I think Bartricks is saying "let's imagine the first two evolved members of mammals. How can they talk to each other? They don't have a languages programmed by God". To which the answer is "in the biology is intuition on how to properly communicate"

Yes, that is what I'd say - to be a language rather than squiggles and noises it has to be being put to a purpose. And purposes are the sole preserve of agents - minds, with plans and so on. So without that, you just have noises and squiggles. And though another agent who has previously been using those same or similar noises and squiggles to express their own purpose - that is, to try and transmit something to another person - may well take those noises and squiggles to be a language when a Parrot say, or machine makes or produces them, they're not functioning that way in that context.

This applies to all representations. It is not as if just applies to noises and squiggles - for why should that be? So, in order for the content of a percept to 'represent' something to be the case, it would need to be being used by a mind for that purpose - the representative contents, then, comes from its being used to represent something. Used, that is, by a person.

Incidentally, an objection to my view - and I might as well make it myself as it has occurred to me and I don't see anyone else making it - is that we ourselves could be said to be using our faculties to make representations. For though something may originally have been created by blind forces - and thus originally lacked any representative contents - that does not stop it from subsquently acquiring some by being used by an agent. The leaf with squiggles on it that looks like "there is a pie in the oven" does not tell me, or anyone, that there is a pie in the oven (even if some people acquire an accurate belief about it from the leaf). But if I find that leaf and form the plan to convey to you that there is a pie in the oven by showing you the leaf, then the leaf can now be said to bear representative contents, thanks to me. So perhaps the same could be said in respect of our faculties of awareness.

Continuing with the same error is not a defense of it. — Kenosha Kid

Yeah, er, I provided a defence of it in the OP. You've not said anything to challenge it. You've just said 'language is different'. Oh, ok. If you say so.

I have a few problems with this statement.

1. Evolution, the process itself, isn't unguided. It's guided by natural selection.
2. Most of our information processing isn't conscious at all. I think this is what you mean by awareness. We are only aware due to certain processes that require "awareness", like synthesizing sensory information into abstract concepts, or basic tools to aid us in survival. One could easily see how this could be a desirable trait in natural selection, given its parameters.

I don't think I agree with your definitions. Maybe explain what awareness means as well. Does this mean purely conscious thought or does this include subconscious thought too?

I find no significance at all in it. I don't think that there is an agent behind anything so it makes no difference at all to me. — Sir2u

So why did you ask?

But as you are the one claiming that evolution cannot be responsible I would presume that you have an answer — Sir2u

Why would you presume that? "I think Jane was murdered - there's an axe lodged in the back of her head and axe wounds all over her back". Sir Fit: "I presume that as you think someone is responsible for killing her, you know who it is?" Er, no.

Note as well that I am not claiming evolutionary forces cannot have built our faculties, I am arguing that 'unguided' evolutionary forces cannot be responsible for them, for then they would not be representing anything to us.

"We cannot believe what our senses tell us about the world because it is not presented to us by an agent.
If we accepted that there is an agent that is purposely sending the information then we can believe it." — Sir2u

That's not a quote from me! That's not my view!

Define perception. — Sir2u

Perception denotes that which is involved in perceiving something. And you perceive something when you are subject to a certain kind of mental state known as a perceptual experience. This kind of mental state has 'representative contents' (though it is not the only kind that does) - that is, it represents something to be the case. And when that perceptual experience has been caused, non-waywardly, by its representative contents, then you are perceiving something.

Some philosophers will argue over how closely cause of the experience needs to match its representative contents; some will argue over whether the experience can exist absent the cause of its representative contents. I am not taking a stand on those issues. What I am arguing, in case you didn't know, is that unless an agent has designed the faculty that created that experience in you, it won't have any representative contents at all and thus won't qualify as a perceptual experience (just something that is introspectively indiscernible from one).

Maybe explain what awareness means as well. Does this mean purely conscious thought or does this include subconscious thought too? — ep3265

I don't think there are subconscious thoughts - the idea sounds contradictory. But if there are such things, then the same would apply to them as would apply to conscious ones.

As for explaining what awareness means - well, that's too much as a full account of awareness is the end point of philosophical analysis, not the beginning.

But a necessary (though not sufficient) condition on being aware of something, is that one be in a certain sort of mental state - a mental state with representative contents. That much is, I think, uncontroversial.

What I am arguing is that no mental state has representative contents unless an agent has put it there. For representations require representers, and mental states are not themselves representers. That is, mental states are not themselves minds - so they do not, by themselves, represent anything to be the case. Not without external assistance from a mind.

1. Evolution, the process itself, isn't unguided. It's guided by natural selection. — ep3265

I mean guided in the sense of 'being regulated by an agency'. So, for instance, our faculty of sight is not designed for seeing if it is purely the product of natural selection, for it does not express an agent's design. The word 'design' and 'guidance' when used in the context of purely natural processes that do not in any way express an agent's will are metaphors.

So, if our faculties are the creation of blind natural processes - to, processes that do not express any agents plan or purposes - then our faculties are impotent to create in us mental states with representative contents. At best they can only create in us mental states that appear to have representative contents. Though even that would require a faculty of introspection that has not been built by blind processes.

If you would like a picture of the problem just click on my name and go to my profile page, then enlarge the profile image about 300 percent. What you see is a head with a brain looking at an inanimate object. So say x is an apple and light travels to your eye, a signal travels through your optic nerve to your brains vision processing region and finally to (generally) your cerebral cortex. There it's held as what you call representative content. Your brain would be thinking "apple".
I used Y(o) which means a sufficiently large neuron group containing a non- physical.
Is your view any different and what would you correct?

