God the posters that pass for 'moderators' on this site is a real, real blight on the face of it.

Looks a bit silly, organisationally speaking.

Is it that Wittgenstein tends to bring out these personality-types that like to gatekeep when discussing on a forum setting? — schopenhauer1

No one understands Witty because he makes extremely little sense. It takes a certain level of gatekeeping to maintain a character that think it understands something that makes no sense. Its akin to conspiracy theorists saying "you just don't get it" when its blatant nonsense.

I just ignore it, mostly, because its so laughably dumb.

I think all of what we call cognition is things we observe ourselves through experience. — Apustimelogist

Forgive what must appear a quite glib response, but this line, to me, explains your entire rationale. This seems plainly, empirically wrong. Ants, cilliates and even slime molds are examples which make the vast majority of what you're saying, which basically relies on the assumption above more-or-less moot arguments. There are extant examples of complex behavioural outputs from complex reaction and adaptive cognition without any hint of anything like conscious experience.
In the cases where this isn't what defeats your points, I think my previous comments are adequate to outline my thoughts. If they are not convincing, so be it :) Such is life. I may be dead wrong.

Probably worth noting. cognition is not 'things', it is not 'experience' - cognition is the processing element of perception. thinking. Experiencing that cognition is a separate, and i posit, further element of our world and this is, in fact, in what the mystery, such as it is, consists. Even on the reductionist account, the missing piece of the puzzle is still how consciousness arises from any level of cognition. It clearly does, though. Which is why it is such an enduring problem for thinkers of the bent to approach it. It is patent, inarguable and fundamental.
And yet, all the fun starts here.. how to solve the problem. Waving it away wont do.

So, Hume aye.

Should I just be ignoring this weird tangent?

What? And this is also in relation to your next post?

Infinite regress is fine. Trying to escape it is where trouble arises, in the absence of relevant information.

You made the assertion. Beginning to think you don't understand half the words you use.

antelope to die in agony — Vera Mont

If you have some conclusive proof of the phenomenology of antelope agony, that would be interesting!

muscle growth doesn't hurt, either. Damage does. — Vera Mont

I see you've entirely ignored the necessary relationship between the two, again.

Such scientific studies are not difficult to find. Examples; — Hallucinogen

1. Is inconclusive, and somewhat indicative that this cannot be done for self-reported pain. THe correlations are weak, or antithetical viz. :

"No correlations were observed between self-reported hot or cold pain quality and thermal hyperalgesia on QST. Self-reported abnormal skin sensitivity has a high sensitivity to identify patients with DMA, but its low specificity indicates that many patients mean something other than DMA when reporting this symptom."

2. This is specific to patients experiencing schizophrenic hallucinations. This is not apt for this thread at all.

3. "The present single-case study" - really my dude?
"There are a number of limitations to the present study. "
"Statistical power was obviously limited in this single-case study..."
"Clearly, replication is required..."

These present no reliability at all. There are not functional ways to assess private phenomenal claims beyond structural awareness - whcih says nothing for their 'actuality'.

Those two things aren't mutually exclusive. — Hallucinogen

The arguments are each, more or less, are, though.

It's irrational for a few reasons. — BitconnectCarlos

What are they? Your next lines were simply states of affairs without any argument about whether or not it should be. It's certainly rational, on average, to prefer flourishing of humans in the sense that we are far more apt to assist one another, for example.
It would need to be a very, very strong set of reasons to reject that bias. Singer barely gets close - his arguments are more akin to Parfit's in that they fairly soundly refute self-interest theory on it's own terms, but don't establish any reason to adopt either a total change in stance, or what other stance could be considered more rational in the actual world.

Hilariously, I initially wrote the post this way:

You continually mistake 'state of affairs' for 'moral fact' and respond with Emoji's when this is pointed out.

I await something interesting from you. Given your constant need to deride those you think are incorrect, isn't it just delightful that you're wrong.

You're not, though. You're just asserting certain values/disvalues not based on anything.

I've put forward: We have biases towards other humans (as opposed to cockroaches, in your account). This is rational.

You now need to either point out why it is irrational, or give a more rational reason to try to lose the bias. You haven't attempted either.

Probability still has a truth to it. — BitconnectCarlos

I'm not quite sure what you mean here, but probability seems to be the functional and rational response to Hume. Unsure how that plays out here, as Im not entire getting what you're trying to do.

I'm just running with your version of truth here. — BitconnectCarlos

You're not. Because I didn't put one forward. Everything you've responded with is a little bit out-of-place given what i've posited. The bolded above is all that should be responded to, here. I suspect your appeal to Divine sacredness is what's underlying the resistance. Happy to be wrong, if you're willing to actually elucidate..

