:up:

It's trickier than just adding idea to matter to equal a thing. — frank

That’s Schopenhauer, not Kant. The use of “idea” is an earlier translator’s choice, because “vorstellung” can be and was translated as representation in later publications. Taken as representation, Schopenhauer follows Kant, but taken as idea, he does not. The world as will and representation is a direct affirmation of Kant’s distinction between pure and practical reason, but the world as will and idea is something quite different.

But whether adding idea, or adding representation.....neither of those is what the respective authors want us to take away from his theory. In both, objects become something else, which makes adding to them, a misunderstanding.
————-

TA? The only TA I am familiar with is transcendental aesthetic or the transcendental analytic, in the CPR. I guess I’m not grasping the point you’re making with this part. Neither of those speak to ideas, or packages, or pairs of opposites. Unless you’re taking a shallow dive into dialectics, but that’s TD, not TA.

Ya lost me, bud. “Everpresent situation”? Dunno what that is, sorry.

What do you understand by this:

But the observing subject is not anywhere to be found in the objective domain, so in no sense can be derived from or imputed to the properties or attributes of objects.
— Wayfarer — Tom Storm

It's just a belief. If a neuron fires (objective) when someone has a particular experience (subjective), a physicalist would likely say that that firing was identically that 'having that experience', while a dualist would say that the neuron firing is some physical effect of a non-physical subjective mind, and an idealist... well, frankly an idealist has nothing interesting to say as neurons firing are a redundancy.

It's similar to what I said earlier:

The problem with this is that the same people reject any evidence that there are some animals that would do something remotely similar, of which there are many. What would constitute "remotely similar" is always subject to revision by those that believe there can be no such thing. — Kenosha Kid

Because there's an element of magic involved (mystery is apparently only terminal for physicalism), idealism, dualism, theism et al are always free to add and revise criteria ad hoc. Just as a notion of what it is to be human must be refined as we discover more about other animals (the soulful elephant, the cooperative dolphin, the chatty gorilla), the notion of consciousness can also be whittled down to what, in the end, is a plain assertion: the neuron firing is not identically the having of the experience, there is an extra bit that can only be known in the first person.

In reality, I don't know what it is like to be a bat and never will. But nor will I know what it is like to be a little girl, a gay man in '50s Utah, a gorgeous Hollywood star, autistic, dyslexic, left-handed, or a dwarf. I will never know what it is like to be you, Wayfarer, Nagel, or Trump. There is a necessary gap between the first person and the third person that arises from purely physical considerations: I am a physically distinct entity, with my own unique initial state; I am an autowiring brain which will learn from the same information (in principle) in my own idiosyncratic way (I never learned to wink with my right eye, for instance); and most importantly, I am not subject to the same causes of perception as anyone else (even in a common experience, like going to the cinema, I have a slightly different perspective, have come with a different companion, am surrounded by differently disruptive assholes...).

Empathy relies on the fact that different humans are at least similar enough that we can mirror their first person perspective with enough accuracy to, e.g., predict a threat or help a suffering person. The more different another mind is to our own, the more likely our empathy is to fail us. Psychopaths are unnerving precisely because we cannot empathise with them or them with us, and this is still within the realm of purely physicalist considerations. It's very difficult for me to empathise with individualists, racists, misogynists, etc., and these people exhibit lack of, or counter-action to, empathy themselves. (Note that when people like NOS lament the lawlessness and socialism of BLM, the one thing that never factors into their thinking is the plight of black Americans. They're not even on their radar as considerations.)

This is what I meant when I said that idealism (likewise dualism) is an explanation in search of a problem: the first/third person gap arises from purely physicalist considerations, and not at the human/animal or human/rock boundary. Nonetheless, many (most?) people insist without compelling justification that there is an additional thing: the so-called hard problem of consciousness, such that if all of the physical barriers to knowing what it is like to be a bat were overcome, we would still not know what it is like to be a bat. This is just proof that sentences can be valid without conveying understanding or meaning imo.

The observing subject is overwhelmingly likely to be found in the objective domain: imo this has been achieved, curious details notwithstanding. This does not mean that anyone should or could know what it is like to be something else. We have purely physical explanations for this that are consistent with the same purely physicalist explanations that render our world explicable and predictable, with no need of magical concepts that explain and predict nothing, not even the thing they're conjured to explain.

Thanks. Very thoughtful. I'll mull over this. I'm fairly sure Wayfarer will say this misses his nuances.

Matter exists - but it lacks intrinsic reality. — Wayfarer

Please, if you would, clarify / explicate the non-trivial differences between "intrinsic" and "non-intrinsic" (modes? degrees? types? of) "reality".

