:up: I also stand by my preference for the DR view, and I totally get your interest in exploring the nuances of the various arguments even though I no longer share it.

I don't think it's hair splitting to contest your claim that qualia are the direct objects of perception, or to press the point that determinate objecthood is necessary for reference. — Esse Quam Videri

I have always found this whole debate somewhat ridiculous. It has always seemed to me to be nothing more than arguing about terminology. We can say, without going in to any detail, that the visual environment stimulates the visual cortex such as to form a visual image, in some way analogous to how an image is formed on a photographic emulsion or digital sensor.

Then it may be said that the visual image just is the seeing of the environment―that's one way of talking about it. Or it may be said that the visual image is what is seen― and that's another way of talking about it. The latter way of talking, though, is more inherently dualistic because it invokes an homunculus that does the seeing, whereas in the former way of talking it is simply the sentient body that sees the environment.

So, we have two different ways of conceptualizing what is going on and no way of determining that one is true and the other false. Personally I prefer the "direct" description on the grounds of parsimony and a distaste for dualism. What I don't see any point in is arguing about it, because such arguments never pass the point of talking past one another. As far as I have read it, this whole thread has been an altogether wasteful and pointless exercise in each side talking past the other.

However, predestination does preclude free will. Also, determinants (i.e. genes, environments, nutrients, and experiences) preclude free will because biological organisms do not choose all of their determin — Truth Seeker


Of course our environment and experiences and biology influence our choices. How could it be otherwise? That's not what we mean by "free". "Free" means "not under the control or in the power of another; able to act or be done as one wishes." What we wish for may be the result of our biology and environment -- but our ability (or lack thereof) to act on it is either "free" or "constrained". — Ecurb

You are each talking about different notions of free will. The libertarian notion admits of no determinants which are not strict restraints on freedom like being locked up or subject to natural laws such as gravity.

The compatibilist view simply redefines free will as the capacity to act free of "extraneous" restraints yet under the control of, that is not free of, natural and cultural determinants such as genes, cultural conditioning, psychological development, intelligence and so on.

But that’s exactly where the pressure point lies: if the semantic/normative side is genuinely real, then physical causality can’t be an exhaustive account of thought. — Esse Quam Videri

For me eliminative physicalism says that ultimately the constitutive reality is the physical causal with the semantic being an emergent phenomenon of a purely conceptual nature. Basically that the obvious fact that the semantic seems real to us due to our immersion in symbolic language and conceptual generalization does not point to any substantive non-physical reality over and above the physical. I don't say i agree with that, but I do argue against those who try to claim that it is self-refuting.

Traditional Buddhism isn't interested in explaining "the world we experience in common", that has never been its scope, even though especially later, some have tried to make it part of its scope. — baker

I agree that Buddhism offers only a soteriology and not any coherent, consistent or explanatory metaphysics, and the idea that it does offer the latter is all I've been arguing against.

That “boundness” isn’t social; it’s just what it means see that the conclusion follows from the premises. — Esse Quam Videri

Right, the conclusion follows from the premises in that it must be, at least implicitly, saying the same thing. So, I would say it is a matter of semantics. The "should" in the "should accept the conclusion if we accept the premises" of a valid deductive argument, for me just seems to be a matter of understanding of what is being said. I think it could be expressed as "would" in other words, as in "would accept the conclusion if the premises are accepted and understood" (and given good faith, of course).

And I also agree that a causal description doesn’t mention normativity. The question is whether normativity is merely a parallel “semantic overlay,” or whether it has real explanatory authority in why we believe what we believe. — Esse Quam Videri

Why can in not be both ? Perhaps the word "overlay" led you think I was counting it as secondary?

But if warrant is real, then physical causality can’t be the whole story. — Esse Quam Videri

Right, not the whole story, but then neither would the semantic side be the whole story, either. Sellars attempts to address these questions. Spinoza too, in a kind of tangential way.

