If you like; think of my comment as setting out which certainty interests me.

Then I do not agree with your assumption that there is a something it is like to see.

Rather there is the act of seeing, and this has a physiological explanation.

We don't need to reify the self as then a thing. It is no more than the complementary part of a single (sign relation/epistemic cut) process. — apokrisis

Perhaps.

↪Janus
Then I do not agree with your assumption that there is a something it is like to see. — Banno

There is nothing it is like to see over and above the seeing, but the seeing (for me at least) is inherently qualitative and affective. Having feelings associated with it is what it means to say that there is something it is like to see. If you don't experience any associated feeling when you see then I guess there would be nothing it would be like for you to see.

So, in short there is something it is like for me to see, and that is not an assumption, but something experienced. There may not be anything it is like for you to see, if you are emotionally impoverished, and that could lead you to make the (erroneous) assumption that there is nothing it is like for me to see.

See?

I said that our experience seems direct. We cannot be wrong about its seeming direct. — Janus

What exactly do you mean to say here? If it only seems direct, then your position appears to be that it is not direct - it just seems so.

Or are you saying it is direct, and this directness is something we also directly experience?

What I commented on is the striking way that qualia are the product of a socially-constructed state of perception. Through a philosophical/scientific set of concepts, we learn to look at green-ness or tree-ness as the qualities of an appearance, a mental representation, rather than as qualities of the world.

So introspecting on "raw feelings" is a curious business. Instead of the natural realism for which the brain is designed - the one where we just interact with the world we perceive without question - we introduce a learnt stance towards perception. We "know" it is actually a perceptual state seen from "the inside". And so there is something going on that "regular materialism can't explain". In causal terms, it is "an intractable mystery".

So your heightened notion of subjectivity - defined in opposition to a counter notion of objectivity - depends on a learnt stance. And yet you then treat the qualia thus conceived/perceived in this fashion as "direct and real". The essence of the mental realm is that it is founded on "raw feelings". That is the stuff of which consciousness is composed. No qualitative experience, no mind to speak of. The real world has dropped out of the picture. There is just these primal mental events. And they are directly accessed, they are substantially real.

I think it is worth analysing this in detail because what I suggest you are doing is simply re-focusing the usual direct realism folk have about the "objective world" to make it a direct realism about the contents of the "subjective mind".

In other words, this remains a hard causal dualism. And that justifies your claims of "an intractable mystery".

But my approach is triadic rather than dyadic. Semiotically, the world and self emerge co-jointly via the mediation of the sign. So it gets around all need for direct access by just accepting nothing is direct, everything emerges. Subjectivity and objectivity only arise as complementary limits on being. Thus there is no intractable causal mystery ... except for the very generalised one expressed by the usual ultimate question, "Why anything?".

Heh. The right epistemic algorithm has been discovered. It is the dichotomy or dialectic. The "truth" is approached asymptotically in two directions. Or rather it emerges within the bounds of two complementary limits. — apokrisis

I suspect that truth is too subtle - or too simple - to be trapped in an algorithm.

You are referred to as apokrisis; it is true that you are referred to as apokrisis. That's not something that is approached asymptotically; it's just true.

One might be tempted to treat all justifications, beliefs and hence knowledge as approached asymptotically. But even here there are things that we do not doubt, That this conversation is in English; that I have two hands with which to type - these are things taken as being undoubted, as certain.

What exactly do you mean to say here? If it only seems direct, then your position appears to be that it is not direct - it justseems so. — apokrisis

When it comes to experience how it seems is how it is. Of course we can be mistaken.about what is experienced (in the sense of what is producing the experience but then who really, seriously, deeply cares about that?), but not about the quality of the experience. The seeing of things has the quality of directness; to ask whether it is "really" direct is a malformed question.

So your heightened notion of subjectivity - defined in opposition to a counter notion of objectivity - depends on a learnt stance. — apokrisis

Sure the notion of subjectivity does depend on a "learned stance", but the subjectivity itself is primary and prior to any mere "notion"; for us, at least. If you want to undertake an objectivist analysis ( also a "learnt stance") you might say the objective is primary; but that can only ever be a story we tell our subjective selves; whereas the primacy of subjectivity is felt in every living moment. That's the big difference that really does make a difference.

So, in short there is something it is like for me to see, and that is not an assumption, but something experienced. — Janus

You are arguing that the seeing is done by the "me". I am arguing that the "me" is produced by the seeing. Perception (or cognition) is about the product of the self that stands apart from its world so as to be able to act purposefully within that world. To perceive, is to feel the self as well as feel the world. And psychological science tells us all about how that works. The facts are not in dispute on this score.

So perception is a triadic process. A sign is formed in the middle that anchors a self~world distinction. I feel strongly like an observer of the world because I can see "a tree" and that it is "coloured", and its "leaves rustle in the breeze", and a whole lot of other interpreted signs that confirm all that is not me, at the same time as I feel the limits of my body, the way the same breeze ruffles my hair - all the me-ness that is also present.

You are arguing that the seeing is done by the "me". I am arguing that the "me" is produced by the seeing. — apokrisis

Sure, you can make up that story and tell it yourself, but the experience of me is primary. There has to be a "me" to tell the story to in the first place, otherwise no story can be told.

I suspect that truth is too subtle - or too simple - to be trapped in an algorithm. — Banno

Suspect away. If you have an actual argument, that might be interesting.

Exhibit A would be that philosophy is entirely founded on dialectical reasoning. The only difference is that some treat dichotomies as having to be either/or choices - one right, the other wrong - and others treat dichotomies as complementary bounds on existence. So both "horns of a dilemma" are right, both exist, both together compose the unity of opposites.

You are referred to as apokrisis; it is true that you are referred to as apokrisis. That's not something that is approached asymptotically; it's just true. — Banno

Predicate logic is for reasoning about contingent particulars. Dialectical logic is for reasoning about metaphysical wholeness.

So your argument here is both correct and irrelevant. What we are named is not a necessary metaphysical truth. But why would we expect it to be?

One might be tempted to treat all justifications, beliefs and hence knowledge as approached asymptotically. — Banno

This is talking about measurement now. Another issue again.

But even here there are things that we do not doubt, That this conversation is in English; that I have two hands with which to type - these are things taken as being undoubted, as certain. — Banno

That we take things as undoubted is merely pragmatism.

On logical grounds, they could be doubted - even if you would be right that doubt would seem strained. To assert A is certain requires that not-A was at least a possibility. And if it was a possibility, then the possibility of doubt remains. Your measurement of the world might have been in error concerning the facts.

So truth defined tautologically might seem undoubtable. A is A by definition. But that is just a state of belief within a mind. And even if is a communally shared belief - a language game - it is still just something folk agree to say.

When it comes to metaphysics, that is pretty trivial. But I get that your philosophical project is to deny metaphysics.

That we take things as undoubted is merely pragmatism.

On logical grounds, they could be doubted - even if you would be right that doubt would seem strained. To assert A is certain requires that not-A was at least a possibility. And if it was a possibility, then the possibility of doubt remains. — apokrisis

Yes, but doubts should at least be interesting.

There has to be a "me" to tell the story to in the first place, otherwise no story can be told. — Janus

So this "me" is directly aware of this "me"? This "me" can perceive its perceptions and perceive its self?

I agree that "me-ness" develops as a habit. A sense of "me" is just basic to the logic of modelling the world. Animals have to have an embodied sense of being so that they can also know a world. And humans have a social sense of self. Psychology has all the facts about how this sense of "me" arises.

But as soon as you insist on making this sense of "me" primal, unmediated, direct, etc, you get into all sorts of logical binds and homuncular regresses.

It is up to you to straighten those out. I've pointed to the fact they exist.

So sure, there is a "you" telling "your story". And go back to your infancy, we can see this "you-ness" developing due to biology and culture.

Using conventional cause and effect logic, you then want to insist that there can't be a narrative without a narrator. Any action implies an author. Agency is a primal fact.

