Physical means mind independent stuff... — Marchesk

Hmmm... and if the mind is in part, physical?

:wink:

Transcendental is natural, by the way, as it does not require the intervention of any god.
— Olivier5

That is an interesting topic for debate in its own right. In practice, naturalism is suspicious of transcendentals, because by definition they're not defineable in purely naturalistic terms; nature is what they're transcendent in respect of, you might say. This shows up in debates about platonic realism and whether maths is invented or discovered. — Wayfarer

It should show up in discussions of meaning... because meaning most certainly transcends the individual and/or community. Naturalism doesn't seem to me to have an issue accounting for meaning. If meaning is transcendental then, it doesn't have a problem with that either...

I'm left with the impression that you and I both hold that fear is the only innate emotion.
— creativesoul

What about love and social bonding — Marchesk

What about them? Social bonding clearly is not innate, let alone whether or not it is an emotion.

Love? I'm pretty much along the lines of a Spinozist on love.

How do you know you feel angry? — Isaac

Nonsensical question. By definition, when it seems to you that you are angry you are, in fact, angry. There is no point at which you can think you're angry but you're actually not angry or vice versa. Because the way things seem to us ("I am angry" for example) is, in fact, the way things seem to us (the experience)

You know you want to punch something, you know your heart is racing, you know you're inclined to growl, your speech has got louder, you're thinking less rationally... — Isaac

This is only apparent after the fact. Note: I am not saying that these things do not cause or at least correlate with anger, I am saying that in the moment you're angry you're not examining your heart or your voice.

what is it you're committing to the existence of? — Isaac

Qualia.

Either way, we consider his knowledge of physiology to trump our gut feeling about the cause. — Isaac

Again:

"I'm in pain, I feel like there's something stabbing inside my thigh and it's shooting down my leg" — Isaac

"What's actually happening is that you have some tissue damage in your back" — Isaac

are not in any way contradictory statements. The former is an attempt to allow the doctor to imagine the pain you're having. Damaged tissue in the back feels like stabbing in the thigh. The latter is an explanation of fact.

That is not denying the end result. It's explaining how it came to be. — Isaac

Now you're getting it.

That's an explanation. It doesn't deny anything except your arbitry armchair guesswork as to how your mind works (which I'm not going to apologise for denying). — Isaac

It doesn't even deny that. An explanation of how the brain works (what you just gave) does not contradict an explanation of how the mind works (what I talk about). As in, again: Saying "I am angry" is not to imply "There is a neural correlate of anger". Phenomenology does not imply neurology. I've been saying this since we first started talking.

By definition, when it seems to you that you are angry you are, in fact, angry. — khaled

Which parts of what counts as being angry is established by social convention?

Social bonding clearly is not innate, — creativesoul

Nonsense, bonding is found in all sorts of animal species. From parents to mates to social groups.

Stop it withthe posting, folks, and give a man a chance to catch up.

...his essay Real Patterns seems illuminative. — fdrake

Nice. I don't think the critique of Davidson amounts to much, so that's were I'll sit on the realist-eliminativist continuum he constructs. Different schema are translatable in so far as they are true, but that leaves to one side the question of whether or not they are properly to be called true or false. I don't think Dennett is sufficiently nuanced in his treatment fo the variety of intentional states. Belief can be taken as propositional; but, say, hunger?

Me at times reading this thread:



In deciding the status of emotions, it might help to look at primate studies and see whether a similar range of emotions is seen there.

Talking to a Vietnam veteran about the horrors of war when you've never fought yourself you'll likely be met with "You don't know what you're talking about". — khaled

This actually does not address the issue. There are no facts about a traumatic experience that cannot be stated. But of course no set of statements will be complete; there will always be more that can be said. Taken literally, say that someone does not know what they are talking about is to say they cannot say anything.

That we cannot say everything does not imply that we cannot say anything.

Hmmm... and if the mind is in part, physical? — creativesoul

Checkmate, Qualiasts?

On the angry stuff.

"I know I was angry because I felt angry"?

Knowledge is usually taken as justified true belief.

So you can justify your belief that London is in England by pointing to a map, or citing third party authorities, or plenty of other things. But you could not justify your belief that London was in England by claiming London was in England... you need a different proposition for the justification.

What would count as a justification for your belief that you were angry?

It can't be a feeling - "I felt angry"; because that would be the same as saying "I know London is in England because London is in England".

Note the difference between "I know I was angry" and "I know Marchesk was angry"; we see @Marchesk bare his teeth, beat his chest, stare, and vocalise. That's our justification.

You don't know you are angry. You just are angry.

So when you say "I feel angry, so there must be such a thing as 'anger'", what is it you're committing to the existence of? — Isaac

The feeling.

