>>Consciousness is the capacity for experience<<

What do we think? — Wayfarer

I think that's a pretty good definition. It leaves open the conceptual possibility of consciousness with no content, which some find absurd, but I'm OK with.

:up: Thank you :pray:

I'm not complaining about criticism, but about the weird appeal to authority. You didn't actually say why my analogy was poor. — hypericin

I didn't mean to annoy you. I included a link to a book review which was earlier shown to me on this forum. It's Bennett and Hacker, Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, which talks about the 'mereological fallacy':

In Chapter 3 of Part I - “The Mereological Fallacy in Neuroscience” - Bennett and Hacker set out a critical framework that is the pivot of the book. They argue that for some neuroscientists, the brain does all manner of things: it believes (Crick); interprets (Edelman); knows (Blakemore); poses questions to itself (Young); makes decisions (Damasio); contains symbols (Gregory) and represents information (Marr). Implicit in these assertions is a philosophical mistake, insofar as it unreasonably inflates the conception of the 'brain' by assigning to it powers and activities that are normally reserved for sentient beings. It is the degree to which these assertions depart from the norms of linguistic practice that sends up a red flag. The reason for objection is this: it is one thing to suggest on empirical grounds correlations between a subjective, complex whole (say, the activity of deciding and some particular physical part of that capacity, say, neural firings) but there is considerable objection to concluding that the part just is the whole. These claims are not false; rather, they are devoid of sense.

Wittgenstein remarked that it is only of a human being that it makes sense to say “it has sensations; it sees, is blind; hears, is deaf; is conscious or unconscious.” (Philosophical Investigations, § 281). The question whether brains think “is a philosophical question, not a scientific one” (p. 71). To attribute such capacities to brains is to commit what Bennett and Hacker identify as “the mereological fallacy”, that is, the fallacy of attributing to parts of an animal attributes that are properties of the whole being. Moreover, merely replacing the mind by the brain leaves intact the misguided Cartesian conception of the relationship between the mind and behavior, merely replacing the ethereal by grey glutinous matter.

Yet, we say without issue, "Hearts pump blood". — hypericin

I wouldn't say the heart pumping blood is any different to saying that my hand is splashing water if I flap my hand in a filled up sink. You can put a heart in a sink of blood and have it contract and say it is pumping blood. I'm not sure saying a brain is "thinking" is as straightforward given the usual criteria we use to denote thinking for ourselves.

No, because the inability to know the intrinsic nature of things doesn't mean we cannot interact with their extrinsic consequences and make an inference that the outside world exists in an objective way.

At the same time, knowing that there exists a certain thing in the world doesn't mean one has to know the intrinsic nature of that thing, in the same way that someone might know fire exists but not know what fire is.

I believe Hoffman gets along quite well with Kastrup, so I don't think he has specific problems with philosophers. He has issues with philosophers who to him, don't make a valid argument.

Something like they (the philosophers who disagree with him) don't understand how science works, because we accept the best theories as true or good approximations to truth.

I'm forgetting his exact wording on this, but I don't find his rebuttal forceful. He accepts that evolutionary theory says something (true) about the world, ergo some of our theories are true.

But then there's the whole issue of evolved to discover what kind of truths? Truths about the constitution of the universe? Very unlikely. That must be some kind of lucky accident that we are able to form theories that apply to the universe.

Of course, there's also "folk psychological truths": if I kick a stone, it will move a bit until it stops. It's just that the theory is incomplete as an account of the universe, but perfectly fine for day-to-day affairs.

Having

an inference — Apustimelogist

made about the world translate to a conception of the world ..

in an objectuve way. — Apustimelogist

Hmmm, I'm not sure I can accept this position.

At the same time, knowing that there exists a certain thing in the world doesn't mean one has to know the intrinsic nature of that thing, in the same way that someone might know fire exists but not know what fire is. — Apustimelogist

Non sequitur with the fire part. That's because the underlined is not true. To claim that you know that something exists does entail knowing something about it's intrinsic nature (i.e non-illusory for instance) as best i can tell.

I'm forgetting his exact wording on this, but I don't find his rebuttal forceful. He accepts that evolutionary theory says something (true) about the world, ergo some of our theories are true.

Yes, there seems to be a bit of the common move of setting up the "view from nowhere," as a strawman foil here. You see the same thing in deflationary thinkers like Rorty as well. The old "we cannot achieve 'the one true ahistorical, perspectiveless view of truth,' thus truth is inaccessible," as if there is no middle ground. Yet it's not like my brother and I cannot both know our parents simply because each of our knowledge of them differs.

