Yes, there is a dualism there. Causal closure is defined in terms of a sort of mental/physical dualism where only the physical is causally efficacious. That's one of the things that I think is wrong with it.

Does a dual aspect theory avoid this problem? I am not sure. For one, it seems hard to have dual aspect theories without panpsychism, but even if you have pansychism you have to explain why, if everything experiences, our minds end up being discrete and 'bound to our bodies' in the way they appear to be. And the question of psychophysical harmony remains completely unaddressed.



Sure, but this leaves the problem of psychophysical harmony completely unaddressed. So you have all the same problems.

I asked this in the other thread. How exactly does Spinoza's conception demonstrate why the experiences produced by our bodies should synch up with the evolutionary history of our perceptual organs? If everything has an experiential/mental side to it, why is our phenomenological horizon rooted to our body in the way it seems to be? Shouldn't half my brain and the surrounding air make up its own physical system with a concious dual aspect, or the same for 4 people in a room? If all physical systems have this dual aspect, how does anesthesia or a drop in blood pressure wipe this away for us? Why is the experiential side of this dual aspect "just so" so as to make the experience side match the physical side? What's the relation between the two? How could such a position ever be verified or supported empirically? It seems very "God of the gaps," to me.

I don't think this is a silver bullet at all. All the same problems remain.



Have you read the book? I feel like it sort of gets misrepresented in reviews because the argument really doesn't come into focus until the last chapter. Hoffman's point is an argument about a certain, fairly dominant form of naturalism that imports Kantian dualism into "science." This view is ultimately self-refuting in just the sort of way Plantinga is talking about, although Hoffman provides much more empirical support for his claims. If you've only read his earlier "desktop interface" papers (which have the benefit of being free), I think it's easy to miss how Hoffman's ideas have changed pretty radically, even if he uses the old arguments to prove the new thesis.

Hoffman thinks the only way to avoid this is a sort of objective idealism with agents baked in from the start—"agential realism." This solution is not very convincing IMO. The argument that the sort of semi-Kantian representationalist soup dominant in modern cognitive science is self-refuting is, IMHO, quite strong (and plenty of people other than Hoffman have attacked it, for example the enactivist view counters other elements of it).

Exactly...the reductionists seek to analyze the physical in terms of the mental (idealism) or the mental in terms of the physical (eliminative physicalism). Tendentious thinking prevails on both sides. — Janus

Nothing wrong with reductionist analysis as such (A is nothing other than B) - that is the most common type of explanation, particularly in science. Where ephiphenomenalism goes disastrously wrong is in a mistaken application of the causal exclusion principle. It is like saying that if you are putting one foot in front of the other, then you cannot also be walking, and if you are walking, then you cannot also be fetching a glass.

Eliminativist positions sometimes succumb to this type of error, but not all eliminativism is necessarily wrongheaded - it just needs to be properly motivated. Merely having an alternative explanation is not enough, you need to show that it is superior in every respect, and that can be a tall order.

:up:

I agree on the type of error involved. I disagree on the track record of reductionism. How many true reductions do we have? Thermodynamics and statistical mechanics is the canonical example, but it is a rare example. 120 or so years on, the basics of molecular structure in chemistry has yet to be reduced to physics. Reductions are not common. Unifications, the explanation of diverse phenomena via an overarching general principle are far more common. For example, complexity studies explains disparate phenomena like earthquakes and heart beats via a similar underlying mathematics. But of course this does not say that heart beats or earthquakes are "nothing but," the math they share in common. Yet it seems to me that unifications are very often misunderstood as reductions.

That and facts about composition is misunderstood as a reduction. To be sure, all cells are made from molecules. All molecules are made from atoms. This isn't a reduction. You can't predict how a molecule works from theory in physics, you need all sorts of ad hoc empirically derived inputs for it to work. The method of reductionism is fine, but it's not the only successful method either. Unification is as successful, if not more. But when reduction becomes an ontological assumption, I think it leads to problems. For one, you get the elevation of parts over wholes, the idea that wholes must be "nothing but" their parts.

Prima facie, there is no reason to believe that smallism, the idea that all facts about large things must be reducible to facts about smaller entities, and that smaller = more fundamental, is true. A sort of bigism where parts are only definable in terms of the wholes of which they are a part actually seems more common in physics by my reckoning.

But I think the error you identify is directly related to smallism and reductionism. The justification for the causal closure principle is normally that minds are "nothing but" brains/bodies, and the brains and bodies are "nothing but" atoms and their constituent particles. Particles are the smallest structure and thus most fundemental. Everything is "nothing but" these, and so everything is describable in terms of their interactions. This makes all other causal explanations duplicative. At best they are a form of data compression. And so this makes motive irrelevant and conciousness epiphenomenal.

Of course, were this true, it would make conciousness a sort of bizarre physical phenomena. Where else in nature would such epiphenomna exist? You'd have a physical property of a system (conciousness) that only has causation going in one direction. Everywhere else all properties are causally efficacious. This explanation still seems to rely on a sort of sui generis conciousness and dualism of sorts.

