Thanks very much for your feedback.
I will need to wait until tomorrow to consider it in detail.

You mean "world", or unwelt? And so the noumenal - analytically - falls outside that phenomenology? It is the division that is fundamental, even if the division ain't usually experienced?
And also, it can only be fundamental in the sense of being fundamental to a particular level of semiosis, a particular community united by a common system of sign? — apokrisis

I suppose I mean "umwelt" or "world" in the phenomenological sense. (The noumenal would be more properly what is real but not revealed to us, and hence kind of irrelevant to this discussion). So, in that phenomenological sense the shared world of any community is fundamental to the experience, the "innenwelt' of the individual. It would seem to be so even with the social animals.

But the point is that they are united by a common form of experience which gives rise to the possibility of a common system of signs. It is the affective aspect of experience that is really determinative; what matters to us, and this is rooted in what we are at the most fundamental level, which is ultimately inaccessible to our rational investigations because we cannot step outside of what we are to 'see it from the outside" so to speak, or escape the historicity of our perspectives in order to gain a view which is free from our own presuppositions.

On the basis of this I reject the idea that the self and the world are socially constructed fictions, — Janus

Well, the self certainly is. A linguistic community is fundamental to the production of a linguistic self. And some kind of semiotic community is the shaper of any kind of selfhood.

These are in fact the consequences of your own first move - the one where you say the shared is what is fundamental. The self must emerge from that, if you are correct.

What you say is true of 'a linguistic self", but there is a deeper pre-linguistic sense of self and other, upon which the linguistic self and other is parasitic, and without which it would be impossible, and that is what I am referring to.

I of course make it easier by saying that co-emergent is in fact what is fundamental. It all begins with a symmetry-breaking or division. However you are taking the substantialist view that existence begins with something being already definite. You are calling that "experience" at the moment.

No, I am not saying it is definite at all; nothing can be defined precisely except linguistically. primordial experience is precisely not definite, and it is you who are trying to render it definite by talking about it in terms of 'symmetry breaking', rather than accepting the natural limitation of our discursive knowledge. In that respect I see you as a kind of positivist.

Sure. But your problem is that we become human through language and its narrative framing.

I disagree; I would say that we come to define ourselves as 'human' "through language and its narrative framing", but that that is not the whole of the story. Of course the pre-discursive part of the story can only be hinted at, but why is that a problem; that is what, inter alia, the arts are for.

And it is only going to be make worse once you start using poetical social constructs about oceanic feelings, or whatever else you have picked up in your cultural wanderings and drugged states.

This is one of your typically toxic caricatures, and it seems to me that all it shows is your own prejudicial rejection of anything you haven't personally experienced and/ or cannot put into a convenient box.

Of course. Your argument has to reach your favoured conclusion. There is little point me commenting on that. Art is just straightforwardly the social construction of selfhood. That is not even disguised.

It's not my favored conclusion, but my favored inclusion. You, unfortunately, have your diametrically opposed favored exclusion; which leaves the fullness of your account severely wanting. Art is (or at least can be) much more than what you say, but for you to see that you would need to experience that 'much more'. Hopefully one day you will.

But the question is on what physical basis can we draw the distinction?

I lean toward the representationalist account of phenomenal consciousness. Objects in the external world are represented in our minds, and these representations are intentional (i.e. they dispose us to behave a certain way). It is the way we remember aspects of the world so that we are better equipped to act in it.

Reperesentationalist theory of consiousness doesn't solve all problems of consciousness, but it's a step in that direction.

(The noumenal would be more properly what is real but not revealed to us, and hence kind of irrelevant to this discussion). — Janus

Huh. Internalism makes no epistemic sense without the assumption that there could be the external as its other. So given this is about the foundations of epistemology now....

But the point is that they are united by a common form of experience which gives rise to the possibility of a common system of signs. — Janus

I was saying it is the other way round. Otherwise this ontologises experience as substantial being.

t is the affective aspect of experience that is really determinative; — Janus

And what is that founded on except some process of neural semiosis? We have our evolutionary biology in common. We grow up in the same physical world. So sure, it may ban aspect of neurocognition. But once we are talking about affect as a rational semiotic process, it is the mechanism of the sign relation we are making ontically basic.

