Of course in all this I'm reminded of the certain scientific and philosophical skeptics who mistake their lack of visualization or lucid dreaming for those abilities not existing in other people. That's a kind of logical error whose name escapes me — Marchesk

I don't know if that would be a logical error. I'm guessing the strong bias towards believing that we're all the same has to do with communication.

Aphantasiacs report that they always thought that when people talked about visualizing things, they didn't mean it literally. It's that charity thing?

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. — sime

To some extent, was not part of Kant's project to meet Hume's challenge regarding the pursuit of causes? The idea being that we could pursue them as significant agents worth the effort rather than dismissing them as stories we tell ourselves that accidentally get confirmed by experiences.

Of course in all this I'm reminded of the certain scientific and philosophical skeptics who mistake their lack of visualization or lucid dreaming for those abilities not existing in other people. — Marchesk

I don't doubt this at all, nor any of the neurodiversity you point out. I just don't think it is the norm. From what I have read of people who cannot visualize, they believe it is an all or nothing ability that they lack, they don't seem to conceive of in-between states.

I don't know if that would be a logical error. I'm guessing the strong bias towards believing that we're all the same has to do with communication. — frank

It's obviously not the case if you've aware of savants or various neurological abnormalities, which you would hope educated people like philosophers and scientists would be aware of when making claims about the mind.

It's obviously not the case if you've aware of savants or various neurological abnormalities, which you would hope educated people like philosophers and scientists would be aware of when making claims about the mind. — Marchesk

Well, yes.

Others can compose music in my head. — Marchesk

That'd be a neat trick. :wink:

I never said I wasn't crazy. Or didn't make typos, whoops.

:lol: :cool:

You want to be careful, many of those studies have been called into question. — Wayfarer

Seriously? You've never cited a study that's been 'called into question'? Sheldrake's work, for example... ever 'called into question'?

there is no way of objectively measuring awareness, — Janus

Then how do we know the machine isn't?

Who is claiming you "really" seeing in your mind? — hypericin

Then in what sense are we 'aware' of a yellow disk and a blue disk? We clearly are not experiencing their actual properties.

How do we measure awareness? — Isaac


By report, or by measuring at the neural correlates. — hypericin

What neural correlates? And how do we know they are the neural correlates? If "by report" then how do we know the camera's circuits aren't 'aware' of the light?

Then how do we know the machine isn't? — Isaac

We don't, but we also have no reason to think it is. We think others are aware because they insist that they are, and become offended when it is suggested that they might be deluded. This doesn't happen with machines.

So. I look at my tea cup, and the claim is that in addition to the circuits processing the sensations I get from it, I also have this other thing called 'being aware' of it, which isn't simply the word we give to those circuits doing their job, but something else (which correlates with them). We assume bats have it (what 'it's like' to be a bat) even though they don't insist they do, but cameras don't have it (there's nothing it's like to be a camera)...because bats would be... offended?

What about when you dream? I would put it more in terms of a VR headset kind of experience, particularly for lucid dreaming. — Marchesk

When you dream, the world 'around' has that dreamlike quality: people are not who they seem, objects and folks evolve into other things. It's usually quite foggy and unstable.

We are a very good public for our own visualizations. We forgive a lot, we convince ourselves of their beauty, even if in truth they are barely there at all.

I believe there is actually an empiric proof of that, of the fact that we cannot visualize very well, even though we convince ourselves that we do visualize really well. I discovered it in primary school. There was this girl I was very found of. She liked my drawings and asked me for one. I decided that instead of drawing Mickey Mouse or Lucky Luke as usual, for her I would draw something nicer, more original: a horse. I thought I knew exactly how it would be, for I had this picture in my mind of a splendid horse. Then I started to draw.

Try as I may, I could not replicate on paper the splendid image I thought I had in my head. I had to find a photo of a horse and draw from it. The result was somewhat ok but I wondered: how come I needed an external picture to copy? Why couldn't I simply copy my mental image?

Introspectingly, I realized that this image was not actually 'there' in my mind.

What was there was an idea of a picture, a dream of it, a mere shadow of a sketch, but I had easily convinced myself that it was the real deal, the full canvas.