This would be problematic if reality had presented us with anything that obviously did not sit in physics' purview. However, the success of physics relies on their being no such thing. — Kenosha Kid

:clap: :100:

Equivalent hit rate for idealism? At last count, zero. All you can really do with it is believe it or not believe it. It's an inert notion on a shrinking stage without an audience. Physicalism is a conclusion; idealism an assumption. They're not in the same league.

:fire:

In reality, I don't know what it is like to be a bat and never will. But nor will I know what it is like to be a little girl, a gay man in '50s Utah, a gorgeous Hollywood star, autistic, dyslexic, left-handed, or a dwarf. I will never know what it is like to be you, Wayfarer, Nagel, or Trump. — Kenosha Kid

The 'what is it like to be' schtick leaves me a little cold. I'm not sure what it is like to be me, let alone Nagel's winged mammal.

Nagel can't even intelligibly express "what it's like to be Nagel" because he has no other "what it's like to be ..." to compare "being Nagel" to having never been anything else but himself. "Unverifiable tosh" as you say (or batshit nonsense, I say).

The use of “idea” is an earlier translator’s choice, because “vorstellung” can be and was translated as representation in later publications. — Mww

As in your body is a representation of the Will. This is not indirect realism, bud.

:grin:

OK. Thanks.

But the observing subject is not anywhere to be found in the objective domain — Wayfarer

I don’t see how this follows or why it would be necessary. I was with you until here:

The form of idealism I subscribe to, on the contrary, is not denying that material objects possess empirical reality - deny it at your peril - but saying that reality comprises both the observed object and the observing subject — Wayfarer

I may read the PDF tomorrow but it’s time for me to sign off today.

What would be the problem with having our reality depend on our perception of the objective domain AND have us be part of the objective domain, no different from the other things in it. Why cut us off?

Excellent commentary. If I may......

In reality, I don't know what it is like to be a bat and never will. — Kenosha Kid

.....I would ask, can we also say we don’t know what it’s like for our neurons to fire? Assuming, of course, that what happens after, is not the same as what happens. If granted, it is easy to see why the dualist maintains that the conscious subject is not to be found in the objective apparatus.

The 'what is it like to be' schtick leaves me a little cold. I'm not sure what it is like to be me, let alone Nagel's winged mammal. — Tom Storm

Quite right. :100: I did actually mean to add... We don't actually have a great deal of insight into ourselves. Our consciousness is of second-hand and incomplete metadata about our own state, including our beliefs about ourselves, and our senses. In some ways, others know us better than we do.

.I would ask, can we also say we don’t know what it’s like for our neurons to fire? — Mww

Ah! Perfect timing Mww, see my above response to Tom.

Nonetheless, many (most?) people insist without compelling justification that there is an additional thing: the so-called hard problem of consciousness, such that if all of the physical barriers to knowing what it is like to be a bat were overcome, we would still not know what it is like to be a bat. This is just proof that sentences can be valid without conveying understanding or meaning imo. — Kenosha Kid

Are you claiming Mary's Room is meaningless/devoid of meaning?

Again, the dualist will admonish against claims regarding insight into ourselves, for which there is a plethora of justifiable speculation, in juxtaposition to claims about the mechanistic origin of ourselves, for which there is barely any insight at all. In short, we have been given what’s necessary for insight into ourselves (brains/matter), but not yet what is sufficient (causality).

Now, the pure undifferentiated idealist does have something interesting to say, if he is so bold as to invoke the cum hoc ergo proper hoc argument, in that it is because we don’t think in terms of natural law, that unknowable mitigating factors are proved, which demand explanation, over and above mere brains. And of course, under those conditions, an explanation will be impossible.

Anyway....didn’t mean to butt in. Ok, fine. I did. Now I’ll butt out.

OK. Thanks. — Mww

Sorry, shouldn't have added the bud.

Again, the dualist will admonish against claims regarding insight into ourselves, for which there is a plethora of justifiable speculation, in juxtaposition to claims about the mechanistic origin of ourselves, for which there is barely any insight at all. In short, we have been given what’s necessary for insight into ourselves (brains/matter), but not yet what is sufficient (causality). — Mww

What is the causality you're talking about? How matter causes experience?

Wow, there is actually some agreement here. That's insane.

In philosophy? No way.

I take it from this that you subscribe to a pragmatic view of truth, "the truth is the end of inquiry?"

