Are you sympathetic to the Kantian notion that space and time are part of the human cognitive apparatus and allow us to make sense of our experience, but not an aspect of the noumenal world? — Tom Storm

I'm sympathetic, but not necessarily in agreement :wink:.

The problem I see with Schop with this is the architecture doesn't line up...

Will ||
Forms || Outside Time/Space

What is thus "mental states" then? This "unknown knower" Subject? Ok... Why is that in there? Where is this time/space/causality (PSR) coming from? It's an illusion? Whence this illusion?

It just seems oddly shoehorned in.

The Noumena is supposed to be Will, the Phenomena is I guess the Representation which encompasses ... The Subject (mental states?), The Forms (the content of mental states?), and Time/Space/Causality (and the fourfold root of the PSR that stems from this. It's just too many things comprising the Representation, seemingly arbitrarily.

And why is this the way Will chooses to individuate itself?

And why is this the way Will chooses to individuate itself? — schopenhauer1

That's the million dollar question. Nicely framed.

Would you consider yourself an idealist?

The hard problem has nothing to do with whether consciousness resides in the brain. Its about creating an objective measurement for subjective experience.

Ok, I would say that from my physicalist perspective I would expect reaching such a goal to be impossible. However, I don't see such a goal being unreachable as posing a logical problem for my perspective.

Anyway, I am undoubtedly most accustomed to encountering "the hard problem" being brought up, as an attempt to disprove reductive physicalism (often accompanied by suggestions that panpsychism is more reasonable), and I haven't been reading here long enough to have good intuitions* about where individual people are coming from. So I hope you will forgive me projecting my biases while I get to know you all.

My neural networks are insufficiently trained. ;-)

Kastrup would say that our perception is simply representing the world as if it was a certain way. The physical world is representation, not the thing itself. — schopenhauer1

I would say that the physical world is represented. It is not the thing itself, but both what is represented and experience are of something.

Is the assumption that there is something that is experienced and something that is represented mistaken?

The physical world is representation, not the thing itself. — schopenhauer1

Suppose "representation" is the "thing in itself" (just as the tip of an iceberg is also an iceberg) ...

In terms of science, I think that science proper is the acquiring of how entities relate to each other and not what they fundamentally are — Bob Ross

:up: Agree. I am also a Kastrup reader. Overall, as I'm opposed like him to reductive materialism, I'm generally in agreement with him. My criticism of his philosophy is perhaps an over-reliance on metaphors - the 'dissociated alter' and 'the dashboard' to name a couple. At the same time, I think he's an important voice. He is building up an impressive bibliography and does an excellent job in many debates and forums.

My overall philosophical orientation is to emphasise the primacy of experience and that knowledge is a constructive and synthesising activity, which absorbs experiences and perceptions and synthesises them into the gestalt of subjective experience. Empiricists likewise stress the primacy of experience - Berkeley was an empirical idealist - but I adopt the Kantian principle of there being innate categories and functionalities of the mind which are not simply given but which the mind brings to experience.

Forms || Outside Time/Space — schopenhauer1

'Prior to' - ontologically prior. Not 'outside' as in 'located somewhere else'.

If the nature of reality is essentially experiential does this mean that prior to experiential animals there was no reality or is this a teleological claim or has there always been something that is capable of experiencing?....I would say that the physical world is represented. It is not the thing itself, but both what is represented and experience are of something.

Is the assumption that there is something that is experienced and something that is represented mistaken? — Fooloso4

Hope you don't mind my chipping in. What's at issue here, is the sense in which the physical world has an inherent reality outside our experience, knowledge and perception of it. From a realist point of view, that it exists independently of us is so obvious as to seem hardly worth stating. But consider the role of the observing mind in arriving at this understanding.

The problem with your argument is that it assumes you can get outside your understanding of the world to see it as it truly is, without any observer. Then you imagine on the one side, your representation, and on the other, the object being represented. What that neglects is the role of the observing intelligence in synthesising experience to form a whole - a gestalt, in fact - which is then the subject of your judgement. Absent that synthesising capability, there is nothing to pass judgement about. So you can't literally get outside your representation. You can't in any sense imagine a world from no viewpoint. Perspective is essential, and perspective is what the observer brings.

You might object (as did Einstein) 'surely the moon continues to exist when there is nobody to perceive it'. Bishop Berkeley, and Bernardo Kastrup, get around this difficulty by positing God and a Mind-At-Large, respectively, which ensures the continuous existence of the moon, even the absence of observers. However I have a rather more radical view than that (and here part company with Kastrup.) It is that all we know of existence — whether of a specific thing, or the Universe at large — is the product of our cognitive and intellectual capacity, the activity of the powerful hominid forebrain which sets us apart from other species. All that processing power generates our world, and that’s what ‘empirical reality’ consists of. After all, the definition of ‘empirical’ is ‘based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience.’ So, asking of the Universe ‘How does it exist outside of, or apart from, our observation or experience of it?’ is an unanswerable question. It's not as if it really ceases to exist when not observed, or really comes into existence when it is observed. To exist is to be 'inside' this relational subject-object dynamic¹.

Because of scientific realism, we assume that the world exists independently of your or any mind. But that's only true as a methodological assumption, not as a metaphysical axiom. This is something that has become increasingly evident in 20th century science and philosophy, mainly as a consequence of the observer problem in physics. Science has had to acknowledge the role of the observer, whether via the 'Copenhagen interpretation' or in Wheeler's 'participatory universe' model or in QBism. (Kastrup addresses all this, by the way, he is thoroughly conversant with modern physics and was employed at CERN at some point.)

I suspect that is probably a controversial analysis, but that's my take on it.