If you don't believe me, do your own experiment: chose a person you know well and can recognize easily, then imagine her face, then try and draw it. You might find that you are better at imagining that you can imagine her face, than at producing an actual stable image of her face.

If our dreams were giving us the same rich, full experience that we get from reality, then we would spend all our lives in dreams...

I believe there is actually a proof of that, of the fact that we cannot visualize very well, even though we convince ourselves that we do visualize really well. I discovered it in primary school. There was this girl I was very found of. She liked my drawings and asked me for one. I decided that instead of drawing Mickey Mouse or Lucky Luke as usual, for her I would draw something nicer, more original: a horse. I thought I knew exactly how it would be, for I had this picture in my mind of a splendid horse. Then I started to draw.

Try as I may, I could not replicate on paper the splendid image I thought I had in my head. I had to take a photo of a horse and draw from it. The result was somewhat ok but I wondered: how come I needed an external picture to copy? Why couldn't I simply copy my mental image?

Introspectingly, I realized that this image was not actually 'there' in my mind. — Olivier5

Dennett has very interesting lines of thought on that... well worth watching. The gulf between the purported complex complete picture of something people believe they have in their mind('visual thinkers' and all that) with what they can describe when asked a few questions about it.

So. I look at my tea cup, and the claim is that in addition to the circuits processing the sensations I get from it, I also have this other thing called 'being aware' of it, which isn't simply the word we give to those circuits doing their job, but something else (which correlates with them). We assume bats have it (what 'it's like' to be a bat) even though they don't insist they do, but cameras don't have it (there's nothing it's like to be a camera)...because bats would be... offended? — Isaac

The awareness is prior to any understanding of "circuits", the "circuits" which may or may not be objective correlates to subjective awareness.

We assume animals are aware because we see them spontaneously responding to things as we would. We see them, some of them at least, playing and seeming to enjoy and desire certain activities, if their body language is any indication, which it plausibly is since it is not so different from ours.

We don't observe anything close to that in machines. If they never manifest body language, similar enough to be recognizable and readable by us, then how would we ever know they were aware? That said, personally I wouldn't care if machines turned out to be conscious entities, I have nothing to protect that such a revelation would threaten.

Introspectingly, I realized that this image was not actually 'there' in my mind. — Olivier5

That's generally true of me as well. In my teens i realized that, although I was very good at drawing and painting, I could not evoke an image of even familiar things, such that I could look at it like I would a photograph and note all the fine details.But back then I asked friends about their experience and some claimed they could visualize like that.

Also I've many times experienced the ability to do it, when under the influence of psychedelics, so I believe the capacity is there. Also I can draw a likeness of the face of someone I know well, even if I can't "see" a stable mental picture of it. Same with the human figure; I can draw a very accurate, proportionally and muscularly speaking, image of the human body, male or female.

I'm just trying to pin down what this thing 'awareness' is that neuroscience has apparently failed to explain.

People seem absolutely concrete about what it isn't (neurons firing), but somewhat evasive about what it is.

You seem to be suggesting here some kind of temporal identity (comes before neural activity), but then suggest it has something to do with spontenity, and then pleasure? I'm not following I'm afraid.

I'm just trying to pin down what this thing 'awareness' is that neuroscience has apparently failed to explain. — Isaac

It isn't anything objective, and we should not expect it to be, but it is, by all reports something we all (or most of us at least) experience. Neuroscience cannot directly examine experience, but it doesn't follow from that that experience is an illusion, a "folk" delusion or is nothing. It might be, but again, how would we ever know, since such a thing cannot be empirically confirmed. What could it even mean for something that seems so obvious to most people to be a delusion?

but logic* as a field does not present an argument or a justification of itself. — SophistiCat

This would be true if logic were, magically, its own interpretative base — Constance

That's the opposite of what I said.

I first put this out there to show how physicalism as a naive thesis, lacks epistemic essence. — Constance

What do you think the thesis of physicalism is? I don't think there is a single generally recognized physicalist doctrine. It is more of a family resemblance among philosophical treatments of certain subjects.