But then there's the whole issue of evolved to discover what kind of truths? Truths about the constitution of the universe? Very unlikely. That must be some kind of lucky accident that we are able to form theories that apply to the universe.

Or no luck is required. It has become common to think of logic and reason as being the sui generis products of mind, something "constructed" or something like that. But if there is a certain logic to the world, a Logos, then it should not be surprising if minds correspond to it. Rather it would be impossible for it to be otherwise. And the world certainly appears to have an intelligible order.

Phenomenologicaly, the intelligibility of the world is given. One needs to make some advances in philosophy before one starts holding apart the world and its intelligibility.

Hoffman's interface theory is ultimately guilty of the same old Cartesian/representationalist error that haunts a good deal of contemporary philosophy. Saying "we don't know the world, we just know our experiences of it," is a bit like claiming no one can drive a car because "they can only push pedals and turn a steering wheel," or that writing is impossible because "we can only move muscles in our fingers." What is "being" supposed to mean if it's not what is thought, experienced, known or talked about?

Hmmm, I'm not sure I can accept this position. — AmadeusD

Why not?

To claim that you know that something exists does entail knowing something about it's intrinsic nature (i.e non-illusory for instance) as best i can tell. — AmadeusD

So how do people know that fire exists?

Hoffman's interface theory is ultimately guilty of the same old Cartesian/representationalist error that haunts a good deal of contemporary philosophy. Saying "we don't know the world, we just know our experiences of it," is a bit like claiming no one can drive a car because "they can only push pedals and turn a steering wheel," or that writing is impossible because "we can only move muscles in our fingers." What is "being" supposed to mean if it's not what is thought, experienced, known or talked about? — Count Timothy von Icarus

That made me laugh. I appreciate the analogies.

Yes, there seems to be a bit of the common move of setting up the "view from nowhere," as a strawman foil here. You see the same thing in deflationary thinkers like Rorty as well. The old "we cannot achieve 'the one true ahistorical, perspectiveless view of truth,' thus truth is inaccessible," as if there is no middle ground. Yet it's not like my brother and I cannot both know our parents simply because each of our knowledge of them differs. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Exactly.

Rorty once called it (according to Dennett) the "vegetarian version of truth". Okay...so? truth is truth, vegetarian or omnivore. Maybe, and likely, there is more out there than we know, sure, but what we know is not false for that reason.

Or no luck is required. It has become common to think of logic and reason as being the sui generis products of mind, something "constructed" or something like that. But if there is a certain logic to the world, a Logos, then it should not be surprising if minds correspond to it. Rather it would be impossible for it to be otherwise. And the world certainly appears to have an intelligible order. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's a bit hard to say. I can imagine an intelligent species with reason, that can't find such a logos, so they could settle for a creation myth, as we used to do back in the day.

But, it could be that given reason, we should be able to find some kind of order. Maybe. I'm more skeptical of this, but it's possible.

Yes, at the very least, our experiences are part of the world.

Why not? — Apustimelogist

Perhaps you missed the aim with that quoteset - I'm sorry if it was insufficiently clear. I was trying to clever lol. I'll remove the quotes and just assert the position I think you're committed to, so the response is 'direct'.

"An inference which you've made about the world based on repeated experience can directly translate to a conception of the world in an objective way"

To me, this is plainly untrue (I think the problem in 'the thinking' is the same in the below example, which obvs ill get to lol). You cannot "objectively" infer anything, from anything. All you can say is "this is the best assumption available". No apodicticity or veridicality in it (although, I understand that by accident, you might still be 'correct').

If you have a mere inference about some proposition about 'the world' out there, you do not have any objective way to ascertain the accuracy of your inference. This is where Science is supposed to step in - but lets not open that can. But two examples I've raised for different reasons elsewhere are tides/waves and shadows. You can't accurately infer the shape of the object which caused a shadow from the shadow. You can accidentally be right, but the angles of light, the angle of hte object, the shape of hte surface, any intermediary issues like bright light or coloured light will affect the image you receive

If the tide near you has gone out, you might be about to drown. You couldn't know by inference. You'd naturally infer "Oh, the tide's gone out" or perhaps "Oh, the tide's gone out at a weird time" but that gives you no objectivity as to whether a Tsunami is coming.

As to the second comment, it really does depend what you're asking. It could be more like "Why do people take fire to exist?" Which is easily answerable (im sure I don't even need to do it for you).

Or, you could be asking why people are certain that fire exists. That one is more awkward, but probably because the benchmark for certainty is not the benchmark for apodicticity. Being certain means "beyond a reasonable doubt" not "beyond a logical possibility" and it is entirely logically possible fire does not exist (at least not in the form we take it to, let's say). Certainty just means you aren't questoning your position. Apodicticity means your position cannot be questioned on logical grounds (think law of identity).

