You are basically throwing away, by my lights, the vast majority of biological and neurological knowledge that we have gained in the past 2 centuries and saying that, somehow, we are actually not filtering the world but, rather, directly experiencing it. — Bob Ross

I understand why you want to say that, but I think you are reifying the [ discursive, dramaturgical ] subject. Are we gremlins in the pineal gland ? Do you sit behind your eyes, looking out the windows ? But then the tiny actual you must also have eyes that a tinier man sits behind, ad infinitum.

Or our we always already on the 'public stage' of the rational conversation ? Are we not better understand as discursive selves ? The conditions for the possibility of rational conversation cannot be rationally denied.

Are you saying that our brains just let the data of experience 1 to 1 pass-through? — Bob Ross

Our linguistic-conceptuals selves are more like softwhere on the crowd than the lardwhere they run on.

Even if that's true, it still would be different in very significant ways that, it seems to me, would not be predictable. — T Clark

Ah! I understand. Thanks.

I thought this was an accidental discovery by some geeks with a microwave detector in the 1960s. — T Clark

IIRC, The people who got the Nobel accidentally discovered it. They were trying to find the source of the "noise" in there readings. Something like that?

But other people had just started looking for it at the same time, because their calculations told them it should be there. Which sucks for them!!

As far as I understand, the person who first adopted neutral monism, though I don't believe his used this term, was William James. Russell was influenced by it and then developed a version of it. I unsure if Whitehead would accept this very label, probably sticking to "the philosophy of organism". — Manuel

Yeah I was trying to think the best label. “Process philosophy” or organism seems very specific. I meant neutral monism in that it’s all occasions of experience organized differently. Not a dualist or traditional physicalist etc.

In any case, I think that the actual problem is matter - not consciousness, we know very little about matter, much more about consciousness. But people tend to go the opposite route and say that experience is the problem. — Manuel

I think I can agree here. That seems to be the incredulous move for many materialists because it gives mental qualities to physical. Panexperientialism and it’s varieties, seems a bridge too far. At best it seems, the materialist makes the move to say mental is “illusory” or somehow epiphenomenal or something like this. That is to say it simply relabels the phenomena or begs the question.

I share the view of you and Chalmers as to the amount of sleight of hand that goes on in consciousness studies. It's an epidemic. . . — FrancisRay

I think many of us on the other side of the argument would agree with, obviously, different opinions about who is doing the prestidigitation.

I feel that calling it hidden dualism is a bit misleading because this is a wider problem afflicting the whole of Western philosophy. 'Hidden mind-matter dualism' would be sharper. I wouldn't call it hidden but just rather obvious sloppy or devious thinking. I share the view of you and Chalmers as to the amount of sleight of hand that goes on in consciousness studies. It's an epidemic. . . — FrancisRay

Thanks for your post! Yes, I agree, it is the slipping in and out of these categories that can cause problems all over, especially correlation versus identity, etc.

I think many of us on the other side of the argument would agree with, obviously, different opinions about who is doing the prestidigitation.

Perhaps, but I find the problem more one sided. The OPs position is more open minded so needs less wriggling on the hook. But I accept there's two sides to the debate. .

Hello Plaque Flag,

Note please that you are assuming your own framework -- talking of 'representations' of the world -- in the presentation of the 'problem.' For various reasons, I frame awareness on terms of the direct apprehension of the world --not representation but good old fashioned seeing and smelling and ..

So, under your view, the brain is not representing anything? ‘Seeing’ and ‘smelling’, by my lights, are senses: are you saying we have senses without perceptions (i.e., formulations of those sensations)?

He's feeling no pain, because they gave him morphine.

I am particularly interested in this one, as this demonstrates that ‘he’ is representing the world, and that is in the form of his conscious experience; for giving him morphine has inhibited his sensory receptors and cognitive functions and thusly he has lost his ability to represent pain (i.e., and lost his ability to have the sense of touch in general). How would you explain it if his body is not responsible for representing unpleasurable and unwanted damage to his body in the form of pain?

