental or immaterial in nature is not to say that only my experiences exist. — Michael

Yeah, I know that.

And the idealist's claim that independent minds can interact with and perceive each other is no more problematic than the physicalist's claim that independent bodies can interact with and perceive each other. — Michael

But I don't see how. Walk me through how I go from ideas of your body in my mind to interacting with and perceiving your mind, which isn't an idea/perception at all.

It's not some obscure tribe by the way. It's the official language of Indonesia, spoken by more than 200 million people. — andrewk

My fault, read too quickly. Used to hearing about some tribe that thinks/does things radically different.

Anyway, for what it's worth, I used Google Translate from the English "to be or not to be" to Indonesian: "untuk menjadi atau tidak menjadi". Then reversed it, and "to be or not to be" was the result.

I tried "existence" => "adanya" => उपस्थिति (hindi) => presence

That's interesting. उपस्थिति => Kehadiran => presence

I wonder why the Indonesian to Hindi is different.

And the idealist says the same. Only that the human beings that we interact with are mental/immaterial things, not physical/immaterial things. — Michael

That doesn't work, because minds aren't ideas. See where I edited my previous post right before you responded.

Yes. Isn't that also what the materialist says? — Michael

Yes, bodies are more than perceptions for a materialist.

How does the materialist know that there are other minds? — Michael

This depends on whether the materialist can make a case for mind being a part of a living body. If so, then the materialist can say that we perceive the activity of a mind when interacting with another human being.

The idealist doesn't have this option, since bodies are just ideas. Minds can't be ideas on the pain of solipsism.

There are minds other than mine. It's idealism, but not solipsism. — Michael

I never understood how idealism justified this stance. I get that metaphysically non-solipsistic idealists maintain there are other minds, but how they know this is problematic.

Now just take away the physical bodies. There are minds other than mine. It's idealism, but not solipsism. — Michael

So me perceiving your body is how I know you have a mind? *Ahem*

I suppose if I wanted to ask an Indonesian, in Indonesian, whether Harry Potter is real, I might ask something like 'Do you think anybody ever did all those things that the book says Harry Potter did?'. — andrewk

We could also ask the Indonesian if rocks are made up of smaller things we can't see, taste, touch, etc which give the rock the properties it has.

The relevance of that to the thread is that, without that verb, I don't think one can even describe a difference between an Idealist and a materialist. The difference dissolves to just one of language use. — andrewk

Does it really though? If you asked this Indonesian tribe whether imaginary rocks are made up out of the same stuff as ordinary ones you stump your toe on, would they say yes?

'The map is not the territory', which uses 'to be' in the 'identity' use. So according to Korzybski himself, his most famous utterance may be meaningless. — andrewk

There's other ways of noting that a map of London is not the city of London. I can't hail a cab while visiting a map of London. I can't bungee jump off a six inch model of the Eiffel Tower. And the equations of gravity written out on a chalkboard don't exert any force on me.

Of course the map isn't the territory.

(although as a philosopher that statement makes me blush, as I know that counterfactuals like that are meaningless). — andrewk

Why are they meaningless? I fully understand the concept of Bernie Sanders being elected, just like I fully understand the idea of alternate history when watching The Man in The High Castle.

The big flaw in his argument is using evolution and brains to make the case that what we experience is an illusion. Brains and evolution would be part of his desktop metaphor, not the underlying reality that leads to the illusion of desktop icons and folders.

You can't have your evolutionary brain cake and eat it too. Either we have a way of ascertaining how the computer creates a desktop interface, in which case it's not all an illusion, or we don't and we might as well be envatted in that desktop.

Besides, if it helps with the example, assume it's a TV show that isn't based on a book. Do claims about what will happen have a determinant truth value? — Michael

Yes, in the future.

Given that the script for the next season hasn't been written, would it be correct to say that "Jon Snow will sit on the Iron Throne" has a determinant truth value? Nothing in the world satisfies the requirements to be a truth-maker (whether to make it true or to make it false). — Michael

If GRRM had that as part of his outline for how the series ends, then yes. Otherwise, the truth value becomes determinate in the future.

Where is Landru? I fervently agree with half he says and fervently disagree with the other half. I haven't heard from him in ages. I miss him. — andrewk

Agreed on both accounts. I don't know that he ever made it over here.

That is, if advanced human civilization as such is still functioning in the not-to-distant future. — 0 thru 9

Someone might have said about the various fighting clans in the past (Vikings, Mongols, etc) that if human beings kept doing that, we would have disastrous results by now. But aside from the two world wars, it would seem that most places on the planet are trending toward more peaceful coexistence with their neighbors over time.

Human society evolves. Democracy is the norm across the world now. If and when we colonize space, we may have entered a post work world where the machines do all the labor for us.

Further society's interest in, and considerable investment in, science is principally driven by its instrumental value, not by any philosophical beliefs about Truth. We invest in science because it brings us useful things. — andrewk

So you've adopted Landru's beliefs about science. *sigh*

Are you really interested in QM, GR and thermodynamics because of their instrumental value? I'm not. I'm interested in them because I think they reveal something true about the world. Now this isn't absolute truth in that all things in science are subject to revision. But neither is it merely social construction, because these are theories about how the world works.