Delete duplicate.

Oh for goodness sake - stop flagrantly begging the question. Optic nerve, retina, blah di blah di blah. Put in as much detail as you like - talk about rods and cones and so on. It makes no blasted difference. Read the OP and address the argument I made.

You analyze the conscious mind and conclude it can't come with its a priori thoughts straight from matter. But it doesn't! You have to think subconsciously in order to latter think consciously. This is what sleep is about. And we can't really say what a subconscious mind can or can not do

delete duplicate — Mark Nyquist

Why just the duplicate?

You analyze the conscious mind and conclude it can't come with its a priori thoughts straight from matter. — Gregory

I don't know what you're talking about. This thread is about states of awareness. And I am arguing that we are not capable of being aware of anything if the faculties that create those mental states have been created by blind natural forces.

Gosh, can't figure out how. So sorry.

1. If our faculties of awareness are wholly the product of unguided evolutionary forces, then they do not give us an awareness of anything — Bartricks

The if, then form of your first premise contains a conclusion within the premise without giving the reasons for the conclusion.

The if, then form of your first premise contains a conclusion within the premise without giving the reasons for the conclusion. — Mark Nyquist

And what does the first line of the paragraph below that argument then say:

Here is my argument for the truth of the first premise — Bartricks

It seems to me that what's preventing you from acquiring knowledge in this sort of case is that you have acquired a true belief from an 'apparent' representation, not a real one. — Bartricks

If unguided - by which I mean, unguided by any agency - natural forces produced those shapes in the sky, then it was not imparting information to you. It was just pure fluke that, to you, the clouds appeared to be trying to tell you something. — Bartricks

Then I refute the idea that reliability has anything to do with whether something is representing or not. — Bartricks

Just a few interesting notes regarding this profound and beautiful argument.

You know there is forms of AI that learn through unsupervised learning right? When one of those tells you something is it giving you knowledge of something or awareness of something? The whole point about these forms of AI is that they are not designed, but can still predict and relay information to us.

It is a profound and beautiful argument. I make Plantinga look like a total amateur

Question begging. No there aren't

Look up "unsupervised learning" if you want to actually learn something. Otherwise happy trolling.

Dunning kruger

So your first premise is nested and unnecessarily convoluted.
Why not just state "unguided evolutionary forces cannot produce faculties of awareness"?
As you wrote it, first faculties of awareness are a product of unguided evolutionary forces, then you conclude they cannot be.

It was a standard 'if p, then q' conditional. It wasn't 'nested and convoluted'. Anyway, why don't you just ignore what I said in defence of it and tell me once more about light hitting retinas?

You don't seem to get the point. If this is bot generated, it isn't a communication.

If your faculties are bot built, they aren't communication mechanisms.

When bot built faculties interact with a bot built world, they do not generate communications. That is, they do not generate mental states with representative contents - mental states that communicate something.

So 'there is a tree outside my window'. If that was bot generated, you were not just told there is a tree outside my window. That remains the case even if there is a tree outside my window and you now believe there is.

So, we are not perceiving the world if our sensible faculties are bot built. We just think we are, because the mental states they are generating in us are indistinguishable from genuine representations.

It goes all the way down. If our belief forming mechanisms are bot built, then they do not generate real beliefs, but imitation beliefs.

If our introspective faculty is bot built, then it too does not make us aware of anything.

Fake awareness will pervade us.

But, yeah, light and retinas and eyeballs.

I don't see how you have any unique argument on this question. It's the same old "matter must be designed to produce consciousness" without actually providing a proof for this premise because there isn't any. Many of us have seen your argument many many times

Yeah, only that's not my argument. I mean, not in any way shape or form. There's what you think my argument is, and then there's this big canyon, and on the other side of it there's my actual argument.
My actual argument is original, to the best of my knowledge. I think it could be classified as a kind of disjunctivist view, though such classifications do not really matter and original views will often defy existing classificatory schemes.

All you've said is meaning can't spring from matter. Yet not you nor anyone else knows what matter is ontologically. You can't rule out meaning coming from it alone

What you just said. Canyon. What I argued. And you followed that with a short sharp parp of gibberish.

You've clearly plagiarized Descartes arguments

No I haven't (though christ only knows what you think Descartes argued). Descartes argued that our faculties are designed by God and on that basis we can trust them. But that's not what I have argued, is it?

Descartes: I think, therefore I am.

Gregory: so you're saying that you think it is 1am? But it isn't, it's the afternoon. But time, ontologically, is matter spliced with consciousness. I'm a catholic buddhist by the way, which definitely makes sense.

Descartes: no, I am pointing out that the thought 'I exist' has the interesting property of being true wherever and whenever it occurs.

Gregory: so you are saying that whatever you think is true and as you think it is 1am it is 1am? No one can know what time is, because time and truth and ontology and whizz and lalala we are all consciousness, buddha, buddha, buddha....jesus.

Now, back to me and you: explain to me how my argument in the OP amounts to the claim that matter cannot produce consciousness?

If matter randomly forms into an organism, then meaningful thoughts can arise from this matter because it has a brain. That's the obvious answer to what you've argued. You don't think matter can do this and invoke something incorporeal to explain it. I question your distinction between matter and spirit and that you know what matter truly is.