So, the brain is analogous to the mirror. In your understanding of this metaphor is consciousness analogous to the reflections or to the reflectance? — Janus

Consciousness, by analogy, is the reflected image that has an apparent location 'in one's head'. The idea I'm wanting to convey is that it can be the case that though consciousness is a physical phenomenon produced by a brain, just as reflections are real phenomena produced by mirrors or water, yet it is not what it appears to be or where it appears to be. We understand, most of us, that when we see a tree, and a reflection of a tree in the lake, we are not seeing a literal second tree in the lake, but rather seeing the same tree 'round a corner'. This becomes more obvious when one considers a periscope, or the wing mirror of a car.

It is perhaps worth noting that in the case of the wing mirror (or the lake) what one sees is displaced from behind one to in front, (or from on the bank to in the lake), but in the case of the periscope it rather that the point of view itself is displaced - one sees as if one's head were that much higher.

"Consciousness is seeing the world round a corner", or perhaps better "the world seeing
round a corner". But don't take it literally. But that is as far as I want to press this analogy; it's time to talk more seriously about brains.

I'll get back to that a bit later.

Hah, I like it. There's actually quite a long philosophical lineage of reflection (hah) on the 'being' of the image in the mirror, one that culminated in the scholastic idea of the 'species being' (cognate of 'specular', along with 'special'), which has the peculiar status of being neither a real thing 'out there' (ens reale) nor something merely in the head (ens rationis), but something in-between both. I've not considered thinking about this in terms of consciousness, but it's an interesting way to go about it.

I'm still a bit fuzzy on the specifics of what the mirror analogy is meant to explain though, with respect to consciousness. There's a novel vocabulary, to be sure: like the image, consciousness is virtual with respect to what is actual 'out there'; but is this just another way of speaking of consciousness as a so-called epiphenomenon, a surface effect according to which all the weight of reality takes place elsewhere? But is this an explanation, or it is closer to a phenomenology of consciousness? And if the latter - as it sounds like - what accounts for this phenomenology?

Well that is a common way of understanding things, that I am questioning. I am saying that there is no inner world, no mind in which images appear. 'Seeing an image' - tree reflected in water is more or less identical to 'seeing a tree' and these seeings occur not in the mind but out there in the world where the tree and the water are; they are what brains do. The mind is a virtual 'behind the mirror' world where nothing happens because it does not exist, just as nothing happens in the mirror world, it merely reflects the happening of the real world. — unenlightened

This is a great example of a "philosopher" who has let his imagination run away with him.

Seeing only occurs in a brain/mind. Not "out there". Seeing is the act of interpreting information in light. The interpreting doesn't happen until after the light enters the eye.

Seeing a reflection of a tree is not the same as seeing a tree. For one, the reflection is always in reverse. How is it that I can read your posts if our brain/minds were seeing everything in reverse? We make distinctions between reflections and non-reflections all the time. You're saying that everything is a reflection and we can't seem to make that distinction between a reflection and a non-reflection because all we experience is a reflection. If everything we experience is a reflection of the world, then what is it when we look in to a mirror?

I would say the image is not "in" the mirror, but on the surface of the mirror. If it were "in" the mirror, then it would be as unenlightened says, it would be a virtual image located behind the surface of the mirror. — Janus

The light interacts with the substance of the mirror to make the image, just like it interacts with any substance that you see, allowing you to see the object. Therefore the image (what you see) is in the substance of the mirror.

We understand, most of us, that when we see a tree, and a reflection of a tree in the lake, we are not seeing a literal second tree in the lake, but rather seeing the same tree 'round a corner'. This becomes more obvious when one considers a periscope, or the wing mirror of a car. — unenlightened

Right, that's much better than talking about the image behind the mirror. There's a further issue now though. Once you see that the image in the mirror is just a reflection of what's around the corner, can you look at the object itself as just a reflection, like Plato suggested in the cave analogy? Perhaps what we see as "an object" is just a reflection of what's inside. The light shines off the object, giving us just a glimpse of an indication of what's inside. So what you apprehend as "consciousness" is just a glimpse of what's inside the human being.