An impersonal, unreflective, robotic, mindless little scrap of molecular machinery is the ultimate basis of all the agency, and hence meaning, and hence consciousness, in the universe.

It's clear in that quotation that he's not denying the reality of agency. consciousness and meaning― but by all means continue with your self-righteous crusade astride your mighty strawhorse.

Hart is using the word "normative" in a different way. To say reasoning is "normative" is to acknowledge the possibility of error. The distinction between successful and unsuccessful performance comes "baked in". — Esse Quam Videri

I take the normativity of reason to be relative to its form, not its content. Valid reasoning may lead to unsound or even meaningless conclusions if the premises are unsound or meaningless. Error in reasoning I understand to be error of method, not a matter of the truth or falsity of its content. What do you take the possibility of error to be dependent upon?

Yes, but also there is an "oughtness" to logical implication itself (e.g. one ought to accept the conclusion of a deductive argument that is both valid and sound). — Esse Quam Videri

The problem is that the premises are taken for granted not supported within the argument itself. The requirement is only that the conclusions follows from the premises. So, there is no requirement that one should accept the conclusion of a valid deductive argument unless one accepts the premises, and there is no way, from within such an argument itself that one is constrained to accept the premises.

Hart's argument is targeted toward eliminative materialists such as Rosenberg, Chruchland, etc. who do argue that human (or animal) thought is fully and exhaustively explicable in terms of physical causal relations. — Esse Quam Videri

I haven't studied Rosenberg or the Churchlands, but I find it hard to believe that they would be stupid enough not to allow that there is a semantic overlay to neural processes. I suspect their position gets routinely strawmanned by its opponents.

It's hard to see how the former is reducible to the latter. The "oughtness" or "normativity" described above seems to drop out of any purely causal analysis. — Esse Quam Videri

It is not necessarily a matter of the former being reducible to the latter. The "oughtness" is obviously not a part of any causal analysis―however i don't see any reason to think a causal model rules out, as opposed to simply does not include, the semantic―why, that is, they could not exist "in parallel", despite the fact that we cannot unite them conceptually in a single account.

That's an interesting comparison. I'm not sure if I would have put those two ideas together, but I see what you mean. Both appear to be unverifiable. I'm not convinced people see ghosts even though I have heard some stories (from folks I know and trust) which are ball-tearers. I've always believed in haunted minds not haunted houses. — Tom Storm

As I go on to say, the fact that we all see the same objects in the same places at the same times does strongly suggest even if it doesn't strictly prove that objects are independently existent of human and animal minds assuming no connection between human and animal minds.

I believe people think they have seen ghosts, but I don't believe that what they have seen, or thought they have seen, are really ghosts as in disembodied spirits of dead people. The fact that people have seen something commonly referred to as ghosts is the reason I say that ghosts are real psychic phenomena.

If they do, then that ratio is π, whether anyone has conceptualized it or not. The mathematical relationship exists in the physical structure itself. If no — then it needs to be explained why circular objects behave as if that ratio constrains them. Why do soap bubbles, planetary orbits, ripples in water all exhibit this same ratio? Is that just coincidence? — Wayfarer

Any shape at all if perfectly repeated at different scales would always have the same relative proportions. How could it be otherwise? Soap bubbles, planetary orbits and ripples are not perfect circles or spheres so the ratio would differ in each individual case.

That is just the division between the quantitative, material, extended, objective, and the internal, qualitative, subjective. — Wayfarer

Division or distinction? Unlike Descartes i am not claiming a division. Are you saying there is no such distinction?

There’s the Cartesian division again. — Wayfarer

What makes you think it is a Cartesian division rather than just the acknowledgement that there are different spheres of activity and inquiry in human life? Do you think science has anything much to say about art or love or religious feeling?

Curious, if someone tells you there are ghosts, is your response:

Bullshit: science hasn’t demonstrated their existence and souls most certainly can’t be demonstrated..
Or
We can’t rule ghosts out as yet and while I am unconvinced so far by any evidence, I am open to changing my mind if fresh evidence is forthcoming. — Tom Storm

I think there is ample evidence that ghosts are real psychic phenomena. Do they have an independent existence? How would we know? Is that question very much different in the strictest sense from the question as to whether the world as it appears has an independent existence?