-------
1. 'By and large, Kaccayana, this world is supported by a polarity, that of existence and non-existence. But when one sees the origination of the world as it actually is with right discernment, "non-existence" with reference to the world does not occur to one. When one sees the cessation of the world as it actually is with right discernment, "existence" with reference to the world does not occur to one'. ~ the Buddha, Kaccāyanagotta Sutta

Hello Philosophim,

So if I understand this correctly, reality is the total abstraction of an observer

No. The concept of “reality” is the sum total of existence (i.e., of being), just like how “substance” is the concept of a type of being. I am not saying that something is real simply by being abstracted by a human being (or something like that). Abstracts are prominently associated with our ability to reason, which has nothing directly to do with what exists.

Isn't this just solipsism?

Good question: no. Solipsism is the idea that everything is in my mind, whereas analytical idealism is the idea that both our minds are in a universal mind.

Because this seems to run into the problem of multiple beings each having a separate, and often times conflicting representation of reality.

There is no doubt that we have different experiences because we are different minds (i.e., different disassociated alters), but that doesn’t mean we aren’t a part of the same mind-at-large fundamentally.

If the observer is doing the abstracting, what is the observer? Is that also an abstraction of itself? In which case, what is it?

I didn’t quite follow this part: could you elaborate? Reality isn’t an abstraction: our understanding of reality by application of reason (i.e., our concepts of reality) are abstractions.

For example, if I abstract that I can fly, but fall and shatter half of my body, while I am in the hospital I have to find an explanation for why my abstraction failed.

This isn’t unique to a solipsist view (although analytic idealism is not solipsism regardless): our abstractions is our cognizing of what exists and it isn’t necessarily accurate all the time. Truth, I would say, is a relationship between thinking (cognizing) and being (reality) whereof something is true if our concept corresponds to what it is referencing in reality. This can include concepts referencing other concepts as well.

They cannot understand what it is like to experience a green pen from your point of view.
…
This is where we run into the hard problem. How do we objectively handle personal qualitative experience when it is impossible to know if we can replicate it on ourselves? Is what I call green your qualitative green when you see the waves that represent green? So far this seems impossible.

They cannot explain why anyone experiences the color green. A strong correlation between a brain function and the qualitative experience of greeness does not entail that the latter was produced by the former.

I think, and correct me if I am wrong, what you refer to by “the hard problem of consciousness” is how we account for the uniqueness of each persons experience: but I would say it is a much deeper problem than that. Just because they can stimulate something in brain that affects the conscious experiencer does not entail nor is proof that consciousness is reducible to the brain.

No, we know you're going to see green when a green wavelength hits your eyes and the proper signals go to your brain.

Again, this is just to acknowledge that conscious states are correlated with brain states: this does not prove that conscious states are brain states.

The fact that everything you experience is from your brain is not questioned in neuroscience at this point, only philosophy.

I agree with you on this, because I think most neuroscientists are physicalists and they are not acquainted with nor interested in the philosophical side of it, and really the only thing they are proving is a strong correlation between consciousness and brain states—not that the brain produces consciousness.

What is it like to be a fire for example?

Did you mean “to be on fire”? There is nothing to be like a fire: it isn’t a subject. Or are you saying it is a subject?

Just because we don't understand all the mechanics to the exact degree in a system does not invalidate the overlaying mechanics that we do understand about that system.

I absolutely agree, but a system not accounting for something it can theoretically account for is a soft problem, whereas a hard problem is in theory unprovable from the system. I think that the latter is the case with consciousness with respect to physicalism. Just to clarify, I am not claiming that we simply can’t explain it now, I am saying the reductive physicalist method fails in theory to be able to explain it.

qualitative experiences being linked to the physical brain

Again, them being linked is not under dispute: it is whether the brain is producing the qualitative experience and, thusly, whether reductive physicalism can account for it under its methodological approach. I agree that brain states are heavily correlated with conscious states; however, this is accounted for in analytic idealism by postulating that the brain state is an extrinsic representation of mental states (including the aspects of consciousness that bubble up to the ego: to our immediate awareness).

it is that a physicalist method cannot account for what it is like to be the thing experiencing that qualitative experience, because it is purely in the realm of the subject having the experience

I agree here: I am claiming that physicalism cannot account for what it is like to be a subject.

We cannot objectively know through the mechanics of stimulating the brain what it is like to have the experience of that brain, as we can never be that other brain.

This is also true for our own brain + mental states (if we were to experiment on them): we would never come closer, under physicalism, to proving mental states are derived from brain states.

Check out brain surgeries, or the case of the color blind painter who had brain damage that removed his ability to ever see or imagine color again

I don’t deny that we can manipulate conscious states by affecting brain states, this is also expected under analytic idealism.

Bob

Hello Fooloso4,

Does science suggest that there was mind experiencing itself experiencing?

No; and neither does analytical idealism. The universal mind is not something we can personify: the cognition, deliberation, and meta-consciousness that we (as humans) have are a product of evolution and are not something the universal mind has.

The universal mind is not experiencing itself directly like we experience the world but, arguably under Kastrup’s view, it is experiencing itself via us (as we are alters of that mind).

Or that there is something experienced that is not experience? That there is a difference between experience and what is experienced?

Science only tells us how things behave, not what they fundamentally are.

There is a logical leap from our being experiential to the universe being experiential. We have no experience of the experience of the universe or of it being experiential. It seems to be a form of anthropomorphism. The ancient assumption of like to like. Microcosm and macrocosm.

This would be true if my argument was that the universe is mind simply because we are mind: it is not. The argument is that we cannot account for consciousness by the reductive physicalist method and we can explain the exact same data with idealism, so that is our best metaphysical theory. I am not simply assuming the world out there is mind because I am mind: that is a bad argument.