For hundreds of years, the simplest, best, and maximally sufficient explanation for our experiences, their continuities, and our consensus about them has been the existence of a single objective reality that obeys physical laws. Nothing has changed. Yes, there will always be little gaps to fit gods and dualism and idealism in, but these necessarily explain less and less as physicalism explains more and more. Quite likely, the less idealism could explain and the more physicalism does explain, the more enthusiastically idealists (or dualists or theists) must insist that science doesn't work but the unavoidable fact is that it does: we are drowning in an ocean of applications of physicalist assumptions to control our world, each one asking the question: If physicalism is false, why must I act as if it is true?

This isn't my understanding of the recent history of natural sciences. This may have been a fair sentiment circa the end of the 19th century, when positivism was riding high and a "unified theory of everything," seemed on the horizon. These hopes collapsed in spectacular fashion with the onslaught of new geometries, the Incompleteness Theorem, QM, the continual discovery of new elementary particles underlying the previously "elementary" ones, etc. Now there seems to be more room for the relevance of observers in physics than there was a century ago; the progress of physicalism you're describing has been creeping backwards if anything.

As to hit rates, something being useful doesn't make it true. Newtonian views of space and time work just fine for getting an automobile or airplane to work. That doesn't make its fundemental claims about the nature of space true; indeed some turned out to be demonstrably false. Further reversals and paradigm shifts will continue. Casual locality might be the next victim.

A "hit rate," that describes hits as being "predictive enough to be useful," doesn't seem to correspond to truth to me. From the coherence view, these are at best small progressions towards the truth, at worst misleading because we confuse usefulness with truth.

The problem for materialists, and I say this as one, is that you are essentially stuck making the claim that subjective experience, the world of ideas, the only world we have access to, the immanent and apparent world, is in fact dependant on and emergent from something else: material, which is something we can't define very well. What is this material? Where did it come from? Why does it behave the way it does? These are all very open questions, and if you're the one making the counter intuitive claim "the world isn't actually composed of what it seems to be made of, its nature is actually something completely different," it seems to me that you get stuck with the burden of proof. And, in terms of advancing this proof the line of "material is a thing, the only real thing, I know this with certainty but I can't define material for you," is a real weakness. You can start with Newtonian physics and get down to elementary particles, but as you keep peeling the onion the line of description suddenly disappears on you.

You say physics necissarily encompasses everything, but physics does not pretend to explain the origin of material objects, it only studies the relationships of material objects as they exist. In popular cosmology, there is a hard stop at the Big Bang. The claim isn't just that physics can't currently explain where matter came from, it's that physics as a field cannot examine that topic. It can't have anything to say about origins past the initial explosion of matter that left physical evidence or itself. It's entirely possible that it will also never have an explanation for why physical laws are what they are, it will only be able to describe how those laws work relationally. These are the gaps you mentioned, but to my mind they aren't small gaps, they are massive fissures that are opening not closing.

It's also worth noting that serious scientists doing work on panpsychism aren't doing it because they want to work out a place for "magic" in the gaps, they are doing it to keep materialism from collapsing.

I find it ironic that Many Worlds has been used to justify materialism because the idea of reality as a Pleroma of all potential realities, infinitely branching out to encompass all potentialities sounds conceptually like something you'd read about in a idealist tract about being positing itself in sublation of non-being, resulting in a contingent becoming of all potentiality.

Again, the dualist will admonish against claims regarding insight into ourselves, for which there is a plethora of justifiable speculation, in juxtaposition to claims about the mechanistic origin of ourselves, for which there is barely any insight at all. In short, we have been given what’s necessary for insight into ourselves (brains/matter), but not yet what is sufficient (causality) — Mww

As in neuroscience is an on-going project? Yes, I'm well aware (and you're probably aware of one of catchphrases in response :) ).

All numbers are large compared with zero, so I'd argue we know a lot! To do neuroscience, you have to be able to make predictions, and to develop theory you have to have some of those predictions be reliable. This makes it the only player in Explanation Town, however many gaps there remain (as long as they shrink with time).

Now, the pure undifferentiated idealist does have something interesting to say, if he is so bold as to invoke the cum hoc ergo proper hoc argument, in that it is because we don’t think in terms of natural law, that unknowable mitigating factors are proved, which demand explanation, over and above mere brains. And of course, under those conditions, an explanation will be impossible. — Mww

I'm reminded of people typing on computers connected to the internet that science cannot possibly work...

Anyway....didn’t mean to butt in. Ok, fine. I did. Now I’ll butt out. — Mww

All butts welcome, I always appreciate your posts.