I don't think physicalists deny the existence of experience nor do they say that experience must accompany cognitive functions. Or have I misunderstood you? — T Clark

I don't think you've misunderstood me, but you may have misunderstood physicalism. A theory of consciousness should ideally be able to specify the necessary and sufficient conditions for a thing to be conscious, and explain why those conditions result in/constitute/realise consciousness. A physicalist theory, if it is to have any force, must specify the sufficient conditions, that is, what conditions necessitate consciousness, and explain why. Otherwise it's more of a speculative possibility than a theory with persuasive force.

I also believe it is reasonable to call into question the mind-independence of the objects of cognition. — T Clark

To question the mind-independence of a thing, is to suppose the possibility of that thing without a mind.

To even state an affirmative belief presupposes the validity of each and every conception, and their non-contradictory relation to each other, which constitutes the judgement such belief represents.

If the major function of a mind is pure thought, and the major contribution of pure thought is cognition, and the product of any cognition is an object, albeit of a particular kind, how can it be reasonable to believe objects of cognition may be possible without a mind?
—————

Perhaps the stated belief is intended to indicate an affirmative questioning of mind-independence in general, of which objects of cognition are merely a part. But there is nothing in that form of belief that is sufficient to suggest contingently on the one hand, or prove necessarily on the other, that the belief is not itself a mind-dependent object of cognition.
————-

It is reasonable to question mind-independence in any degree, with respect to any supposed mind-related function, iff it is possible to question mind itself outside and apart from the glaring self-contradiction of having to use mind in order to deny the very possibility of whatever functionality is supposed as belonging to it.

In the interest of fair play, I can still ask how it is that you think it reasonable to question the mind-independence of objects of cognition, given the mutually agreeable presupposition that objects of Nature are not what is meant by objects of cognition.

According to Chalmers, at least as I understand him, the hard problem is how to get from a physical, biological, neurological explanation of cognitive functions to experience. — T Clark

Yes, either by a theory or by redefining these things as experiential.

Yes, I agree with this description!

A theory of consciousness should ideally be able to specify the necessary and sufficient conditions for a thing to be conscious, and explain why those conditions result in/constitute/realise consciousness. A physicalist theory, if it is to have any force, must specify the sufficient conditions, that is, what conditions necessitate consciousness, and explain why. — bert1

I don't think this is true, although I admit I'm not sure what it means. What does it mean for a theory to specify what conditions necessitate consciousness or any other phenomenon? What does it mean that a theory has force or is robust? Why must a theory specify what conditions are necessary for a phenomenon rather than just sufficient?

To question the mind-independence of a thing, is to suppose the possibility that thing without a mind. — Mww

No, the opposite. Or did I say it wrong? Or did I misunderstand what you wrote? To clarify what I'm trying to say, I think reality is the result of the interaction between the physical world and our minds.

If the major function of a mind is pure thought, and the major contribution of pure thought is cognition, and the product of any cognition is an object, albeit of a particular kind, how can it be reasonable to believe objects of cognition may be possible without a mind? — Mww

I don't think the major function of a mind is pure thought and I don't think cognition is produced primarily by pure thought. For that matter, I don't really think pure thought exists. Or maybe I just don't understand what it is.

But there is nothing in that form of belief that is sufficient to suggest contingently on the one hand, or prove necessarily on the other, that the belief is not itself a mind-dependent object of cognition. — Mww

Is belief a mind-dependent object of cognition?... Yes, I guess it is.

the glaring self-contradiction of having to use mind in order to deny the very possibility of whatever functionality is supposed as belonging to it. — Mww

I don't see any contradiction. Are you saying a mind cannot think about itself? I can use a camera to take a picture of itself if I have a mirror.

I didn't respond to this in my previous response.

In the interest of fair play, I can still ask how it is that you think it reasonable to question the mind-independence of objects of cognition, given the mutually agreeable presupposition that objects of Nature are not what is meant by objects of cognition. — Mww

Ah, now I see the problem. When I quoted Wayfarer I misunderstood "objects of cognition" as "objects of nature." Now that we've straightened that out, I do think objects of cognition are objects of cognition. After all, objects of cognition are also objects of nature.

‘Learning to use’ is not quite the same as ‘inventing’. Was the law of the excluded middle invented by us, or was it discerned? Would it be something that is ‘true in all possible worlds’? — Wayfarer

Well, I would say that such rules and understandings are directly enacted within our experience. And so, just as we are unable to present a perspective-independent view of objects beyond our immediate experience, there is no perspective-independent view of such matters like the law of excluded middle. What can be ascertained is that we learn to enact these notions in various ways in our experience. Are possible worlds much more than a way of making sense of how the mind can generate imaginings we think of as counterfactuals?