I'm still a bit fuzzy on the specifics of what the mirror analogy is meant to explain though, — StreetlightX

It's not meant to explain anything; it's intended to make a conceptual space in the mind (ha ha) for 'the virtual' which is not where it seems to be, and not what it seems to be, yet is not something else or somewhere else, and again yet is perfectly intelligible and real. I'm having to work harder than I expected to do even this simple thing; people will insist that the mirror has an inside, or else that the image is on the surface like a painting (see below).

I would say the image is not "in" the mirror, but on the surface of the mirror. — Janus

One can readily demonstrate that the image is not on the surface of the mirror by moving one's point of view, and noticing that the image is not the same; this is parallax that I mentioned before. The image can be demonstrated to be exactly where the ray diagram shows it to be and where one sees it to be, despite that the rays do not come from there. We can arrange a mirror such that I can see you in it, and you can see me in it. If an image was on the surface, we should both be able to see it the same. In fact the blankness of the mirror is an essential feature, as soon as someone writes on the mirror with their lipstick, we can both see it, and it obscures both our images.

It's not meant to explain anything; it's intended to make a conceptual space in the mind (ha ha) for 'the virtual' which is not where it seems to be, and not what it seems to be, yet is not something else or somewhere else, and again yet is perfectly intelligible and real. — unenlightened

So it's circumscription of conceptual space? Via negativa?

I'm having to work harder than I expected to do even this simple thing; people will insist that the mirror has an inside, or else that the image is on the surface like a painting (see below). — unenlightened

You wanted to put the image outside the mirror, and thus place consciousness outside the human head. But there cannot be an outside without an inside. So why would you think that outside is a better, more real, location than the inside?

What about the boundary between inside and outside? Isn't it rational to assume that the image on the mirror is at this boundary. Perhaps we need to consider that consciousness is on the boundary between inside and outside (whatever that means).

Moving on...

When I see a tree, I see it over there, where the tree is, and if there is any doubt, I can go over there and bang my head on it until I am convinced. But right now, I am not seeing a tree, but imagining seeing a tree, and imagining going over to it and imagining banging my head. I find it very useful to be able to distinguish the world I see and touch etc from the world of imagination, because weirdness results when I try to bang a real head on an imagined tree.

An imagined tree is rather less substantial than a reflected tree, because when I see the reflected tree, as I mentioned before, I am seeing the real tree displaced. The imagined tree is, let's say for the moment, some compound of memory, language, concepts, stuff going on in the brain anyway, that does not directly relate to what's going on in the world, where I am sitting in my chair typing on the laptop.

So I invite you to imagine you are standing by a lake, and opposite you is a solitary tree right by the edge, reflected in the still water. And imagine walking round the lake to the tree, and gently banging your head on it.

My guess is that as soon as you have read it, you have imagined it. Now you might be able to tell me all sorts of details that you have imagined, or you might not. What species of tree, whether the margin of the lake is muddy or stoney, how long it took you to walk round. People vary.

Now I tell you it was a poplar tree, and it took you a good 15 minutes to reach the tree. And again, as soon as you read the words, the adjustments or additions are made in your imagination.

Did you have to start the imaginary walk again, or did you just stretch or compress, or 'solidify' the walk you had already imagined? It doesn't really matter.

What matters for my purposes is that brains do two very distinct, but not necessarily separate things:
1. They interact directly and immediately with the world via the body and senses.
2. They construct and run models of varying degrees of abstraction.

One particular thing I want to emphasise, because I think it is going to be important later; it does not take 15 minutes to imagine walking for 15 minutes - model time is very different to body time.

I'll stop here for a bit, so Ag can say 'so what?' and Harry can say I'm making it all up, and Street can say something I don't quite understand, and others can say things I can't even imagine.

I'll just give it the ol' "neat"

:D

Not much to contribute just yet, but cool to read.

Now I tell you it was a poplar tree, and it took you a good 15 minutes to reach the tree. And again, as soon as you read the words, the adjustments or additions are made in your imagination. — unenlightened

Well, some adjustment would be made if I knew what a poplar is :rofl:

So a brain is somewhat like the polished surface of a mirror, — unenlightened

I know it's a tempting metaphor, and it's a metaphor with a rich history in non-dual mystical teachings too, but there's something troublesome and subtly misleading about the mirror analogy for consciousness, I think.