I agree with that. I wouldn’t say unfortunately. It’s more like, unfortunately, we humans ruminate about and dramatize every little spark of the nervous system. — Fire Ologist

My inability to sleep due to hairs standing on end, dust landing on my eyelids, the tiniest excitation of my ear drums, a skin cell detaching etc.. says "fucking yes dude, this". LOL. It's an awful reality.

Pain need not have anything to do with God, and need not be seen as better or worse than any other state - pain is change measured by the one undergoing the change. — Fire Ologist

I think I/we may have misinterpreted what Vera was doing/saying in those exchanges - but I would say she simply made up a lot of the context, in that regard. Nevertheless I am quite sympathetic to her position. Just htink her discussion here betrays a lack of focus (and perhaps a faulty commitment to an emotional response).

Nothing in this is moral. You continually mistake 'state of affairs' for 'moral fact'. It will be an extremely interesting post when you come up with something non-circular to support the morality part of the position.

Sorry I missed all this - It wasn't in my notification list!

feel like you have this strong preconception that any kind of phenomena is necessarily internal to some kind of external physical things, because you are dualist. But I don't see how this view is strictly necessary and how other kinds of views of phenomena as ontology are not at least conceivable. — Apustimelogist

I have explained why (it is irrelevant what Kastrup or Chalmers think - though, as far as I;m concerned you are seriously misunderstanding what is entailed by 'mental only' and perhaps not reading that into the theories presented. Or, i could be wrong.

So if physical theories are defined purely functionally or relationally and say absolutely nothing about the intrinsic nature of what is beyond our personal experiences, I think you have to give an argument to rule out the idea that what is beyond our personal experiences can conceivably be more experiences and nothing else. — Apustimelogist

I have. "What are the experiences of" is a good enough question to at the very least, put the position you're driving at on the rocks, if not infer a position that requires externalities (in a 'proper' use of the word - not the economic one) to inform any type of experience. Otherwise, we have infinite regress - at what point would content be involved, if it's experience all the way down? Seems a massive gap here.

Again, we have established that you have no idea about the intrinsic nature of what is going on beyond your immediate experiences so I don't see what standard you are using to judge that what is going on beyond cannot be experiential — Apustimelogist

Its incoherent, on my account. You don't need a standard. It's logically unsound..As noted a couple of times, and apparently ignored: Experiences must be OF something(if you do not accept this, we may be at an end of the road we travel together). Sure, an experience can be of another experience, on (the surface of) an idealist account but this cannot explain anything about content. That we have experiences of 'things' that must have come from somewhere, even if it isn't 'actually there' in any particular instance (given regress is a fine method for establishing this, to a point). The basis for its invocation cannot be a further, necessarily empty, experience.

What we think of as physical objects can still exist, just they have to be made of phenomena. — Apustimelogist

IN.CO.HERENT. I'll leave that there, adding that I think this ridiculous claim is why Kastrup is alternatively considered a genius, and a total idiot.

I haven't seen justification. — Apustimelogist

You have.

what physical things intrinsically are? — Apustimelogist

not-mental. This is the exclusion you seem to just straight-up ignore. Something cannot be physical and mental at once. Mental objects do not exist outside of mind, by definition. What's not getting through?

The question of "why do experiences exist?" would be no different from the question of why any other different kind of intrinsic stuff were to exist — Apustimelogist

You seem to have completley ignored that this raises the exact same problem of 'why experience'. All you have done is removed the difference between 'why anything' and 'why experience'. They are both still live questions in an Idealist world. This is not displaced by the removal of physical objects in an account. We could equally say, in a world with no mentation whatsoever(obviously, this is metaphysically impossible) "why does anything exist?" "why isn't anything conscious"? The latter is not irrelevant, in the discussion we're having.

There have been absolutely no discoveries in science that suggest some kind of inherent metaphysical separation between mental and physical stuff in any sense. Such a dualism is incoherent. — Apustimelogist

We cannot explain plenty of non-physical phenomena, and the fact that apparently the expectation of a physical explanation is the only way to get past this just ignores the problem. The explanation wont be physical. And given we have absolutely failed to do anything whatsoever with our physical theories to explain consciousness, I'm just not interested in ignoring that problem. Discovering that the consciousness does not logically supervene on the physical is a discovery that literally discounts a fully physicalist account of mind (if it holds).

The problem is that consciousness is rendered causally irrelevant not only to our behavior but to our own knowledge of consciousness. The absurdity suggests that dualism is an illusion and that there is no dual-aspect. — Apustimelogist

This is not a problem, and it does not suggest this. I would recommend reading all of Chalmers, if this is where you're going.

I think this is less mysterianism than the fact that if you endorse kinds of scientific and metaphysical deflationism / antirealism, then the need for inherent dual-aspects is not pressing. — Apustimelogist

Not for scientific reasoning, but for understanding consciousness it remains the central issue. I wont address your other Chalmers-related comments other than to say he's predicted them and responded to them. He wouldn't agree; you're right. He would posit that nothing you've said changes the fact that Consciousness is irreducible. In that sense, property dualism is almost a given (whether hte premise holds is the big Q).

Because this view doesn't rely on falsifying phenomenal experiences — Apustimelogist

Property dualism doesn't either. Can you explain why this would have any weight in displacing the (potential) property dualist account?

Your latter definition only accounts for direct realism, not indirect realism. Also, scientific realism is not about positing an external world per se, it posits that our theories about the world are true. Doesn't seem very different from the idea of perceptions being true representations or giving true access to the world. — Apustimelogist

I'm beginning to think you're confusing yourself. It applies to both, but you must reverse the onus of the sentence. Your final sentence betrays the failure of your attempted delineation.
You would need scientific realism to hold to ever establish this position. This is because they are relevant to separate questions, as noted.

Bold: Do you know any idealist scientific realists?

The difference between "conscious" and "non-conscious" cognition essentially comes down to differences in this flow of experience. — Apustimelogist

But we know, for sure, that cognition happens sans any experience. How could you posit that experience is included in non-experienced cognition?

I had extremely little to work with. You can't blame a man for the tools he's given.

Mocking doesn't happen on this forum. — Shawn

To the end above, avoid Banno and 180Proof :P Great guys, but they do like to mock here and there.

My question is....are there any stupid questions?? — Gingethinkerrr

Not to me. But I am probably scantly above the level you're espousing you're at. Perhaps I have a bit more confidence though.

The value of a single human life? — Gingethinkerrr

Value, seems to me, a construction. I don't think it makes any sense to ascribe brute value.

Ah okay, fair enough. Thanks. I am back to following the exchanges now :P

(aside) you may be interested in a book called DMT: The Soul of Prophecy. You can disregard the intention of the book, as its subtext - and simply read a psychiatrist's take on Jewish Patriarch's hallucinatory experiences ;)

Can you outline what you intend to be up for discussion?
I have thoughts, but your thread appears to sort of engineer its own success. Not much room to discuss here...

No.

Thanks Carlos - I would have disagree prior to this post, that you're discussing it. Onward...

It's like if I were to say "well humans naturally have confirmation bias, what's the problem?" Well, we naturally try to unlearn that to get our thinking more in line with objective reality. — BitconnectCarlos

Why? What's the basis for unlearning it? (i realise this is now not at all a religious discussion, so happy to leave off if it feels too out-of-place in the thread). This is why non sequitur has been invoked. If there's no rational reason for the bias, there's no rational reason to try to remove it (though, in reality, it is rational to have an in-group bias. That doesn't require an objective basis for such and I would content it irrational to try to unlearn the bias. If you ahve to make that effort cognitively to overcome your actual reality (hehe, below..) then you're not doing God's work or employing rationality, on your terms).

I seek to act in accordance with objective reality and if that gets you mad then anger is derived from an irrational source. — BitconnectCarlos

This, once again, entirely and completely refuses to engage the question:

What bloody objective reality are you talking about? The one in which we actually have biases towards other humans??. Sounds like you're literally trying to overcome reality.

It's coherently and consistently dismissive of the idea of intelligent design by a benevolent deity. — Vera Mont

I can smell your farts from here, Vera :) Not too bad.

but someone who is dominated by their emotions is to that extent not an agent at all

we are simultaneously agents and patients; the emotivist excludes the former — Leontiskos

Could you maybe elucidate this? I think this is a completely wrong statement. I see nothing in it.

Emotivists (to my knowledge) don't claim that you are beholden to your emotions to act. Just that emotions inform moral proclamations. One can simply act against their emotions. I do this constantly. To me, one of the biggest benefits of emotivism is that it explains moral disagreement, even intrapersonally. I can have conflicted moral standpoints, because the views done rest of logical predicates (i.e confirming/disconfirming conclusions regardless of their valence).

If our natural pro-human bias is not accordance with reality — BitconnectCarlos

It is reality. I have asked you to put forward something that either discusses, or displaces this.