Pain and 2–√ are just entities in a 'flat' ontology inferentially related to other entities like Paris and protons

I read your OP on flat ontology, and I don’t understand it yet. Is it a form of quantitative monism?

Pain, as the qualitative sensation, is not in the world like, for mathematically realists, the square root of two is; so I don’t understand how it is ‘flat’ in that sense.

We 'scientific' ontologists in our demand for justifications are not on the outside looking in --that's a failure of self-consciousness, an 'alienated' failure to notice our own central role.

Science can’t afford ontology: it afford a map, not the territory. Ontology is metaphysics, not physics.

I don’t think anyone in contemporary metaphysics thinks that they are on the outside looking in: we are on the inside looking out.

I understand why you want to say that, but I think you are reifying the [ discursive, dramaturgical ] subject. Are we gremlins in the pineal gland ? Do you sit behind your eyes, looking out the windows ? But then the tiny actual you must also have eyes that a tinier man sits behind, ad infinitum.

No we are not gremlins in a pineal gland. No I do not sit behind my eyes. I am a collective organism that represents the world to itself via sensibility, receptivity, and the understanding. The eyes are what are used to see, and there is no reason to posit another set of ‘eyes’ within them, so no ad infinitum here (by my lights).

Or our we always already on the 'public stage' of the rational conversation ?

What do you mean by ‘public stage’? Rational conversation is of our representations. What else would it be?

Are you saying that our brains just let the data of experience 1 to 1 pass-through? — Bob Ross

Our linguistic-conceptuals selves are more like softwhere on the crowd than the lardwhere they run on.

I did not understand your answer to this question: could you elaborate? I am not asking about language nor concepts (in the sense of our faculty of reason taking in our perceptions as input and derive ideas/concepts of them in our native language)—I am talking about representations (i.e., our faculty of understanding producing a filtered representation of the world).

Hello Darkneos,

But I am observing the number 1, right now.

Let’s take an example (of what I believe you are referring to here): there’s a red block on the table in front of me and I say “there’s one red block!”. Did I thereby experience the number 1? I would say: no! Why? Two reasons. Firstly, and the most common argument, is that the object is distinct from the number 1. There is an object which is 1 object, but that is not the number one: it has the form of one; so, what you experience is an concrete object, which is not the number one, with the form of one (i.e., unity: a whole) and never the abstract object of one (or the abstract concept, if you are nominalist, of one). Numbers are abstract, they aren’t concrete. In other words, you will never bump into the number 1, but you may bump into one (concrete) object.

Another, secondly, is because singling out an object within the sea of experience is not equivalent to experiencing a quantity of one. I can easily split the ‘red block’ into two red blocks without manipulating it whasoever by simply conceptually divvying the red block in half: no different than how I can single out 1 finger or 2 parts of that finger—it’s all just nominal.

Kinda sounds like a flaw in reason, I mean why should anyone take your word for it? What makes your reasoning better?

I don’t want anyone to blindly follow me: please see the above arguments—let’s start there.

Allegedly, I get by fine without reason.

You must use reason, in the sense that you cannot avoid it. You are using your faculty of reason to argue against me right now; and you use it in practical life every time you so much as think (implicitly or explicitly).

So, under your view, the brain is not representing anything? ‘Seeing’ and ‘smelling’, by my lights, are senses: are you saying we have senses without perceptions (i.e., formulations of those sensations)? — Bob Ross

I'm tempted to say we should talk as simply as possible to get at my point. I see this lamp on my desk. I perceive it. It's right there in front of me. I put my hand on it, and the metal is cool to the touch.