Externalism is better: the key mistake is to think of consciousness as something (that "mirrors" a world "out there") locked inside the skull. Actually it's something out and abroad in the world, it's the name of a a process that threads between things and the brain, and takes in the actual physical objects as part of its process. The actual tree is part of the phenomenon of consciousness of the tree, the presence of the brain and its perceptual apparatus affords an occasion for the tree to exist in a particular way that it couldn't exist otherwise, on its own. (A rough analogy would be the interference pattern you get when two waves interact: it's a pattern that's not the one wave, not the other wave, but a way that the two interacting waves have of existing that isn't there without the interaction.)

This is also different from Panpsychism - Panpsychism is like copying the bad idea (of consciousness being locked in the brain or mind) out into the world. But Externalism is saying something subtly different that's perfectly compatible with physicalism and doesn't have any whiff of woo.

:up:

if I knew what a poplar is — Agustino

Google images can help you out with that. They are quite varied, but the ones 'I had in mind', are the tall fast growing ones of narrow habit with upward pointing branches, that you often see in France in single file used as a windbreak. Just the thing to reflect in a lake.

Externalism is better: the key mistake is to think of consciousness as something (that "mirrors" a world "out there") locked inside the skull. Actually it's something out and abroad in the world, it's the name of a a process that threads between things and the brain, and takes in the actual physical objects as part of its process. — gurugeorge

Yes, Externalism gives a very good account of immediate experience, sensation and perception and it is the absence of an inner world that I have been emphasising so far. But it does not immediately account for acts of imagination such as those proposed in my previous post, that do not seem to be interactions with the external world in the same way. Has anyone given such an account that you know of, or shall I try and continue to think it through?

Well, yes, it could be said the image is 'really' in the eye, or in the visual cortex. So moving around to get different viewpoints is just the same as remaining in one position and moving the mirror. Nonetheless it is the surface that reflects, and from that perspective what we see, despite the illusion of depth is, if it is 'really' 'anywhere' 'outside' the perceiving body, 'painted' on the surface of the mirror. I get that it can also be said to be 'virtually' in the 'position' indicated by the ray diagram, too.

Different ways of thinking about it have their own logic. So my response to MU was just to emphasize that there is no one privileged way to think about the 'location' of the image. On the surface of the mirror, in the mirror, behind the mirror, in the eye, in the brain; the image seems to be everywhere and nowhere, in the sense that it is in every 'spatial domain' external and internal, but not exclusively in any space.

Externalism tells only one half of the story. It is interesting that people feel compelled to choose one or other side of the internalism/ externalism dichotomy. It's as if there is a prejudice which dictates 'it can't be both'.

I can imagine being at Hastings in 1066. Some things I know because of books. Some things I know a priori.

*sigh*. Circumscribe: draw a circle around (scribe a circle?), clear a space for, without yet filling in that space. Via negativa: the way of the negative, the specification of what something is not, rather than what it is. This seems to be what the OP is doing.

Ah right. Ok, I suppose that's about right. I think of it more as exploring. Looking at the various ways philosophers think, and trying to find a way that most of them can be mostly right. So far, it has been a sort of eliminativism/externalism, but using the old old mirror of the soul trope. But now I want to look at imagination, where there does not seem to be anything 'outside' to anchor thought.

Externalism tells only one half of the story. It is interesting that people feel compelled to choose one or other side of the internalism/ externalism dichotomy. It's as if there is a prejudice which dictates 'it can't be both'. — Janus

Well the reason for that is probably an aversion to dualism, and the attendant spiritual woo. I more or less dismiss panpsychism, not on the grounds of woo, but on the grounds that it doesn't explain anything. It is like claiming that everything reflects light, and thinking that that explains mirrors. but dualism in general at least has the merit of covering the ground, and you have pre-empted me in a way by suggesting that a combination of internalism and externalism will do the same job. But I want to keep the internal in its place as a model on a par, at best, with the creations of a model railway enthusiast; wonderfully complex and ingenious, but no substitute for as decent public transport system.

One can spend a deal of time absorbed in one's model railway, or in one's philosophical theory, but one cannot live there.

