I'm not. This follows from what i take to be your (rather extremely) misguided conception of cognition in relation to phenomenal experience. It seems quite clear to me your monist conception is arbitrary and counter to what's presented to you. The line of yours I quoted should make it sufficient clear that your objection here is not apt, at all, in any way, to my objection/s. — AmadeusD

Nonsense. You didn't understand what I was saying. I don't even think what I was saying actually depends on any metaphysical stance. It just depends on you understanding what I mean by unconscious and conscious cognition:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscious_cognition

And the triviality that we learn about our own cognition through experience and behavioural responses or reports are used in psychological experiments as a way to access these events that take place in the manifold of our experiences.

Your point about other complex behaviors either does not clearly fit the kind of distinction between conscious and unconscious cognition I was thinking about or it simply begs the question in a way that is sympathetic to dualism by assuming that those certain things don't have experience or that there is a kind of flick of the switch between experience and non-experience. I don't like making claims about what or how things other things would experience because I think ultimately talking about it is ill-posed; but by rejecting the dualism between physical things and experience, my view rejects this notion you have that one thing clearly has experience and another does not. Again, where I was coming from in the first place was a notion of human cognition where.we all agree on the role of experience operationally.

an underlying organisational structure — AmadeusD

Structure of what.

but given we already know 90% of our cognition has absolutely no noticeable effect on our phenomenal experience, this is just not plausible. — AmadeusD

You will have to be clear what you mean by this and give examples and then it will probably be easier for me to show you what I mean by interpreting these examples through my lense.

Experience is irrelevant to the explanations and organisations of cognition. There is nothing in cognitive science that would lead us to predict conscious experience from the underlying structure of, lets call it awareness, which is in turn strictly tied to (theoretically) the underlying physical relational structure of information processing in the brain. — AmadeusD

Cognitive science is not trying to explain phenomenal experience in any sense in the first place. Experience is relevant because cognition is studied by people reporting or behaving in reaction to their experiences, so cognition is tied to experience in that sense. If you went and participated in a study on memory or attention, you are reporting about your experiences to the experimenter, correct? In that sense, cognition is about your experiences. Cognitive models are constructed by scientists to explain the flow of people's experiences after the fact. We trivially wouldn't know about cognition without our own experiences ans ultimately notions of cognition are less fundamental than the brain which in principle explains all cognition purely through the apparatus of neurons.

This is the entire f-ing point my dude. We dont. And this is a known fact. We have no idea about most of our cognition. Because "as above.." — AmadeusD

I will give you a list of cognitions from wikipedia:

"functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, imagination, intelligence, the formation of knowledge, memory and working memory, judgment and evaluation, reasoning and computation, problem-solving and decision-making, comprehension and production of language."

Not one of these is not something you are not directly aquainted with by experience. Perception? Obviously experience. Attention? Obviously attending to experiences. Imagination? Bring up mental images, talk about narratives. Intelligence? Do an intelligence test, you have the experience of doing it and coming up with the answers. Memory? You experience your recollection of a fact or event. Judgement? You experience yourself looking at something and experiencing it and then making the judgement or reporting it and how you feel. Problem Solving? you experience yourself thinking and engaging with a problem. Language? You experience yourself reading or bringing up words.

All of these functions are describing things happening in experience.

Where we ascribe the term unconscious is when we don't really know how we do some of these things. We are unaware of where they came from. They seem automatic. They are not deliberative. But at the same time all of these tasks are being performed experientially and arguably deliberative processes are just products of automatic processes which perhaps show traits of temporal depth as I suggested before. Therefore, "unconscious" and "conscious" cognition has the same foundations in terms of flows of experience which are in some sense automatic. What explains the transition from one experience or behaviour to the next? The brain. The brain in principle is all that is required to explain the changes in the sense of isomorphia., though not the phenomena itself in the sense of the hard problem. This is how I view "conscious" and "unconscious" cognition as inherently separate. Afterall, they are both being performwd by the same brain, perhaps just with different patterns of brain behaviour which nonetheless don't have a strict divide.

No. — AmadeusD

So how do you know when you have been distracted? There ia obviously a pattern of experiences which characterizes someone who has been distracted and deviates from a task.

I have no idea what you thought this was addressing? — AmadeusD

I am talking about the fact that if you lack access to the fundamental nature of reality you don't have to take intuitions about dualism to be ontological. It is therefore not waving away anything but embracing the reality of the limits to our knowledge.

But no. — AmadeusD

All you had to say.

You think a reductionist account is incoherent? — AmadeusD

I was talking about dualism being incoherent, i.e. conscious experiemce arising out of and separate to something elae.

I guess its just agree to disagree then since I don't find your justifications compelling. — Apustimelogist

It's difficult to when you misunderstand about 85% of what I say.

If property dualism were true, we could formulate and test psychophysical laws the same way we test physical laws, and come to the same levels of causal, relational and phenomenal certainty about them — AmadeusD

This wouldn't explain why physical things were connected to the particular phenomena though it is beside the point because I was talking about phenomenal experience being irreducible to functional explanations of "mental stuff".

here is though. I think i'll just leave you to discover the discussions on your own, at this stage. Chalmers himself deals with these issues in the work we're referring to. — AmadeusD

I have already explicitly coveredthis with you and told you his responses are irrelevant to my position.

It seems you simply have no idea about hte arguments in this area. — AmadeusD

Chinese Room*. Chalmers deals with it head-on aimed at Searle. — AmadeusD

I don't know. Someone who earlier admitted to misconstruing the hard problem, was seemingly unaware of some very general definitions of idealism and now has shown they are unaware of the knowledge argument, I think it is you who seem to have much less familiarity with this whole topic.

This, again, has literally nothing to do with the discussion we're having. — AmadeusD

Again, more evidence that you just don't understand anything I say. The point is that we can functionally explain why people have an intuition for dualism without requiring the distinction to be about fundamental ontology.

Mistakes are equivalent to neither, harm nor foul. Mistakes have been made.

You didn't understand what I was saying — Apustimelogist

False. Much of this response confirms.

Not one of these is not something you are not directly aquainted with by experience. Perception? Obviously experience. Attention? Obviously attending to experiences. Imagination? Bring up mental images, talk about narratives. Intelligence? Do an intelligence test, you have the experience of doing it and coming up with the answers. Memory? You experience your recollection of a fact or event. Judgement? You experience yourself looking at something and experiencing it and then making the judgement or reporting it and how you feel. Problem Solving? you experience yourself thinking and engaging with a problem. Language? You experience yourself reading or bringing up words. — Apustimelogist

You do not understand what you're talking about given the above. You're conflating the activitiy in the brain with the (abstract) experience which is not of that action. We are blatantly speaking past each other and you are, unfortunately, flat-the-heck-out-wrong.

I was talking about dualism being incoherent, i.e. conscious experiemce arising out of and separate to something elae. — Apustimelogist

Which makes it all the more clear that you're confusing not only the concepts you're discussing, but yourself in the process.

I tried to end this exchange to avoid having to get this 'dirty' but its just blatantly obvious you're protecting positions that are wrong on every level.

Again, appreciate the time - but at this point I really don't care. This is stupid.

You do not understand what you're talking about given the above. You're conflating the activitiy in the brain with the (abstract) experience which is not of that action. We are blatantly speaking past each other and you are, unfortunately, flat-the-heck-out-wrong. — AmadeusD

Here is the issue. You are talking about the idea of some mysterious unobservable process.

I am coming from a different angle which is what is actually being studied in psychology. We are studying observable data, right? Thats where all psychological study comes from. We then give names to these events we observe. Some of them we describe as involving conscious, deliberate awareness. Others as unconscious or automatic. But both these categories are things that are observable, just like a reflex is something like an act performed automatically but we are still observing empirical data. Or playing music on the piano in a habitual automatic fashion. Both of these things can be experienced by the one performing these acts even though they are categorized as automatic or unconscious - because they lack deliberation. This is what I am talking about when I am saying that both unconscious and conscious cognition arr manifest in experience and so not fundamentally different in that way. Yes the behaviors are different, but after starting from the empirical observations, it is then that models of cognition are constructed to explain those events after the fact.

So when I am talking about unconscious cognition I am talking about these observable events and this is a totally valid way to do it because after all, thats how we know these things are happening and thats the entire basis of the categorization. We don't have access to what is going on in someones head when they automatically and fluidly do some kind of intricate automatic event so we therefore we cannot be distinguishing automatic and controlled cognition through direct observation of the unobservable faculty inside someones head. If you look at lists detailing the differences between automatic and controlled cognition, you will find that all of the things on the lists are what you can observe for yourself through your own experience... because unconscious and conscious processes are defined from whats observable, we do it by categorizing the behaviour that is experienced and observed by people. Models might then built to explain that after the fact and obviously people might construct different latent models to explain the same observable facts.