I really don't understand the view that people are only interested in science because it has instrumental value. No doubt that's true, but it seems awfully apparent that the majority of people think science is approximating the truth about the world, best as we can get at it. And so we're often fascinating by all sorts of discoveries that have no real insturmental value for our lives.

I think Black Holes are fascinating, but they have zero instrumental value for my life.

I read Ishmael years ago. Profound reading, but I'm not entirely sold. Makes me wonder how a Kurzweil/Quinn debate would go. Quinn includes in the myth telling that we're headed for some kind of Star Trek like future, when in fact we're headed for collapse. Kurzweil would say that our technology will save us, transforming human society into something greater than ST.

Can I still be evil, or must I gave that up to rule the world?

I'm a metaphysical realist because it's quite obvious that mind is secondary to bodies, to being born, to things in the world, to the effects of foods and drugs we ingest, and so on, and more than anything, that we die. Also because it makes sense of the other being situated bodily in relation to myself. And it makes sense of events happening. Time is real, space is real, things are real.

What I'm not at all sure about is ontology. The world exists regardless of what I think, perceive or know about it. That is almost certainly true. Whether we can truly carve nature at it's joints and describe in terms of one category or another is questionable.

It's also true that the mind plays an important role in how we perceive and understand the world, but the mind itself is shaped by being embodied. We have bodies that move about and change in space and time and communicate with other similar bodies. The mind is part of that, not separate from it.

Liars aren't honest ever — Wosret

Except when they say they're lying ;)

How do you intelligibly talk about genetic material without allowing that there are molecules carrying information? — Srap Tasmaner

I wonder if a precise physical description for genetics could be given, would there be any need for information?

Is information a kind of heuristic shortcut we use to make sense of highly complex physical systems?

But it's a good question. However, also keep in mind that DNA's role is a little messier than it sounds. There was a Radio Lab episode which started out talking about how the thinking was that protein production was like clockwork, since DNA specified precisely what sort of organism is to be produced (or maintained). However, when scientists figured out a way using light to watch proteins being produced, it was a very random affair, even for genetically identical cells.

The conclusion was that there is no order at the level of protein production, but somehow other systems (eleven total) give order to the chaos. They contrasted it with cleaning up an old song from a noisy tape with creating a song from random noise, protein production being the random noise.

That doesn't sound very computer-like, at least not at the level of genes. It does sound like emergent complexity, though.

I don't think of those physicists as being pedantic. — Reformed Nihilist

They're being philosophical, which is fine, as long as everyone understands the distinction, although if a way can be devised to test different interpretations, then it goes from philosophical to scientific.

Which raises the question as to what is the line between theoretical physics and metaphysics. Because the multiverse, 11 dimensional Branes colliding, and creation from quantum vacuum states certainly sound metaphysical.

Do we have to define computation as symbol manipulation? There are clearly phenomena in nature that are driven by information transfer rather than just energy transfer. — Srap Tasmaner

Why is it clear that any information is being transferred? Information seems like something that minds are concerned with, not physical processes. Information is intentional by nature. It's about something. But aboutness is mental.

In contrast, physical systems aren't about anything.

Well, if you define computation as involving symbols, and if you define symbols as things that have a particular meaning to us, then it follows by definition that computation doesn't exist independent of human minds and culture. — Michael

Then the question is whether defining computation in a broader sense is meaningful. If every physical system can be understood as computing, what would non-computational system look like? How do you distinguish computation from non-computation?

So for something to count as computation, the output has to be useful? Then how about the physical processes that brought about the Sun, or DNA? — Michael

Keep in mind that we coined computation in the context of symbol manipulation and mathematical calculation, not nuclear physics or protein production.

I think you're being too pedantic. If we just look at the physics of a calculator, all that happens is some physical thing reacts to some physical force. Kinetic energy causes a chain reaction that results in certain LEDs emitting light. — Michael

This is an ontological question, so being pedantic is expected. You're right that the physics of a calculator doesn't involved symbol manipulation, which goes to a deeper point. Computation exists when we say a physical system produces meaningful symbols for us.

Since there's nothing meaningful to the universe, I would suggest that computation can't be ontological. Rather, it's a product of mind and culture.

But what does that mean? If it's just a case of taking some input, doing something with it, and then outputting something else, then every physical process is an act of computation, isn't it? — Michael

We can say that, but I'm not sure how meaningful a rock computer is. I can't use it to do anything useful I would use a computer for. And how am I supposed to differentiate between computing machines and computing rocks? Does that mean computers existed before we built computing machines and people computed with pen and pencil? Was the Big Bang the first computer?

Also, the idea that physical systems are transforming inputs into outputs is an interpretation where we treat things as inputs and outputs.

What counts as computation? — Michael

Something like symbol manipulation via calculation.

If something is not subject to modality, then ipso facto it cannot be discussed in terms of possible worlds. — Banno

I suppose so. But then again, did we just make that up?

Or what I'm trying to point out is that maybe brute facts are like infinity in counting. Infinity doesn't follow the same rules as the finite numbers.

Or maybe brute facts are like 1 divided by zero, which is not a number, but it is something that comes up when you have zero in the number system.

I don't know. If it's brute, there's no explanation for it, right?

If there's no reason why something is brute, then there's no reason for it to be brute in another world, perhaps?

The truth value of brute facts are not subject to modalities and are not contingent unlike facts per se. — Question

Interesting. Could there be different brute facts in other worlds?