All the background biological stuff that enables this is not being denied. But the discursive subject only makes senes as a worldly 'public' entity. We now are on a 'stage' together or at a table enacting the norms of a scientific inquiry. Anything talk that calls that into question is necessarily unjustifiable.

as this demonstrates that ‘he’ is representing the world, and that is in the form of his conscious experience; for giving him morphine has inhibited his sensory receptors and cognitive functions and thusly he has lost his ability to represent pain (i.e., and lost his ability to have the sense of touch in general). How would you explain it if his body is not responsible for representing unpleasurable and unwanted damage to his body in the form of pain? — Bob Ross

I embrace the existence of pain. The meaning of pain is (roughly) its inferential relationships with other entities, like morphine and the spinal cord and spiritual training perhaps. Both 'mental' and 'physical' entities exist on the same inferential plane. All entities are interdependent. The pain is not and cannot be part of some absolutely disconnected 'interior.' The concept could have no meaning, no use.

Your pain exists in my world, even if I access it differently than you. Otherwise we could never talk about it. Pain plays a role in inferences like umbrellas and sardines.

The pain need not be understood as a representation of something else, even if we do indeed articulate a causal relationship of the pain or its absence with rusty nails and doses of morphine.

Pain, as the qualitative sensation, is not in the world like, for mathematically realists, the square root of two is; so I don’t understand how it is ‘flat’ in that sense. — Bob Ross

The main idea in my flat ontology is that the 'fundamental' aspect of entities is their inferential relationships to one another. That they exist otherwise in very different ways is something like a distraction. It's fine that nickels and protons and octonions exist and are accessed very differently. They are all connected by the role they play in our giving and asking for reasons for claims about them. We rational ontologists are not outside looking in. Our normative discourse establishes the conceptual structure of the only reality we can talk about sensibly.

No we are not gremlins in a pineal gland. No I do not sit behind my eyes. I am a collective organism that represents the world to itself via sensibility, receptivity, and the understanding. — Bob Ross

I agree: an organism. But... as a scientist / ontologist, you are not just goo or even just self-modelling goo. You are at this table with me talking about reality, living into and toward an ideal of rationality. Dramaturgical ontology. The biological details that make this possible are secondary to the dramaturgical possibility of establishing such details rationally.

What do you mean by ‘public stage’? Rational conversation is of our representations. What else would it be? — Bob Ross

Rational conversation is, I insist, about the worldly object, the public object. Occasionally we might talk about your 'take' on Hegel instead of Hegel. But both are worldly objects accessed differently.

I did not understand your answer to this question: could you elaborate? I am not asking about language nor concepts (in the sense of our faculty of reason taking in our perceptions as input and derive ideas/concepts of them in our native language)—I am talking about representations (i.e., our faculty of understanding producing a filtered representation of the world). — Bob Ross

I'm trying to say that normative linguistic rationality and the inferential relationships between entities are, for us, the 'deepest' level. Whether or not the representational framework is meaningful and appropriate depends on logical and semantic norms that transcend any particular ontologist on the 'stage' of the public ontological inquiry.

What does it mean for a person to be rational ? What does it mean to feel the responsibility to justify claims ? And the duty to change a set of beliefs when they are not coherent? Our rational inquiry is not outside of Being peeping in.

The necessary being for ontology is a community of ontologists articulating reality together. This implies a shared world and a shared language.

The OPs position is more open minded so needs less wriggling on the hook. — FrancisRay

I guess I see it more as imagining a hook so you have something to wriggle on.

there's two sides to the debate. — FrancisRay

Yes I understand the move to describe it as information processing, but does that really solve anything different for the hard problem? Searle's Chinese Room Argument provides the problem with this sort of "pat" answer. As you walk away self-assured, this beckons back out to you that you haven't solved anything. Where is the "there" in the processing in terms of mental outputs? There is a point of view somewhere, but it's not necessarily simply "processing". — schopenhauer1

So insightful :clap:

Do you see yourself as particularly well qualified to judge what is science?
— wonderer1

You are getting mighty close to arguing from a place of bad faith. But please do continue...poison well commence I guess. — schopenhauer1

I asked a question which you didn't answer. Do you know why are you are jumping to conclusions about whatever arguing you are speculating about?