So by my reasoning we have both of these categories are, on the most superficial level, about behaviours and experiences which are just different in ways which can be directly discerned from experiences or behaviors. They both have in common that we can view them and discerning them through our own personal experience. We can then construct different underling cognitive models to explain them. But at the end of the day brain activity is more fundamental than these models. So at the end, what do we have? Two sets of distinct events observable in experience and, in principle, brains which explain them because the cognitive models can in principle be eliminated as underlying causes. They both can be entirely discerned and explainable in the same two mediums of experience and then the brain in similar ways. The brain is doing all the hardwork for both processes and again the main difference can be thought of in terms of something like temporal and contextual depth of processing. Conscious processes are very sensitive to temporal contexts - to goals, to history, to future - deliberately controlling attention in open ended scenarios. Whereas automatic processing the temporal or contextual depth is thin. Reactions to cues which are indifferent to recent histories or goals and no longer entertain an open endedness in future context presumably due to practise and repetition or expertise. I think it is widely considered though that these are just extremes and most things meet in the middle somewhere; for instance, playing a musical instrument is definitely attentionally demanding but if you are familiar with a piece enough you will be going through passages in a very habitual and automatic pattern. The less familiar you are, the more deliberate is the playing of those passages.

Which makes it all the more clear that you're confusing not only the concepts you're discussing, but yourself in the process. — AmadeusD

No, because that incoherence being referred to ia just referring to the paradox of phenomenal judgement as stated in Chalmers' book.

Everything in this response further entrenches the clear fact you are confusing cognition and experience. They are patently separate events.
The charge that I'm invoking some mysterious unobservable is risible, in that context. The causal link between cognition and experience is unobservable, as all causal relationships are. I have not posited that cognition is unobservable. Again, betraying your clear lack of comprehension of what's been said. I am unsure why you're bothering with length replies at this stage.

Everything in this response further entrenches the clear fact you are confusing cognition and experience — AmadeusD

No, not at all. I am just pointing out than in the scientific process we construct concepts and models of cognition abstracting from things people observe in their immediate experience. They are just constructs describing experiences and behaviour. "Unconscious" cognition is a category defined by directly observable experiences in the exact same way "conscious" cognition is. When awake, we are always in the flow of experiences, sometimes with the phenomenology of deliberative thought, sometimes with automaticity where we are not really aware of why or how we have behaved in a certain way. We cannot directly observe the root cause for either but in principle, any underlying hidden cause or explanation for exactly why we go through chains of either "deliberate" acts or "automatic" ones will be explainable completely by a sufficiently complete model of the brain. "Cognitive modules" are in principle completely explainable just by dynamics in the brain. With regards to phenomenal experience, both these kinds of cognition are in the same boat in terms of unfolding on the same experiential space with the same category of underlying explanation very broadly in terms of brain dynamics.

I am unsure why you're bothering with length replies at this stage. — AmadeusD

I am just trying make sure I am articulating my thoughts as thoroughly as I can, even if just for the case of someone else reading.

The charge that I'm invoking some mysterious unobservable is risible, in that context. — AmadeusD

"We can understand it as an underlying organisational structure that informs experience in some way, but given we already know 90% of our cognition has absolutely no noticeable effect on our phenomenal experience, this is just not plausible. Experience is irrelevant to the explanations and organisations of cognition. There is nothing in cognitive science that would lead us to predict conscious experience from the underlying structure of, lets call it awareness, which is in turn strictly tied to (theoretically) the underlying physical relational structure of information processing in the brain. This is so much more fine-grained than you're allowing for, while simultaneous so much simpler than you seem to think it really is. Cognition has no per se relationship to experience. This is, in fact, in what that mystery largely consists in. Even if we are to grant a 100% reductive concept of 'consciousness' there is no current, plausible way to connect cognition with experience beyond some vague, uninteresting correlates that amount to 'vibes'."

I didn't write this ...

There is nothing in cognitive science that would lead us to predict conscious experience from the underlying structure of, lets call it awareness, which is in turn strictly tied to (theoretically) the underlying physical relational structure of information processing in the brain. — Apustimelogist

…..and yet, methodological dualism is still not granted as necessarily the case with respect to human intelligence.

….unfolding on the same experiential space with the same category of underlying explanation very broadly in terms of brain dynamics. — Apustimelogist

…..and yet, there is currently no plausible explanation for experiential space in terms of sufficiently reduced brain dynamics.

So someday some scientific genius figures out how the brain’s dynamics functions right down to a gnat’s ass, and all “I”’s disappear. It shall be known there never was an “I”, never an experiential space that wasn’t legislated by the empirical cause/effect of natural law, and no one really registers the cognition of “broccoli” without this many neurotransmitters crossing this many clefts in this network in this region, neuroplasticity be damned.