I see my cat and I am thereby forced to admit I am reductively seeing brain states only. — Constance

That's hardly even a caricature of physicalism. No one would say that you are "seeing brain states" when you look at something.

Phenomenology remedies this matter, I argue. — Constance

Well, I was hoping to find out more about "this matter" (not so much about phenomenology), but I am making no progress in teasing it out.

What could it even mean for something that seems so obvious to most people to be a delusion? — Janus

I'm not seeing the problem you're seeing here. History is littered with understandings and entities which seemed 'so obvious' to people at the time, but later societies consider them nothing but misunderstandings or superstition. I can't see how "everyone thinks it's obvious" presents any major barrier to neurological theories.

Isn't this just what the 'hard problem' is about? 15 pages of texts and it's back to square 1.

Naturalised neurological theories are semantically deficient for tacking the hard problem, due to the fact their theoretical concepts are only publicly defined up to third person predication, which restricts their applicability to the description of psychological predicates in relation to the mythical third-person subject.

For example, my perceptual judgement that this apple in front of me is "green" isn't part of any public neurological theory of colour perception. Rather, my perceptual judgements constitute my personal semantic foundation for interpreting public neurological theories of colour perception.

A scientist who fails to acknowledge that a-perspectivalized naturalised science has a 'hard problem' conflates their private interpretations of science with the public theories of science. These aren't the same thing. For instance, Einstein's understanding of General Relativity isn't part of the theory of General relativity; The theory of relativity isn't defined in terms of Einstein's thoughts and observations and the theory doesn't even define observation terms. So Einstein would not be at liberty to use the public definition of Relativity to explain the existence of his frame of reference. Rather, he is at liberty to apply the public definition of relativity to his frame of reference as he sees fit.

Also I can draw a likeness of the face of someone I know well, even if I can't "see" a stable mental picture of it. Same with the human figure; I can draw a very accurate, proportionally and muscularly speaking, image of the human body, male or female. — Janus

Yes, because you've already done it again and again based on a real human body. But if at age 6 or 7, someone had asked you to draw a human body from memory alone, you might have drawn something less accurate... in spite of being perfectly capable already of recognizing a human being when you saw one.

Isn't this just what the 'hard problem' is about? 15 pages of texts and it's back to square 1. — Wayfarer

Read somewhere:

Breaking news: Philosophers give up on hard problem of consciousness -- "it's just too hard!"

I'm just trying to pin down what this thing 'awareness' is that neuroscience has apparently failed to explain. — Isaac

It's equivalent to the concept of consciousness.

It's equivalent to the concept of consciousness. — Olivier5

That's of no help because 'consciousness' is an equally vague and slippery notion defined, it seems, by exactly the same list of things it definitely isn't, but nothing it actually is.

Isn't this just what the 'hard problem' is about? 15 pages of texts and it's back to square 1. — Wayfarer

If so, then the 'hard problem' seems to be defing what the problem is.

So far, it seems there's this 'feeling' people have that there's something there that isn't just neuronal activity, but it's not actually detectable in any way (other than this 'feeling' that it's there), and that neuroscience's failure to match its empirical models with this vague feeling is somehow a problem for neuroscience.

That's of no help because 'consciousness' is an equally vague and slippery notion defined, it seems, by exactly the same list of things it definitely isn't, but nothing it actually is. — Isaac

Why don't you give it a try then? Make the concept less slippery, if you can.

Me, I consider it perfectly normal to lack a precise definition for a philosophical concept. You probably could not define the word "definition" in a way that isn't vague and slippery.... and yet you keep asking for definitions. :-)

Why don't you give it a try then? Make the concept less slippery, if you can. — Olivier5

There are several definitions of consciousness I'm happy with. None of them result in a 'hard problem'. It's those definitions I'm trying to pin down.

I consider it perfectly normal to lack a precise definition for a philosophical concept. — Olivier5

Indeed, but its not simultaneously considered a failing of some empirical science to not then account for this vague philosophical concept in its models. We don't consider physics to have failed because it can't capture the sense of 'nearby'. There's no 'hard problem' of maths because it can't do 'quite a bit' multiplied by 'loads'.