In any case, I'd say the poisoning of the well began with your OP.

If you don't like the Chinese Room argument because it seems too narrow, then call my version, the "Danish Room Argument". That is to say, my point that I wanted to take away was that processing can miss the "what-it's-like" aspect of consciousness whilst still being valid for processing inputs and outputs, whether that be computationalist models, connectionis models, both, none of them or all of them. I don't think it is model-dependent in the Danish Room argument. — schopenhauer1

Well, by all means, present your Danish Room Argument, but it's sounding like it amounts to an assertion that science has no role to play in explaining "what it is like".

That seems fairly out of touch with what the Philpapers survey suggests is mainstream philosophy of mind:

Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism?
Accept or lean toward: physicalism 248 / 414 (59.9%)
Accept or lean toward: non-physicalism 105 / 414 (25.4%)
Other 61 / 414 (14.7%)

As for me, scientific understanding has proven to be of enormous explanatory value in understanding what is like to be me. (And to some degree, what it is like to be you.) More and more it looks to me, as if you are a modern day analog to a geocentrist, when it comes to the topic of philosophy of mind, but you do you.

BTW, I'm rather accustomed to, and unbothered by, people finding things I say disagreeable. Respond or don't, as you like.

I looked at the survey you referenced and don't think I could get through all the questions without a dictionary of philosophy although the questions are rather simple.

On the mind question, physicalism or non-physicalism, I would be stuck picking 'other'.
For the majority picking physicalism how do they account for our endless mental content of non-physical subject matter? For example anything outside their present time and location. Of course it's done by physical means but shouldn't brains with the capability to deal with non-physicals be considered? And do the physicalists have any way of dealing with time outside the present? Past and future are non-physical to me.

So for a physicalists dealing with the past or future there really might be a hidden dualism.

I looked at the survey you referenced and don't think I could get through all the questions without a dictionary of philosophy although the questions are rather simple.

Very much agree.I couldn't complete the survey because my view is not listed. The survey gives away just how hidebound and ideologically limited academic consciousness studies is. It's as if nobody has even heard of non-dualism.

I'm with Chalmers. There are two sides and one of them doesn't make sense. But yes, there are two sides. .

As for me, scientific understanding has proven to be of enormous explanatory value in understanding what is like to be me.

Could you give an example of this explanatory value?

It's interesting you use the word hidebound to describe the...academics. Have you noticed the inconsistencies in their positions? They want everything to be physical but are alright with information being an abstract concept. Or claiming scientific understanding of information by referencing Claude Shannon. Or genetic information. Or physical information. The point being these are all incompatible as a whole and they don't see the problem in it....they are saying 'because science' without backing it up with a fundamental basis.

I'm saying physicalism or dualism should be logically consistent with your position on consciousness, information, time perception, physical matter...the whole list.

On the mind question, physicalism or non-physicalism, I would be stuck picking 'other'. — Mark Nyquist

A nice feature of the Philpapers survey webpage is the choices in results display that can be selected. (Hit refresh to get a page updated to show the new results display.) Earlier I copied and pasted the default coarse grained results, but selecting fine grained shows:

Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism?
Accept: physicalism 180 / 414 (43.5%)
Lean toward: physicalism 68 / 414 (16.4%)
Accept: non-physicalism 61 / 414 (14.7%)
Lean toward: non-physicalism 44 / 414 (10.6%)
The question is too unclear to answer 22 / 414 (5.3%)
Accept another alternative 13 / 414 (3.1%)
Accept an intermediate view 10 / 414 (2.4%)
Agnostic/undecided 8 / 414 (1.9%)
Reject both 4 / 414 (1.0%)
There is no fact of the matter 2 / 414 (0.5%)
Skip 1 / 414 (0.2%)
Accept both 1 / 414 (0.2%)

For the majority picking physicalism how do they account for our endless mental content of non-physical subject matter? — Mark Nyquist

I couldn't speak for the survey respondents. For myself, I'd ask you to clarify what you would find surprising about a physical system being able to represent ideas of things which don't exist in our physical reality.

