In that sense, there isn't really fundamental matter or experience for the semiotic theorist.

The world is vague, not specific forms of the world. Minds and bodies don't pre-exist their logical structure. Bodies and minds are two categories of caused states in the world, constituted in particular logical structure.

There are no "formless fundamental bodies and experience bits" which are shaped in logic. Such a thing makes no sense-- bodies and minds have a logical structure. They cannot be prior to that logical constraint.

I should point out that apo is using "brute fact" differently than I am. I mean it in the sense that experiences are thought to be state of the world, as proposed to some "illusion" or transcendent form.

Apo is using it in the context of the question of perception and explanation-- i.e. how do we explain the presence of these existing experiences? What causes them? How do they mean? What makes them experiences rather than something else?

Yeah, apokrisis introduces a Logic which is actually illogical because it is supposed to exist independently of any mind, and this Logic is what structures the world. We all know though, that logic is mind dependent. Then with a big turn around, this Logic is called "mind-like". But this claim of "mind-like", or "mindfulness", is completely unjustified because this Logic has been thoroughly separated from mind in the premise.

So intention, attention, thinking, sensation, feelings, emotions, and all these things which are normally associated with mind, and are properly "mind-like", are irrelevant to apokrisis' metaphysics. Apokrisis has assumed a nonsense form of Logic, which operates within the wold, acting to structure it, operating independently of a mind.

Addendum: that is what apokrisis calls demystifying metaphysics.

The world is vague, not specific forms of the world. Minds and bodies don't pre-exist their logical structure. Bodies and minds are two categories of caused states in the world, constituted in particular logical structure.

There are no "formless fundamental bodies and experience bits" which are shaped in logic. Such a thing makes no sense-- bodies and minds have a logical structure. They cannot be prior to that logical constraint. — TheWillowOfDarkness

You misinterpreted me. I never meant that each of the trinity of the triad is there in some formless way, but that it is indeed the material root or cause. You tend to strawman a lot there Willow.

I would put "experience" in quote marks to show that even to talk about it is already to turn it into a measurable posited within a theoretical structure. — apokrisis

Then use "sense" or basic perception if experience is too vague or too complex a notion for your material cause.

So the main difference is that you are taking experience as a brute fact. Essentially you are being a naive realist about your phenomenological access. Qualia are real things to you.

I would take qualia as being the kinds of facts we can talk about - given a suitable structure of ideas is in place. — apokrisis

Oh come now. A baby or animal doesn't have brute fact experiences? It only becomes experience through some sort of linguistic filter? Blah.

Your approach is illogical. Either it is homuncular in requiring a self that stands outside "the realm of brute experience" to do the experiencing of the qualia. Or the qualia simply are "experiential", whatever the heck that could mean in the absence of an experiencer. — apokrisis

You simply state the problem, but it doesn't go away. Actually this is the basis of the Hard Problem of Consciousness in the first place. By stating the problem in some sort of dismissive way, the problem itself does not disappear.

My way is logical. It is the global structure of observation that shapes up the appearance of local observables. And these observables have the nature of signs. They are symbols that anchor the habits of interpretation. — apokrisis

See, this is where lose you. That literally does not make sense to me. You have to explain that better to be relevant in the conversation. As I interpret that when you say "observation that shapes.." you are committing the very fallacy of a homuncular that you accuse me of. When you say "appearance of local observables" it sounds again, like you are committing the fallacy. And then you move the topic all together to signs which does not explain the observation itself, or the appearance of local observables, which to me just seems like a fancy way to say "experience". It's as if you briefly mention the brute fact of experience as material cause but overlook this very fact in your theory by wanting to focus so much on the formal cause. By the way, I am not unsympathetic to semiosis as a way to hash out the formal causes in a modelling format, but I am noticing a trend to stick to the formal and not look at the material.

Yeah, apokrisis introduces a Logic which is actually illogical because it is supposed to exist independently of any mind, and this Logic is what structures the world. We all know though, that logic is mind dependent. Then with a big turn around, this Logic is called "mind-like". But this claim of "mind-like", or "mindfulness", is completely unjustified because this Logic has been thoroughly separated from mind in the premise.

So intention, attention, thinking, sensation, feelings, emotions, and all these things which are normally associated with mind, and are properly "mind-like", are irrelevant to apokrisis' metaphysics. Apokrisis has assumed a nonsense form of Logic, which operates within the wold, acting to structure it, operating independently of a mind. — Metaphysician Undercover

Good points.

the intelligibility of nature is a consequence of nature itself being a fundamentally semiotic or "mind-like" process. That is why Peirce described existence as the generalised growth in reasonableness. — Apokrisis

Totally with you there. It is related to the Greek 'nous' as being on the one hand, the individual intellect, but on the other, the intelligible principle that is the source of the order of the cosmos. That is how the individual's grasp of reason can be like a key that can turn in the lock of the order. That is the basis of the idea of intelligibility.

I would put "experience" in quote marks to show that even to talk about it is already to turn it into a measurable posited within a theoretical structure. — Apokrisis

Which, I think, is a generally Kantian point isn't it? So you're saying that, in speaking of 'qualia', you're already turning them into what basically amounts to an abstraction; whereas the real discipline consists of understanding 'the process of abstraction' itself, right?

I know. You didn't interpret the triad as formless. The problem is you envision parts of triad coming out of fundamental formless substance of mind and body. As if there were, before minds and body were constrained by logical structure, a formless mind and body.

My objection to your argument is going the other way to what you interpreted. I'm saying your formless bits of mind and body are incoherent to the semiotic theorist. The problem is not that you've interpreted the triad as formless, it is you are saying mind and body somehow have presence outside the triad.

The semiotic theorist is bumping up against your substance dualism again. You've introduced the mind and body catergories of substance dualism and are now trying to understand the semiotics theorist in those terms. It's not going to work. The semotic theorist rejects the dualism fundamental substances of mind and body.

My objection to your argument is going the other way to what you interpreted. I'm saying your formless bits of mind and body are incoherent to the semiotic theorist. The problem is not that you've interpreted the triad as formless, it is you are saying mind and body somehow have presence outside the triad. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Yes, there is incoherence, but it is coming from the semiotics side, at least as I see it at this point. How is by positing "triad" vs. "dual" you are solving the problem? Panpsychists essentially say the dualism dissolves in the fact that matter is experiential. They have to bite the bullet regarding the idea that experience is just always there. How is the triad dissolving the problem besides simply explaining "formal cause formal cause formal cause" and using the word "illusion" every once in a while? Like elimintive materialists, but for much different reasons, they must explain the "illusion" and how this illusion even comes about from the triad.

Panpsychists essentially say the dualism dissolves in the fact that matter is experiential. — schopenhauer1

If matter has subjectivity, then why don't animals have it?

Semiotic theory is really more of a tri-aspect monism. The triad isn't replacing the dual substances of mind body dualism. It's a different sort of logical concept. Not a pair of opposed fundamental substances, but a singular system of an interacting triad. Experiences are considered states of the world.

In terms of the "hard problem," semiotic theory considers it either incoherent or irrelevant. Since qualia doesn't have an apparent logical structure, there's nothing to say about it with the constraints of logic. It's not needed to talk about how experiences are logically constrained to a form, so it sort of a pointless detour.

"Quaila" is just bad metaphysics for the semiotic theorist because it doesn't reflect a logical constraint on the world. It doesn't tell us how the world is formed, so it's irrelevant to describing what matters (at least that's how the story goes. Of course, the immaterialists, anti-realists and non-reducitve materialists have other things to say, but that's a whole range of different arguments).

I think good knowledge and understanding of major works of art makes the world more intelligible and this has nothing to do with science.

Pardon me if I missed this point earlier, I'm traveling around and on my phone.

We all know though, that logic is mind dependent. — Metaphysician Undercover

Do we? Might it not be the other way around: that minds are logic dependent?

This is giving short thrift to panpsychists like (presumably) Whitehead — schopenhauer1

Whitehead was not a panpsychist, but a pan-experientialist; a distinction which Whitehead himself was at pains to emphasize.

Then use "sense" or basic perception if experience is too vague or too complex a notion for your material cause. — schopenhauer1

You miss the point. No matter how we might refer to dasein or whatever, in pointing to it, we are already constructing a conceptualised distance from it. We are introducing the notion of the self which is taking the view of the thing from another place.

So even phenomenology has an irreducible Kantian issue in thinking it can talk about the thing in itself which would be naked or primal experience. Any attempt at description is already categoric and so immediately into the obvious problems of being a model of the thing. You can't just look and check in a naively realistic way to see what is there. Already you have introduced the further theoretical constructs of this "you" and "the thing" which is being checked.

Oh come now. A baby or animal doesn't have brute fact experiences? It only becomes experience through some sort of linguistic filter? Blah. — schopenhauer1

Again, to talk about animals having just brute fact experiences is both a convincing theoretical construct, but still essentially a construct.

How do we imagine it to be an aware animal? Using reason, we can say it is probably most closely like ourselves in a least linguistic and self-conscious state - like staring out the window in a blank unthinking fashion. So we can try to reconstruct a state that is pre-linguistic. It doesn't feel impossible.

But the point of this discussion is that it is humans that have a social machinery for structuring experience in terms of a logical or grammatical intelligibility. We actually have an extra framework to impose on our conceptions and our impressions.

This is why there is an issue of how such a framework relates to the world itself. Is the machinery that seems epistemically useful for structuring experience somehow also essentially the same machinery by which the world ontically structures its own being? Is logic an actual model of causality in other words?

You have to explain that better to be relevant in the conversation. — schopenhauer1

Or you have to understand better to keep up with the conversation. Definitely one or the other. :)

Either it is homuncular in requiring a self that stands outside "the realm of brute experience" to do the experiencing of the qualia. — apokrisis

Could someone explain to me what is wrong with the homuncular approach? People speak as if this is some big fallacy, but until the homuncular approach is proven wrong, why should we be afraid of it?

Do we? Might it not be the other way around: that minds are logic dependent? — John

No, I don't see how it could be that way. Logic is a process of thinking, reasoning. Clearly thinking and reasoning is what minds do, and it is not the case that thinking and reasoning is a process which starts without a mind, and then proceeds to produce a mind. I think that such an idea requires a misguided definition of "mind".

You assume your own conclusion that logic is dependent on mind, by saying that logic is a process of thinking or reasoning. Logic is what inherently constrains our thinking and reasoning; we don't actually know 'where it comes from'; how could we? A set of principles of logic is a formalization and/or formularization of those inherent constraints, a formalization that has come about via processes of thinking or reasoning; but which is not itself a process of thinking or reasoning, but is a set of principles that is understood to govern processes of thinking or reasoning.

The most often argument against homunculi is it results in infinite regress. Each instance of experience is given in terms of the identity of a different being, so it results in an endless run of homunculi with homunculi.

What I perceive really of a homunculus in my head. But then that homunculus has experience, it's experiencing my perception, so it needs Its own homunculus to be experiencing it's perception. The loop repeats ad-infinitum.

Strictly speaking, this argument isn't quite enough to exclude homunculi, at least in what it describes (why couldn't there by an endless transfinite run of homunculi? They could exist). It's just people think the idea is too absurd to consider.

But they read it as absurd of a reason. The homunculus is incoherent by identity. If my experience was of a homunculus, I wouldn't be myself. I would be merely watching a body which wasn't my own.

My conciousness would by irrelevant to the body I'm perceiving around me. And so it would be to the homunculus of every level. Each would not own their experience. It would belong to the homunculus on the higher level. Now since the line of homunculi is endless, it means the passing of ownership never terminates in the existence of an experiencing being.

The homunculus account of conciousness literally says no-one exists. Quaila never belongs to anyone.

Could someone explain to me what is wrong with the homuncular approach? People speak as if this is some big fallacy, but until the homuncular approach is proven wrong, why should we be afraid of it? — Metaphysician Undercover

Infinite regress. An explanation endlessly deferred is an explanation never actually given.

The most often argument against homunculi is it results in infinite regress. Each instance of experience is given in terms of the identity of a different being, so it results in an endless run of homunculi with homunculi. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I don't see any infinite regress here. Let's say that there is something within me which I call "self", and this self experiences. Why would there need to be another self within that self, and so on? The self is within me, and carrying out the function of experiencing, why would there need to be another self within that self? As an analogy, let's say that there is a part within my computer which carries out the function X, why would you assume another part inside that part carrying out X, and so on.

The homunculus is incoherent by identity. If my experience was of a homunculus, I wouldn't be myself. — TheWillowOfDarkness

You are misrepresenting. No one would say that my experience is an experience of a homunculus experiencing, what they would say is that there is an inner part of me which is experiencing, and this inner part is the homunculus experiencing. it is not that I am experiencing a homunculus experiencing, that would be absurd. It is that I am experiencing, and this experiencing, is the inner part of me, the homunculus, carrying out the function of experiencing. I am breathing, but it is my lungs which are carrying out this function of breathing. No infinite regress with respect to breathing.