Yea. Wonderful. Let’s all stop being human for the sake of facts by science. Probably best to kill off those that remain insisting on cognition by personality rather than cause/effect by activation potential.

(Sigh)

methodological dualism — Mww

I might steal this phrase to describe how even though I am not a dualist, I often refer to both brains and experiences.

…..and yet, there is currently no plausible explanation for experiential space in terms of sufficiently reduced brain dynamics. — Mww

The experiences aren't explanatorily reducible to brains, but in principle, the dynamics of how these experiences change will map to the dynamics of how brain states change. Maybe to be more intuitive, a "perfect" model of the brain will produce all of the behaviours and reports you would find in normal people. Maybe that model is used to control a synthetic but perfect replica of a human body - no one would be able to tell the difference. Put that replica in a psychology experiment, it would then demonstrate all the findings of psychology and our various cognitions.

But then, models of brains are just predictive tools that replicate functions and behaviours. They don't tell you anything about the underlying metaphysics or devalue experience imo. A model of a brain we construct isn't necessarily a statement about that, it is a bundle of formal tools and math that we can use.

I don't think such things are a threat to people's humanity.

I don't think such things are a threat to people's humanity. — Apustimelogist

Yeah, me either, truth be told. I suspect a “perfect” model is altogether impossible, and a relatively perfect model doesn’t tell us what we want to know.

…..and yet, methodological dualism is still not granted as necessarily the case with respect to human intelligence. — Mww

To be clear, he's quoting me here.
I can't entirely grok from you where you sit, but I think we're seeing hte same issue with that quoted passage in relation to Ausp's position that dualism is inherently incoherent. IT is required to speak about what we currently know as to a relationship between the brain an experience. Only a gap serves to plug the gap hehehehehe.

IT is required to speak about what we currently know as to a relationship between the brain an experience. — AmadeusD

Language is required to speak; dualism is that by which a functional relationship between the real and the abstract, is possible.

For dualism to be inherently incoherent is to prove with apodeictic certainty the relation between brain dynamics and, e.g., its empirical manifestation as experience. To propose a “perfect” model of the brain as being sufficient to provide that proof, violates the principle of induction, insofar as it is impossible to anticipate that the construction of the model won’t destroy the possibility of what it’s trying to prove. Which is immediate sufficient reason for an established doctrine represented as dualism to be left intact as an explanatory device, which contradicts the proposition that it is inherently incoherent.

The problem is quite obvious: the apodeictic certainty of the relation between brain dynamics and its manifestation…..won’t be of experience, in that the natural law of physical dynamics only determines conditions according to natural law, to which experience does not abide. While this seems to eliminate the abstract from the initially proposed functional relationship, the whole purpose of the “perfect” model to begin with, it just leaves us with that which in general we will refuse to accept, and we’ve succeeded wonderfully in making things that much worse.

...........Yes. lol.

:eyes:

A fellow... mysterian? Good to find one. We are a rare breed.

If you’re one I wouldn’t hesitate to join up.

What’s a mysterian?

The crazy view that there are problems and mysteries. Problems are those areas in which we can hope to get some insight, mysteries are those parts which we can't get insight.

“…..Human reason, in one sphere of its cognition, is called upon to consider questions, which it cannot decline, as they are presented by its own nature, but which it cannot answer, as they transcend every faculty of the mind. (…) The arena of these endless contests is called Metaphysics…”

Looks like the problem-solvers just don’t bother with that sphere of cognition in which the mysterians find their endless contests.

Maybe we’re all problem-solvers from a practical point of view, but mysterians otherwise.

Oh, I metaphysics too. Quite a lot. But, as your mentor suggests, I proceed very little.

It is still fun.

Oh, I metaphysics too. Quite a lot. — Manuel

“…. Time was, when she was the queen of all the sciences; and, if we take the will for the deed, she certainly deserves, so far as regards the high importance of her object-matter, this title of honour. Now, it is the fashion of the time to heap contempt and scorn upon her…”

Maybe it’s still fun because we heap no contempt, instead just let it play out.

And he is correct.

Well, this is pure speculation. If nothing else, metaphysics teaches at least about how philosophers go about building mental structures which they believe latches on to the external world.

On a slightly more positive note, it does tell us quite a bit about "folk psychology/science".

Finally, it could be that one system is "closer to truth" than another one. But we have no possible way of finding out which one is correct. There is something here to be said about "common sense" here, of which your guy said:

"It is indeed a great gift from heaven to have plain common sense. But this common sense must be shown in practice, through judicious and reasonable thoughts and words, not by appealing to it as an oracle when one has no rational arguments to offer."

That's not trivial to do.

….not by appealing to it as an oracle when one has no rational arguments to offer. — Manuel

Ill-disguised poke at British/Scottish empiricism in general?

:scream:

Nope.

In defense of Hume! Against his mis-interpreters!

It's near the very beginning of his Prolegomena.

Wow, I got one point over you on Kant. This made my day.

:cool:

“…. It is positively painful to see bow utterly his opponents, Reid, Oswald, Beattie, and lastly Priestley, missed the point of the problem….”

You’re right: in defense of Hume in particular contra British/Scottish empiricism in general.

Ironic, innit? Hume termed his empirical cause/effect conditions “constant conjunction”, which Kant translated into “habit”, and Kant was himself the epitome of habit, given the anecdotal evidence of his contemporaries.

He interprets the people he reads very well. Not only Hume, but also Locke and Descartes and Leibniz and others. Good stuff.

…..it could be that one system is "closer to truth" than another one. But we have no possible way of finding out which one is correct. — Manuel

Do you think maybe that accounts for the rise of the analytic doctrine, the non-systemic program? If one system is no more provably correct than another, why hold with systemic metaphysics at all?

By non-systemic you mean non-systematic? If so, I think that it merely has to do with the fantastic advance of the sciences, by which one can spend one's whole career studying the neuron of a squid, without knowing much more about biology.

We no longer have people who are capable of knowing all the sciences very well - including mathematics, which makes serious system building extremely difficult.

As for your second question, that would be my guess.

….the fantastic advance of the sciences….. — Manuel

Ahhhh….sorta like, video killed the radio star.

one can spend one's whole career studying the neuron of a squid, without knowing much more about biology. — Manuel

Ahhhh…..sorta like OLP: it’s enough that everybody speaks without having to think about how there came to be words.

Which is worse for Mr. or Mrs. Thinking Subject, not caring, or being too lazy to care, about what goes on between the ears that doesn’t require test equipment to discover.

It's an extremely hard topic that does not have empirical evidence by way in which a demonstration could be given that would settle the issue. So why bother when we have all this things we can check?

Of course, you and I will disagree and think that they are granting too much to the given which (actually) belongs to the subject. But then that's why we are around and will continue to be around for quite a bit more.

….granting too much to the given…. — Manuel

As in, Sellars, the myth of? Faith in…holding to….sense-data theories of direct empirical knowledge?

I know I would, and I think you would, disagree with that, rather holding to representational, that is, indirect, knowledge theories.

Apologies for the obscure formulation. But you interpreted correctly. Mainly granting the given in experience much more value or force than it merits. Because on closer investigation, a lot of these so called "empirical" things, turn out to depend on the a priori mechanisms we have. And we then attribute to objects things which don't belong to it.

There are plenty of good reasons, supported by science, to believe indirect realism over direct realism, as I discussed at length here. — Michael

And the science of the brain and its processes is important to understand, but philosophy constructed a particular framework we should be aware of, because it did so for its own purposes. As I mentioned before, philosophy does not like the fact that we are sometimes mistaken. Instead of rectifying our errors with the means and explanations in each case, philosophy problematizes our entire relation to the world as an abstracted case—creating a space between us and the world. As an example, instead of accepting that we just see, however corruptible in particular ways and cases (hallucinating, dreaming, physiological issues, etc), philosophy projects a “reality” that we only see “indirectly” (e.g., that we have to “perceive”, or that we each see differently, or that we only see the “appearance” of, or “sense datum” of, or that create “qualia” for us, etc.), which allows philosophy to control the form of error (as a problem we might solve) or that we see “directly” which is judged by a manufactured standard that philosophy desires, creates, and imposes: a kind of knowledge that is certain, universal, generalized, abstract, etc. Basically, the dichotomy is false and manufactured and the world in all its varied forms and criteria gets abstractly judged as a single form of “reality”.

But I don't understand how we got to this point. You were saying something about us wanting to help each other if we're in pain, and somehow conclude from this that indirect realism is false? Your reasoning is confusing. — Michael

Examining the ordinary criteria and mechanics of pain, of how we judge and respond to another’s pain (acknowledging or denying it), shows philosophy’s desire to instead “know”** another’s pain (partly that it wants to avoid the claim another’s pain makes on us). Philosophy would rather turn it into an intellectual problem that is either equated or not (**subject to knowledge and certainty). This, like the example of “reality”, shows philosophy’s inclination to skip over our human lives and split our relation to the world entirely as an abstract problem.