You can’t have your cake and eat it. If you want to make experienced affect basic, then you are talking a very different story. The usual one of substantial being and not semiotic process. So you have to decide which horse you back.

What you say is true of 'a linguistic self", but there is a deeper pre-linguistic sense of self and other, upon which the linguistic self and other is parasitic, and without which it would be impossible, and that is what I am referring to. — Janus

Sure. I’ve said that a thousand times. The vertebrate brain is based on the forward modelling that makes a self-world distinction basic. We have know it is our head that turns and not the world that spins. But the animal sense of self is not an introspective one. It lacks that social structure.

It's not my favored conclusion, but my favored inclusion. You, unfortunately, have your diametrically opposed favored exclusion; which leaves the fullness of your account severely wanting. Art is (or at least can be) much more than what you say, but for you to see that you would need to experience that 'much more'. Hopefully one day you will. — Janus

If you can’t deal with reasonable arguments then best you don’t reply.

Huh. Internalism makes no epistemic sense without the assumption that there could be the external as its other. So given this is about the foundations of epistemology now.... — apokrisis

I agree with that, but we are discussing what is phenomenologically basic, and by definition the noumenal is not a concern of phenomenology.

I was saying it is the other way round. Otherwise this ontologises experience as substantial being. — apokrisis

I wouldn't put it that way. If experience is to be considered ontologically, rather than merely phenomenologically basic, even then it would be ontologized as process, not as substance. Again it is the "chicken and egg" problem. On a different analytic perspectives we could say that semiosis is fundamental, or we could say that semiosis and experience are co-arising, or we could say that affective experience is fundamental; the point is that there is no absolute, presuppositionless truth of the matter.

Semiosis and experience evolve together to greater complexity in an upwards spiral it would seem.

You can’t have your cake and eat it. If you want to make experienced affect basic, then you are talking a very different story. The usual one of substantial being and not semiotic process. So you have to decide which horse you back. — apokrisis

Yes, but I am not claiming it is ontologically basic; I am merely saying that phenomenologically speaking, from the perspective of the ordinary unreflective individual who would never automatically, and without considerable education, begin to interpret experience in terms of signs, affect is basic. That is where we all start from, and I think that this is the kind of commonsense understanding that Peirce says philosophy should never discard or contradict.

But the animal sense of self is not an introspective one. It lacks that social structure. — apokrisis

I disagree again. The animal sense of self in social animals obviously does not lack a social structure (although it is obviously not self reflectively explicit even as it is not with many human beings) and it does not depend on introspection.

I am merely saying that phenomenologically speaking, from the perspective of the ordinary unreflective individual who would never automatically, and without considerable education, begin to interpret experience in terms of signs, affect is basic. — Janus

Then all you are saying is that people brought up in contemporary western culture would learn to say these kinds of things as that reflects folk epistemology. It is hardly fundamental.

On a different analytic perspectives we could say that semiosis is fundamental, or we could say that semiosis and experience are co-arising, — Janus

Well I am arguing that ontologising experience as a semiotic process is the fundamental epistemic move. And this stands in contrast to ontologising it as a substance. So I am taking a hylomorphic and semiotic position on the question.

If you too are rejecting a substantive sum in regard to experience, you would need to communicate that in your choice of words, the direction of your arguments.

As it stands, I haven’t seen that. You still want to make experience - affective experience - basic. And then say at worst it is a chicken and egg situation.

It really is nothing more than a matter of different interpretations of the ambit of a term. — Janus

I don't think so. It's about whether science and its laws control reality, or describe it. It's about whether reality is human-independent, which is why it's significant, and not a trivial matter of semantics.

It's about whether the law-of-gravity is:

• a curve-fitted mathematical model of gravity, or
• a magical incantation that underlies, powers, governs and controls gravity.

It just is, and it does what it does without the need for any sort of support or guidance. No laws. No luck. Just reality, being real. — Pattern-chaser

Of course, it is metaphysically impossible for nature to "just be" without a concomitant cause. — Dfpolis

Our discussion seems unconnected with whether nature has a cause. :chin:

Because an infallible sign of existence is the ability to act. — Dfpolis

You think that a rock, which cannot act, therefore does not exist?

I like to project reality into different conceptual spaces -- to think about the same thing from different perspectives. I think doing so, and comparing the resulting "pictures," helps me understand an issue more fully. — Dfpolis

Absolutely.