I don't hold that Fire doesn't exist, but i am very, very much open to it not actually being in the form we perceive. It may be that fire is colourless to many animals, for instance, and only our perceptual apparatus allows us to essentially go "BIG HOT RED BAD LEAVE NOW". We have plenty of evolutionary ways to explain why we are how we are - including why we perceive colours, shapes and difference in general the way we do: Survival. There's nothing objective in this and I think Hoffman is at the very least, thinking about hte right things in this area. Pretending we know apodictically what's going on leads to dictators lol (that is genuinely jest, but i suppose there's something in it).

"An inference which you've made about the world based on repeated experience can directly translate to a conception of the world in an objective way" — AmadeusD

Well, this is not what I said or meant.

What I meant basically amounts to: you cannot know the intrinsic nature of the world but you can infer that the world indeed does exist when you are not looking at it.

I'm finding Donald Hoffman's book alternately interesting and frustrating. His formula of 'fitness beats truth' makes me want to ask what is the ‘truth’ that is ‘beaten by fitness’. He says that we don’t see ‘objective reality’ but that we see what evolution primes us to see. But at the same time, as we all have the same evolutionary heritage, then why that can’t also be ‘objective’? We’ll all share a very large pool of common objects of experience, so if I call a tomato an orange, or measure a meter to be 80cm, I’ll be objectively mistaken.

Anyway - perceptive review of the book by a physicist can be found here https://4gravitons.com/2024/02/23/book-review-the-case-against-reality/

With respect to specificity, I rather think, assuming an interest in such matters despite the absence of sufficient empirical facts from the scientific method proper, little remains but to fall back on logical constructions, the certainty, hence the explanatory value, of which is our own responsibility. — Mww

I meant that you described a type of consciousness. For instance, if I can be just 'be aware' without having thoughts, I would be conscious without any kind of conscious interpretative activity. But maybe I misunderstood you.
If you meant that consciousness is an 'unifying' activity, in a sense yes, I agree.

BTW, there are some psychiatrists that try to apply pheonomenological concepts in their practice. For instance, the concept of 'self-disorder'/ipseity disturbance employs the distinction of 'narrative self' (any kind of conceptual description about ourselves) and the 'basic self/ipseity' (the sense that experiences are our own). They argue that some psychotic experiences (like the experiences where one feels that his thoughts are inserted by some other agent) are actually a strong expression of a disturbed 'basic self', i.e. that the content of the experiences are not one's own (but a lower level of 'privateness' remains, after all...if a content of our experience doesn't feel 'ours', after all, we still have the sense of 'privateness').
The reason I brought about this is because I think that these kinds of study might be useful to study the structure of our experience. For instance, these kind of studies suggests to me that these kind of disorders can only happen in sentient beings that are 'self-conscious', i.e. beings that are conscious to be conscious.

Maybe also @Wayfarer finds this kind of thing interesting.

I'm finding Donald Hoffman's book alternately interesting and frustrating. His formula of 'fitness beats truth' makes me want to ask what is the ‘truth’ that is ‘beaten by fitness’. He says that we don’t see ‘objective reality’ but that we see what evolution primes us to see. But at the same time, as we all have the same evolutionary heritage, then why that can’t also be ‘objective’? We’ll all share a very large pool of common objects of experience, so if I call a tomato an orange, or measure a meter to be 80cm, I’ll be objectively mistaken. — Wayfarer

More or less I had the same impression. I found his 'interface theory of perception' (a form of epistemic idealism) fascinating and also the basic idea that we might not know 'external reality as it is' because, after all, our perceptive and cognitive system is at the service of fitness, i.e. our own survival and the survival of our species. And a 'non-literal' respresentation of external reality might be far more useful than a 'faithful portrait' of it.

I actually didn't like his excursus in speculative idea of contemporary physics. After all, when he did that he was trying to argue for his speculative idea using other speculative ideas (so that chapter was IMO unhelpful). Also, the final chapter about 'conscious realism', where he tries to define what a 'conscious agent' might in general be and concludes that the external reality might only be other conscious agents, might be an interesting speculation but leads to a confusion between it and the interface theoty (to his credit, however, he is clear that the two theories are separate).
Finally, regarding the theorem, well, I think that he uses a weird definition of 'reality'. So, I think that it is a good book, has interesting and provocative ideas, but also I get the frustration and in some cases, his 'wilder' speculations, so to speak, might obscure his more 'reasonable', 'down to earth' ideas.