This is still within the world of human experience.

What do you mean? My point is that we use reason to infer, based off of experience, things which are not a part of our experience (and this is perfectly valid).

It is the best because the best theory must be reductive?

Analytical idealism is not the best theory simply because it is a reductive methodololgical approach; however, yes, reductionism is the best means of explanation (regardless of whether one is a physicalist or idealist): “explanations” are fundamentally the reduction of a phenomenon (an effect) to other effects (or potential abstractions). If you don’t agree with that methodological approach, then you can’t be a physicalist either.

That there must be a single something that is fundamental?

There is nothing in reality that necessitates substance monism; however, the best theories are the one’s that use occam’s razor: otherwise, theories explode into triviality.

We have no experience of something fundamental.

I am not a full blown empiricist: it sounds like you might be. I think we can know things without directly experiencing them.

Bob

Hello 180 Proof,

Yes, it seems to me that 'panpsychist' arguments (e.g. analytical idealism) consist of appeal to ignorance / incredulity, hasty generalization and compositional fallacies.

Analytical Idealism is not a form of pansychism. Furthermore, could you please elaborate on why you think such?

Bob

Hello Wayfarer,

I appreciate your response!

but I adopt the Kantian principle of there being innate categories and functionalities of the mind which are not simply given but which the mind brings to experience.

Very interesting: what would those categories be exactly?

Bob

I appreciate your response!

I don't have much substantive to offer here, but I wanted to compliment you on a well written and clear OP. You obviously put a lot of thought and effort into it.

Thank you! I really appreciate that. I am still thinking over my metaphysics and so I am interested to hear everyone's opinions on it.

Bob

Under analytical idealism, the entirety of reality is fundamentally mind and is thusly conscious: not just animals. — Bob Ross

Analytical Idealism is not a form of pansychism. Furthermore, could you please elaborate on why you think such? — Bob Ross

Explain why you have not just contradicted yourself, Bob. Thanks.

You'll find them here.

what would those categories be exactly? — Bob Ross

Not to step on ’s toes, but to give a quicker answer……

Mathematical:
Of Quantity: unity, plurality, totality;
Of Quality: reality, negation, limitation;
Dynamical:
Of Relations: subsistence/inference, causality/dependence, community/reciprocity;
Of Modality: possibility, necessity, existence.

Fair warning: merely knowing what they are by name doesn’t tell you of the required presuppositions for their function.

…..reductionism is the best means of explanation….. — Bob Ross

But that’s a very good start, insofar as certainly the Kantian, and in some respects, Aristotelian, categories are the reduction of all conditions for function of the human intellect regarding real physical objects, pursuant to a particular speculative metaphysical theory.

Keyword: theory.

The problem with your argument is that it assumes you can get outside your understanding of the world to see it as it truly is, without any observer. — Wayfarer

This is why I asked about the "something" that has always been capable of observing.

If it is true that we cannot get outside our understanding of the world, then this extends to our understanding of a disembodied observer.

Thanks Bob for some great answers.

Good question: no. Solipsism is the idea that everything is in my mind, whereas analytical idealism is the idea that both our minds are in a universal mind. — Bob Ross

I've heard something similar to this before. Its sort of a "God observer of reality" idea (does not necessitate a God). I've seen this type of thought as the idea that if we could have an observer that could observe and comprehend reality, that would be the true understanding of reality.

I don't necessarily have a problem with that idea, but I have a problem with saying the God observer is reality itself. Isn't reality itself the substance the God observer observes, while the entire rational interpretation of it all can be known about that substance? Even if that is not what you are saying explicitly, this is a competitive theory with the idea that the observation is in fact reality.

I'm going to repost your intro and now dive a bit deeper now that I've asked a few questions.

By analytic idealism, I take it to be that reality is fundamentally (ontologically) one mind which has dissociated parts (like bernardo kastrup's view). Thusly, I do find that there really is a sun (for example): it just as a 'sun-in-itself' is not like the sun which appears on my "dashboard" of conscious experience--instead, I think the most parsimonious explanation is that it is fundamentally mentality instead of physicality — Bob Ross

If I understand what you're going for here, its the idea that the "sun-in-itself" only has identity because of rational beings. Let us imagine a child who looks at a picture and see a sun in a sky. If the child has never been told that there is a sun and a sky, would the child necessarily see the sun and sky as separate? We identify it as separate, and so it is. But without a rational being doing the identifying, would the concept of the sun and the sky exist? Would there really be a separation, or would it just be a blend of atoms?

Taken one step less drastic, its like the air we breath. Its a combination of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and other gases. But since we cannot easily observe this, its simply, "Air". Its like the sun in the sky, except we do not see the sun as separate from the sky just like we don't, while breathing, see the nitrogen as separate from the oxygen.

If I have this right, this still does not eliminate the sun as an existence if an observer did not exist. An observer is necessary for there to be an identity; for "the sun" to be known. But the substance of existence would still be. I can very much agree to this, but this seems to me to be "known reality" while the idea of reality as "what exists" still exists whether a rational observer identifies it as such.

Truth, I would say, is a relationship between thinking (cognizing) and being (reality) whereof something is true if our concept corresponds to what it is referencing in reality. This can include concepts referencing other concepts as well. — Bob Ross

Perhaps our vocabulary is slightly different, but I believe you agree with this concept from your original post. If "being" is reality, why not just call it "being" instead of reality? In which case, why not simplify it to state that reality is what exists regardless of our observations, or our being, while what we know about reality is a combination of our rational identifications that aren't contradicted by what exists? What problems does your vocabulary and outlook solve that my above statement does not? How can your vocabulary and outlook solve all of the problems that would arise by removing the idea that reality exists independently of an observer?