I would say that phenomena (physical actualities) are perceived, not encoded in neural representations.
Perception being the experience caused by sensation (sense function). — Galuchat

A neural representation is a modification to our neural state that encodes information in the same way that an E-M signal carries a representation of transmitted information. — Dfpolis

It is the use of the word “representation” to describe phenomena such as neural conditions and signals that I object to, because none of its contextually-relevant connotations (e.g., picture, figure, image, idea) reasonably apply. Whereas, referring to phenomena such as paintings, sculptures, dance movements, and music as representations would be an appropriate use of the word. The difference being the latter are semantic (have meaning for a mind).

It is especially inappropriate to use the word “representation” with reference to neural conditions when Antonio Damasio (as well as Sherrington, Edelman, and Crick) thinks that perception involves constructing an image in the brain:

“When you and I look at an object outside ourselves, we form comparable images in our respective brains...But that does not mean that the image we see is the copy of whatever the object outside is like. Whatever it is like, in absolute terms, we do not know. The image we see is based on changes which occurred in our organisms...when the physical structure of the object interacts with the body...The object is real, the interactions are real, and the images are as real as anything can be. And yet, the structure and properties in the image we end up seeing are brain constructions prompted by the object... There is a set of correspondences between physical characteristics of the object and modes of reaction of the organism according to which according to which an internally generated image is constructed.”
Damasio, A. (1999). The Feeling of What Happens. p.320. Heinemann, London.

“But this is confused. What one perceives by the use of one's perceptual organs is an object or array of objects, sounds, smells, and the properties and relations of items in one's environment. It is a mistake to suppose that what we perceive is always or even commonly, an image, or that to perceive an object is to have an image of the object perceived. One does not perceive images or representations of objects. To see a red apple is not to see an image of a red apple, and to hear a sonata is not to hear the image or representation of a sonata. Nor is it to have an image in one's mind, although one can conjure up images in one's mind and sometimes images cross one's mind independently of one's wish or will. But the mental images we thus conjure up are not visible, either to others or to ourselves – they are 'had', but not seen. And the tunes one rehearses in one's imagination are not heard, either by oneself or by others.”
Bennett, M.R., Hacker, P.M.S. (2003). Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. p.138. Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

7) Received and decoded by the brain (Sensory Processing) — Galuchat

I have no idea what it means for the brain to "decode" the neural signal. It surely processes neural signals, but what difference can there be processing in which one form of neural signal is input and another form output, and "decoding" when the output is simple a neural signal? — Dfpolis

What I am attempting to describe in succinct terms is the reception of neural signals from sense organs at these locations in the brain where sensory processing takes place:
1) Primary Sensory Cortex
2) Somatic Sensory Association Area
3) Visual Association Area
4) Visual Cortex
5) Primary Motor Cortex
6) Somatic Motor Association Area
7) Prefrontal Cortex
8) Broca's Area (Speech Production)
9) Auditory Association Area
10) Auditory Cortex
11) Wernicke's Area (Speech Comprehension)

This processing activates schemata, which effectively “decodes” neural signals into meaningful data for the mind to act on. However, I accept that these terms may be faulty from a neurophysiological standpoint.

Thanks for the references to John of St. Thomas, Henry Veatch, and your video on Ideas and Brain States.

"Laws causing the regularity of nature is identical with the regularity of nature being caused by laws." — Dfpolis

"No it isn't. In one case, the laws are the master and nature follows them; in the other, nature is the master, and the laws follow it. The latter is the truth. The former is sciencist dogma, and wrong." — Pattern-chaser


Of course it is. If A is doing B, necessarily, B is being done by A. There is no question here of master and disciple, only of different ways of stating the same reality. — Dfpolis

First, you do realise, don't you, that "A is doing B" and "B is being done by A" are identical, and probably not what you meant to say? If you reverse the A and the B, and you reverse the sense of the verb, the net result is unchanged.

What you actually said, translated to use letters, as you seem to prefer, is: "A causing B is identical with B being caused by A", which is obviously true, and which I missed the first time I read it. Sorry. :blush: But what you said is not, I suspect, the observation you intended to make.