Brains don’t do anything, rather agents make judgements. — Wayfarer

Well, agents abilities of doing anything corresponds to the brain's ability to do anything. You may say that what we call the brain is something like a model constructed in experience; but nonetheless, an objective world exists, and we can think of this objective reality as having the kinds of degrees of freedom we consider to be the case in the structure of the brains we observe, down to the level of ions crossing membrane barriers.

An agent can't make judgements without a brain, and messing with an agent's brain will mess with ita judgements.

without the exercise of reason — Wayfarer

I don't see the relevance. You wouldn't consider a damage in someone's reasoning (e.g. due to non-perception-related brain damage) changing the status of how veridical their perceptions are, would you?

The claim is that our cognition is conditioned by adaptation to see in terms of what is useful from the perspective of evolution, not what is true. So - what is true? What does the word even refer to? Well, that’s a question that neither walruses nor whelks can ask. Whereas we can ask it, and the answer matters to us. — Wayfarer

I think my position is not to argue about some single notion of veridicality, or objective truth - If, there is in principle no perspective-independent way that organisms can view and interact with the world perceptually, then such a notion is undermined in the sense that organisms simply cannot pick out such single "veridical" perspective even if there is an actual objective way the world is independently of our perception in principle (very difficult to see how this isnt the case from my perspective).

We are just directly aquainted with experiences, our cognitive faculties and abilities enacted within the flow of experiences. "Truth" is just a word used in conjunction with our abilities and faculties within experience, the ability to (fallibly) use the word then also related to assumptions or contingencies within the perspective. This is not relativism because I am just talking about the use of the word and related abilities. No fact of the matter about reference being assumed here.

However, I guess what gripes me about Hoffman is statements like this:

"Just as the color and shape of an icon for a text file do not entail that the text file itself has a color or shape, so also our perceptions of space-time and objects do not entail (by the Invention of Space-Time Theorem) that objective reality has the structure of space-time and objects."

Seems to imply to me that what I perceive is radically different in structure to the actual objective world. But in my story about the actual objective world, if coherent perception is to work effectively by mapping consistently to actual structures of the world so that we can get payoffs, then in some sense it must be the case that our perceptions are still mapping to an embedded subset of the objective of the world with that structure. At the same time, we can manifest synchrony to other parts of the actual world via extending our perceptual abilities with scientific technology and build scientific models.

Still, there may be no single perspective-independent way for an organism to map states or draw boundaries onto the world or particular subset - a compromise, as said before (And can we actually ascertain an objective fact of the matter about perceptual reference from within our perspectives? An even deeper question perhaps). Is there more to successful perception than how our effective our sensory-motor loops seem to be (predicting which perceptions come next or acting appropriately)?

What does it mean for a theory to specify what conditions necessitate consciousness or any other phenomenon? What does it mean that a theory has force or is robust? Why must a theory specify what conditions are necessary for a phenomenon rather than just sufficient? — T Clark

I'll see if I can explain with a simple example (it has to be simple because I don't know much science):

To what temperature do I have to heat this water to get it to boil? Prediction: it will boil at 100 degrees provided the following necessary conditions are met:
- sea level atmospheric pressure
- and all the obvious ones like having a heat source and a container that conducts heat etc
...when all these necessary conditions are met they will be jointly sufficient for the water to boil at 100 degrees. That is to say that even if one of the necessary conditions are not met then the water will not boil, and if all the necessary condition are met, they are jointly sufficient, which means the water MUST boil at 100 degrees. It can't not.
Further, a theory which tells a story about pressure and temperature of different materials and states of matter and so on will then explain why we get the result we do, and will be flexibly able to predict the phase changes of different materials under different circumstances, and that's how we test it: we make a bunch of predictions and then do the experiments. The theory will spit out the necessary and sufficient conditions for each phase change.

Applied to consciousness, a well-fleshed out theory will tell us the necessary and sufficient conditions for consciousness to arise at all, and perhaps even go further and tell us what particular experiences a conscious thing will feel under what circumstances. So to take @apokrisis preferred theory, the necessary conditions for x to be conscious are:
- models environment
- makes predictions based on that model
- for the purpose of building and maintaining itself as an organism (sorry if I got that wrong)
...and I presume these are taken to be jointly sufficient for consciousness. That is to say, if they are all met, x is most definitely conscious, it can't not be. (It wouldn't be much of a theory if they weren't jointly sufficient. That would be like saying "Water needs to be at atmospheric pressure at sea level before it will boil at 100 degree, but sometimes it just doesn't, even when those conditions are met. Water is weird like that." That's an incomplete theory, no? It fails to predict.")
So @apokrisis preferred theory makes a great reasonably clear prediction, because it specifies the necessary and sufficient conditions. The trouble it shares with all theories of consciousness is that we can't test it. We can use it to predict a human being is capable of being conscious, and predict a rock isn't. But we can't check, because we don't have a consciousness-o-meter. And if we use the theory to check, (i.e. we look to see if the organism models the world to make predictions in order to create and maintain itself as an organism) then we have just assumed the thing we are trying to show.

