Philosophical naturalism is the study of the window. — 180 Proof

No, that would be philosophy of science.

I believe that the principal difference between Kant and Plato on this matter is that Plato believed that the human mind could have direct unmediated access to these independent intelligible objects (what Kant calls noumena), but Kant denied that the human mind could have any direct knowledge of the noumena. — Metaphysician Undercover

The point I was labouring to make was simply that 'phenomenal' was one term in a pair, the other term being 'noumenal', similar to the pair of 'immanent-transcendent' and other such pairs of complementarities, and that Kant appropriated the term for his own uses in his philosophy.

Suppose you create a machine that you believe is conscious. You can learn all the physical facts there are to know about the machine, and still not be any closer to answering the question of whether it's conscious or not. Since there are no new physical facts to learn about the machine, physicalism fails to provide any answer to the "is it conscious?" question.

Philosophical naturalism is the study of the window.
— 180 Proof

No, that would be philosophy of science — Wayfarer

As a philodophical naturalist myself, I'm sure you're wrong about thst, sir

Non sequitur. Physicalism is a paradigm for generating conjectures or models and not a theoretical explanation of phenomena. Also, non-physicalism (e.g. panpsychism, mind-body dualism, idealism) accounts for "consciousness" (or anything) even less than physicalism.

Ned Block wrote a paper on the Harder Problem of Consciousness using the android Data from Star Trek to illustrate the problem that we can't tell whether consciousness is tied to our particular biology or functionalism. As such, we have no criteria for deciding whether Data is conscious.

Some people have suggested that the recent machine learning models exhibit conscious behavior. I have serious doubts, and most researchers would probably disagree. But at some point it's likely we will create a machine that's convincing enough where we can't tell. The movies Ex Machina and Her would be good examples of this.

Well, I'm a physicist so I'm going to be biased toward the physicalist/materialist PoVs. I tend to think that property dualism explains things reasonably well, though. — tom111

Chalmers espoused a property dualism in one of his books where any informationally rich system would be conscious. He's more predisposed to finding a universal law connecting consciousness to the physical than just identifying it with certain biological creatures.

But at some point it's likely we will create a machine that's convincing enough where we can't tell. — Marchesk

Yes, and my point is that with physicalism, the question of whether x is conscious will always be open-ended. That suggests the physicalism framework is a dead-end.

Yes, and my point is that with physicalism, the question of whether x is conscious will always be open-ended. That suggests the physicalism framework is a dead-end. — RogueAI

We certainly have problems drawing the line on which life forms are conscious. And we can't say what sort of sensations animals with different sensory abilities from us would have. In the far future, there could be Boltzmann brains fluctuating into existence with bizarre mental states that we can't even imagine.

Schopenhauer accused Kant of appopriating the term for his purposes without proper regard to its prior meaning for Greek and Scholastic philosophy — Wayfarer

I and many Kant scholars think Schopenhauer was wrong about that. At the very least his reading is unfair and simplistic.

The original meaning of "noumenal" was derived from the root "nous" (intellect) - hence "the noumenal" was an "object of intellect" - something directly grasped by reason, as distinct from by sensory apprehension. — Wayfarer

This is also how Kant used the term. The noumenon for Kant is an object of intellectual intuition (non-sensible representation of reality).

The difference is that Kant argued that such intuition is a faculty we do not have.

I side with Schopenhauer over Kant although I'm still working through it. But I can't see how such things as logical and geometric principles can be construed in any way other than as objects of intellectual intuition. I mean, humans can grasp mathematical concepts and the like through the faculty of reason, which non-human creatures don't, and I can't understand how that can be something other than 'non-sensible intuition'. :roll:

(Perhaps this ought to be a separate thread, but I'm more than happy to participate in one.)

Yeah I don’t want to take things off-topic too much, so I’ll just say the following, because you make a good point.

Remember that intuition for Kant means very roughly perception, the representation of things in the world. Mathematical concepts, in contrast, are pure a priori products of human faculties (reason) that don’t depend on experience.

Noumena are purported objects of a non-sensible grasping of the world, possible examples being Platonic forms. Thus noumena are the elements of the metaphysics that Kant is critiquing.

So mathematical concepts are objects of reason, but not objects of intuition, meaning perception. Under this scheme, which is not so far from the pre-Kantian, they’re not noumenal.