I certainly don't claim that only that which can be observed can possibly exist. Of course it many people, even everyone, observes the same things in the same places at the same times that does seem to lend some weight to the idea that the things have some kind of independent existence―unless of course our minds are at some unconscious level conjoined, and I don't rule that out, even though it would seem to be something impossible to prove.

I basically agree with what you say about science, but there are two points that came to mind. First, I see science as an extension of ordinary, everyday observation, and I think those observations, if accurate, will remain true as long as the things observed don't change their behavior.

Second, another part of science is inference to explanation, hypotheses, which are subsequently tested by observing if what they predict obtains. The theories that becomes accepted parts of science as a result of this process of testing cannot ever be proven to be true, and as you say, some of them have become obsolete, because further observations which no longer accord with them have arisen.

There are classic historical cases of this, but the fact of the being past falsifications of theories does not guarantee that all or even any of the current accepted theories will be falsified in the future.

As to what we know of reality, I would say that we know what we are able to observe, and nothing more, when it comes to "knowing that". "Knowing how" is of course a very different matter. We don't know of our theories, for example relativity and quantum are certainly true, but we certainly know how to apply them to achieve incredibly accurate results. What conclusions can we draw from that is the question.

To say that no phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is observed is not the same as to say that we bring things into existence by observing them. We know that in the context of how things appear to us that we can be mistaken. So, even in that context there are things real and things imagined, and their realness or imaginary status is not a matter of opinion. We and the other animals seem to share a world―and that is the way it appears to anyone with their eyes open―it's not a matter of opinion.

Science is a combination of observations (of what appears to us, obviously) and inference to the best explanation for those observations. It says nothing, and can say nothing, about how things are in any absolute, non-contextual sense. There is no such sense―not for us anyway―how could there be?

The objective world of science is only one half of human life. The other half is the world of dreams, feelings, visions, the world of the arts, literature, music, religion. The two are not, or should not be, in conflict―they are simply two different realms of human experience. The attempt to make the arts and religion sciences, and the attempts to make of science a religion are (although there is an element of art in the sciences), in my view, equally wrong-headed.

Every working scientist presupposes that nature is intelligible, that valid inference tracks truth, and that explanation is possible when they do their work. Those are philosophical commitments, whether or not anyone stops to examine them. — Esse Quam Videri

You make it sound as though there could be an alternative.

:up:

Yep, that’s pretty much how I understand the maxim. We need to remember that no one sentence formula is going to articulate a full account of morality. But it’s certainly better than, “Death to all apostates!” — Tom Storm

I think it's the best we can do. For me the very idea of a "full account of morality" is the wrong way to think about it, given that we are always dealing with real people in real world situations. It's a simple way of encapsulating the idea that we should, if we want to be ethical, always be motivated by the best intentions we are capable of.

Sure, but for me the essence of ethical thought and action is about fellow feeling and good intentions. We are not perfect, obviously we can and do make mistakes.

But I think many scientists are nowadays aware of the dangers of metaphysical realism, the antidote to which is simply circumspection. 'We don't say this is how the world really is, but that is surely how it appears to be.' — Wayfarer

On the other hand, the idea that reality could be other than it appears to be is absurd unless what is meant by "how the world appears" allows that what appears to us is not exhaustive, since we have reason to believe it appears differently to other animals. I don't think theories should be included in "how the world appears" either, since they are obviously defeasible.



Ironically the idea that reality could be some absolute way apart from how it appears introduces the very the notion of the "God's eye view from nowhere" that you are constantly arguing against.

How about "Treat others as you, to the best of your understanding, think they would wish to be treated"?

I don't know what you are driving at with "subjectivity over objectivity".

But that's not why we're here, now is it? Certainly not why you are, I'd wager. :smile: — Outlander

I don't know why I'm here.