The imagined tree is, let's say for the moment, some compound of memory, language, concepts, stuff going on in the brain anyway, that does not directly relate to what's going on in the world, where I am sitting in my chair typing on the laptop. — unenlightened

More nonsense. Brains, and what they think about, are part of the world. Imagined trees can be a causal influence on the rest of the world as much as a real tree can have on the mind. From my perspective the contents of your brain/mind are just as external to me as the tree in the forest.

The contents of the mind are not reflections rather they are representations.

From my perspective the contents of your brain/mind are just as external to me as the tree in the forest. — Harry Hindu

I very glad to hear it. But the question is, where are you and your perspective?

Outside of yours - just like yours is to mine - which is to say in my head.

The question should be, if we are not in our heads then why does it appear that we are?

And outside the forest as well, you just said that. I can only hope then for your sake, that you live in a world of your own. Otherwise you are nowhere.

if you hope that I live in a world of my own then you are hoping for your non-existence as a real person outside of my world. Are you a real person or only an imagined one?

Time for a quick recap. I started with an analogy of brain to mirror, and mind to reflected virtual image, thereby suggesting that looking for mind in the substance of brain is a bit like looking for the reflected image behind the mirror. Doomed to disappointment, that is.

Now I have suggested that the brain functions in two distinct ways, probably both at the same time in most cases.

One is a sensory and motor engagement with the world that is immediately present, physical, pressing keys, walking round lakes, banging into things seeing trees and reflections - all things sensing and acting.

Two is disengaged from the present world and engaged with thought, model, making, imagination, memory, that sort of thing. (This is a model that I am presenting here for you to play with and pull apart or decorate as you wish. You can put it in prominent position in your model of the world, or you can chuck it straight in the bin. )

But the question is, where are you and your perspective? — unenlightened

I am sat in an armchair in North Wales, typing on my laptop. That is to say I am present in the world, sensing and interacting and - inevitably - making models of the world, or adapting, playing with a model.
I am not in the model, which is what is in my head; only a model of me is in the model.

But here's a problem; I am not present to you. Everything I present to you in the previous paragraph is not me, but the model of me that forms part of the model of the world I am offering for you to use as you wish or chuck in the bin. So I am inscribing on this model, 'the model is not the world, the word is not the thing, I am not my post'. Lest I be accused of nonsense.

Well the reason for that is probably an aversion to dualism, and the attendant spiritual woo. I more or less dismiss panpsychism, not on the grounds of woo, but on the grounds that it doesn't explain anything. — unenlightened

Sure, but the dichotomous alternative to panpsychism is panzombieism or pandeadism. It seems a matter of perspective as to whether the material constituency of the world is mutely, brutely dead or animatedly alive. Must the reality be one or the other; or would that apply only to our models?

But I want to keep the internal in its place as a model on a par, at best, with the creations of a model railway enthusiast; wonderfully complex and ingenious, but no substitute for as decent public transport system. — unenlightened

I agree, although I would say that we first need the model in order to intelligently construct the living, working system.

'the model is not the world, the word is not the thing, I am not my post'. — unenlightened

So iff I say I don't think I fully understand your post; that's not accurate, because I'm not my post?

But here's a problem; I am not present to you. Everything I present to you in the previous paragraph is not me, but the model of me that forms part of the model of the world I am offering for you to use as you wish or chuck in the bin. So I am inscribing on this model, 'the model is not the world, the word is not the thing, I am not my post'. Lest I be accused of nonsense. — unenlightened

Interesting.

I'm playing a bit here. Not exactly sure where I'm going, but trying to actually relate too.

To go back to the mirror example, words are the light and the model is the image. We can share words and see the image in our own mind, but that's different from seeing you. I'd have to be in Wales for that, for starters.

So you might say that since you are not present to me -- or since I am not present to you -- or perhaps I should say that you can't see my images? -- we have these two aspects of experience which seem to operate on different parameters of time, and even physics, and even in terms of experiential access. Which is where we may draw our dualistic inference from, these two aspects of the brain/mind.