What is the causality you're talking about? How matter causes experience? — RogueAI

In general, yes. How amazing, a.k.a., fantasmagorically convoluted, is it, that because some sufficient neural network is not yet enabled, we are permitted to say we have no idea how the brain causes experience, but that only because some other network is enabled that permits us to say it. Taken a step further, we find that the brain tells us both, that it is responsible for experience, because we’ve already thought so, but at the same time cannot tell us how, because those thoughts have never come about. We, being rational agents, on our own accord, go even further, and rightfully assert that if we do not know a thing, it is possible there is either no thing to know, or we are simply not equipped to know it.

Aaaannnndddd.....the brain falsifies itself. Figuratively.

Then the argument comes up, that philosophy is just making stuff up, which is exactly what it is. I know, cuz I just did it. But we’re allowed, because the brain won’t inform us of making-stuff-up’s pathological uselessness by informing us of the truth of it all. And maybe.....just maybe....it doesn’t because it can’t.

:100:

I'm reminded of people typing on computers connected to the internet that science cannot possibly work... — Kenosha Kid

Those guys.....deserving of little mention and even less respect.

“...For although education may furnish, and, as it were, engraft upon a limited understanding rules borrowed from other minds, yet the power of employing these rules correctly must belong to the pupil himself; and no rule which we can prescribe to him with this purpose is, in the absence or deficiency of this gift of nature, secure from misuse. Deficiency in judgement is properly that which is called stupidity; and for such a failing we know no remedy....”
—————

And I, yours.

Respect.

Sorry, shouldn't have added the bud. — frank

Heck no. That didn’t bother me. I’m just not agreeing with what you said (it very much is indirect realism, and the body is in no way representation of Will), but didn’t quite understand why you said it. So I decided to leave it alone.

Hey.

Thanks.

Additions/changes welcome, if you’re so inclined.

we are permitted to say we have no idea how the brain causes experience — Mww

Three points to make:

Your claim is dualistic. You're saying that brains cause experience, which is to say that for any mental state, there's a causal brain state. Brain states and mental states aren't the same thing; one causes the other. So, if brain states and mental states are different, how are they different?

We're permitted to say "we have no idea how the brain causes experience" because it corresponds to reality (i.e., is true): we have no idea how matter can cause experience.

Suppose we're still in the dark about the Hard Problem 100 years from now. How damaging would that be to physicalism? What about 1,000 years from now? Or do you think physicalism can survive an infinitely long explanatory gap?

Heck no. That didn’t bother me. I’m just not agreeing with what you said (it very much is indirect realism, and the body is in no way representation of Will), but didn’t quite understand why you said it. So I decided to leave it alone. — Mww

I don't know if we're talking past one another, but Schopenhauer is not indirect realism as it's usually imagined. He thinks reality is unified. He thinks the thing-in-itself is indivisible.

As the SEP says:

" At this point in his argumentation, Schopenhauer has established only that among his many ideas, or representations, only one of them (viz., the [complex] representation of his body) has this special double-aspected quality. When he perceives the moon or a mountain, he does not under ordinary circumstances have any direct access to the metaphysical inside of such objects; they remain as representations that reveal to him only their objective side. Schopenhauer asks, though, how he might understand the world as an integrated whole, or how he might render his entire field of perception more comprehensible, for as things stand, he can directly experience the inside of one of his representations, but of no others. To answer this question, he uses the double-knowledge of his own body as the key to the inner being of every other natural phenomenon: he regards — as if he were trying to make the notion of universal empathy theoretically possible — every object in the world as being metaphysically double-aspected, and as having an inside or inner aspect of its own, just as his consciousness is the inner aspect of his own body. This is his rationale for rejecting Descartes’s causal interactionism, where thinking substance is said to cause changes in an independent material substance and vice-versa.

"This precipitates a position that characterizes the inner aspect of things, as far as we can describe it, as Will. Hence, Schopenhauer regards the world as a whole as having two sides: the world is Will and the world is representation. The world as Will (“for us”, as he sometimes qualifies it) is the world as it is in itself, which is a unity, and the world as representation is the world of appearances, of our ideas, or of objects, which is a diversity. An alternative title for Schopenhauer’s main book, The World as Will and Representation, might well have been, The World as Reality and Appearance. Similarly, his book might have been entitled, The Inner and Outer Nature of Reality."

If it's indirect realism, it's a bizarre brand of it.

I have a question for the good folks on both sides of this discussion - does any of this makes a difference in how I should lead my life?

If Idealism is correct, should I sell all my worldly possessions and become an ascetic?

If Materialism is correct, should I invest in petroleum stocks and $1000/night hookers?

BTW - If it isn't obvious, I'm exaggerating for comic effect. . . :razz: