I asked a question about the scenario as you presented it and asked for the justification for characterizing it that way.

Do you accept that an obscure memory ("not available to introspection") can blip into consciousness?

Do you accept that an obscure memory ("not available to introspection") can blip into consciousness? — ZzzoneiroCosm

You can suddenly have a memory. There is nothing like a memory, with the same qualities that you're aware of when you're aware of a memory, that's present in your mind that you're just not aware of at other times however.

There is nothing like a memory, with the same qualities that you're aware of when you're aware of a memory, that's present in your mind... — Terrapin Station

(I certainly never asserted my memory exists in identical form in its conscious and unconscious states.) — ZzzoneiroCosm

It's not anything like mental content when unconscious. Hence there isn't unconscious mental content.

Mental content is phenomena such as thoughts, desires, ideas, concepts, propositional attitudes, etc.

It's just like the car alarm (as a particular sort of sound) is not anything like that sound when the alarm is not going off. It's not that the sound is present but just hidden.

It's not anything like mental content when unconscious. — Terrapin Station

You claim it isn't mental content. So I have to ask: Is it nonmental content?

If it's nonmental content, what specific kind of nonmental content is it?

If it's no kind of nonmental content at all, is it nothingness?

If it's nothingness, how does it blip into consciousness?

It's not anything like mental content when unconscious — Terrapin Station

I've already agreed the memory in question takes a different form in its conscious and unconscious states. When I'm unconscious of the obscure memory in question it isn't floating around in my mind in an unconscious state. But it certainly is in my mind. It's stored in my mind and can be retrieved.

Does the hard drive analogy help?

A file saved on a hard drive is certainly digital content. The file as it appears on the screen is also digital content.

Mental content is phenomena such as thoughts, desires, ideas, concepts, propositional attitudes, etc — Terrapin Station

Your definition of mental content is esoteric and arguable.

Mental content is phenomena such as thoughts, desires, ideas, concepts, propositional attitudes, etc. — Terrapin Station

In fact, all I have to do to explode your definition of mental content is add - memories.

Most reasonable people would agree, memories are mental content.

You claim it isn't mental content. So I have to ask: Is it nonmental content?

If it's nonmental content, what specific kind of nonmental content is it? — ZzzoneiroCosm

You'd have nonmental potentials, which amount to specific brain states (structures and processes that can respond in specific dynamic ways), that can result in mental content, which is necessarily conscious. Again, it's just like a car alarm, where particular structures/processes can respond in specific dynamic ways to produce a sound.

I've already agreed the memory in question takes a different form in its conscious and unconscious states. — ZzzoneiroCosm

You could think it takes a different form, but it's something like conscious mental content.

Your definition of mental content is esoteric — ZzzoneiroCosm

lol

In fact, all I have to do to explode your definition of mental content is add - memories. — ZzzoneiroCosm

It wasn't an exhaustive list. And sure, memories are an example. Again, there's no reason to believe that there are unconscious memories.

Most people would probably say that there are unconscious thoughts, desires, etc. too. Unconscious, or colloquially, "subconscious" mental content is a very popular idea.

The definition wasn't gerrymandered to pick out only uncontroversially-conscious phenomena. If there were unconscious mental phenomena, unconscious desires, thoughts, memories, etc. would be an example.

You'd have nonmental potentials, which amount to specific brain states... — Terrapin Station

What I call "unconscious mental content" you call "brain states with the potential to create mental content." You leap from the psychological to the physical to avoid using a phrase that rings nonsensical to you. I prefer to describe the mind without referencing the physical.

The mind is mysterious. There's no one right way to describe it. Your way is fine and my way is fine.

You'd have nonmental potentials, which amount to specific brain states (structures and processes that can respond in specific dynamic ways), that can result in mental content — Terrapin Station

One trouble with leaping from the psychological to the physical in a description of the mind is - one is no longer describing the mind.

I say obscure memories ("not available to introspection" - the blipping kind of memory) are "unconscious mental content." I'm describing some facet of the mind.

You reduce this sort of memory to a brain state. You're no longer describing the mind. It's a kind of surrender.


Unless for you minds and brains are the same. That happens too.

What I call "unconscious mental content" you call "brain states with the potential to create mental content." You leap from the psychological to the physical to avoid using a phrase that rings nonsensical to you. I prefer to describe the mind without referencing the physical. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I'm a physicalist. I don't think anything about mind is nonphysical. I'm not "leaping to the physical." I think the idea of nonphysical >>whatevers<< is incoherent.

What I'm describing as potentials etc. isn't anything qualitatively like mental states (which are purely physical), so I'm not about to start calling them mental states.

Again, this is why I'm using the car alarm analogy. There's nothing controversial about that only being physical. It shouldn't be hard to understand that it isn't the case that the sound is present at all times but just hidden most of the time. And there's nothing qualitatively like the sound as a property of the alarm when the alarm isn't going off. So it would be silly to call certain states of the non-sounding alarm something like the "inaudible alarm." (Using "alarm" there in the sense of the sound it makes when triggered.)

You reduce this sort of memory to a brain state. You're no longer describing the mind. — ZzzoneiroCosm

The mind is brain states.

I don't think anything about mind is nonphysical. — Terrapin Station

That's an extreme variety of physicalism. I suppose if you hold the image of a tree in your mind you make the attempt via the intellect to reduce this tree-thought to its physical counterpart. But, of course, the tree-thought itself is nonphysical. (I suppose you disagree.)

The tree-thought exists and the brain state giving rise to the tree-thought exists. One is psychical and one is physical. (I suppose you disagree.)

To reduce the mind to physicality is to fatally limit your scope of exploration. It's a dogmatism and hence fatally limiting.

But to return to your criteria for practicing kindness. Let me use your language:

You may think you have no set criteria for practicing kindness but in fact there is a particular concatenation and mechanism of neurons and other unspecified brainstuffs that determine when you will and when you will not practice kindness.

!

That's an extreme variety of physicalism. I suppose if you hold the image of a tree in your mind you make the attempt via the intellect to reduce this tree-thought to something physical. But, of course, the tree-thought itself is nonphysical. (I suppose you disagree.)

The tree-thought exists and the brain state giving rise to the tree-thought exists. One is psychological and one is physical. (I suppose you disagree.)

To reduce the mind to physicality is to fatally limit your scope of exploration. It's a dogmatism and hence fatally limiting. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Yes, I disagree. I think everything is physical, and I don't deny thoughts or anything psychological, so I think psychological phenomena are physical.

Again, I'd say that the very notion of nonphysical >>whatevers<< is incoherent.

You may think you have no set criteria for practicing kindness but in fact there is a particular concatenation and mechanism of neurons and other unspecified brainstuffs that determine when you will and when you will not practice kindness. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I don't buy determinism, either, but at any rate, non-mental reasons for something aren't "criteria for kindness." Criteria for kindness would refer to reasons that we can practically state as sentences, reasoned or emoted conditions, etc.

Let's suppose you decide to be unkind to X. You're conscious of no special criteria underpinning your decision to be unkind. You're curious about this and devote long, painstaking hours to self-examination. After a period of introspection you realize Y is why you made the decision to be unkind.

That's what I mean by unconscious criteria.

To use your language (supposing throughout that minds and thoughts are brains and brainstates, respectively):

A certain brain-state was present at the time I made my decision to be unkind. I was at that time unaware of the relationship of this brain-state to the decision to be unkind. After long hours of self-examination, I discovered brain-state-Y to be present at the moment of my decision to be unkind. At the moment I made the decision to be unkind I believed there was no special criteria, but through introspection I've learned that brain-state-Y underpinned my decision to be unkind.

Again: This is what I mean by unconscious criteria.

I am a man - a human male. — Harry Hindu

I guess your identity comes directly from your dick. That fits. Although for most people, there's this thing called society that gets in between dangly bits and their identity-forming powers. — Baden

As I said, I'm a man - a human male. So there was more to my identity than my dick. My first identity was that of a human with my sex being secondary.

It's no surprise that sex was the first thing to come to your mind - as if sexual identity trumps species identity. The authoritarian left has this fetish with sexual identities.

You have the additional problem of your argument getting in the way of everyone's identity forming - including "transgenders". Your argument supports the idea that society, not the individuals, form identities of individuals. So, how is that a man can identify as a woman, and society not get in the way of their identity-forming? You're trying to have your cake and eat it too.

What is it about religion and politics that makes people throw logic and reason out the window?

Is it? For example, a transwoman's belief that she is a woman is not really like a delusional belief: It is an inherent aspect of the person that believes it and it comes from a psychological/neurological difference from the others that it is a core aspect of it -it is not simply someone believing an extraordinary thing later in life (and it is also based around a more defensible claim, i.e. their gender is different).
In your example, them believing they are a special creation of some god (assuming it is not an unrelated insult at religions and it is about a person who believes they were created by god in a particularly very special fashion) is not a core aspect of the person- it would not have been that way if the culture was different, they would have believed something extraordinary instead. But the transwoman would have still believed only that and, if she was allowed to transition, would not have gone back to being a man after some consideration. If you fed into a delusional person's beliefs, they would have only grown more unstable and not more stable. That is not what we observe with trans people unless discrimination is involved.

That's mainly because you (and everyone else who identifiesthe same) equate being a man with having certain genitals and being a woman with having another set of genitals. Of course, from that perspective, that person will be a "man"-but a man that dresses like a woman, sounds like a woman, literally has boobs and the curves of a woman, has a generally feminine body and prefers to be on the girl side of things nonetheless.

I would say that a social perspective of gender ("gender as a social construct") can more accurately represent those kinds of situtations than a simple biological definition. — HereToDisscuss

It would have been different in another culture. Just ask anyone around these parts and they will tell you that gender is a social construction. That means, that in order to change one's gender, they'd have to change their culture that they were raised in, not their clothes. In the same vein, religious people would have to change the culture that they were raised in order to have a different religion.

So, is "gender" a social construction, or a individual feeling? If is it an individual feeling, then how does a man know what it feels like to be a woman to claim that they are a woman? These are very basic questions that everyone should be asking, but they don't because they have an emotional attachment to their political beliefs, no different than a religious person.

You don't seem to understand what a social construction is. It is a shared assumption about others identities, which means that it comes from society, not the individual. Also, these assumptions can be wrong AND SEXIST. The assumption that a person wearing a dress is automatically a woman is wrong AND SEXIST. A man can wear dresses and still be a man. You're conflating the shared assumption of an individual with the actual physical characteristics of that individual and promoting SEXISM.

1) Society mediates biological identity.
2) The subject is socially embedded.
3) What do you disagree with re 1) and 2)? And how does what I said exclude personal psychological input into identity formation?

Let's suppose you decide to be unkind to X. You're conscious of no special criteria underpinning your decision to be unkind. You're curious about this and devote long, painstaking hours to self-examination. After a period of introspection you realize Y is why you made the decision to be unkind. — ZzzoneiroCosm

On my view, what people are doing in that situation is making up a reason to "explain" why they did the behavior they did, because they have a belief that there should be a (stateable-in-a-"reasoned"-sentence) explanation for everything, and for some unknown, irrational reason, people have a tendency to think that there always need to be one or two "background" reasons, but that there do not need to be one or two "background" reasons for the background reasons.

A certain brain-state was present at the time I made my decision to be unkind. I was at that time unaware of the relationship of this brain-state to the decision to be unkind. After long hours of self-examination, I discovered brain-state-Y to be present at the moment of my decision to be unkind. At the moment I made the decision to be unkind I believed there was no special criteria, but through introspection I've learned that brain-state-Y underpinned my decision to be unkind. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Again, "Criteria for kindness would refer to reasons that we can practically state as sentences, reasoned or emoted conditions, etc.," which the brain states in question wouldn't be. They're not mental brain states.

And that is if the antecedent brain states are even causal to the behavior in question. Again, I don't buy determinism.

That's why I mentioned all of that in the first place. Either you're ignoring what I said or you don't understand it.

1) Society mediates biological identity.
2) The subject is socially embedded.
3) What do you disagree with re 1) and 2)? And how does what I said exclude personal psychological input into identity formation? — Baden

I don't agree with 1 or 2.

Natural selection mediates biological identity and by extension, social interactions.

What does it even mean to be a "subject" that is socially embedded?

I already explained how your personal psychological input is excluded from identity formation. Based on your own arguments, it is a social construction and it is the identity that society is assuming of a person that is sexist. So transgenders are reinforcing sexist assumptions of the society they are in.

I don't agree with 1 or 2.

Natural selection mediates biological identity and by extension, social interactions. — Harry Hindu

This has nothing to do with natural selection. We're presuming the existence of humans of both sexes. So, I'll try again. To start off: Society, at whatever level, is involved in forming the identity of individual humans? Yes or no?

What do you disagree with re 1) — Baden

(1) would need to be clarified (and justified if dubious after the clarification).

Society, at whatever level, is involved in forming the identity of individual humans? Yes or no? — Baden

In what way do you see society as involved in this?

In what way do you see society as involved in this? — Terrapin Station

Your usual tactic of answering questions with questions. :yawn: In what way could you justify society not at all being involved in identity formation?

You made a claim: "Society mediates biological identity."

That claim is not at all clear to me. I'm asking you to clarify the claim. Are you not capable of clarifying a claim you're making?

Do you realize that I asked a simpler question above in order to begin the process of clarification? Do you realize that above you answered that simpler question intended to help clarify things with another question? Do you understand that I'm aware that you use this tactic all the time to avoid addressing issues and waste other posters' time?