I don't see how that has anything to do with the point I was trying to make. — Outlander

You said."who says reality has to make sense?". I was pointing out that anything that would count as a reality for us must make sense. The point was clear.

Anything we can identify as being real has to make sense. Of course that doesn't rule out the possibility that there are aspects of nature that we cannot detect.

I agree that as far as we can tell humans compared to animals have the added ability to reflect in symbolic linguistic terms.

I agree that humans being reborn as animals, even insects, makes little sense even within the doctrine of karma. Buddhism altogether lacks any metaphysical force insofar as it lacks any capacity to explain the world we experience in common.

Justice is another strong motivator. If someone wrongs you, and you're unable to revenge yourself or they die before you have the chance, then what? — baker

I don't equate justice with revenge, but I get that the idea that wrondgdoers can get away with their wrongdoing and escape justice by dying is not palatable.

In order to effectively maintain that a system of ethics is worthwhile, one has to believe that justice will prevail, if not in this life, then in the next. — baker

I don't believe that, because I think the idea of justice is rightly based on compassion. A psychopath may be incapable of genuinely ethical behavior, since for me it comes down to intention. We generally think that animals are incapable of ethical behavior, a view which indeed may be incorrect, but assuming that it is correct, why should we expect more of a psychopath than we do of animals?

Out of time now...

Argument 1: The Argument from Rational Normativity
P1. Reasoning involves being guided by normative logical relations — recognizing that conclusions ought to follow from premises, that inferences are valid or invalid, that beliefs are warranted or unwarranted.
P2. Logical relations are intrinsically normative (they involve "ought"), and no purely descriptive-causal account of physical events entails or generates normativity. (The is/ought gap applies at the level of logic itself.)
P3. If physicalism is true, then every feature of human thought is fully and exhaustively explicable in terms of physical causal relations.
P4. Genuine reasoning requires that our beliefs are (at least partly) explained by the normative logical relations themselves — that we believe the conclusion because it follows, not merely because neurons fired in a certain sequence.
P5. If a worldview renders genuine rational warrant impossible, it undermines its own claim to be rationally believed.
C1. If physicalism is true, no belief — including the belief in physicalism — is held because it is rationally warranted; it is held because it is causally produced.
C2. Therefore, physicalism is self-undermining. — Esse Quam Videri

I somehow missed this earlier. I'll give my thoughts on each premise and conclusion.

P1: Saying that reasoning is normative suggests that it is socially or culturally constructed. I don'rt buy that because it seems obvious to me that animals, and not just social animals, reason. Of course symbolic language vastly extends the ambit of reason, but I think it is also true that the necessity for consistency, validity and justification in reasoning is intuitively obvious if a thinker is self-aware enough to be concerned with more than merely asserting a random opinion.

P2: The only ought I see in logic is that if you want your thoughts to be more than arbitrarily related to one another, orderly instead of chaotic, and pragmatically insightful, then you ought to attempt to think consistently, validly and justifiably. I think this applies to animals as much as to humans. It seems reasonable to expect that the ability to think in appropriate ways would be selected for in both animals and humans, as chaotic thoughts unrelated to what is going on would not be conducive to survival.

P3: It is simply not true that human (or animal) thought is fully and exhaustively explicable in terms of physical causal relations. To think this would be to posit strict determinism and the impossibility of novel insight.

P4: What if believing the conclusion because it follows just is neurons firing in a certain appropriate sequence or pattern of relations?

P5: The physicalist worldview does not necessarily, even if certain versions of it may, render rational warrant impossible. This is a strawman.

C1: This is an either/or fallacy. A belief may both be held because it is rationally warranted and because it is causally produced.

C2: Physicalism is not (necessarily) self-undermining. This is not to say that it is certainly true, but that only tendentiously simplistic caricatures of physicalism are self-undermining.

As time allows I may come back to address the other argument as you have laid it out.

Buddha’s point is that if there is initiation of action, then agents are discernible, and once agents are discernible, responsibility follows. — Wayfarer

You clearly missed the point. I was responding to the underlined, not making a comparison between humans and animals, except insofar as it seems more normal to impute, whether rightly or wrongly, moral responsibility to the latter.

Animals are initiators of actions―it seems wrong to impute moral responsibility to them. If you are talking about mere responsibility, as in 'lightning was responsible for starting the fire', then the point is trivial.

It should be possible to make sense of any clear and consistent argument. The claim seems to be that because physicalism cannot make sense of intentionality, and intentionality is obviously real, then physicalism is refuted.

The problem is that any physicalism which claims that there can be no real intentionality is always already refuted, since the claim that there is no real intentionality is itself a claim about something and hence is itself and example of intentionality.

It doesn't follow that, for example, electro-chemical signalling, which amounts to semiosis ...that is amounts to information about some conditions or other being apprehended, would be impossible if it were nothing more than a physical process, just because we cannot explain how it works in the terms of physics.

It is already obvious that those kinds of biological processes cannot be explained in terms of physics. It is simply the wrong toolkit.

That there might be (current at least but even no possible future) physical explanation does not prove that something more than physical processes are involved, even if it might reasonably serve as a motivator for the faith-based intuition that something mysterious and perhaps inexplicable is going on. Claiming that the something mysterious is logical or empirical proof of a spiritual realm or god or whatever is a step too far and does not provide any missing explanation in any case.

Maybe there is nothing to understand. If no one can lay it out, we might conclude that there is no argument―that is what I've been leading up to. You can't debunk or refute an argument that doesn't exist.

It might help if you lay out what you think the argument is.

You say this:

It isn’t talking about consciousness, mind, or any number of tedious philosophical problems; it is simply saying that a mere point of view can’t be explained by naturalistic processes. — Tom Storm

But that is a mere assertion. What reason do you think the argument is offering for why point of view cannot be explained by natural processes?

What exactly are you looking for Tom. Do you think intentionailty cannot be explained in naturalistic terms? Or are you thinking that it is the origin of intentionality that cannot be explained in naturalistic terms? It is a trivial truism that intentionailty cannot be explained in terms of physics or physical chemistry―no one who has thought about it at all would disagree with that.

Do you think there are theistic, supernaturalistic or esoteric explanations that offer better, more coherent and consistent accoiunts than naturalistic ones?

I think you misunderstood me. I should have said that we would leave the door open to superstitions, folk traditions, and supernatural ideas, God and esoterica. There is little doubt that wherever there is a gap, God will be inserted, as a kind of explanatory wall filler. — Tom Storm

Yes, I suppose that is true for some―for those who need certainty. My point is that God and other spiritual and/ or esoteric notions might provide a sense of certainty, but cannot provide any cogent explanation for anything. There is nothing more mysterious, more inconsistent, more ambiguous than God, for example. Just read the Old Testament―particularly the Book of Job.

If people claim that physics can explain everything, then they are obviously wrong. I haven't heard many, or even any, claims to that effect on this site.

Why should we not trust in complexity and neuroscience up to the point of what is known in those fleids? Like all science the trust should be provisional, and completely open to revision.

Also saying that we may never have a complete account does not necessarily leave the door open to God and esoterica, because those posits can never be scientific or satisfactorily explanatory. They can only be faith based notions. Science should not have problems with faith-based notions since they can never be part of science and hence pose no challenge to it. The obverse also holds, I think, since science can never be the "be-all and end-all" of human life, it can only ever play a mere part.

The “input” to the system is treated as if it were already a perceptual unit, already individuated as visual information, when in lived experience there is no such pre-perceptual layer. What the neuroscientist calls “input” is itself a reconstruction abstracted from an already meaningful encounter with the world. The retina does not receive “edges” or “features”; it is we who later describe neural activity as if it were encoding them. The world is perceived in terms of what it affords, not as a neutral array of data awaiting interpretation. No amount of neural description can recover this level, because it presupposes it. — Joshs

The problem applies equally to postulating that the input is historically determined cultural and social conditioning. In lived experience there is no such pre-perceptual layer. The degree to which what we perceive is "naturally given" as opposed to culturally constructed is impossible to determine and so the question seems always to be open to black and white thinking on both sides of the argument.

Probably both. But a problem with "naturalism" is that it’s so vague that you can smuggle a lot into it. I think the explanatory gap for intentionality applies to both naturalism and physicalism, because both seem to share the central assumption that everything, including mental states can be explained in terms of physical processes or natural laws. — Tom Storm

I don't think that is a fair assessment of either physicalism or naturalism. It may apply to certain stripes, but beyond that, no. For example there are physicalssts such as Galen Strawson who propose a kind of panpsychism. Naturalism in the broadest sense, I would say, just rules out an intelligent designer, it doesn't rule out that matter might be, in some sense, intelligent at all levels.

We often end up in physicalist or naturalist circles claiming that our mysteries are explained by evolution or complexity and emergence, and that time will answer them definitively, or that we’ve described the problem incorrectly, so we simply restate it in a way that makes it disappear. — Tom Storm

Again I think this is not right. That there may be mysteries which might never be explained is not ruled out by either physicalism or naturalism. Supernaturalism posits an intelligent designer and an overarching plan, and the problem with those ideas is that they can never be demonstrated to be true, and they are, given the nature of the world we know, greatly implausible to boot.

Yes, and this is really the area I’m interested in: understanding the argument, not refuting it or trying to sidestep it. I want the best possible formulation of this argument. We often move so fast on this site that, for the most part, people are playing a kind of tennis with their own preconceptions: you hold this, I return your serve with mine.

Hart’s argument concerns an explanatory gap. Even if every mental state is correlated with a brain state, that only gives a correlation, it doesn’t explain why the brain state represents the world rather than merely being a physical pattern. The point, it seems is that naturalistic accounts struggle to bridge the gap from physical patterns to meaningful content. — Tom Storm

It seems to me the argument is one from incredulity coupled with accusing naturalism of not being able to deliver on what it does not necessarily claim to be able to deliver on. In other words, as you say the "explanatory gap" is counted as being fatal to physicalism/naturalism.

But really, what is the alternative? Positing a designer or even merely some kind of pan-psychism does not solve the "explanatory problem" because there seems to be no way of explaining how either of those alternatives could work. So it doesn't come down to a contest of explanatory power so much as a case of people simply having different intuitions in the matter.

The physicalist/naturalist can fairly say "why should we posit entities for which we have no evidence, and maybe even no possibility of evidence?".

Naturalism or physicalism?

In an earlier response I outlined what the world being intelligible means to me. It means simply that an organism can navigate an unarguably complex environment successively―where "successfully" means simply 'well enough to survive, if not to thrive', and where thriving would indicate greater success.

If the non-naturalist explanation is that intelligibility is somehow an essential feature of things, even a matter of essences that allow an "agent intellect" to grasp their meaning and significance, would that apply only to symbolic language enabled beings or would it apply to animals also?

Notice, however, that an 'essence' limits the changeability of something (edit: because an essence would imply a defining characteristic that cannot be changed without annihilating the entity that bears the essence). — boundless

Right, but it seems undeniable that each entity is unique and that there will never be another the same. In our thinking about the one, I think we should not dis-value or deny the reality of the many.

No matter how we might want to diminish its importance by intellectualizing it, it is undeniable that each biological entity's deepest instinct is to survive. I think that is the unconscious motivation for concerns with rebirth and afterlife. It is really a motivation deriving from, a concern that finds its genesis in, the very sense of self these various religious teachings are advocating liberating ourselves from in one way, by means of faith, meditation or practice, or the other.

So, I don't see it as being a help, but rather as a hindrance, to effective practice leading to liberation from the fear of death.