But a systems logic says individuation is a process of habit-formation. You become a story-teller by learning to tell stories. So it is being born into a narrative culture that forges you the narrator. From infancy, you are being encouraged to make those first attempts that eventually produce your heightened "me".

The seeing of things has the quality of directness; to ask whether it is "really" direct is a malformed question. — Janus

So you are doppleganger Banno here. He wants to treat criticism of naive realism as malformed questions. You want to treat criticism of naive idealism - the claim raw feelings are direct access - as also just bad metaphysics.

Yes, but doubts should at least be interesting. — Janus

That's a bit random if I am defending pragmatism here.

Is it interesting that we could doubt that we type with two hands as it might appear to us?

The more relevant question is what use it might have, what functional advantage it might have. Clearly in an everyday context, there isn't a good reason to doubt. But critical thinking doesn't even get started except by the forming of assertions that have sufficient counterfactual definiteness to be doubted.

So this "me" is directly aware of this "me"? This "me" can perceive its perceptions and perceive its self? — apokrisis

No this me just is immediate awareness, immediate feeling. it is the feeling upon which everything else is constructed.

You are still overthinking it.

No this me just is immediate awareness, immediate feeling. it is the feeling upon which everything else is constructed.

You are still overthinking it. — Janus

Can you make this claim in a way that feels meaningful without asserting the presence of a witnessing self. Can there just be "the immediate experience"?

And when we have deconstructed matters to that level, is this immediacy present in a way that isn't mediated by a temporal context - a sense of past constraints/future possibilities? Isn't it still essential that the essence of being is "immediate" in terms of an intentionality that speaks to the non-immediate?

We can keep drilling down, but when do we just get to bare particulars, raw feelings, or actual qualia? Some foundational atomism upon which everything is then "constructed"?

I'm not overthinking anything. I'm pointing out how you are just applying reductionist metaphysics in another guise.

Banno wants to talk about the point of view that sees the real. You want to talk about the point of view that sees the ideal. You are both trapped in an atomist metaphysics in which everything is simply a product of bottom-up construction.

Points of view - the fact of a viewing self - is taken for granted. The argument then becomes whether experience is the product of atomistic idealism or atomistic realism. Experience is either of fragments of mentality or of states of affairs.

And thus the true triadic richness of a modelling relation never comes into metaphysical view.

I think the crux of the problem you are having with this is that you are thinking of it as a claim about experience when it is actuslly a description of experience.

I think part of what causes this splitting of the world into object (that may or may not exist), and ones private perception of an object is this particular way in which we imagine other people's perceptions.

So as an example lets imagine two people, you and your friend, in a room staring at a painting. Your friend has taken LSD and is wildly hallucinating and you are sober. Now the way in which, if I was the sober friend, I would conceive of what my friend is experiencing, is to literally form a sort of mental image in my mind of what I imagine his visual field is like. Which of course leads to questions like, does my visual image correspond accurately to what to what he is experiencing? Is there anything even there that my visual image corresponds to (solipsism)? Is there an independent object that both of our visual fields correspond to?

We imagine, in our minds what it is like to experience the world as another person, which already splits the world into these private little individualized 'orbs' of perceptions/experience.

So you walk up to someone, shake their hand, start a conversation. And then you ask yourself "I wonder what it's like to be that person?" In your mind you form this mental image of what you imagine their perceptions and experience is like - which itself splits the world. You in your mental imaginings, have left the immediacy of your interaction with the other person and created this divide between the two of you, imagining the two of you as existing as these privately experienced 'orbs' of perceptions, that may or may not be embedded within a wider material world.

As in, it's completely incoherent to 'imagine' the way in which another person exists. A category error.

Deception requires intent. We cannot intend to deceive ourselves. There is no such thing as self-deception.

You're chasing a chimera...
— creativesoul

Sure we do. What are delusions if not intended beliefs that are meant to cover up the truth that is so depressing? — Harry Hindu

You're working from an ill-conceived notion of belief. One cannot knowingly believe something that is false.

Delusions are false belief.

...it's completely incoherent to 'imagine' the way in which another person exists. A category error. — antinatalautist

That doesn't seem to follow from what preceded it?

Got an argument for it?

Well, for starters we need to realize that the very notion of 'self-deception' is self-contradictory. It doesn't really make any sense when placed under careful scrutiny. I mean think about it differently for a minute. What sense does it make to say that we deliberately set out in order to trick ourselves into believing something that we don't?
— creativesoul

I haven't said we do it deliberately. — Janus

Then we don't do it at all. That's the point being made here.

If one sets out with the deliberate intention of figuring out what they're mistaken about, they must consult others.
— creativesoul

Sure I read books and listen to others; and have gained a lot from doing so; I have never denied that. On the other hand I have participated in these forums long enough to know that almost nobody changes their existential beliefs on account of someone else's rational arguments. For sure others may point out things I haven't considered; it happens all the time, but that is something different.

No one has pointed out anything to me, in this thread at least, that I have found convincing enough to seriously question my own intuitions about my own experience. My own experience is the final arbiter. And I think that is how it should be with everyone; they should listen not to authorities or rational arguments, but to their own conscience to try to discover whether they are deceiving themselves in any way. I'm talking here about existential understanding of course, not about science or other academic disciplines. — Janus

You cannot depend upon your conscience as a guide, for it is you who must keep it satisfied... Bob Dylan(similar at least)

Your experience includes talking to others ya know?

Having feelings associated with it is what it means to say that there is something it is like to see. — Janus

It's not as if those feelings were ineffable; whence poetry and art?

Feelings have physiological explanations.

Yes, there is a difference between feeling a feeling and understanding it in physiological terms. Just as there is a difference between orbiting the Sun and understanding the laws of gravity. But we do not say the orbit is inexplicable in the face of the explanation.

Claim or description, same point. The raw feelings are socially constructed. They are not primary in the sense being claimed/described.

We have to learn the trick of “experiencing the pure redness of red.” So the raw feeling is the product of a particular philosophically framed effort. We are striking a conceptual attitude where we are seeing the “reality of an appearance.”

I guess this is a hard case to make in a modern western context where we grow up with red crayons and red traffic lights. We are taught from a young age to regard colour as an abstract general quality. Anything could be painted red if we choose.

But even so, cross cultural comparisons show how an abstracted notion of colour is a learnt point of view.

So we might well describe red as ... what if feels like to see red. We can point towards our idea of just an abstracted hue filling awareness as a mental image. But how is that direct or raw? Abstraction is by definition indirect surely?

So, it is navigating through those self-deceptive tendencies that we all have, while never failing to recognize that we can never be certain of anything, that is what wisdom consists in, for me. Sure it's necessary to listen to others and all, but personal experience must be the ultimate guide in this. And different people's personal experiences differ as much as their viewpoints do. That's why I'm not much concerned at all about inter-subjective corroboration when it comes to philosophy. I actually think it is fatal to descend into that pit of vipers. — Janus

I'm wondering if the belief in self-deception shared an origen with the notion of falling into a pit of vipers?

Do you know the source(s) of those thought/belief?

Do you really believe that all intent is utterly conscious? — Janus

I believe that the terms "really" and "utterly" are being used in a manner that adds nothing to the discussion aside from reflecting either misunderstanding or insincerity.

I believe that all intent is conscious, and will unless and/or until someone could convince me otherwise.

The claim was that deception requires intent. We cannot intentionally set out in order to trick ourselves into believing something that we don't. Thus, there is no such thing as self-deception.

Your question implies an unconscious intention to deceive oneself...

Unconsciously intending to trick oneself into believing something that they don't...

Nah. That doesn't make any sense either.

Deception is based upon the intent of one creature to convince another to believe something that the one does not. When successful, the second believes something that the first does not.

"Type of truth"...

Banno, do you mean sense?

In that certainty is not equivalent to a sense of "truth"?

What's a type of truth?