You can build a simple neural network that classifies images of glyphs into the symbols they represent. Is such a system aware of the symbols? — hypericin

Yes. If it classifies them, it has to be aware of them at some level. How else would it classify them.



You're right. I hadn't considered the possibility that people who believe in this phenomena are just mentally different in some way. Something akin to schizophrenic delusion could be a possibility, where you become convinced of the presence of something which isn't there.

Suppose you create a machine that you believe is conscious. You can learn all the physical facts there are to know about the machine, and still not be any closer to answering the question of whether it's conscious or not. Since there are no new physical facts to learn about the machine, physicalism fails to provide any answer to the "is it conscious?" question. — RogueAI

So, let me get this straight. The phenomena you're proposing we investigate is one which is undetectable and has no impact on anything (objects with it are indistinguishable in their action from objects without it). Why exactly would we investigate that?

This is also how Kant used the term. The noumenon for Kant is an object of intellectual intuition (non-sensible representation of reality).

The difference is that Kant argued that such intuition is a faculty we do not have. — Jamal

Is Kant saying we reason that the real world responsible for our senses is beyond our perceptions and reason? There is a real world responsible for us reasoning and perceiving, but it's unknowable and we can't say anything meaningful about it, only the one of appearances our minds shape from our sensory manifold?

I wonder what Kant would make of the modern consciousness debate. I suspect he would think it's beside the point with both sides making a fundamental error of mistaking the phenomenal physical for the noumenal. There's no point in arguing whether there's a hard problem if it's all phenomenal anyway.

Is Kant saying we reason that the real world responsible for our senses is beyond our perceptions and reason? There is a real world responsible for us reasoning and perceiving, but it's unknowable and we can't say anything meaningful about it, only the one of appearances our minds shape from our sensory manifold? — Marchesk

My own answer is no, not quite, but this is a big topic that doesn’t belong in this discussion. I poked my head in to challenge Wayfarer’s scurrilous accusation. When you’ve read Kant, doing so is irresistible.

I updated my comment and added a comment on Kant and the hard problem (that he would likely find it pointless).

I wonder what Kant would make of the modern consciousness debate. I suspect he would think it's beside the point with both sides making a fundamental error of mistaking the phenomenal physical for the noumenal. There's no point in arguing whether there's a hard problem if it's all phenomenal anyway. — Marchesk

His idea of transcendental apperception could be the key. There is consciousness of oneself as a phenomenal object, and there is a consciousness of oneself as the subject of experience. Off the top of my head I can speculate that the what it’s like emerges here as a consequence (although this is hand-waving).

But I’d have to think about it, and you could be right.

I thought the analogy of logic clear. — Constance

I would rather address the original question directly.

No, I don't find the analogy with logic any more clear. Anything can be the subject of a discourse, including logic. At the same time, as you note, logic structures discourse. But I don't see a vicious circularity here, if that is what you are leading to. You cannot ground or justify logic with more logic - that much is clear. But you are talking about the very possibility of discoursing (logically) about logic, and I don't see a problem with that.

I don't see how, at the level of basic questions, anything can be posited that is not phenomena. — Constance

Well, then you do deny the premise, and that's that. You cannot make an argument against a contrary position without first taking it on its own terms. If you deny the position outright, or, as you admit, don't even understand it, then there is no argument to be made.

That encountering is phenomenological. What isn't? — Constance

Indeed, especially if you understand "phenomena" and "encountering" as one and the same, or one being a species of the other. But I don't see where that gets us.

Would Kant qualify as a mysterian?

But I can't see how such things as logical and geometric principles can be construed in any way other than as objects of intellectual intuition. — Wayfarer

(Perhaps this ought to be a separate thread, but I'm more than happy to participate in one.) — Wayfarer

I'd be interested to read what people think and ask a question or two.

I’ll work on it

I poked my head in to challenge Wayfarer’s scurrilous accusation. — Jamal

Ahem, SCHOPENHAUER'S criticism of Kant's use of the term 'noumenal', to wit...