A sufferer might say "I'm in pain, I think there's something stabbing inside my thigh and it's shooting down my leg". The doctor will carry out a series of examinations. On finding no nerve or tissue damage in the thigh he might think about referred back pain. We take no issue with him saying something like "I know it feels like there's something stabbing inside your thigh, but there isn't, you're mistaken. What's actually happening is that you have some tissue damage in your back". Or, if he finds no damage there he might consider the pain neuropathic, or even (worst case) made up entirely. Either way, we consider his knowledge of physiology to trump our gut feeling about the cause. — Isaac

"I'm in pain" is not a causal explanation (a causal explanation for what, the pain?). Saying that you feel a stabbing pain in the thigh is an expression of the pain, not an attempt to explain its cause. You expect the doctor to tell you what the cause is.

Why would you assume privileged and accurate access to your mental states when you already know you have no such privilege over your bodily states? — Isaac

Maybe the doctor should be telling the patient how their pain feels? Why does the doctor need any verbal cues at all to know what the ailment of "the sufferer" is?

The phenomenological end result is the thing we're taking seriously (the feeling of pain in the thigh, the feeling of anger), not the phenomenological 'gut feeling' about how such a result came about. — Isaac

You're taking it seriously? I thought you wanted to "quine" it.

The former is an attempt to allow the doctor to imagine the pain you're having. — khaled

Actually it varies from an itch to a burning; and I don't care what the doctor does or does not imagine. An unimaginative doctor might be just as effective.

You still think of the meaning of talk of pain in terms of pain having a referent. This is why you can't make sense of your opponents.

Another good thing about the article cited is that it provides a more nuanced account than the rather mundane "qualia or eliminative materialism" spectrum apparently assumed by folk here - @Luke, @Olivier5?

Sideline question: could you give a checklist for a position not to count as Cartesian? Just to be clear, I'm not trying to "gotcha" question you into "lol the term is meaningless", since non-Cartesians are good company, but I'd struggle to write a list. — fdrake

Yes, if the term mind is understood as it is used in everyday experience then it's probably fine. That is:

Talk of the mind, one might say, is merely a convenient facon de parler, a way of speaking about certain human faculties and their exercise. Of course that does not mean that people do not have minds of their own, which would be true only if they were pathologically indecisive. Nor does it mean that people are mindless, which would be true only if they were stupid or thoughtless. For a creature to have a mind is for it to have a distinctive range of capacities of intellect and will, in particular the conceptual powers of a language-user that make self-awareness and self-reflection possible. — Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience - Bennett and Hacker

Whereas the Cartesian considers mind as a container or theater where "internal" experiences occur. This is not just a dualist tendency. Materialists sometimes talk about what the brain produces. But this is just the flipside of dualism. For the materialist, there is no ghostly mind so therefore the brain must be producing the illusion of a ghostly mind. But this is just the Cartesian theater all over again in a materialist guise.

The right approach is to reject the entire Cartesian framing. The human being (interacting in the world) is the relevant agent here, not minds or brains. We see things because we have eyes (and brains), not because our brain projects things on a virtual screen for us.

I have some more questions in that direction:

Does Cartesian = adhering to subject/object and the attendant distinctions (internal/external, mental/physical)? — fdrake

Pretty much. The use of those terms reinforce the Cartesian theater such that its difficult to understand that there can even be an alternative. Per Ryle's ghost in the machine metaphor the materialist, in rejecting the ghost, simply endorses the machine (where physical things are external, third-person, objective). But that still accepts the underlying Cartesian framing and so doesn't resolve anything.

Would you throw a doctrine like "environmental patterns are represented by mental patterns + mental pattern = neural pattern" in the Cartesian bin because what it's trying to reduce (mental patterns) still adheres to a Cartesian model? — fdrake

As far as I can tell, yes. It seems to be adding an unnecessary middle-man (mental patterns).

Can you do an "in the body/in the environment" distinction without being a Cartesian? — fdrake

Yes. As long as we keep in mind that a human being is not just a body, but how it is organized (just as a university is not just a set of buildings, but how they're organized). That is, we predicate experiences, beliefs, perceptions, actions, etc., of human beings, not bodies (or brains).

↪fdrake I'd also add questions about non-perceptual experiences and how those avoid some sort of movie in the head. Dreams being the number one concern, but things like inner dialog sound like a stream of consciousness podcast is running in your skull. Or when a song gets "stuck in your mind". — Marchesk

The main issue for me there is to recognize dreams and inner dialog as distinct from perception. So the first step is understanding perception in a natural (non-Cartesian) way.

Dialog, by definition, is a conversation between two or more people. Inner dialog extends this idea in a metaphorical way. It's like dialog, except it is conducted in a way that bypasses the normal perceptual channels. Similarly with dreams. An analogy here might be with software that is designed to communicate with some other device on the network. The program could be enhanced to communicate with a virtual device that runs on the same computer as itself, or even as a module within the same program. Human beings similarly have the capability to do that kind of self-referential thing. But that self-reference presupposes a prior capability for reference (and language) generally, which perception provides.

But the point of dreams and inner dialog is that it's happening inside your skull. A dream isn't of some event outside the head. An inner dialog is not hearing voices from other people.

No... ...I'm just trying to make sense of your earlier comments which are still unclear to me:

"Internal, external, that which consists of both. Conscious experience being of the third; part physical, part non physical; part internal, part external, part neither."
— Andrew M

Fair enough.

Conscious experience of tasting bitter Maxwell House coffee from a red cup...

So, the red cups are external, the biological machinery is internal, and conscious experience of drinking bitter Maxwell House coffee from red cups consists entirely of correlations drawn between the bitterness(which results from the biological machinery) and the Maxwell House coffee by a creature capable of doing so.

The content of the conscious experience is the content of the correlations... that includes both internal things and external things, however the correlation drawn between those things is neither for it consists of both. — creativesoul

While I agree that the red cup is external to you, and your taste buds (etc.) are internal to you, I don't think it follows that those predicates are applicable to the experience itself. An experience is not a concrete thing like cups and taste buds are. It instead describes your practical contact with things in the environment, which occurred at some time and location.

Anyway, either way, no Cartesian issues there!

An analogy here might be with software that is designed to communicate with some other device on the network. The program could be enhanced to communicate with a virtual device that runs on the same computer as itself, or even as a module within the same program. — Andrew M

Software exists inside some computer system. It's not external to the computer or network. A simulation is a program running inside a computer. We don't interact with software, we interact with computers that run software.

Getting rid of internal/external distinctions doesn't work as long as there are things that have internal and external relationships. It's like saying we shouldn't talk about a movie playing inside a theater because the theater is part of the world!

Dreams are experienced inside brains and nowhere else, because you are asleep.

Transcendental is natural, by the way, as it does not require the intervention of any god.
— Olivier5

That is an interesting topic for debate in its own right. In practice, naturalism is suspicious of transcendentals, because by definition they're not defineable in purely naturalistic terms — Wayfarer

I suppose it would depend on what one defines as ‘natural’ and ‘naturalism’. Historically the latter is synonymous with ‘ physicalism’. But for me it just means ‘without god’s intervention’. Remember that ‘physical’ has no meaning In this context, since it usually means ‘mind-independent’. So natural does not mean physical, it just means ‘without need for a god or fairy’. And transcendence needs no fairy.

An experience is not a concrete thing like cups and taste buds are. It instead describes your practical contact with things in the environment, which occurred at some time and location. — Andrew M

1. Isn't the "practical" (physical?) contact between you and your environment a "concrete thing"?
2. Isn't there more to an "experience" than this physical contact? E.g. There's not just the "practical contact" experience of light entering the eye, there's also the experience of seeing red.

There's not just the "practical contact" experience of light entering the eye, there's also the experience of seeing red. — Luke

Yes, and that experience happens inside the brain.

Another good thing about the article cited is that it provides a more nuanced account than the rather mundane "qualia or eliminative materialism" spectrum apparently assumed by folk here - Luke, @Olivier5? — Banno

You want to summarize the conclusion for us, Banno? Personally I hold Dennett as a fake thinker, as a snake oil salesman à la Trump. In typical fashion for a faker, he says nothing precise in Quining Qualia. I suppose the same is true of this other article.

Personally I hold Dennett as a fake thinker, as a snake oil salesman à la Trump. — Olivier5

Since you don't back this up with any form of erudition, I don't really much care.

Since you don't back this up with any form of erudition, I don't really much care. — Banno

Likewise, why should I care about your Dennett article, if you can’t even be bothered to summarize what it says?

Fakers everywhere...

Fakers everywhere... — Olivier5

Indeed.

There's not just the "practical contact" experience of light entering the eye, there's also the experience of seeing red. — Luke

Yes, and that experience happens inside the brain. — Marchesk

Perhaps, but that doesn't explain (away) the duality of the experience.

Perhaps, but that doesn't explain (away) the duality of the experience. — Luke

Agreed. The experience of red is something more than the perceptual process leading up to it. Or at least our description of it.

All of it. That is to say you obviously won't say you're angry if you don't have the concept "anger". You'll still feel angry though.

Actually it varies from an itch to a burning; and I don't care what the doctor does or does not imagine. An unimaginative doctor might be just as effective.

You still think of the meaning of talk of pain in terms of pain having a referent. This is why you can't make sense of your opponents. — Banno

Not necessarily. I said what the purpose of the statement was, ignore referents. It's why we say "It feels like someone stabbed my leg" instead of "Ouch". Even though both would work at informing the doctor we're in pain. The former give the doctor more to work with, IE: it specifies a certain pain as opposed to just the blanket statement that you are in pain.

That we cannot say everything does not imply that we cannot say anything. — Banno

When did I say that a urbach-wiethe disease patient cannot say anything about fear? They can say under what conditions people tend to be afraid for example. But they cannot say much more than that.

And transcendence needs no fairy. — Olivier5

But it does seem to imply a mind or foregoing intelligence. Religion is not all gods and fairies, you know ;-)