Well, so that article doesn't contain a bit of information which actually invalidates the notion I quoted? Can you summarise for me then why it would invalidate it? — Agustino

It was just a comment on the article, I wasn't trying to invalidate anything.

But experience predicates it all. — charleton

I agree. It doesn't follow though that the concept comes from experience itself.

Why are you asking that?
Proprioception, is an innate sense with which we experience our own bodies. — charleton

What does this have to do with the concept of an "individual"? I don't mean just and "individual" as in a person, but ANY individual whatsoever - the impression of red is an individual, the impression of blue is an individual, etc.

You started by saying we could have no experience without the concept of self as individual. Are you now rejecting that position?
yes/no?
Now you ask where the concept comes from?
If you answered yes above, spend some time thinking this through before you quiz me to death with you confrontational approach.
If you said no. then I have no idea why you are asking where it comes from. I assume you are going to say it has something to do with god, and so I bow out of the conversation with you.

You started by saying we could have no experience without the concept of self as individual. Are you now rejecting that position?
yes/no? — charleton

Well that's not what I said. I said we cannot have any experience without individuating things - into red, blue, sweet, sour, etc. That individuation cannot come from the senses. I still maintain exactly the same thing.

in order to have more than one experience in the first place, individuation already must be possible. — Agustino

Yes, what about it? That means exactly what I said above. Individuation does not mean just individuation into a person as distinct from other persons. It means individuation of anything and everything.

Your Color Red Really Could Be My Blue (Natalie Wolchover, Live Science, Jun 2012)

Calling roses, strawberries, blood, apples, Santa, etc red is a matter of appropriate language use (or predication).

In a different sense, the question posed by the Live Science article above may not be quite right.
That special format of personal experiences we call red (qualia) is more like an occurrence.
Something that happens for the experiencer, either part of a larger process (perception), or otherwise just a personal occurrence (dream, memory recall, hallucination).
Sometimes the process can go awry, e.g. synesthesia, phantom pain, hallucination.
Strictly speaking, such qualia happen for individuals, so "your red" being "my blue" from the article seems misleading; the article is worthwhile, though.
Fortunately we're rather alike, so unlike echolocation of bats, we can identify sufficiently shared experiences and call some of them red.

we don't get thisconcept from any — Agustino

As I said we do not need this CONCEPT to have experience.
You need to take more care with words

It means individuation of anything and everything. — Agustino

This is about conceptualising. All experience is prior.

This is about conceptualising. All experience is prior. — charleton

And yet, "individuality" cannot come from experience (the senses), but rather experience presupposes it. So where does it come from?

GOD?
LOL

And yet, "individuality" cannot come from experience (the senses), but rather experience presupposes it. So where does it come from? — Agustino

There is no "IT". It is just an abstraction you are conceptualizing.

We weren't discussing God, I asked you an epistemological question. How do we know "individuation" granted that we must already be able to individuate in order to experience anything?

And yet, "individuality" cannot come from experience (the senses), but rather experience presupposes it. So where does it come from?
— Agustino


There is no "IT". It is just an abstraction you are conceptualizing. — charleton

There is no "IT". It is just an abstraction you are conceptualizing. — charleton

That's not true. Let me illustrate. Abstraction is something that happens after experience. For experience to occur, I must be able to distinguish between things - that means to see red, and blue, and feel hard and soft, etc. Red, blue, hard, soft, etc. are sense impressions. But all these sense impressions presuppose individuation, since they are all individuals, distinguished from each other. Red is not blue and is not hard, etc. So where does this individuation come from, if it is already required before I can perceive sense impressions?

Abstraction is something that happens after experience — Agustino

That's what I have been saying all along, obviously.
Go back and read your first post.

That's what I have been saying all along, obviously.
Go back and read your first post. — charleton

Can you please answer the question:

So where does this individuation come from, if it is already required before I can perceive sense impressions? — Agustino

I know that the concept of individuation will only enter awareness AFTER experience, that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist prior to experience as an activity.

For example - individuation. Individuation - that we see experiences as individual, and separate from one another, that we can even make such distinctions as red, blue, etc. - we don't get this concept from any one experience, or any multitude of experiences. Instead, in order to have more than one experience in the first place, individuation already must be possible.

No, I think individuation is a developmental achievement. We can watch a baby track a ball as it rolls by her in the first few months, when the ball rolls out of view the infants stops looking and puts its attention elsewhere, then a couple of months latter, the baby stretches its neck or crawls to see what happened to the ball, where it went. Object permanence is learned and probably a necessary step prior to individuation, language learning and the rest.

I think individuation is tied to the individual's body, that the entire body forms the basis for our interactions with the world. I don't think that a child understands the implications of its individualization without language, and it does not understand itself as a responsible agent until they are 4/7 yrs of age.

Surprised. No discussion of the imagination, at least that I noticed.

I think individuation is tied to the individual's body, that the entire body forms the basis for our interactions with the world. I don't think that a child understands the implications of its individualization without language, and it does not understand itself as a responsible agent until they are 4/7 yrs of age. — Cavacava

You're already stuck in a theoretical understanding here, where you assume that you are a child, with a physical body, etc. That's not interesting. I'm interested in how you arrived at this framework.

No, I think individuation is a developmental achievement. We can watch a baby track a ball as it rolls by her in the first few months, when the ball rolls out of view the infants stops looking and puts its attention elsewhere, then a couple of months latter, the baby stretches its neck or crawls to see what happened to the ball, where it went. Object permanence is learned and probably a necessary step prior to individuation, language learning and the rest. — Cavacava

This doesn't make sense. How can the boy track the ball if he cannot individuate it?