Nobody can agree upon what Kant really meant, even when Kant was still alive and responding to criticism. That said,

If Kant is interpreted to be an identity phenomenalist, meaning that he considered the concept of noumena to ultimately be ontologically reducible to "appearances" when appearances are taken in the holistic sense of the entirety of one's experiences, then he would, like other empirically minded philosophers such as Berkeley , Hume and Wittgenstein, have regarded the metaphysical Hard problem as a misconceived pseudo-problem that results from mistakenly reifying the concept of "mental representations" as being a literal bridge between two qualitatively different worlds. But this would say nothing of Kant's views regarding the semantically 'hard problem' of translating noumena into appearances.

In Kantian terminology, the natural sciences do not make a distinction between noumena and appearances; for any physical entity describable in any SI units can be treated as either a hidden variable or as an observation term at the discretion of the scientist in relation to his experimental context. This doesn't imply that the sciences are committed to one world (whether phenomenal or physical) or both; it only implies the practical usefulness of ignoring the semantic relationship between theory and phenomena, which has been the case so far for the majority of scientific purposes that fall outside of epistemology.

If Kant was astute, he would in my opinion have regarded his phenomena/noumena distinction as being a practical distinction made for the purposes of epistemology, as opposed to a metaphysical distinction, for obvious reasons pertaining to the creation of philosophical pseudo-problems.

Cognition can vary radically from one human to the next.

I think it's a real possibility that people who favor Dennett's view really are different somehow.
— frank

This is an excellent point. Not only is it different, but everyone presumes that their own cognitive makeup is universal. Which leads to some incredibly frustrating discussions on consciousness. — hypericin

I don't think that materialist folks are wired much differently than idealistic types. Dennetists are not p-zombies -- in fact they keep wondering why they are NOT p-zombies.

I suspect we are all pretty much the same soul, the same thing, the same mental structure, with better or worse abilities here or there. Like two diesel cars are essentially the same thing, even if one can drive faster than the other.

I agree that this is an assumption, a belief. It cannot be proven empirically, at least not yet.

don't think that materialist folks are wired much differently than idealistic types — Olivier5

I didn't suggest that idealists and materialists experience the world differently. Idealism vs materialism is a mischaracterization of the issue.

Idealism vs materialism is a mischaracterization of the issue. — frank

How would you describe the issue, then?

The idea of the "hard problem" is that in order to make a thorough theory of consciousness, we need to explain phenomenal consciousness, otherwise known as experience.

In answer to the assertion that explaining functions of consciousness also explains experience, Chalmers is the source of several well known thought experiments that show that phenomenal consciousness and functionality are not identical, so proponents of aforementioned "function equals phenomenal" carry a burden of justifying that.

Chalmers doesn't believe that's possible and asserts that science needs to expand it's conceptual framework to include experience. His focus is on inviting creativity. He doesn't propose to offer a final answer

Chalmers is the source of several well known thought experiments that show that phenomenal consciousness and functionality are not identical, so proponents of aforementioned "function equals phenomenal" carry a burden of justifying that. — frank

But...

Dennett is the source of several well known thought experiments that show that phenomenal consciousness and functionality are identical, so proponents of aforementioned "function doesn't equal phenomenal" carry a burden of justifying that.

Have you got anything more to offer than Burden-of-proof tennis?

Dennett is the source of several well known thought experiments that show that phenomenal consciousness and functionality are identical, — Isaac

Really? Care to justify that statement?

Care to justify that statement? — frank

Why? You didn't bother.

Uh huh.

Don't let me disrupt your flow, you're on a roll.

So far we've got "anything Chalmers says is true by default unless it can be proven otherwise", and "anyone who disagrees with Chalmers probably has some form of brain damage".

Some suggestions...

"people who disagree with Chalmers are more likely to be fascists"

"Chalmers has nice hair"

"Chalmers is an anagram for 'les charm' which is French for 'The Charms' an American garage rock band who produced a song called 'I believe', which is instructive"

"Chalmers.com pay me £50 each time I promote his stuff"

Chalmers is the source of several well known thought experiments that show that phenomenal consciousness and functionality are not identical, — frank

I find this surprising, because generally in biology, function determines form. So I would think that conscious experience exists for a reason, that it has a function, such as putting in one space various sources of data (visual, audio, but also goals, fears etc.) for coherent decision making, or something like that.

I'm also not a fan of labeling "hard" or "easy" problems that are yet unresolved. For all we know, the solution might be very simple. Remember the story of Christopher Columbus' egg: it was a very easy solution, all what one needed to do is to think of it, yet nobody did...