They cannot understand what it is like to experience a green pen from your point of view.
…
This is where we run into the hard problem. How do we objectively handle personal qualitative experience when it is impossible to know if we can replicate it on ourselves? Is what I call green your qualitative green when you see the waves that represent green? So far this seems impossible.

They cannot explain why anyone experiences the color green. A strong correlation between a brain function and the qualitative experience of greeness does not entail that the latter was produced by the former. — Bob Ross

Bob, I'm fairly certain that neuroscience does explain why you experience the color green. There are certain areas of the brain that generate colors. Read the link about Cerebral achromatopsia I posted.

"Cerebral achromatopsia is a type of color-blindness caused by damage to the cerebral cortex of the brain, rather than abnormalities in the cells of the eye's retina. It is often confused with congenital achromatopsia but underlying physiological deficits of the disorders are completely distinct. A similar, but distinct, deficit called color agnosia exists in which a person has intact color perception (as measured by a matching task) but has deficits in color recognition, such as knowing which color they are looking at."

We clearly know that the brain is what allows us to produce color. The above is a provable statement, with several ways of proving it wrong. For example, if the areas of the brain associated on the cerebral cortex were damaged but a person could still see color. Yet this isn't the case. It is incontrovertible in neuroscience that the brain is the source of consciousness. Only philosophers are arguing otherwise at this point, and to my mind, not doing a very good job of it.

What neuroscience cannot explain is what its like to be a brain that "sees" the color green. We know they see green, but it is impossible for US to see that green the brain is experiencing, because we are not that brain. This is why I used the fire analogy earlier. We know that fire is caused by oxygen combusting. It is a physical process that can be described clearly. But we cannot know what it is like to BE that flame. Why do I say it this way?

Because once you realize the brain is the source of consciousness, you realize that matter can have consciousness if combined in the correct way. This is not philosophy, but known fact. You are your brain, and a your brain is matter and energy. Can a fire have consciousness? Unlikely considering how we have identified consciousness. But we can't observe what its like to be those molecules in the fire can we? Is fire simply the sun and the sky together, or are we missing an identity and there are more identities we could put if we could observe it more carefully?

And that's the hard problem that physicalism cannot solve. We can identify and know all of the mechanics behind what make a result, like the brain resulting in consciousness. Mechanics = outcome.
But we cannot experience what it like to be outcome from the viewpoint of the outcome itself. We cannot say, "According to the brain monitoring we've done, you are experiencing 20 microns of pain." Its currently impossible. We can say, "We see you are experiencing pain from your brain scan, how do you feel?" Then we have to take the experiencers subjective answer.

And in this way, that is the experiencers "observed reality" to lead back into your idea. We can't use physicalism to identify it. The only one who has that observed reality, is the observer themselves. Without the observer, pain as a sensation, a personal experience, could not exist. We could monitor a brain and see all the mechanical functions that result in pain, but we cannot measure the experience itself. This is like the idea of there being "zombies", or people who have the mechanical brains that should indicate they feel a certain way, but we can't really measure exactly what they're feeling. What if a person has the mechanical combination for pain, but their feeling isn't at all like what we would feel? What if there is a brain that has the mechanical function of denoting consciousness, but it doesn't feel to them the consciousness that you or I feel?

In sum so I avoid repeating myself, the hard problem is that physicalism cannot objectively identify and quantify a personal subjective experience of matter and energy. Can matter and energy have consciousness if combined in the correct way? Absolutely. Is the brain the source of consciousness? Unquestioningly. Can we objectively describe the sensation of experiencing the color green? It seems impossible at this point in time.

I don’t deny that we can manipulate conscious states by affecting brain states, this is also expected under analytic idealism. — Bob Ross

This is also expected under physicalism and direct evidence for why physicalism can prove that the brain is the source of consciousness. I'm usually open to different view points, but on this one Bob, its a hard fact that the brain is the source of consciousness. You'll need to show something in neuroscience that would disprove this to me. If we cannot agree on this fundamental issue, then we'll just have to agree to disagree. We can continue the conversation at your observer level, but I will respectfully bow out on the hard problem if that is your decision.

Wonderful thinking as always!

Under analytical idealism, the entirety of reality is fundamentally mind and is thusly conscious: not just animals. — Bob Ross

Analytical Idealism is not a form of pansychism. Furthermore, could you please elaborate on why you think such? — Bob Ross

Explain why you have not just contradicted yourself, Bob. Thanks.

Absolutely: let me explain. Pansychism, in the literature, although the word etymologically means "all" + "soul", is reserved prominently for a family of metaphysical views which claim that matter is fundamental but that matter is conscious, whereas analytic idealism is the view that mind (i.e., consciousness) is fundamental: the former is the claim that everything has consciousness and the latter is that everything is in consciousness--which is a vital distinction. That is why I said it is not a form of pansychism.

I don't remember the exact context of the first quote of me from you, but when I said everything "is fundamentally mind and is thusly conscious", I was referring to the idea that everything is in a mind-at-large and not that everything has consciousness.

The reason this distinction is vital (i.e., between having vs. being in consciousness) is because pansychism has two issues that analytical idealism does not: the hard problem of consciousness (viz., how did those tiny bits or entities of matter become conscious?) and the compositional problem (viz., how can tiny conscious bits or entities of matter compose a much large and more complex subject like ourselves?). Ultimately I think that these problems render pansychism epistemically costly to hold (and that is why I am not a panpsychist).

If by pansychism, you were just referring to its etymological meaning (i.e., all + soul), then technically this would be a form of pansychism (so I apologize if I misunderstood you)--but I have been and would like to keep to the formal, traditional usages of the terms to reduce confusion.

With that being said, please let me know if you think I am still contradicting myself and I would love to hear that fallacies you think analytic idealism is committing.

Bob

Hello Mww,

I appreciate your response!

I am familiar with what Kant said were the categories, but I have never understood the proof for it. I don't see how those categories are function that produce objects as opposed to being meaning an aspect of our cognition (in the modern sense of the word). Could you elaborate on why one should believe that these categories are what our minds use as functions to produce phenomenal experience?

Bob

The argument is that we cannot account for consciousness by the reductive physicalist method ... — Bob Ross

The fact that we cannot now explain consciousness does not mean that there is not a physical explanation. This is an old story in the history of science. There have been naysayers at every step in the development of science who have argued that something cannot be done prior to it being done. Neuroscience is a relatively new science. This looks like nothing more than a sophisticated version of God of the gaps.

Science only tells us how things behave, not what they fundamentally are. — Bob Ross

According to the Standard Model of Particle Physics there are fundamental or elementary particles of matter.

I am not simply assuming the world out there is mind because I am mind: that is a bad argument. — Bob Ross

You are assuming that there is mind, but what do we know of mind that is not based on our mind? You are arguing that our consciousness cannot be explained unless consciousness is fundamental and irreducible.

What do you mean? My point is that we use reason to infer, based off of experience, things which are not a part of our experience (and this is perfectly valid). — Bob Ross

Based off of our experience you infer that reality is essentially experiential. Like from like. Put differently, based off the human mind you infer that there is mind itself.

Analytical idealism is not the best theory simply because it is a reductive methodololgical approach — Bob Ross

Your claim was:

It is the best metaphysical theory I have heard (so far) for what reality fundamentally is. — Bob Ross

There is nothing in reality that necessitates substance monism; however, the best theories are the one’s that use occam’s razor: otherwise, theories explode into triviality. — Bob Ross

The best theories do not misuse Occam's razor. Monism is not better than dualism or pluralism simply because it seems simpler to have one thing rather than many. Unless the theory can explain the whole of reality in terms of this one thing then Occam's razor does not apply.

It may be that sooner or later we run up against the limits of human knowledge. It may be that the deeper we dig the more there is to find. This is not trivial.

I think we can know things without directly experiencing them. — Bob Ross

The claim that:

... the universe is experiential in essence.

is not something we can experience but it is also not something we know. Whether it is something that can be known is questionable.

Hello Philosophim,

Wonderful analysis as usually! As I think that the root of our dispute is the hard problem of consciousness, I am going to briefly elaborate on the other portions of your reply (for now) so as to focus on the hard problem. If, at any point, you feel as though the conversation pertaining thereto is circling around or hitting a brick wall, then we can absolutely just agree to disagree; however, I think as of now that we have much more in common than we both may think and I do think we are both slightly speaking over one another (although not on purpose of course). There is still much to explicate on the topic.

I've heard something similar to this before. Its sort of a "God observer of reality" idea (does not necessitate a God). I've seen this type of thought as the idea that if we could have an observer that could observe and comprehend reality, that would be the true understanding of reality.

I want to clarify that this view is not a form of Berkleian idealism, where “to be is to perceive or to be perceived”. I do not hold that the universal mind is “observing” the world in the sense that we are. Instead, it is a lower grade of consciousness. Our, as humans, evolved consciousness is capable of things which the universal mind is not (e.g., cognitive deliberation, motive deliberation, meta-consciousness, etc.). In other words, I don’t think that the tree that I am seeing exists in the (or close to the) manner that I am perceiving it nor that it exists in that manner independently of perception due to a God-observer. The tree that I phenomenally see is perception-dependent, but the tree-in-itself still exists independently of perception: it is a part of the ideas within the universal mind. Think of it this way: if no one is looking at the tree, then it does not continue to exist in the manner that we perceive it, but it continues to exist in the sense that it is an idea in the universal mind that if we were to go perceive it we would expect to see the same tree (because our ability to perceive will represent the ideas the same manner it did before).

It is kind of like a video game in the sense that the game world (whatever it may be) is a representation of 0s and 1s. If the character moves to view a tree in that game, then they should expect to see the same representation (i.e., the tree), but that tree doesn’t ontologically exist: it is a representation of 0s and 1s. So, although the game analogy isn’t equivalent to our experience, under analytic idealism, the tree we perceive is just a representation within our perception-dashboard and the true essence of the tree is ideas (information).

Isn't reality itself the substance the God observer observes, while the entire rational interpretation of it all can be known about that substance?

This is a fair critique of berkelian idealism (where God is keeping the tree existing by continually perceiving it). The substance of reality under analytic idealism is mentality and the universal mind is fundamentally the one existing brute fact, and we are derivatives thereof (i.e., priority monism).

If I understand what you're going for here, its the idea that the "sun-in-itself" only has identity because of rational beings. Let us imagine a child who looks at a picture and see a sun in a sky. If the child has never been told that there is a sun and a sky, would the child necessarily see the sun and sky as separate? We identify it as separate, and so it is. But without a rational being doing the identifying, would the concept of the sun and the sky exist? Would there really be a separation, or would it just be a blend of atoms?

You actually went a step deeper than I was intending for the original post. I was just attempting to mention that the tree (or sun) doesn’t exist as what we perceive it (just like how the tree in the video game exists truly as 0s and 1s). But you are nevertheless correct that, under analytic idealism, the distinction between non-conscious entities is nominal. So I agree with you there.

Also, I really like the air example! That is really good for explaining that situation.

If I have this right, this still does not eliminate the sun as an existence if an observer did not exist.

This is correct. The idea is that the sun (just like the sun in a video game) doesn’t exist ‘in-itself’ (even though I only think it nominally is distinguishable from other non-conscious things, I like to use ‘in-itself’ still just to keep it simple) as what is perceived by conscious beings that are capable of perception.

This is the vital distinction between analytical (i.e., objective) idealism and subjective idealism and why I am not the latter.

If "being" is reality, why not just call it "being" instead of reality?

You could. I was using them interchangeably.

In which case, why not simplify it to state that reality is what exists regardless of our observations, or our being, while what we know about reality is a combination of our rational identifications that aren't contradicted by what exists?

Because what we observe is also real (i.e., a part of reality). When I imagine a unicorn, that unicorn exists as an imaginary unicorn. My concept of a car exists in my mind and is thusly a part of reality: humans and other conscious beings are a part of reality.

If one simply calls what is real what is perception-independent (or something similar) than (I would say) it fails under more in depth scrutiny. For example, one cannot evaluate the concept of concepts as true (even in the case that it references what a concept is correctly) because it doesn’t correspond to something outside of perceptive-experience (which is what you would be calling ‘reality’).

Ok, now for the hard problem of consciousness. Firstly, I really appreciate you sharing neuroscience with me, but I don’t think that is what is under dispute here. Let’s see if we can find some common ground.

Science (proper) tells us how things relate and not what they fundamentally are. The latter is actually metaphysics. All neuroscience is engaged in understanding how conscious experience relates to brain states and does not in-itself have anything to do with what conscious experience nor brain states fundamentally are (ontologically). Thusly, there are two claims I think you are accepting: (1) that neuroscience proves that brain states are strongly (maybe even incessantly) correlated with mental states and (2) that that suggests that metaphysically the former is the latter. I accept #1, but not #2: so our dispute is not about the science but rather the metaphysical implications of the science. To me, thusly, I agree with many claims you make because they are geared towards #1: such as the neuroscience you quoted.

However, you haven’t provided an argument for why you think that the fact that conscious states are heavily correlated with brain states (which is a scientific fact) suggests or implies that the latter is reducible to the former. Why do you think that?

Another key distinction I think needs to be made to provide clarity is that there is a difference between explaining mechanical awareness and qualitative experience. The former is how a mechanical (or otherwise consciousness-independent) organism can acquire information about its environment, whereas the latter is the qualitative experience that a subject has. Some of the claims you are making are really not a hard problem for physicalism at all (as you rightly point out) but this is because you are providing explanations of the former and not the latter. The hard problem pertains to how a consciousness-independent organism produces the latter, not how it has the former.

For example, when you say that we see the color green because of the light wavelengths and its interpretation by the brain to be green, that explains how the brain acquired knowledge of the greeness of the object (in the sense that it is reflected those wavelengths) and not why you have a qualitative experience of greeness. According to that account, we have not reason to expect that a qualitative experience of greeness would be produced: that is what you would have to explain to solve the hard problem.

Now, you could argue that we see strong correlations between the brain acquiring the knowledge of the greeness and the subject qualitatively experiencing the greeness to claim an inference that the latter is really reducible to the former, but, right now, I am just trying to explicate that the brain acquiring the knowledge of a color is distinct from a subject qualitatively experiencing that color; and, inherently, the account that you gave (i.e., the wavelengths being interpreted by the brain) only implies that the brain knows it is green, but not why would or how the brain generate an extra qualitative experience of it. This is a subtle but incredibly important distinction to make when discussing the hard problem: otherwise we begin to talk passed each other.

Further, I would anticipate that your response (although correct me if I am wrong) is that the strong correlations (e.g., the fact that every time the brain state has acquired the knowledge of the greeness we also subjectively experience the greeness) suggests that the mental state is truly the brain state (or states): this is where are dispute really lies.

I think that the only way one can account for consciousness in that manner is by obscurely noting it as produced by the brain (in light of strong correlations between the two) but never actually being able to account for its productions (i.e., how it actually happens). The reason I would say this is impossible to account for in physicalism (as opposed to being a soft problem) is because fundamentally the physicalist can only try to explain it by reduction to some brain state (or states) of which they are always only (at best) strong correlations between the two: the brain states themselves can never, due to them being brain states, account for how the qualitative is being produced by the quantitative. For example, if a person claims that this mental state X is strongly correlated to this brain state Y, there is still the valid conceptual question of “how did Y produce X”? The physicalist then has to explain this either (1) by another appeal to the same relationship (i.e., “because Y is correlated with Z”) of which the same conceptual question applies (i.e., “how did Z and Y produce X?”) or (2) by positing that “because strong correlation entails or implies causation” of which it equally applies, and is thusly not unique to physicalism, to an idealistic account of it (i.e., an idealist can accept that claim and hold that the brain states are extrinsic representations—or ‘caused’--by the mental states).

I am going to stop there to allow you to respond.

I look forward to hearing from you,
Bob

Would you consider yourself an idealist? — Tom Storm

I'm agnostic. However, I am weary of the hidden dualisms, Cartesian theaters, and homunculus fallacies found in most reductionist materialism / physicalism models.

I used to read neuroscience thinking I was reading metaphysics on things like mind. That is not the case. I was reading results from a methodology for other physical happenings. One of my themes is the notion of "minutia-mongering". Many people think if they just mine the world for more minutia they will find the hidden secrets. As if adding more physical understanding is peeling back to a core that is to be revealed, with just that much more technical information from scientific investigation.

Believe me, I would rather the "Hard Problem" be solved in some mundane technical fashion. But it might be one of those things that actually cannot. I don't want there to be fantastic "Mind is everything", or panpsychism, or proto-panpsychism, or any cluster of that which puts experiential / mind prior to material, but I am willing to entertain it because it answers the question better than the other. However, that doesn't mean it is accurately accounting for reality either.