If there is no continuity of memory, then there is no continuity of "interesting threads". On the other hand what if, as Kastrup believes, nothing is lost but all experience is taken up by the universal mind or God, contributing to its evolution? I'm not saying I believe that, but it dispenses with the need for individual rebirth.

Not "forever", but cyclically. In Buddhist cosmology, a universe comes into existence, exists, and then disappears. And then another one appears, exists, disappears, and so on. — baker

I don't see how that helps the case unless universal liberation were achieved at the end of the life of each universe. By the way, do you have a citation from the scriptures to support that cosmological view?

By understanding paticcasamuppada, dependent co-arising. — baker

That might be the theory, but where is the practice?

I don't think so.
Enlightenment the Buddhist way is not something many people would or even could want. I find it odd that the idea has such prominence in culture at large, when it's such a highly specific niche interest.

In any case no one but the actual enlightened would know,

Indeed, the phrase colloquially used is "It takes an arahant to know an arahant". Other than that, there are in traditional teachings some pointers as to how even non-arahants might recognize one.

and is it even credible that any human being could not be mistaken in thinking they were enlightened?

It happens all the time in Buddhist venues. It's actually not a problem there. — baker

But how do you, presumably a self-acknowledged unenlightened one, know all this? Or, on the basis of what do you believe it?

Also, rebirth is quite consistent with anatman. If the male human John Smith can become in the future a female ant, then there is little in John Smith that can be considered an underlying essence. — boundless

If there is little (nothing?) in John Smith that can be considered to be an underlying essence, then the idea of him becoming a future female ant seems unintelligible. I've heard the "candle flame" analogy, but it seems simplistically linear and naive in the context of a vastly interconnected world.

In my book for the environment to count as intelligible all that is required is that percipients can successfully orient themselves in it such as to act in accordance with what is actually going on. A percipient that could not do this would not survive for long. Creatures of all kinds have eyes, ears, noses, mouths and parts sensitive to touch.

It seems unarguable that those sensory organs developed in response to the possibilities afforded by environments. Eyes would not for example have developed in the absence of light. To say that the environment is intelligible is only to say that creatures with the right sensory organs and nervous systems can navigate successfully enough to survive. As an analogy to say that something is visible does not require that it be seen, but merely that it reflects light.

As I understand it, intelligibility is an attribute of events, not of objects. Objects are perceptible. Cognition and re-cognition of objects happens for humans and animals on account of gestalting and memory. We can say that animals "see things as", see things in terms of affordances, and we might say this is a kind of judgement, but it is not judgement in the conceptually reflective sense made possible by symbolic language.

It seems to me that aboutness is possible only on account of symbolic language. Chomsky says that words do not directly possess referents in the world and I take this to mean that words, being generalizations, do not strictly refer to particular objects, but rather to kinds of objects, which reference is a linguistic, not a worldly states of affairs. It is humans that use or take words to refer to particular objects in particular situations.

Aboutness has a couple of closely related but different senses.

(1) It's a property of the experience, the property to be about an object. It arises with the experience from physical processes in the brain.

(2) the relation between the experience and the object.
Arises by virtue of seeing the object. Doesn't call for other physical processes than (1) and the object.

. — jkop

This might be merely a terminological issue (so much in philosophy is) but I think it makes more sense to say that experience is of objects and sensations and judgements are about attributes and relations.

Indeed. Can it be demonstrated that a single person has achieved this end? How would we even do that? How do we even know it is a plausible possibility? — Tom Storm

I agree. I think the idea of the enlightened one is just a case of the usual human myth-making. In any case no one but the actual enlightened would know, and is it even credible that any human being could not be mistaken in thinking they were enlightened?

Cheers, yes the idea of liberating all beings is aspirational. And given how few (if any?) do ever seem to be liberated, and the acknowledgement within the traditions of its rarity...
That said, acting for the benefit of all rather than the self would seem to be liberating for the self (or from the self).

Personally I like to think of death as being liberation for all―either in eternity or oblivion―the idea of rebirth makes little sense to me. It seems to be, if anything, to be motivated by attachment to the self.