I believe that all intent is conscious, and will unless and/or until someone could convince me otherwise. — creativesoul

Conscious intent is simply one's own intent one is conscious or aware of. There are intents whether we are conscious of them or not.

Your question implies an unconscious intention to deceive oneself...

Unconsciously intending to trick oneself into believing something that they don't...

Nah. That doesn't make any sense either. — creativesoul

Why? Is it because of the following paradox?

When a person A deceives a person B into believing p that means that person A knows or truly believes that p is false while causing B to believe that p is true. So when A deceives A (i.e. himself) into believing that p is true, he knows or truly believes that p is false while causing himself to believe that p is true. Thus, A must simultaneously believe that p is false and believe that p is true. Which is a logical contradiction.

If so, we must return to your earlier claim that it is only a matter of language whether a tree is a single thing or many things. It isn't.

Self isn't a single thing. It is many things. We treat it as a single thing for the sake of convenience. So when we say that A decieves A this must not be interpreted literally. Rather, you must interpret it in the sense that something within A (e.g. A1) deceives something else within A (e.g. A2.) If you do so, no logical contradiction, no paradox, arises.

If I understand you correctly, what you're asking is this: does the act of seeing a tree with your own eyes give you the same kind of experience that the act of, say, visualizing a tree does?

If that's what you're asking, the answer is no. There's a clear difference between the two kinds of experience. Visualization lacks the richness that seeing with your own eyes has.

But suppose that this weren't the case. Suppose that they were equally rich. Suppose that visualizing a tree was just as clear as seeing it with your own eyes. Would that make visualization non-mental? Of course not. This is because whether something is mental or not depends on context. You need to look at how your experience relates to what was in the past. It is this relation, which is never complete, because past is not finite, that determines to what degree what you're looking at is either mental or non-mental.

-Magnus Anderson

Visualization can be as rich as what one sees "with their own eyes", or more so - and isn't it the aim and mark of a finely developed mind to see "with one's own eyes" as if it were both visualized and physical reality? Ie. the visionary's sight.

The raw feelings are socially constructed. — apokrisis

You don't know that. To claim that would be to deny that non-social animals don't have raw feelings. I think it is arguable that the ways human societies have been created would have been mediated by the ways in which humans experienced themselves due to the nature of their particular kind of embodiment.

If even raw feelings are socially constructed then they are not raw feelings; there would be no raw feelings. Then how much more so would the notion of raw feelings or anything else be socially constructed; which would mean all of our idea and theories are nothing more than arbitrary social constructs.

Go ahead and believe that all intent is conscious if you want to. I think you are wrong if you believe that, but it's no skin off my nose. It's not important enough to me to waste time trying to convince you of something which is

so obvious, and yet for whatever reasons you don't want to believe.

Well, for starters we need to realize that the very notion of 'self-deception' is self-contradictory. It doesn't really make any sense when placed under careful scrutiny. I mean think about it differently for a minute. What sense does it make to say that we deliberately set out in order to trick ourselves into believing something that we don't?
— creativesoul

I haven't said we do it deliberately. — Janus


Then we don't do it at all. That's the point being made here. — creativesoul

Most of what we do is not deliberate; following your argument that we therefore do not actually do it, we actually do very little at all. :-}

It's not as if those feelings were ineffable; whence poetry and art?

Feelings have physiological explanations.

Yes, there is a difference between feeling a feeling and understanding it in physiological terms. Just as there is a difference between orbiting the Sun and understanding the laws of gravity. But we do not say the orbit is inexplicable in the face of the explanation. — Banno

It seems you have not been reading the posts carefully enough: I have said a few times now that the quality of feelings can be alluded to but not precisely described or explained. So, physiological explanations are possible, of course, but they remain abstract theories, and as such cannot capture lived experience, they do not explain the subjective quality of feelings, but merely hypothesize about physical conditions that may be thought to be necessary for feelings to occur.

So, your "orbit" analogy is not apt, since an orbit must be thought to either an observable third person phenomenon or an abstract model, and subjective feelings are neither of these.