Thanks for the link, I'll read it.

I actually didn't like his excursus in speculative idea of contemporary physics — boundless

Me neither. Didn’t really understand it either. Although I can see the connection with QBism.

…beings that are conscious to be conscious. — boundless

‘Meta-conscious awareness’ is the term, I believe.

I believe consciousness has to be of something, I believe it has to be intentional in its most basal form, but "content" is controversial issue of course and it's a key controversy in philosophy of mind ATM as well - how do we get from simple minds or non-minds to contentful mental states of which we can predicate True or False?


Might it be the case that content does not necessarily need to be semantic content?

Re causal closure, the position that descriptions of mental phenomena are "just describing the same thing" as physical descriptions, runs into problems with the idea that mental states (or "intervals of experience") are multiply realizable in physical systems. It's generally accepted in theorizing about superveniance that mental states should be multiply realizable. If this is the case, then it isn't true that "I went to the store because I was hungry," is just another way to describe a single group of physical interactions. Rather, it's another way of describing an entire set of physical systems consistent with some given interval of experience.

So, on that far extreme of the possibility of a "brain in a vat," or "the Matrix," etc., there would be instances of P, the set of possible physical states consistent with some mental state, that vary very far from our assumptions about what the mental state says about P. But more realistically we have problems like Hoffman's, questions of inverted qualia, etc. and the overarching problem of psycho-physical harmony.

If you meant that consciousness is an 'unifying' activity, in a sense yes, I agree. — boundless

I didn’t mean that; I said consciousness is a capacity, understood, in accordance with a particular methodological system, as a necessary condition of intelligent agency. That being given, it can be deduced consciousness doesn’t unify; it is that under which unity occurs.

Not claiming a truth here, only a logic validated in a theoretical procedure.

Yes, I actually have had correspondence with Hoffman over this. I actually was interested in his work as a possible way to bridge the ecological psychology paradigms with underlying work in philosophy of phsyics.

On that front, I think his work is very good. I especially like the idea of decoherence as underpinning the co-emergence of the world and agent (ultimately, one system informing itself about itself).

Thr Kantian divide between noumena and phenomena is less appealing, though. Hoffman is not too far from a vast improvement though when he describes the environment as iconic and space as fundamentally semiotic - like a users manual for perpetuating your fitness and existence. Cogntition as an interface is a solid idea, but we need a relational theory of cognition in this vein and not a Kantian one. Thankfully, the philosophy of signs naturally complements Hoffman's idea and it's a non-dual since it involves triadic relations between the sign, object and interpretant. The interface isn't hiding reality, it is reality as co-constructed by agent and world, between realism and idealism.

Me neither. Didn’t really understand it either. Although I can see the connection with QBism. — Wayfarer

Yes, I agree. There is at least a structural analogy between his 'interface theory of perception' (ITP) and QBism.
But, on the other hand, the main prolem is that he not only notes the analogy. But (1) he insists that he is basically saying the same thing as some contemporary research in quantum gravity (!) for instance say and that (2) as the review remarked his own theory of 'conscious realism' contradicts his IPT, if the latter is followed to the end.

ITP after all doesn't make ontological commitments about the 'reality as it is' and, therefore, strictly speaking isn't compatible with any kind of ontological theory. It's a form of epistemic idealism which also tries to explain why we more or less 'see' the same 'interface'.

(regarding the review, I found it ok, but some objections are IMO questionable... for instance, in the chapter where Hoffman evokes contemporary phisical theories, the main comparison is with ITP, not conscious realism. So when he says that 'non-realist' theories are incompatible with conscious realism, it should be noted that Hoffman discussed them when he was speaking about ITP, if I recall correctly)

‘Meta-conscious awareness’ is the term, I believe. — Wayfarer

Ah, ok, thanks. But I think that also 'self-consciousness' is valid for that.

I didn’t mean that; I said consciousness is a capacity, understood, in accordance with a particular methodological system, as a necessary condition of intelligent agency. That being given, it can be deduced consciousness doesn’t unify; it is that under which unity occurs. — Mww

Ah, sorry. Thanks for the clarification. I think I am ok with that!

That is exactly what I said you said. It is the exact same claim: You cannot infer anything objectively. So i take the inference, but you cannot add that its in an 'objective way' on the end - which is what I clarified and objected to.

you cannot know the intrinsic nature of the world but you can infer that the world indeed does exist when you are not looking at it. — Apustimelogist

That the world exists in an objective way just means it exists when nobody is looking.