One way of uniting the two, if that indeed be your goal, is to de-emphasize their experiential aspects. While I can look at the marker on my desk and confirm that it's blue, and were you here you could do the same without me, you cannot access my thoughts in the same manner on whatever it is I happen to be imagining at the time. But perhaps these experiential moments or modes are less important than we have the tendency to give them credit for. What if these are actually just two sorts of "worlds" -- structures of experience, or structures of discourse, or even metaphysical realities -- which act in different ways of find some kind of unity (depends on what strategy we might take -- transcendental seems to correspond to structures of experience, phenomenological to discourse, and epistemological for metaphysical).

But then, those would also just be models to be shared between our own mirrors. The real would still be right there. And then you really do wonder if these two aspects actually have a relation to one another, as one seems bounded and the other unbounded.

Sure, but the dichotomous alternative to panpsychism is panzombieism or pandeadism. — Janus

Well it can't be because we ourselves show that nature has its "psyche" bit. So the real problem for any pan-istic story is to actually enshrine a dichotomy which has some universality. Just trying to have it that everything is mindful is as non-explanatory as trying to have it everything lacks a mind. This kind of pan-ism is monadic and lacks a dichotomous distinction which would actually explain anything in terms of a mutual or complementary opposition.

So the more usual dichotomy would be between generalised simplicity and particular complexity. Mind is what you get when material structure is the least simple. Brains are highly negentropic structures, when compared to the highly entropic world in which they exist. So right there is a qualitative difference of a dichotomous nature we could investigate.

I of course argue for pan-semiosis as an ultimate metaphysics.

The difference between the living and the dead comes down to a semiotic or modelling relation. The mind is the brain modelling the world - a world in terms of a self being in it. A view which pretty much accounts for the meat of the OP. And so we can see there is a primal distinction based on information or symbol vs matter or dynamics. Mind arises as the information that regulates material dynamics in complex adaptive systems.

So we establish the dichotomy that separates the living and mindful material structures from the ones that are dead and unconscious. That dichotomy is enshrined in semiotics as a science.

Then the speculative venture - the bit that might connect everything up as a pan-istic whole - is to push this dichotomy of symbol and matter, information and dynamics, all the way down to the fundamental level of scientific description. Which happens to be where physics is at right now.

So there are rules to this game. A pan-istic metaphysics - a unity that ties everything in existence together with a nice bow - has to enshrine some fundamental dichotomy which also explains why this unity is a symmetry that is very breakable. The unity has to be a unity of opposites ... all the way down to the fundamental.

Panpsychism is failed metaphysics as it doesn't put forward such a tale. It sort of tries to at times. As with dual aspect monism. Matter is said to have both material properties and mental properties.

But this is not a real dichotomy. There is no sense in which the two are complementary and so formative of each other. It is a claim about two essentially unrelated things being housed in the same "atom". The smallest grain of matter contains the smallest drop of awareness. Nothing gets explained as there is no sense in which this brokenness is itself the breaking of a connecting symmetry. The brokenness becomes a brute and dualistic fact.

With the information~matter dichotomy on the other hand, it all arises from quantum complementarity. Physics has uncovered an exact relation between physical existence and knowledge uncertainty. The relation can be quantified or scaled in terms of the Planck constant.

So there is a way that pan-ism has to work. It must enshrine a dichotomy which expresses a fundamental complementarity that connects all the way down. It can't claim to arrive at a unifying monadism simply by pasting together two unrelated concepts, like a substance called matter and a substance called awareness (or soul, or spirit, or whatever).

I agree, although I would say that we first need the model in order to intelligently construct the living, working system. — Janus

Oh absolutely. The architect draws a non-existent house and then the builders build it.

So iff I say I don't think I fully understand your post; that's not accurate, because I'm not my post? — JJJJS

I suspect you are some dude typing, and your post is an honest expression of your thoughts. So reading your post I get some experience of you, but it is more like a footprint than an encounter. "That looks like the post of someone who is reading and trying to understand and getting a little confused", I might think, the way a bushman reads the trail of an antelope. The trail is not the antelope, but it is a sign of the antelope.

Well it can't be because we ourselves show that nature has its "psyche" bit. — apokrisis

The dichotomy is in relation to what is thought to be the constituents of reality. So, the alternative scenarios (ignoring dualistic substance ontologies) as they are usually conceived are;

• matter is alive and intelligent

• matter is dead