Your observation states that, in both cases, A is the cause, and B is what is caused. So there is no contrast, no distinction to be drawn. You miss my point entirely, it seems. :chin:

Nature behaves as it does because it cannot do otherwise. There is no volition or intention on nature's part. And there are no rules or laws that cause nature to act as it does. It does what it does because it is what it is. There is no evidence of cause or purpose*, only of behaviour.

Over the past centuries, we have observed that two separated masses attract one another. We label this phenomenon "gravity". We have tested this observation again and again, and we have always found it to be so. In time, we created a mathematical model of this behaviour, and we called it the "law of gravity". We tested this law, and found it to be a good model, a good description of how nature behaves. And we have since used this law with success.

But nowhere is there any evidence for this law governing or controlling nature. This law is not the magical spell that lies behind gravity, and causes it to act as it does. If it was, we would be able to observe the law itself, out there in nature, and we can't because it isn't there. Gravity is there.

So, to be clear, I assert that gravity is the master; the law of gravity models and describes this master. If there is any contradiction between the two, which one is wrong? The law of gravity. Gravity itself is part of reality, the ultimate reference, and cannot be wrong.

* - I'm assuming we don't wish to consider God's input into all this, in this particular discussion? :wink: :smile:

OK, so the question is, will you adhere to the analogy? — Metaphysician Undercover

There is noting to "adhere" to. The analogy only explains the naming convention, not a prescriptive rule.

do you assume that the laws of nature order natural behaviour through the free will choices of matter? — Metaphysician Undercover

Of course not. Analogical predication is partly the same and partly different. I said what was the same. An important difference is that humans are free, rational agents and insensate matter is not.

What physicists choose to study is irrelevant, because the laws of nature, as you have described them are independent of what physicists study. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is a little too facile. While the laws of nature exist independently of our knowing them, our knowledge of them depends on actual study. If physicists have not studied a dynamical regime, that regime will not be in physics' verified range of application. We saw this in the early 20th century when the descriptions of Newtonian physics broke down for relativistic and quantum regimes. So, until we studied the effects of human intentions on the laws, we could not say what those effects were. Now that we have some data, we can be assured that our intentions do perturb the laws.

The point is, that either matter is bound and determined to follow the laws of nature, as you claim, in which case there can be no free will, or matter is not determined by the laws of nature, in which case free will is possible — Metaphysician Undercover

You have not exhausted the possibilities here. The third option, which now appears to be the case, is that we do follow the laws of nature, but they vary in response to human intentions. So, physical change does follow the laws of nature, but our will is a factor in determining those laws.

you are only trying to create the illusion of free will — Metaphysician Undercover

Really? How does my saying that our will contributes to the determination of motion "create the illusion of free will"?

Either the activities of matter are determined by the laws of nature, or they are not, regardless of what the laws of physics say. — Metaphysician Undercover

Indeed! But, if the laws of nature depend in part on our intentions, how does this undermine free will?

To imply that there could be an undiscovered law of nature which allows for free will is to state a deception intended to give an illusion that free will is possible under your assumptions. — Metaphysician Undercover

I am saying no such thing.

I am saying, first, that we have known for millennia, that our willed intentions cause observable motions. We have simply not put 2 and 2 together to conclude that to do so, they need to perturb the laws of nature. (Although the Scholastics came close by saying that "man by reason participates in divine providence" and that we are "co-creators" of the natural order.) And, second, that scientists who have chosen not to restrict their studies by the Fundamental Abstraction have now established, to a statistical certainty, that our intentions do modify the laws of nature.

Thus, I'm positing no "undiscovered law," but pointing out the nomological implications of discoveries already made.

o, I think it's impossible that human actions are not fully determined by the laws of nature, or that human actions could modify the laws of nature, if the laws of nature inhere within matter. — Metaphysician Undercover

Since human beings are physical and intentional unities, our will, as part of that unity can be said to "inhere" in us. So, there is no intrinsic conflict a principle of action inhering in a physical being and exercising freedom.

I would like to know how you base this assumption that the laws of nature must act immanently. Traditionally, there is a duality between what you call "the laws of nature" (immaterial Forms), and material forms, (physical things). — Metaphysician Undercover

I am not sure what your objection to immanence is. Surely you reject the notion that there are substantial laws, extrinsic to the matter whose actions they order.

All forms are "immaterial" (not made of matter), even those that cannot exist without material support. I have never said that the laws of nature can be actual without material fields to order. Physical things are not forms, they are informed matter.

The Forms act to order natural processes because they are prior in time to these material processes, as God is prior to nature — Metaphysician Undercover

The laws of nature have an ontological rather than an temporal priority (as does God). To have ontological priority is to be an actualizing or an informing principle. But such principles must be concurrent with the processes they actualize and inform, or they could not fulfill their dynamic roles.

this move to materialism leaves intentionality unintelligible. — Metaphysician Undercover

What "move to materialism"? Have I not been discussing the essential role of intentionality as an immaterial aspect of reality?

Without a separation between matter and that which causes matter to behave the way that it does (Forms, or laws of nature), there is no room for possibility. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are confusing "separation" which is a physical concept with "distinction" which is a well-grounded conceptual difference.

You think that a rock, which cannot act, therefore does not exist — Pattern-chaser

No, rocks scatter light, gravitate, resist imposed forces, etc., so thy exist.

Well, as far as I am concerned it is uncontroversial; science and its formulations of laws certainly do not "control reality"; so if you think we have been arguing about that you're wrong, plain and simple.

Then all you are saying is that people brought up in contemporary western culture would learn to say these kinds of things as that reflects folk epistemology. It is hardly fundamental. — apokrisis

No, I'm not saying that at all. It's not about what people say, but about what fundamentally seems to be to any percipient; a world of affordances (to use the language of Gilbert and Heidegger) and of others (even for the solitary predator).

As it stands, I haven’t seen that. You still want to make experience - affective experience - basic. — apokrisis

Yes, but only phenomenologically basic; I am not making any claim about its being ontologically basic. I've pointed this out many times before, and you keep falling back into imputing such an ontological claim to me.

There is noting to "adhere" to. The analogy only explains the naming convention, not a prescriptive rule. — Dfpolis

OK, but the usage in the analogy is other than your usage, so it doesn't actually explain your claimed convention. In the analogy there is a God who imposes law and order on nature, through His free will choices, but in your usage there are laws inherent in matter, with no free will act involved.

This is a little too facile. While the laws of nature exist independently of our knowing them, our knowledge of them depends on actual study. If physicists have not studied a dynamical regime, that regime will not be in physics' verified range of application. We saw this in the early 20th century when the descriptions of Newtonian physics broke down for relativistic and quantum regimes. So, until we studied the effects of human intentions on the laws, we could not say what those effects were. Now that we have some data, we can be assured that our intentions do perturb the laws. — Dfpolis

This doesn't make any sense. You are saying that Newtonian laws of physics were broken down by human intentions, therefore human intentions perturbed the laws of nature. Do you not maintain the distinction between laws of physics and laws of nature?

You have not exhausted the possibilities here. The third option, which now appears to be the case, is that we do follow the laws of nature, but they vary in response to human intentions. So, physical change does follow the laws of nature, but our will is a factor in determining those laws. — Dfpolis

This third option only results from you nonsensical equivocation between "laws" of physics and "laws" of nature. That's why I insist that "laws of nature" ought not be used. It fosters deception through equivocation.

We have simply not put 2 and 2 together to conclude that to do so, they need to perturb the laws of nature. — Dfpolis

But we do not need to perturb the "laws of nature" to have free will, if we properly expose, and represent "laws of nature". So there is no issue of putting 2 and 2 together. This assumption of the need to perturb the laws of nature only arises if you assume that the laws of nature inhere within matter, which is a false representation. Then, to have free will we need to override these laws. But if there are no such laws inherent in matter, as the concept of "matter" is normally understood, then matter is free to be moved according to infinite possibilities. This allows for the possibility that free will acts "participate in divine providence", as you suggest, by participating in the laws which move matter, rather than by overruling, or perturbing the laws.

Since human beings are physical and intentional unities, our will, as part of that unity can be said to "inhere" in us. So, there is no intrinsic conflict a principle of action inhering in a physical being and exercising freedom. — Dfpolis

If you describe a human being as a unity of "physical" and "intentional" aspects, then you have distinguished these two parts as distinct. If the "principle of action" inheres within, then we must identify which distinct part it inheres within, the physical or the intentional. If it inheres within the physical part, as you claim, then it is impossible that the intentional part could exercise freedom of the will, because it is already bound and determined by the activity of the physical part. The intentional part would need a further principle of action which is more powerful and active than the principle of action of the physical part in order to exercise freedom. But why complicate things in this way? Why not just place the principle of action in the intentional part, such that it can exercise freedom over the indeterminate physical part, thus allowing for freedom of will?

I am not sure what your objection to immanence is. Surely you reject the notion that there are substantial laws, extrinsic to the matter whose actions they order.

All forms are "immaterial" (not made of matter), even those that cannot exist without material support. I have never said that the laws of nature can be actual without material fields to order. Physical things are not forms, they are informed matter. — Dfpolis

Do you recognize that a law is a form? If so, how can you say that all forms are immaterial, yet also reject the notion that there are laws extrinsic to matter. It appears like you do not recognize that a law is a form, and that is why I must keep harping on your use of "law". In all cases where the word "law" is used, descriptive and prescriptive laws, the law describes either what is or what ought to be, and a description is a form. In no way is "law" ever used in any way other than as a formula, so your usage is completely nonsensical.

The laws of nature have an ontological rather than an temporal priority (as does God). To have ontological priority is to be an actualizing or an informing principle. But such principles must be concurrent with the processes they actualize and inform, or they could not fulfill their dynamic roles. — Dfpolis

To say that God, as the creator of physical existence is not temporally prior to physical existence, is simply false.

What "move to materialism"? Have I not been discussing the essential role of intentionality as an immaterial aspect of reality? — Dfpolis

Placing laws (Forms) as inherent within matter is clearly materialist. How do you support an immaterial aspect of reality when you have already stipulated that the part of reality which some assert to be immaterial, i.e. laws and Forms, inhere within matter?

It is especially inappropriate to use the word “representation” with reference to neural conditions when Antonio Damasio (as well as Sherrington, Edelman, and Crick) thinks that perception involves constructing an image in the brain: — Galuchat

This is why apokrisis' semiotic approach to the act of perception is much more realistic. What the mind constructs, the so-called "image", is only a representation in the sense that a symbol is a representation. The "image" is more like a symbol, which has a specific meaning to the mind. So there need not be any sort of resemblance, likeness, or representation in that sense of the word, if the image is just a symbol constructed by the mind, having meaning to that mind.

Yes. I would define a mental representation as a cognitive symbol (a type of sign).

t is the use of the word “representation” to describe phenomena such as neural conditions and signals that I object to, because none of its contextually-relevant connotations (e.g., picture, figure, image, idea) reasonably apply. Whereas, referring to phenomena such as paintings, sculptures, dance movements, and music as representations would be an appropriate use of the word. The difference being the latter are semantic (have meaning for a mind). — Galuchat

First, I think that we can agree that "representation" has many analogous meanings, and while there are good reasons to prefer your usage, if we are careful not to equivocate, we can use other meanings.

Second, I agree that thinking in terms of "neural representations" is projecting the reality of perceptions into a very incomplete conceptual space. The concepts of picture, figure, image, idea, etc. are left out of the neural projection, and so anyone who thinks solely in terms of neural representations is committing the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. That said, the firing of retinal rods and cones, for example, does create a neural representation that is processed by the brain -- and interfering with that processing degrades our perceptions. So, refusing to consider the role and reality of neural representation leaves our analysis critically incomplete.

Third, our neural representations are neither instrumental nor formal "signs." Instrumental signs are things that must first be understood in themselves before they can signify. For example, we must first grasp that the smudge on the horizon is smoke, and not dust, before it can signify fire. We must make out the lettering on a sign before it can tell us a business's hours. Formal signs, (ideas, judgements, etc.) Work in a different way. We do not first have to realize that <apple> is an idea before it can signify apples. If we know it is an idea at all, it is only in retrospect, as we we reflect on the mental instruments employed in thinking of apples. So, the whole being of a formal sign (all that it ever does) is being a sign. <Apple>, for example, does not reflect light, exert gravitational attraction, or do anything other than signifying apples.

As I said, neural representations normally are not signs in either of these ways. (One can imagine that some neuroscientist could examine our brain state and determine that the signs she is observing encode the image of the apple we're seeing, which would make it an instrumental sign, but that is not the normal case.) Normally, we do not know what our neural state is, and so the neural "representation" is not used as an instrumental sign of the thing we are perceiving. It is certainly not a formal sign, as its essential being is neurophysiological, not semantic.

So, theories that see ideas as brainstates suffer from semantic confusion, and theories that see self-awareness as a species of proprioception are equally confused.

Forth, as I said to you in relation to Damasio's observation on the biological representation of reality, it does not seem that a neural representation can encode enough information to allow us to distinguish between exteroception and interoception -- between representations of the environment and representations of bodily state. So, we need other channels of information to explain our experience.

But this is confused. What one perceives by the use of one's perceptual organs is an object or array of objects, sounds, smells, and the properties and relations of items in one's environment. It is a mistake to suppose that what we perceive is always or even commonly, an image, or that to perceive an object is to have an image of the object perceived.

I agree for the most part. Locke erred in saying that all we know is our ideas. Rather ideas are means of knowing reality. Still, I am not a naive realist. Apples are not "red" as we see red. Apples have objective properties (say an absorption spectrum) that, in normal light, with normal color vision we will see as red -- that will evoke a "red" quale. In other light, if we are color blind, etc. the evoked quale may differ.

This does not mean we aren't seeing what "is there," or that all we see is a construct. Instead it mans that "what is there" is more complicated than imagined by the unreflective mind. All of our perceptions are subject-object interactions -- inescapably both objective and subjective. (Quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur -- Whatever is received is received according to the mode of the recipient.) Still, it is not constructed, but received.

I think we are agreed on "decoding."

Thanks for the references to John of St. Thomas, Henry Veatch, and your video on Ideas and Brain States. — Galuchat

You're very welcome. I found John of St. Thomas and Henry Veatch very useful.

"The illusion of worlds behind the scenes..."

An image is created by the mind...
So the body creates the world.
So you espouse fatalism?

And if nothing was there to acknowledge this abstraction of 'rock' it would too still exist?
Absurd

The laws of nature have an ontological rather than an temporal priority (as does God). To have ontological priority is to be an actualizing or an informing principle. But such principles must be concurrent with the processes they actualize and inform, or they could not fulfill their dynamic roles. — Dfpolis

And what is this ontological priority of the 'laws of nature?' I assume you are saying that the laws of nature have a primacy over being-in-the-world?
And so you are fundamentally deterministic.
And in bad faith.

↪Dfpolis
And if nothing was there to acknowledge this abstraction of 'rock' it would too still exist?
Absurd — Blue Lux

If there was nothing (no one) to acknowledge the abstraction <rock> there would be no abstraction to acknowledge. There might still be actual rocks, as there were for billions of years before the advent of intelligent life.

And what is this ontological priority of the 'laws of nature?' I assume you are saying that the laws of nature have a primacy over being-in-the-world?
And so you are fundamentally deterministic.
And in bad faith. — Blue Lux

My, my. A little charity, please.

Working backward:
1. I am a determinist when physics is an adequate abstraction.
2. I am not a determinist with respect to human will -- where physics is an inadequate abstraction.
3. I am not saying "the laws of nature have a primacy over being-in-the-world."
4. I am saying that they actualize a specific logically possible line of action.of insensate material being.
5. The ontological priority of laws of nature is that they actualize the potential motion of material being. What actualizes is ontologically prior to what it actualizes.

It as absolutely absurd to think that without consciousness there still exists anything. Consciousness is uncreated. Billions of years is what? Too an abstraction.

"Indeed where would consciousness come from if it did come from something? From the limbo of the unconscious or of the physiological. But if we ask ourselves how this limbo in its turn can exist and where it derives it's existence, we find ourselves faced with the concept of a passive existence; that is, we can no more absolutely understand how this non-conscious given (unconscious or physiological) which does not derives it's existence from itself, can nevertheless perpetuate this existence and find in addition the ability to produce a consciousness. This demonstrates the great favor which the proof a contingentia mundi has enjoyed.

The appearance is not supported by any existent other than itself; it has its own being. The first being which we meet in our ontological inquiry is the being of the appearance. Is it itself an appearance? It seems so at first. The phenomenon is what manifests itself, and being manifests itself to all in some way, since we can speak of it and since we have a certain comprehension of it.

In a particular object one can always distinguish qualities like color, odor, etc. And proceeding from these, one can always determine an essence which they imply, as a sign implies its meaning. The totality "object-essence" makes an organized whole. The essence is not in the object. It is the meaning of the object, the principle of the series of appearances with disclose it. But being is neither one of the object's qualities, capable of being apprehended among others, nor a meaning of an object. The object does not refer to being as a signification; it would be impossible, for example, to define being as a presence SINCE ABSENCE TOO DISCLOSES BEING, since not to be there means still to be. The object does not possess being, and it's existence is not a participation in being, nor any other kind of relation. It is. That is the only way to define its manner of being: the object does not hide being, but neither does it reveal being. The object does not hide it, for it would be futile to try and push aside certain qualities of the existent in order to find the being behind them; being is being of them all equally. The object does not reveal being, for it would be futile to address oneself to the object in order to apprehended its being. The existent is a phenomenon; this means that it designates itself as an organized totality of qualities. It designates itself and not its being. Being is simply the condition of all revelation.

...

... The being of the phenomenon, although coextensive with the phenomenon, can not be subject to the phenomenal condition -- which is to exist only in so far as it reveals itself -- and that consequently it surpasses the knowledge which we have of it and provides the basis for such knowledge.

Jean Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness

My idea, as you can see, is that consciousness does not really belong to the individual existence of man but to his community or herd nature; that, consequently, it is finely developed only in relation to community and herd utility; and, consequently, that each of us, with the best will to understand ourselves as individually as possible, "to know ourselves," will always only bring to consciousness precisely what is nonindividual in ourselves, what is 'average': that our thoughts themselves are constantly overruled by the character of consciousness--by the genius of the species--dominating them--and translated back into herd perspective. All our actions are at bottom incomparably personal, unique, endlessly individual, there is no doubt; but as soon as we translated them into consciousness, they no longer seem so ... This is genuine phenomenalism and perspectivism, as I understand it: the nature of animal consciousness is such that the world we can be conscious of is only a world of surfaces and signs, a world generalized, made common--that everything becomes flat, thin, relatively, general, a sign, a herd signal; that all coming to consciousness involves a cast and thoroughgoing corruption, falsification, superficialization, and generalization. Heightened consciousness is ultimately a danger, and whoever lives among the most conscious Europeans knows moreover that its a sickness. As you might guess, it is not the opposition of subject and object that concerns me here--i leave that to the epistemologists who have gotten caught in the snares of grammar (and folk metaphysics). It is even less the opposition of "thing in itself" and appearance, for we do not 'know' nearly enough even to be entitled to draw such a distinction. We simply have no organ for knowing, for truth, we know (or believe or imagine) just as much may be useful in the interests of the human herd, the species; and even what is here called utility is in the end only a faith, something imagined, and perhaps precisely the most disasterous stupidity that will one day do us in.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The Gay Science

Third, our neural representations are neither instrumental nor formal "signs." Instrumental signs are things that must first be understood in themselves before they can signify. For example, we must first grasp that the smudge on the horizon is smoke, and not dust, before it can signify fire. We must make out the lettering on a sign before it can tell us a business's hours. Formal signs, (ideas, judgements, etc.) Work in a different way. We do not first have to realize that <apple> is an idea before it can signify apples. If we know it is an idea at all, it is only in retrospect, as we we reflect on the mental instruments employed in thinking of apples. So, the whole being of a formal sign (all that it ever does) is being a sign. <Apple>, for example, does not reflect light, exert gravitational attraction, or do anything other than signifying apples. — Dfpolis

I think you misrepresent signification here. For something to be a sign, for it to signify, all that is required is that it has meaning. So there is no need for the sign to be instrumental, or formal, in order that it be a sign. As long as the thing has significance, it is meaningful, and is a sign, despite how vague and indefinite that meaning might be to the mind which creates it as a sign, or which interprets it. This I think is the difficult reality of signification, we can recognize that a thing is a sign, without having any idea of what it signifies. This is to recognize something as meaningful without knowing what the meaning is. For example, when I hear people speaking a foreign language I recognize the sound as meaningful without having any idea of the meaning. And, I can say things without clearly knowing what I am saying. So there is no need that the sign be either formal or instrumental in order to be a sign. especially when that which is signified is vague and unclear. Hence ambiguity is very real.

So the body creates the world.
So you espouse fatalism? — Blue Lux

I don't follow you.

"The illusion of worlds behind the scenes..." — Blue Lux

And...?

Are you in consideration of a world behind the scenes?