The homunculus account of conciousness literally says no-one exists. Quaila never belongs to anyone. — TheWillowOfDarkness

That's an interestingly weird result, since it is the very homunculus itself which is meant to be the self in the first place. Does qualia "belong to anyone" in any but a purely formal sense (accepting for the sake of argument that qualia 'them-selves' even exist in some other than a merely formal sense)?

You assume your own conclusion that logic is dependent on mind, by saying that logic is a process of thinking or reasoning. Logic is what inherently constrains our thinking and reasoning; we don't actually know 'where it comes from'; how could we? — John

No, you are redefining "logic" to suit your purpose. Logic doesn't constrain our thinking, it is thinking, a particular type of thinking, reasoning. Without thinking and reasoning there is no logic. So you could say that thinking constrains itself, through logic, but that is not what you're saying. You're saying that logic constrains thinking, and that is false, because you are making logic, which is a passive tool of thought, into something which actively constrains thought.

There is a coherent distinction between thoughts, thinking and logic; the inherent 'something' that determines how we think and which we formulate as logical principles that are understood to govern thinking, thinking which is the production of thoughts. I think you are trying to dissolve these valid and useful distinctions in order to support your own agenda.

Just in case you misunderstand, I am not claiming that thinking must be strictly logical, we can think illogical thoughts, but we cannot take them seriously because they do not make sense. So this could not called real thinking, but rather senseless combinations of concepts. I'm also not saying that entities such as God are illogical, either; there is a perfectly coherent logic in theology.

But logic is not a "passive tool of thought"; on the contrary we cannot think cogently without it. If you think we can then present an example of cogent thought that is illogical.

I would make a version of that objection too
Why does my self have to be reduced to a homunculus within a body at all? Why exactly are we proposing the homunculus me rather than my body in the first place?

No doubt my experience is not my body, but that only points to the absudity of the homunculus. How does reducing my experience to the body of a homunculus rather than the one I perceive bring us any closer to giving us an account of my experience which is NOT a body?

Is not to be myself enough? To be an experience, to be qualia? Why are we even suggesting I need to be made up by an inner person in the first place? Is my experience only a function of an homunculus organ in my body?

This is why the homunculus account has the regress. If experience was to terminate at a person within my body, it would be reduced to that state of body-- lungs ( homoculus) would supposedly give a full account of breathing ( conciousness). The Being of conciousness is missing, as with any reductionist argument.

Proponents of the homunculus argument don't accept this. There must always be more it conciousness than the body which causes it. The "hard problem" which the homunculus is thought to be resolving actually applies equally to the homunculus. How can this mere organ ( homoculus) in my body account for my experience? It cannot. It falls to the same sword as the body we perceive.

There is a coherent distinction between thoughts, thinking and logic; the inherent 'something' that determines how we think and which we formulate as logical principles that are understood to govern thinking, thinking which is the production of thoughts. — John

This is false though, logical principles do not govern thinking. We choose which principles we wish to apply, and some may not be logical . You even admit to this:

...we can think illogical thoughts... — John

If we can think illogical thoughts, then something other than logic is governing our thinking. Therefore logic is not understood to govern thinking, thinking often goes in illogical directions, invalid arguments are often produced. There is a multitude of fallacies. So you need to consider a different relationship between logic and thinking, because clearly we do not understand logic as governing thinking.

You're saying that logic constrains thinking, and that is false, because you are making logic, which is a passive tool of thought, into something which actively constrains thought. — Metaphysician Undercover

A tool is a effective cause. A logical constraint is a formal cause. So you are confusing your Aristotelean categories here.

But logic is not a "passive tool of thought"; on the contrary we cannot think cogently without it. I — John

I agree. It is the structural grounding that makes it even possible to act in a "thoughtful" way.

Of course you can go back before the development of formal language, and even grammatical speech, and argue that animals think without this "tool".

Yet in fact if you check the very structure of the brain, it is "logical" in a general dichotomistic or symmetry-breaking sense. It has an architecture that is making logical breaks at every point of its design.

It starts right with the receptive fields of sensory cells. They are generally divided so that their firing is enhanced when hit centrally, and their firing is suppressed by the same stimulus hitting them peripherally. And then to balance that, a matching set of cells does the exact reverse. This way, a logically binary response is imposed on the world and information processing can begin.

Then even when the brain becomes a big lump of grey matter, it still is organised with a dichotomous logic - all the separations between motor and sensory areas, object identity and spatial relation pathways, left vs right hemisphere "focus vs fringe" processing styles, etc.