I asked the physical system ChatGPT, "who is voldemort" and got the response:

Voldemort, also known as Lord Voldemort, is a fictional character and the main antagonist in J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series. He is a dark wizard who seeks to conquer the wizarding world and achieve immortality by any means necessary.

Physical representations of things which don't actually exist in physical reality doesn't seem problematic from my perspective.

For example anything outside their present time and location. Of course it's done by physical means but shouldn't brains with the capability to deal with non-physicals be considered? And do the physicalists have any way of dealing with time outside the present? Past and future are non-physical to me. — Mark Nyquist

Brains which can encode memories of the past, and use those memories to project possible futures, seems to be one of the major reasons that brains have been evolutionarily adaptive. A lot of the benefit of our brains' modelling capabilities lies in our ability to imagine multiple possible futures, and only one of those multiple possible futures might actually occur. Our ability to imagine counterfactuals plays an important role in us having human level abilities to affect how the future unfolds.

So, I guess I would say that "brains with the capability to deal with non-physicals" are considered by physicalists, but perhaps I am not understanding your question.

Could you give an example of this explanatory value? — FrancisRay

Sure. Understanding the nature of deep learning in neural nets has given me a lot of insight into the nature of human intuitions, the reliabilty or lack thereof of human intuitions, and what it takes to change intuitions.

Actually I don't disagree. Great explanation of how a physicalists could deal with the non-physical. I think this secondary level gives the detail that can resolve physicalism vs dualism.

Physical representations of things which don't actually exist in physical reality doesn't seem problematic from my perspective. — wonderer1

Those things are all ideas/concepts that you gave examples of. Ideas are part of the "what-it's-like" subjective nature of "mental". That is the thing to be explained. That physical things "represent" them, has never been in question, even by dualists or idealists.

There are two sides and one of them doesn't make sense. — FrancisRay

And this is where this particular argument always ends. It's only a question of how long it will go on till it peters out. And then in a day, or a week, or 10 minutes, it will just start up again. I'll see you then.

Either you (1) believe there are laws (which are inductively affirmed by science) and philosophical principles (which are presupposed in science) or (2) you don’t. Laws are not observed regularities: the latter is evidence of the former. — Bob Ross

There do seem to be laws of nature; there are constantly observed regularities, and very little, or perhaps even no, transgression of those laws. Are those laws independently existing or are they human formulations that merely codify observed invariances? Who knows?

What logically follows is what logically follows, no faith required unless we want to claim that what logically follows tells us something more than the premises, and their entailments, from which it logically follows.

This is incoherent with your belief that anything which is not directly observed (and thusly so-called ‘non-public evidence’) is not epistemically justified: laws of logic is not something you directly observe and would consequently be a ‘faith-based’ absurdity under your view. — Bob Ross

I have said that both what is publicly observable and the principle of consistency (validity) in logic are unarguably important in those domains of inquiry where knowledge is most determinable. Consistency alone is important everywhere. So, there is no "incoherency" or inconsistency in what I've said, since I've never claimed that logical principles are observable.

They are pragmatically necessary if you want to have a coherent and consistent discussion about anything is all. But they cannot determine what is true. This is a basic understanding in logic; that you can have valid arguments which are unsound, because although the conclusion(s) are consistent with the premises, the premises may be untrue, or even nonsensical.

There really is a problem of terms and definitions here to sort out:

Physicalism - only the physical exists
Or
Physicalism -the physical exists AND physical brains have the ability to deal with.the non-physical

Dualism - the physical and the non-physical exist
Or
Dualism - the physical exists AND physical brains have the ability to deal with the non-physical

So for me the second definitions are both the same and both correct.
Of course these are my own definitions based on our short discussion of the issue.