This doesn't make sense. How can the boy track the ball if he cannot individuate it? — Agustino

I agree with you. The power to individuate is a part of our instinct.

You're already stuck in a theoretical understanding here, where you assume that you are a child, with a physical body, etc. That's not interesting. I'm interested in how you arrived at this framework.

Piaget and Gopnik, et al, people who study babies behavior.

This doesn't make sense. How can the boy track the ball if he cannot individuate it?

To individuate is to "distinguish from others of the same kind; single out". A babies ability to follow patterns is from birth, but that does not enable them to distinguish objects as separate from one another or from themselves for that matter.

To individuate is to "distinguish from others of the same kind; single out". A babies ability to follow patterns is from birth — Cavacava

So it is prior to experience?

Part of what it means to see at least for humans

Part of what it means to see at least for humans — Cavacava

So is it prior to the experience of seeing?

In the same way that the body is prior to the experience of seeing.

In the same way that the body is prior to the experience of seeing. — Cavacava

That makes no sense to me philosophically (at least for the purposes of this thread). It only makes sense within a limited scientific discourse. That scientific discourse is arrived at how? By means of experience. So what is arrived at by means of experience is used to tell me what happens prior to experience? :s

The notion of a body is arrived at within experience, and hence makes no sense out of it.

The notion of a body is arrived at within experience, and hence makes no sense out of it.

We are clearly talking past each other here.

We are born with certain physical structures which enable us to experience the world, and how we see it depends on the adequate functioning of our physical senses.

Our ability to see colors is not learned, it is embedded in us, the same for pattern recognition, but it is from this information that we learn things such as object permanence, individuation, causality... that the truck is red.

We are born with certain physical structures which enable us to experience the world, and how we see it depends on the adequate functioning of our physical senses. — Cavacava

How do you know this? Is it because you've developed certain concepts based on experience, such as bodies, etc. and then applied them out of experience? How do you know what a physical structure is? You had experience I presume - and you started differentiating things like thoughts, and things like trees. You called the latter physical and the former mental. And yet, they are all within your experience. How can there be a non-experienced physical thing?! What would that even be?

That's not clear at all to me. How are there future things in the mind? — Agustino

When I think about something I will do tomorrow, that, "what I will do" is a thing in my mind, and it is a future thing.

How is it driven by anticipation? He's imagining possible combinations, has nothing to do with the future as such. — Agustino

In the example, he is thinking about an apartment he will furnish in the future. The act of rearranging is clearly driven by this anticipation. In all these acts, which Manzotti refers to, rearranging the furniture, juggling words, and the child learning, we can ask why does the person who does this, do this. The answer is always that the person anticipates a future need.

His position is in the right-hand bottom corner. But I would push it even further, and argue that even the physical/non-physical distinction makes no sense.

So there is no internal agent at all carrying out the actions. The actions themselves are the agent. Why do we need an agent who is different from the actions themselves? — Agustino

If that is his position, then his enterprise clearly fails for the reasons I've indicated. First, he doesn't properly distinguish between past and future, such that all objects in the mind, are explained by encounters with past objects (memories). He provides no explanation for the encounters in our minds with future objects (anticipation). Second, the terminology he uses reduces all things in the mind to "external objects", such that words are external objects. So he does not dissolve the externalist/internalist division, he just describes a hard core externalism.

Yes, I can imagine rearranging, juggling, and learning happening by themselves, without an agent. — Agustino

Well I'd like to see you describe that. An "agent" is a source of activity, an efficient cause. I really don't know how, you could explain any rearranging, juggling, or learning, going on without a source of activity. And the problem with Manzotti's claims, is that unless the agent is within the human being, as the human mind or soul or something like that, then the source of activity is the encounter with the external object which brings that object into the person's mind. But there is a break in the chain of efficient causation when the object goes into memory. And in reality, the efficient causation which is required to reproduce that object (recollect) is derived from the human agent's anticipation of a future thing, as per Manzotti's examples. It cannot be anything present to the individual which acts as the efficient cause of recollection, because Manzotti has already described the situation as the person's anticipation of the future occurrence as the efficient cause of these activities.

No, my claim is that there is no projection towards the future, just old ideas coming to mind when new impressions are encountered through old associations. — Agustino

This is in contradiction to Manzotti. He claims a projection towards the future. And he needs to include this projection toward the future, because it is a very real aspect of human activity. If it is your desire to produce a position without this projection toward the future, then you have just created a meaningless, unreal position. Why argue from a completely false premise?

So red is represented by what physical things? — Banno

In Manzotti's argument, the word "red" within your mind, is just an extension of the physical existence of the word "red" which you have already encountered. I called it a representation, but Augustine wouldn't like that because Augustine seems to think that Manizotti has devised a way to dissolve the division between the physical object and what I called the representation of it in the mind. The existence of the word is supposed to have a temporal extension in your mind, such that when you recollect the word, to think with it, you are not reproducing the word, it is just a continuation of the word's existence, it's temporal extension.

The problems with this position are numerous. One criticism I had, which Augustine failed to address, is why we need numerous encounters with the same word, in order to properly use that word. Augustine talks about a "bundle" of "impressions". But this doesn't account for what appears to be some form of inductive reasoning whereby the bundle of impressions seems to transform into one general principle which we call knowing how to use the word. The numerous encounters, what Augustine calls the bundle, reoccurring in each single instance of usage, is clearly inconsistent with Manzotti's position, which describes as an extension of existence of particular occurrences.

You called the latter physical and the former mental.

No, those are your words not mine.

And yet, they are all within your experience. How can there be a non-experienced physical thing?! What would that even be?

I don't know what you are saying here.