EDIT: this is why I keep asking variations of "So why can't that happen without consciousness?" The analogy with water is "Why can't water just stay unboiled at 100 degrees at sea level pressure?" And of course the theory answers that, it says why the jointly sufficient conditions necessitate that the water be boiling. It's not enough for a good theory to merely observe that water does in fact always boil at 100 degrees. There needs to be an explanation. And the situation with consciousness is even worse, we can't even agree on what to observe to detect the presence of consciousness - we don't even have an undisputed regularity of nature to explain. If we did have a consciousness-o-meter, that would give us a huge head start in developing a theory. We do have reports of human beings and the inference to other minds by abduction, that's a start, but it only tells us other humans are likely conscious, it tells us nothing about rocks (not without making a bunch of assumptions anyway).

There is certainly a relation to Plato, Hegel, and Wallace, but they are also very different from Hoffman's ideas in a lot of ways (particularly his "interface theory" stuff, which is very representationalist and Kantian). The idea of the mind "constructing reality" isn't one I find in the Plato, or the classical tradition more broadly for the most part. To be sure, "quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur,"—“whatever is received is received according to the manner of the receiver,"—but this doesn't have the Kantian implications that Hoffman's descriptions of the interface theory of perception do. Mind is never separated from nature. Rather, the two are part of a nuptial whole. Being and being known are two sides of the same coin (this might come through most clearly in Plotinus).

Hoffman's agential realism can't get away from the modern tendency towards reductionism and smallism. So ultimately he has the world of experience composed from very many less complex, part-like agential atoms. It's pretty far from Plato or Hegel, who have the idea that ideas/concepts are "more fully real," in that there is necessity behind their being what they are, whereas something like a rock, while obviously real in a sense, is just a bundle of external causes.

To quote Eric Perl's Thinking Being on the distinction:

The key insight of phenomenology is that the modern interpretation of knowledge as a relation between consciousness as a self-contained ‘subject’ and reality as an ‘object’ extrinsic to it is incoherent. On the one hand, consciousness is always and essentially the awareness of something, and is thus always already together with being. On the other hand, if ‘being’ is to mean anything at all, it can only mean that which is phenomenal, that which is so to speak ‘there’ for awareness, and thus always already belongs to consciousness. Consciousness is the grasping of being; being is what is grasped by consciousness. The phenomenological term for the first of these observations is ‘intentionality;’ for the second, ‘givenness.’ “The mind is a moment to the world and the things in it; the mind is essentially correlated with its objects. The mind is essentially intentional. There is no ‘problem of knowledge’ or ‘problem of the external world,’ there is no problem about how we get to ‘extramental’ reality, because the mind should never be separated from reality from the beginning. Mind and being are moments to each other; they are not pieces that can be segmented out of the whole to which they belong.”* Intended as an exposition of Husserlian phenomenology, these words hold true for the entire classical tradition from Parmenides to Aquinas.

* The quote here is from Robert Sokolowski's Introduction to Phenomenology.

So I think Hoffman helps us by making a good case for why a certain sort of thinking is self-refuting, but then he can't really get himself away from the bad elements of this way of thinking himself.

It probably deserves its own thread, but different ideas of "mind-independence," matter here.

For the classical tradition, there is no "mind-independent being," and I think they have a strong case for this based on the way they define "mind-independence." The paradigmatic formulation here is Parmenides' "the same is for thinking as for being." So the argument goes, even if there was truly "mind-independent being," one could not philosophize about it or speak of it. By the very act of speaking of it or thinking about it one has already given lie to its "mind-independence." If it can be thought of then a relationship between it and mind exists. This does not exclude what is super-intelligible, infinite being, but it does include the unintelligible.

Now, when moderns talk about "mind-independent" being they are generally bringing in a whole load of metaphysical assumptions alien to the earlier period. The "mind-independence" here is sometimes framed as a causal one. "The mind doesn't create the world; looking at things doesn't make them spring into existence." This point is made a lot, but it's a little strange because I know of no one who ever argued that looking at things makes them exist. But I think we end up here because of the modern division between subject and object, and the division between primary qualities that exist "out there" "in objects themselves," and secondary qualities (e.g. color or taste) that are said to only emerge in interactions between objects and minds. And this is also where "mind's constructing/generating" the world comes in. Now that we have assumed subject/object dualism, we find ourselves having to assign parts of reality to either one or the other (and this is the road to C.S. Lewis' "bloated subject," the sui generis source of all truth, goodness, and beauty).

Well, I don't think this distinction is a very good one. The fact is, to be epistemologically accessible and to make any difference at all, any property has to involve interaction. The positing of "properties 'in-themselves'" as set against "properties that exist in interaction," seems like a bad move. To be sure, apples only "look red," when someone sees them, but they also only "reflect wave lengths of light associated with red," when they are in the light. Likewise salt only dissolves in water when placed in water, and when photons do anything at all they can be said to be interacting, etc. All properties involve some sort of interaction, some sort of relationship, so relationships involving minds are hardly unique in this.

For much of ancient and medieval philosophy, created things only exist within a web of relations. They are, in some sense, defined by how they relate to everything else. Part of what makes a key a key is the context of a lock for example. Something can only reflect yellow light because there is light in our world, etc. And this is crucial for the differences in how mind-independence is approached.

Common modern examples of "mind independent realities," might be "the early galaxies before life formed." But clearly these are not mind independent in the ancient sense. We think about these things. We can see evidence of them. We think the formation of the galaxies and even the state of the earliest moments of the universe are causally connected to our own surroundings and our own being. So they aren't mind-independent at all. To get the "mind-independence" of modern thought you need to have already, perhaps unknowingly, started with some metaphysical assumptions about relationships, reductionism, the subject/object distinction, etc.

Or did I misunderstand what you wrote? — T Clark

Or, I misunderstood what you wrote. I took…..

it is reasonable to call into question the mind-independence of the objects of cognition. — T Clark

…..as characterizing objects of cognition as already being mind-independent, which is possible if objects of cognition and objects of Nature are treated alike. If one thinks they cannot be treated alike, then questioning the mind-independence of objects of cognition is perfectly reasonable, insofar as it is impossible they are, while the questioning the mind-independence of objects of Nature, is not reasonable insofar as it is impossible they are not.
————-

After all, objects of cognition are also objects of nature. — T Clark

There’s a movie, 2011, “The Sunset Limited”, where the entire cast consisting of only these two rather excellent actors Jones and Jackson, engage in a pure Socratic dialectic, involving all sorts of one-idea/proposition-leads-to another kinda stuff, attempts by the one to get the other to concede a point, using premises without mutually granted relevance.

Surely you see where I’m going with this.

Anyway….hopefully the original confusion is cleared.

To what temperature do I have to heat this water to get it to boil? Prediction: it will boil at 100 degrees provided the following necessary conditions are met:
- sea level atmospheric pressure
- and all the obvious ones like having a heat source and a container that conducts heat etc
...when all these necessary conditions are met they will be jointly sufficient for the water to boil at 100 degrees. That is to say that even if one of the necessary conditions are not met then the water will not boil, and if all the necessary condition are met, they are jointly sufficient, which means the water MUST boil at 100 degrees. It can't not. — bert1

The boiling point of water was determined empirically. I'm not sure if it can be determined by theory. I looked on the web and couldn't find a definitive answer.

Applied to consciousness, a well-fleshed out theory will tell us the necessary and sufficient conditions for consciousness to arise at all, and perhaps even go further and tell us what particular experiences a conscious thing will feel under what circumstances. So to take apokrisis preferred theory, the necessary conditions for x to be conscious are:
- models environment
- makes predictions based on that model
- for the purpose of building and maintaining itself as an organism (sorry if I got that wrong)
...and I presume these are taken to be jointly sufficient for consciousness. — bert1

This isn't a theory, it's a definition.

So apokrisis preferred theory makes a great reasonably clear prediction, because it specifies the necessary and sufficient conditions. — bert1

As I noted, this is not a theory, it's a standard you apply to an existing phenomenon to decide if it is living.

Or, I misunderstood what you wrote. I took…..

it is reasonable to call into question the mind-independence of the objects of cognition.
— T Clark

…..as characterizing objects of cognition as already being mind-independent, which is possible if objects of cognition and objects of Nature are treated alike. — Mww

When I said "objects of cognition", I was quoting Wayfarer incorrectly. He meant it the way you do.

There’s a movie, 2011, “The Sunset Limited”, where the entire cast consisting of only these two rather excellent actors Jones and Jackson, engage in a pure Socratic dialectic, involving all sorts of one-idea/proposition-leads-to another kinda stuff, attempts by the one to get the other to concede a point, using premises without mutually granted relevance. — Mww

I'd never head of it. I'll take a look.

This isn't a theory, it's a definition. — T Clark

You won't find @apokrisis theory in a dictionary. It's not what we mean by 'consciousness'.

But we can't check, because we don't have a consciousness-o-meter. — bert1

And yet in practice, there are procedures developed by neurologists to determine brain death in hospital situations.

To determine brain death, electrocerebral inactivity (ECI) should be demonstrated on EEG at a sensitivity of 2 μV/mm using double-distance electrodes spaced 10 centimeters or more apart from each other for at least 30 minutes, with intense somatosensory or audiovisual stimuli.

Brain scans can tell if you are thinking about tools or animals. Whether you are day dreaming or focused. Happy or in pain. Not yet an exact science and may never be, but further along than you seem to suggest.

Also you aren’t allowing for how theory would actually be structured to account for consciousness.

The Bayesian Brain is a high level theory of biosemiosis. It covers life and mind in a general fashion as enactive modelling relations. If correct, the story would have to apply to any life or mind that appears anywhere in the universe.

To then look inside your head as a human, with a modelling relation that has an architecture shaped by both its neurobiological and sociocultural habits, is then a very low level exercise. There is the particular way mammalian brains are structured into “modules” that specialise in different aspects of the world model. There is the everyday random way that what you had for breakfast might be playing on your mind as your belly grumbles.

A scientist might have a “theory” about whether you had a typical brain architecture - and make predictions about your possible neurodiversity based on that - but a theory about random thoughts that might arise is not really what you ought to expect. The measuring process to achieve that - the control over your life and experiences up to that date - might be considered a little too intrusive for that to be a desirable exercise.

So you are coming at what science can be expected to do in a simple-minded fashion. Your demands are epistemically naive. Science isn’t magic. Theories are themselves woven into hierarchical frameworks that serve pragmatic interests. Knowledge is knowledge when it is organised to cope with the general to the degree that generality is useful, and the particular to the degree that can matter as well.

That is why - to understand the mind from a neurocognitive viewpoint - there is first so much to learn. There is no one answer to the question you have - give me a theory that tells me both what consciousness is and also why I am experiencing exactly what I am experiencing right now. A theory that collapses the general and the particular, and which is somehow then useful to anyone.

I think my position is not to argue about some single notion of veridicality, or objective truth - If, there is in principle no perspective-independent way that organisms can view and interact with the world perceptually, then such a notion is undermined in the sense that organisms simply cannot pick out such single "veridical" perspective even if there is an actual objective way the world is independently of our perception in principle (very difficult to see how this isnt the case from my perspective). — Apustimelogist

But notice here the assumed perspective that our perception is limited to that of being an ‘organism’. It’s inherently reductionist, as if a biological analysis of the relation between organism and environment is the only meaningful perspective on the question of truth. But I question that h.sapiens is simply an organism, in fact I wonder if this is one of the prejudices introduced into modern culture by popular Darwinism.

For example, in Aristotle reason (logos) was more than just a tool for survival; it was the capacity to grasp rational truths and to understand the fundamental principles of logic, ethics, and metaphysics. For Aristotle, reason is a fundamental aspect of the human soul (psyche), specifically the rational soul, which is what distinguishes humans from other animals. (I might also add that it introduces the existential plight of the awareness of death and loss although that’s not made explicit in Aristotle.)

Aristotle posited that reason has an intrinsic orientation towards truth - ‘man desires to know’. It is through the faculty of reason that we can discern the forms (in the Aristotelian sense as ‘the essence of things’). In this context, reason is not merely a byproduct of evolution geared towards survival, but a natural capacity aimed at understanding the world as it truly is. Now, of course many aspects of Aristotelian philosophy such as his physics have been superseded but I believe the ‘doctrine of the rational soul’ is not among them.

Seems to imply to me that what I perceive is radically different in structure to the actual objective world. But in my story about the actual objective world, if coherent perception is to work effectively by mapping consistently to actual structures of the world so that we can get payoffs, then in some sense it must be the case that our perceptions are still mapping to an embedded subset of the objective of the world with that structure — Apustimelogist

In Chapter Three of Hoffman's book he discusses a dialogue he had with Francis Crick about the Kantian distinction between appearance and things in themselves, but I think he's suggesting that Crick misconstrues the nature of his distinction. Crick believed that the object 'as it is in itself' is simply the same object that our perceptions represent but existing unperceived. However, I think that is nearer to what Kant refers to as 'transcendental realism'. I don't think it correctly grasps the somewhat radical nature of what Kant was claiming. You have in mind the world (or object) that you think is ‘there anyway’ irrespective of whether you consider it or not. It’s not so simple.

can we actually ascertain an objective fact of the matter about perceptual reference from within our perspectives? An even deeper question perhaps. — Apustimelogist

Capital T Truth. It’s the provenance of the sages who were at the origin of the Western philosophical tradition, such as Parmenides. Google the book Timothy mention above Eric D Perl, Thinking Being - some kindly soul has posted a PDF copy online.

Now, when moderns talk about "mind-independent" being they are generally bringing in a whole load of metaphysical assumptions alien to the earlier period. The "mind-independence" here is sometimes framed as a causal one. "The mind doesn't create the world; looking at things doesn't make them spring into existence." This point is made a lot, but it's a little strange because I know of no one who ever argued that looking at things makes them exist. But I think we end up here because of the modern division between subject and object, and the division between primary qualities that exist "out there" "in objects themselves," and secondary qualities (e.g. color or taste) that are said to only emerge in interactions between objects and minds — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right, exactly correct. The formulation of idealism that I’ve explained in ‘mind-created world’ discusses this misapprehension of idealism as things springing into and out of existence, nevertheless it is exactly what I’m accused of suggesting whenever I raise it. But I think the over-arching issue of objects, subjects and their relations is unique to the modern period. And it comes from the attempt to treat the whole of existence as an object of scientific scrutiny. As phenomenology points out, and this was its unique insight, reality itself is not something we’re outside of or apart from (an insight shared with non-dualism.) Whereas the modern period is marked by a new sense of self-consciousness, the Cartesian ego who can only be certain of his own existence, the intelligent subject confronting a world of dumb matter.

For much of ancient and medieval philosophy, created things only exist within a web of relations — Count Timothy von Icarus

Exactly, because the world was the expression of a will, not simply dumb matter being acted upon by physical forces. Existence was ‘participatory’ in that through religious mythology and ritual we re-enact and participate in creation. We had yet to see ourselves as pieces of flotsam thrown up by what basically amounts to a highly sophisticated chemical reaction, Stephen Hawking’s ‘chemical scum’.

To get the "mind-independence" of modern thought you need to have already, perhaps unknowingly, started with some metaphysical assumptions about relationships, reductionism, the subject/object distinction, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You articulate exactly the themes I’ve been exploring ever since joining this forum and its predecessor. Whitehead’s ’unconscious metaphysics in science’.

I haven’t got to the final chapter of Hoffman’s book yet, but I’ll keep going with it.

Exactly, because the world was the expression of a will, not simply dumb matter being acted upon by physical forces. Existence was ‘participatory’ in that through religious mythology and ritual we re-enact and participate in creation. We had yet to see ourselves as pieces of flotsam thrown up by what basically amounts to a highly sophisticated chemical reaction, Stephen Hawking’s ‘chemical scum’.

This is no doubt part of it, but it seems to me that the issue goes down to the very basics of metaphysics, with two ideas. The first is the idea of things' properties emerging from arelational properties that exist and subsist "in-themselves," making the world reducible to "building blocks" with things simply "being what they are made of." This view has been attacked from a number of perspectives and I think Hegelians, Thomists, and contemporary process philosophers all give good reasons to reject it. The other view is representationalism, the idea that all we know is our own ideas or experiences, and I think this idea also has very strong points against it. The first idea is still going strong. The second is finally showing signs of breaking down. Perhaps I am too optimistic, but representationalism finally seems to be losing credibility in the philosophy and science of perception, and this will trickle down into the mainstream if the trend continues.

I don't think these positions even necessarily go hand in hand with a "disenchanted naturalism," and certainly they don't go hand in hand with science. Rather, the first is just a bad inference from the assignment of values to "objects themselves" in early modern mathematical physics, with people mistaking the shape of their mathematical model for the structure reality, and the second is due to early modern philosophers being rather poor students of the scholastics and missing their careful distinctions vis-á-vis the role ideas play in sign relations (in part because the late nominalists got very sloppy about this distinction at times and these were the folks more likely to be read in the early modern period, in part due to sectarian prejudices).

I sort of see this more as a historical accident than any necessary connection between technological progress and the methods of science and this particular (bad) brand of metaphysics. The other factor I see at work is the "anti-metaphysical movement," which has slowed the reappraisal of "primary versus secondary property" distinctions and smallism/building block ontologies. This sort of metaphysics has been allowed to remain part of a "default view," largely because of the intentional and dogmatic push to sideline metaphysics and discredit it more generally, which is of course itself just a particularly pernicious brand of metaphysics and philosophy of science (at least as I see it).

Well, and the anti-metaphysical camp was hoping to censor metaphysics and enshrine logical positivism as the default hegemon. But their own project collapsed in spectacular fashion, so all they really did was ensure that elements of Locke, Hume, and Kant (which they ironically disliked) would remain dominant and unquestioned for another 50 years.

How exactly does Spinoza's conception demonstrate why the experiences produced by our bodies should synch up with the evolutionary history of our perceptual organs? If everything has an experiential/mental side to it, why is our phenomenological horizon rooted to our body in the way it seems to be? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sorry, I don't really understand the question. That said, even in the absence of understanding the question I can ask why they should not "sync up". Also, Spinoza as I read him does not claim that "everything has an experiential side to it". If you want to explore that thought take a look at Whitehead's Process and Reality.

I think the salient point is that there can be multiple reductive explanations from different perspectives. So, to say that I went to the shop because I was thirsty is a reductive explanation, as much as saying I went to the shop because of certain neural activity is. Such different explanations do not contradict, and should not exclude, one another.

So for example, the epiphenomenalist might say consciousness does no work, just "goes along for the ride", so to speak, but that would be an illegitimate elimination of one reasonable way of explaining human behavior. I think what puzzles people is that we cannot combine the two explanations or achieve any absolute perspective which would eliminate one and retain the other. 'Either/ or' thinking seems to generally dominate the human mind.

Now, of course many aspects of Aristotelian philosophy such as his physics have been superseded but I believe the ‘doctrine of the rational soul’ is not among them. — Wayfarer

Well this is all just so antithetical to my viewpoint that I don't even have a response, ha.

Crick believed that the object 'as it is in itself' is simply the same object that our perceptions represent but existing unperceived. — Wayfarer

Yes, I am not suggesting that - we cannot conceive things in a way that steps out of our own perspectives. But I am suggesting a story about an actual objective world and how it would relate to the organism, and it seems less radical than what I interpret Hoffman as saying. Maybe though on some ways its more radical. Hoffman's seems to be saying that the structure of space-time and objects can be different to what we perceive. But if there is not one way for an organism to latch onto structure in the world, to draw distinctions, then is there a fact of the matter that the structure we perceive is different to actual structure? If we are latching onto the world in consistent ways that allow us to navigate it effectively then is there much difference? Seems to me Hoffman would have to show that there is some preferential absolute perspective in which one can view the world in order to show that our perceptions are radically different from it.

Maybe though, all he means is different in the sense of how a whelks perceptions would be radically different from a humans because it lacks sophisticated perceptual faculties. But this doesn't seem as radical as his ideas are made out to be. And obviously, science can always extend those faculties.

You won't find apokrisis theory in a dictionary. — bert1

Is that the definition of "definition" - what is included in a dictionary? Would definition of "definition" be included in a dictionary? Apokrisis theory might be found in a technical dictionary of psychology. So, anyway, let's change "definition" to "description." Is that better?

It's not what we mean by 'consciousness'. — bert1

It's not what is meant by "consciousness" in everyday speech, maybe. Is this what we mean by "life?"

Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from matter that does not. It is defined descriptively by the capacity for homeostasis, organisation, metabolism, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli, and reproduction. — Wikipedia - Life

As far as I can see, that's the same level of description we're talking about.

Is " a system is conscious if and only if it models its environment and makes predictions based on that model" a robust theory of consciousness? This theory could no more be used to create an artificial consciousness than the Wikipedia description could be used to create artificial life. I don't see how this would be any more capable of telling us how experience arises than one based on biology and neurology. I also don't see why this could not develop by naturalistic evolution.

Sorry, I was really asking about the neutral monism and dual aspect theories in general; I was only thinking of Spinoza in the first question. A common problem I've seen for dual aspect theories in particular is they have no explanation for why panpsychism shouldn't be the case given the starting presuppositions.

The reply: "why shouldn't it work just so?" is essentially defaulting on an explanation, no? One could give the same sort of explanation for all manner of competing theories as well. We have a contingent fact supported by no sufficient reason.

For example, you could use the same sort of explanation to support Integrated Information Theory instead. Why do some sorts of information processing feel a certain way? Why do some forms of information processing result in first person perspective and other's don't? Why do these result in a phenomenological horizon centered on a specific body? "Why shouldn't it?" or "it just does," is not a compelling answer. If there is no "why should it?" answer for a contingent fact, then isn't "why shouldn't it be false or some other way?" is just as strong of a position as "why shouldn't it be true?"

So for example, the epiphenomenalist might say consciousness does no work, just "goes along for the ride", so to speak, but that would be an illegitimate elimination of one reasonable way of explaining human behavior. I think what puzzles people is that we cannot combine the two explanations or achieve any absolute perspective which would eliminate one and retain the other. 'Either/ or' thinking seems to generally dominate the human mind.

I think the mental explanation is usually downgraded because it is assumed that the physical can be predicted with mathematical certainty, whereas "thirst" and such cannot be represented mathematically in a direct fashion. The mental explanation becomes completely superfluous because the physical explanation explains everything, at least in terms of predicting behavior.

The explanatory power only goes in one direction, the physical explaining the mental. All behavior can be explained and predicted in terms of physics (according to the reductionists). But a purely mental explanation doesn't tell us about the physical with any great degree of accuracy, nor does it have the same predictive power. If mental states are multiply realizable, which seems quite possible, then the physical is undetermined by the mental, whereas the mental is uniquely determined by the physical.

I'll take a look. — T Clark

I only brought it up, cuz I flashed on that being us, if your, “After all, objects of cognition are also objects of nature.”, happened to occassion an argument, because…..a-HEM, obvious to the most casual observer…..they are not.

All in the good spirit of my ol’ buddy Rene’s method for “rightly conducting reason and seeking truth in the sciences”, donchaknow.

I only brought it up, cuz I flashed on that being us, — Mww

Have you seen "My Dinner with Andre?" Two guys talking for an hour and a half. It's a movie I enjoyed, although the philosophy discussed is a little goofy.

:up:

Obviously one does not 'have' reality in one's eye or in one's brain, one has visions and models and heuristics. But crossing the road without attending to what one can see and hear is perilous and foolish.

Hint: "... truly see reality" is a dog's breakfast of a phrase. — unenlightened

Right.

"Truly see reality" is the legacy of naive r realism. You can reject naive realism while maintaining this concept as an impossible standard. That is how we don't "truly see reality". If naive realism is thoroughly abandoned, then "truly seeing reality" is visions and heuristics, when they reasonably correlate with real features. Anything beyond this is a naive realist fantasy.