Being that the only verification for justification we know of is empirical methods, this wouldn't be amenable to getting to the metaphysical heart of the matter (no pun intended). Rather, we may have to be content with theories that have a semblance of a ring of truth to it, based on parsimony. So, that being said, I am willing to entertain ideas like "experiential-first", "mathematics-first", "process-first" models, that turn the traditional, "Mind from matter" on its head as it is looking for novel ways to approach the problem that bypass the aforementioned hidden dualism/Cartesian theater/ homunculus fallacy problems. However, bypassing doesn't necessarily entail solving anything. It is just a clever, and interesting alternative that is worth consideration.

I would say that the physical world is represented. It is not the thing itself, but both what is represented and experience are of something.

Is the assumption that there is something that is experienced and something that is represented mistaken? — Fooloso4

So the problem with Kastrup is the problem I have with Schopenhauer's metaphysics. Why is there so much involved in this "illusion" of the representation (physical) from the monistic Mind? I don't know. Why should it be so complex if it is some sort of unity? Even if it is unity individuated into an "alter" of disassociated parts, why should these parts be the complexity that it is?

This to me, leads to not just disassociation of a unity, but an assemblage of separate contingencies. That is to say, it seems too convenient for a monistic "mind-substance" to just so happen to be also this astonishingly complex physical illusion. Why would it take on this complexity rather than simply being a simple physical aspect? You can ask, "Why not?" but then we must ask, why even have the monism then? The monism simplifies one problem, the combination problem, but then creates a new one of why division in such complicated physical ways. The complicated physical ways is the known. The idea of a monistic mind is the theory. Let's take the known seriously at least, and take that where it leads us, to perhaps a plurality.

I guess I can try to counter-argue this point and say, time is the main factor of why we think of plurality. If everything started as a unity (singularity), then time makes it seem as if things are not a singularity. So the multiplicity is not a multiplicity in at least one point in time (the singularity). But then why is that point in time the only one we are focusing on? Not sure, maybe someone like @Bob Ross wants to chime in.

Suppose "representation" is the "thing in itself" (just as the tip of an iceberg is also an iceberg) ... — 180 Proof

Again, I was reiterating Schopenhauer and Kastrup's theory. But yeah, the idea of representation itself has to be accounted for, so in a way it "is" the tip of an iceberg. However, if what you mean is that physical reality just extends into some non-empirical depth, sure. I know you are a Spinoza fan, and that makes sense with his often characterized "neutral monism" of modes etc.

'Prior to' - ontologically prior. Not 'outside' as in 'located somewhere else'. — Wayfarer

Yeah. It is ontologically not mediated by time and space.

Could you elaborate on why one should believe that these categories are what our minds use as functions to produce phenomenal experience? — Bob Ross

Unless the human cognitive system is granted as being representational and inherently logical, re: relational, nothing anybody says in support of the categories will be deemed theoretically plausible, much less acceptable.

Unless the human cognitive system is granted as dualistic, whereby the phenomenal part of the system by which objects are given through perception has no cognitive power, the categories are meaningless, for they apply to nothing else whatsoever, but are contained in the other part that has cognitive power, the power of logical thought. So it is that the categories aren’t what produces phenomenal experience, which is a conceptual redundancy anyway, insofar as there is no experience, re: empirical knowledge of objects, that isn’t phenomenal in origin. The system as a whole produces, not just any single aspect of it.

The categories represent the necessary fundamental conditions by which the object perceived represented as a phenomenon, relates to the object thought represented as a conception. They determine, not how the object is to be understood, but that it can be understood at all. Without that underlaying criteria, that which is perceived cannot be conceptually represented hence will never make it past the mere sensing of it. It’s not that we won’t know what the object is, but that there is no way to understand that it is anything at all.

To have no understanding at all, irrespective of its certainty, is contradictory, insofar as any object given to the senses absolutely must be something to which a conception may or may not relate. This is in fact the case, in that sensations given from perceptions are themselves impossible to deny. And if the sensation is undeniable, it leaves it for something to be done with it, can’t just stop being something. Like sensory information traveling down a nerve and never making it to the brain. Just doesn’t happen, all else being equal. The appeasement of the contradiction, allowing the cognitive operation to continue, is sufficient warrant for justification of the function of the categories.

So….one should believe all that iff it makes sense to him. If it doesn’t, he won’t.

What are your guys' thoughts? — Bob Ross

Hello Bob,

What struck me immediately was that the OP presupposes that the purportedly "'Hard Problem' of Consciousness" refers to an actual problem, particularly for reductive physicalism. I think that that presupposition is based upon an ambiguous inadequate idea... regarding exactly what counts as being a problem. If there is no problem to begin with, then the entire exercise is moot.

Consciousness is emergent. As such, it is - as we know it - the result of millions of years of evolutionary progression. There is no "aha!" point or moment in time that can be pointed at, and then it can be said "here it is!". There is no magical combination or point in evolutionary progression that consciousness suddenly appears, resides, or has emerged as we know it. That's not how it works.

The reductive physicalist can identify and thoroughly explain how all sorts of 'the parts' commonly associated with conscious subjective experience work physically(See Dennett's Quining Qualia). The opponent will simply state that the hard problem hasn't been solved, or say "that's the easy problems"... Yada, yada, yada.

It's akin to the physicalist pouring hundreds of thousands of grains of sand onto the floor and pointing at the result, while the opponent says... that's not enough to count as a pile of sand.

Think of it this way: if no one is looking at the tree, then it does not continue to exist in the manner that we perceive it, but it continues to exist in the sense that it is an idea in the universal mind that if we were to go perceive it we would expect to see the same tree (because our ability to perceive will represent the ideas the same manner it did before).
...