I see no contradiction in what you quoted of me in this post. Its no different from people making an inference that when you see fire, it exist out in the world even when nobody is looking at it. Even though they have no idea what the intrinsic nature of fire is, they can infer that something exists out in the world beyond their perceptions, and it is causing their perception of the fire.

That the world exists in an objective way just means it exists when nobody is looking. — Apustimelogist

Isn't this a bit loose? What exactly does an 'objective way' entail? Even Hoffman and most idealists would say there is an objective world. Isn't the key issue what is the nature of the world we have access to and think we know?

Isn't this a bit loose? What exactly does an 'objective way' entail? Even Hoffman and most idealists would say there is an objective world. Isn't the key issue what is the nature of the world we have access to and think we know? — Tom Storm

The existence of an objective reality is a presupposition we make in order to allow ourselves to make our way in this more or less existent world.

Isn't this a bit loose? — Tom Storm

We can firm it up. There are true statements about unobserved things. "The cup is in the dishwasher" is true, even though we can't see the cup.

So if asked where the cup is, I'll say "It's in the dishwasher" rather then "I last saw it when I closed the door on the dishwasher, but I've no idea where it is now, or even if it still exists. You might try looking inside the dishwasher to see if it reappears".

That the world exists in an objective way just means it exists when nobody is looking. — Apustimelogist

Albert Einstein famously asked one of his friends whilst on an afternoon walk ‘does the moon cease to exist when nobody’s looking at it?’ If you read the account of the conversation, it was clear Einstein was asking the question ironically or rhetorically. But he was nevertheless compelled to ask! And why? It grew out of the discussions prompted by the famous 1927 Solvay Conference which unveiled the basics of quantum physics. It was at this time that the elusive nature of sub-atomic particles became obvious.

Now you might say ‘so what? We all know that subatomic particles are spooky, but that doesn’t apply to the objects of day to day experience.’ But the issue is, day to day objects are supposed to be composed of these same particles and forces which were supposed to be ‘fundamental’. This was to become the subject of the ‘Bohr-Einstein’ debates that were to run on until Einstein’s death decades later.

Bohr and Heisenberg’s attitude (although differing in some respects) constituted the basis of what comes to be called the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum physics. It’s not a scientific theory but commentary on the implications of quantum mechanics.

Copenhagen posits that quantum systems don’t have definite properties until they are measured or observed. Prior to observation, particles exist in a state of superposition, where they can hold multiple potential states at once. It is only upon interaction with an observer or measurement device that one of these possibilities becomes reality. Bohr said that it was impossible to say whether said objects were 'really' waves or 'really' particles, because the answer to that depended on the way the question was asked.

This leads to the key role of the observer: the act of observation itself plays a fundamental role in “collapsing” the quantum wave function, determining the specific outcome of a particle’s state. In other words, in quantum mechanics, reality at the subatomic level isn’t fixed until it’s observed, blurring the line between objective existence and subjective experience.

This view clashes with classical physics, which assumes an objective world that exists independently of observation, as Einstein famously advocated with his rhetorical question about the moon. For Copenhagen proponents, the observer is essential in the transition from potentiality to actuality.

This suggests that, at least at the quantum level, the observer is integral to how the world takes form, raising deep questions about the nature of reality. And despite much water under the bridge, the question about the moon remains an open one. That is the distant background to much of the discussion about physics in Hoffman's book.

But there's another layer of argument altogether, that from cognitivism. Cognitive science has shown how much of what we instinctively take to be the objective world is really constructed by the brain/mind 'on the fly', so to speak. There is unceasing neural activity which creates and maintains our stable world-picture based on a combination of sensory experience, autonomic reaction, and judgement. This is going on every second. A lot of Hoffman's argument is based on analysis of those cognitive processes and what conditions them.

In my view, a philosophical precursor to that can clearly be traced back to Kant, who likewise understood the sense in which the mind creates the world - this is his famous 'copernican revolution in philosophy'.

On the basis of all of this, I generally argue for the fact that, while the objective domain is independent of any particular observer - you or me - the objective world nevertheless is grounded in the irreducibly subjective process of world-construction. And that because of the over-valuation of science and objectivity, this constructive process is generally invisible to us. That is the subject of the book, The Blind Spot of Science, by Frank, Gleiser and Thompson. And also Mind and the Cosmic Order, Charles S. Pinter.

The key here is what is to count as an "observer". You presume mind. That's down to you, not the physics. Alternative include "We don't know - shut up and calculate" and "whatever collapses a wave function".

I see no contradiction in what you quoted of me in this post. — Apustimelogist

That's a shame. The two phrases are in direct contradiction.