It's the nature of mind/body dualism. Since the mind is considered a different realm to the body, what mind/body dualism cannot take seriously is the existence of conciousness. If conciousness were existing, then it would be of the same realm as bodies and there would by no opposed dualism.

The mind/body dualist rejection of existing qualia makes perfect sense when you consider their metaphysics say experience must have nothing to do with the world.

Quaila belongs by definition. I am my experience, not yours or anyone else's. You can never access my quaila no matter how much you feel or think like me. It's MY Being and cannot be anyone else's. That's what it means to exist as being of experience.

We have the full account of conciousness in the world everyone has been searching for; each conciousness, each instance of qualia, in-itself. We don't need brains or homunculi.

The mind/body dualist cannot accept this though, for it dissolves their dualism and the "hard problem."

You are ignoring the part where I suggested that what we might call "thinking illogical thoughts" is really nothing more than associating concepts or names or mental images that don't have relation of logical entailment between them together. And even those kinds of 'thoughts' must have some kind of associative logic (as with poetry) or they are nothing more than utter nonsense; just meaninglessly contiguous pictures created by language. They are certainly not cogent thoughts. And you haven't risen to the challenge to present a thought which is not logical, so that we can see what kind of things you have in mind when you say that thoughts are not necessarily logical.

A tool is a effective cause. A logical constraint is a formal cause. So you are confusing your Aristotelean categories here. — apokrisis

As a cause of change in the wold. logic is a formal cause. But as we know, there are causes of causes, and thinking is the cause of this formal cause, which we call logic. Yes, logic is a formal cause, but it is not the formal cause of thinking. If we were to seek the cause of thinking, we would turn to final cause, which is itself a type of formal cause, but a distinct type. You do not seem to provide a proper separation between the vey distinct formal cause and final cause.

You are ignoring the part where I suggested that what we might call "thinking illogical thoughts" is really nothing more than associating concepts or names or mental images that don't have relation of logical entailment between them together. And even those kinds of 'thoughts' must have some kind of associative logic (as with poetry) or they are nothing more than utter nonsense; just meaninglessly contiguous pictures created by language. They are certainly not cogent thoughts. And you haven't risen to the challenge to present a thought which is not logical, so that we can see what kind of things you have in mind when you say that thoughts are not necessarily logical. — John

You've lost me in apparent contradiction. You say that we can think illogical thoughts, but this is not really thinking. We can establish mental relations "that don't have relation of logical entailment", but even those thoughts "must have some kind of associative logic". Do you see the contradiction?

The things is, thoughts can jump from one thing to the next, without any apparent logical association, as is evidenced by dreams. And this appears to be the way that brute animals think, their thoughts jump around, depending on what attracts their attention. The human being has the capacity to focus the attention, with intention, thus giving them the capacity to perform logical proceedings.

So this is my presentation of thoughts which are not logical, thoughts which jump around from one thing to another, with no apparent consistency or coherency. This inconsistency is due to the inability of an individual to focus one's attention. That is what is required to carry out a logical proceeding, to focus one's attention, on a particular subject, for a span of time. Without this, one may think, without logic. What is required in order to focus the attention is to exercise the power of intention over attention. That is what human beings do, which enables them to carry out logical proceedings.

You seem to want to deny the distinction between rational and irrational thought, this exercising the power of intention over attention, insisting that all thought must be in some way rational. But this is simply not the case, and there is clear evidence of this. What would you call this, what we call illogical thinking, if not a form of thinking? If we move to deny that this is thinking, as you seem to suggest, then we have nothing to call this. But clearly it is a form of thinking, and that's why we call it thus. Therefore it is you who is trying "to dissolve these valid and useful distinctions in order to support your own agenda", not I. I recognize that logic, and cogent arguments emerge from thinking, which is itself more of a random, "free" process, not constrained by logic.

You and apokrisis alike, seem to be obsessed with this preconceived notion that the freedom within, the local freedom, is necessarily constrained by a larger, global constraint system. But this is clearly not the case, if there are prior constraints on the local freedoms, these must be inherent within, and not of a global character at all. That is why we have substance dualism, to account for the two types of constraints, forms. We have constraints which are inherent within the local freedoms, denying that these freedoms are absolute, acting as upward causation, and we have global constraints, which act as downward causation. Apokrisis does not distinguish between internal and external constraints, and this is a real failing of that metaphysic.