The substance of reality under analytic idealism is mentality and the universal mind is fundamentally the one existing brute fact, and we are derivatives thereof (i.e., priority monism). — Bob Ross

I understand this point, but how is this semantically different from just saying that reality is independent of observers? A tree is going to be what it is no matter if we observe it or not. Why introduce mind and mentality? Mind and mentality imply an observer, which always leads to the question of, "Then what is the observer?" You have an outside entity which needs explaining. Is it also just a mentality? If a mentality can have a mentality, what does the word even mean at that point? If being is reality, then all of reality is being. I think I just need a better definition of "mentality" and "mental".

Because what we observe is also real (i.e., a part of reality). When I imagine a unicorn, that unicorn exists as an imaginary unicorn. My concept of a car exists in my mind and is thusly a part of reality: humans and other conscious beings are a part of reality. — Bob Ross

I agree, but this isn't any different from a physical reality based model. Reality exists independently of what is observed. This allows us to short circuit the "Are you observing what you are observing?" issue that can come up otherwise. No one can observe you observing, yet you are part of reality. You do not need to meta observe your own observation, or have a God observer observing you. Your observation itself is also part of reality. I feel this model is much clearer while still conveying the essence of what you're trying to prove.

I suppose this really asks us to break down what "physical" means, as its only been implicit. "Physical" essentially means there is an existence independent from our observation. As noted, this eliminates infinite meta self-observation. You exist as a physical being. Despite your lack of observing yourself, you still exist physically in the world. Your mind does not float, it is located within your body. Try extending it outside of yourself. Try thinking in a location outside of the room you are in. You can't. It follows the physical rules of reality despite our best wishes.

If one simply calls what is real what is perception-independent (or something similar) than (I would say) it fails under more in depth scrutiny. For example, one cannot evaluate the concept of concepts as true (even in the case that it references what a concept is correctly) because it doesn’t correspond to something outside of perceptive-experience (which is what you would be calling ‘reality’). — Bob Ross

So in here, yes, a concept of concepts is also real. We do not need to have a concept of "concepts of concepts" to make it real. We only need a concept of "concept of concepts" if we wish to observe a "concept of concepts". What is real is not perception-independent. What is real is what exists, and does not need to be perceived to exist.

Science (proper) tells us how things relate and not what they fundamentally are. — Bob Ross

I am not sure I agree with this assessment. Science uses falsification to test hypotheses by trying to break them. When they cannot be broken, what is left is considered scientific fact. This does in fact describe what certain things fundamentally are.

Consciousness emanating from the brain is not merely a correlation, its is a causation. It is provable with a hypothesis that can be falsified. We can experience the color green because of our brains. How could this be falsified? Destroying the brain and still seeing green. Destroying certain parts of the brain and still seeing green. There is a physical claim that can be falsified, and so far in science, it has not. Therefore at this point, it is scientific fact that consciousness comes from the brain. It is scientific fact that matter can be conscious if organized in a particular way. Whatever your conscious experience, there is a physical brain state that produces that. All of this is falsifiable, but has not been show to be false.

It is a common mistake to believe that the hard problem is claiming physicalism cannot link brain states and consciousness together. It clearly does already. Just think about drugs, anasthesia, etc. If we could not accurately link the physical brain to particular conscious states, the science of all of the above would be incorrect. Yet its not.

What I am open to is seeing if you can prove that physicalism cannot link the brain and consciousness together. If you can come up with a falsifiable theory that it cannot, I can think about it and see if you are correct. But claiming that this is the hard problem when physicalism has zero problem doing this is just an incorrect understanding of modern day neuroscience. It's getting to the point where I'm starting to feel like "the hard problem" is as often mistaken as quantum physics! People seem to hear a vague surface level explanation, or people who want there to be more than just our brain misinterpret the hard problem to be something its not.

For example, if a person claims that this mental state X is strongly correlated to this brain state Y, there is still the valid conceptual question of “how did Y produce X”? The physicalist then has to explain this either (1) by another appeal to the same relationship (i.e., “because Y is correlated with Z”) of which the same conceptual question applies (i.e., “how did Z and Y produce X?”) or (2) by positing that “because strong correlation entails or implies causation” — Bob Ross

Not to belabor the point, but this is an example of this misunderstanding. The answer a physicalist gives is, "Because our attempts to disprove this claim have all failed". Neuroscience does not assert a theory that we are to buy into. It asserts a theory that we cannot buy out of.

The universal mind is not experiencing itself directly like we experience the world but, arguably under Kastrup’s view, it is experiencing itself via us (as we are alters of that mind). — Bob Ross

So we are back to my original question:

If the nature of reality is essentially experiential does this mean that prior to experiential animals there was no reality or is this a teleological claim or has there always been something that is capable of experiencing? — Fooloso4

In response you said:

Under analytical idealism, the entirety of reality is fundamentally mind and is thusly conscious: not just animals. — Bob Ross

But now it seems that in order for there to be experience there must be us or something like us. If so, then prior in time to such animals the nature of reality could not have been experiential. There was nothing capable of experiencing.

In order for Kastrup's assertion to qualify for a theory of reality it must explain how animals like us, capable of experiencing, came to be in a universe like ours full of things to be experienced.

There is no "aha!" point or moment in time that can be pointed at, and then it can be said "here it is!". There is no magical combination or point in evolutionary progression that consciousness suddenly appears, resides, or has emerged as we know it. — creativesoul

I wonder if that ‘aha’ point is the appearance of the very first living organism.

Pansychism [ ... ] matter is fundamental but that matter is conscious, whereas analytic idealism is the view that mind (i.e., consciousness) is fundamental ... — Bob Ross

I see. You're advocating immaterialism (which entails solipsism), not (just) panpsychism.