You have failed to do so. So, once again, can you please attempt this? Otherwise it just plum seems you're just pretending to have an opinion, which reduces to a blind belief (as noted). I would genuinely like you to attempt to either discuss the bias, and why you reject it ("not reality" does nothing for me. Support it. If your "Reality" is to immediately jump to your religious views whole-sale, I can do nought but chuckle. That isn't an answer to this query).

Predation, parasitism and disease are. — Vera Mont

Yes. And, ecologically, these, prima facie, have great functional value. (I should be clear - I have no religious position and do not intend to defend one. I just find your line of reasoning chaotically dismissive).

hat pain causes growth or that all growth is accompanied by pain? I'm not sure I actually get a point about either, but I know that the first is untrue and the second is it is not always true. — Vera Mont

Hmmm. This may be a misunderstanding. I did not intimate either of these positions, to my mind. I said, in regard to (i think it was actually bone growth, but Im pivoting here without losing any relevance)

The pain is required for the growth to accrue(as an actual fact of the universe in which we live. — AmadeusD

This was a discreet example, pointing out that pain is required in various circumstances to achieve the benefit you're wanting without to get without the pain. Fine. But we live in the universe as it is.
Unfortunately, to adequately grow muscle, muscle fibres must be destroyed and that hurts. This has a dual nature. In injury, we need to know this is happening to address it adequately. While I hear your gripe, I just don't see what it has to do with the potential 'nature' of a God. It does it's job well.
(The same pain can be psychologically satisfying in situations of non-injury too(I'm thinking here of perhaps after nine rounds of Jiu Jitsu I cannot fucking move for the pain- but i am happier than heck). )
Additionally, I do not think the variability of pain is relevant. That's a function of it as-is. We tend to think people who do not adequate feel pain are, in fact, defective.

Additionally, again, I think it is entirely coherent to just say 'well, if God exists, you're wrong and misapprehending your reality'. A cop-out that the religious like to fall-back on - but there's no good reason to reject that at this point in the discussion. You not liking shit doesn't make the above illogical despite my sincere sympathy (and in other examples, I'd say the problem of Evil is live. Just think this one fails).

Whether fortunately or otherwise, Amadeus, THIS world came about through natural forces and evolution. Which accounts for why the design isn't all that intelligent. — Vera Mont

These are conclusions. They do nothing for the discussion.

Oh, no - I've heard ans understand all the excuses and apologetics. I just don't respect them. — Vera Mont

You clearly do not understand what I have just put forward. It stands, and there is literally nothing you could say that would defeat it. It may be the case that you're incapable of understanding divine reason (as would every other person in existence, rendering your objection moot).

his commandments — Vera Mont

Not his reasoning. You've done well to defeat your own point here :P

No, I'm just an ordinary mortal who can smell it when somebody tries to sell her two fish well past their sell-by-date. — Vera Mont

If you're an ordinary mortal almost all of your claims above are pure nonsense. :) That was my point. The smell of your own farts notwithstanding

This makes no sense to me.

Reality is that humans are biased towards humans because we're human. You've provided literally nothing else to support any other position. Which is odd, because I had asked for what causes you to think something other than the above.

Could you attempt?

I think life is a lot more than suffering. I am unsure anything displaces the centrality of suffering, though.

We just have that bias because we're humans but it's not grounded in anything objective. — BitconnectCarlos

I agree. However, it doesn't seem to me a non sequitur to reject this reasoning because it's not objective. Perhaps this is why I have more comfort with it.

You're mkaing some utterly preposterous leaps. What I said was a non sequitur was this:

Accordingly, we generally leave those decisions to a power beyond ourselves. — BitconnectCarlos

(have fixed the formatting, though)Which has nothing to do with my opinion or feelings regarding the importance of human life. It is a clear non sequitur with absolutely no logic to it.
Your suggestions above are further non sequiturs to avoid the clear gap between the (possible) fact we do not grasp 'life' properly, and that we then simply give up our faculties to a (never even close to proven) supernatural entity in blind trust. Risible.

Who's to say humans are worth more than cockroaches? — BitconnectCarlos

Without invoking God, tell me why you'd think otherwise? Or is the case that you are encased in a religious framework to such a degree that you cannot fathom other thoughts?

In nature, yes. In intelligent design, not so end of. — Vera Mont

Unfortunately, yes. If the world is designed such that pains indicate, very well, what to avoid, then its still end of. Excesses aren't exactly attributable to design.
That said, not sure why you're reducing hte discussion to allow for restrictive points?

No, it isn't. It is a side-effect that does not invariably occur. — Vera Mont

Point to me a situation in which my point is violated? Unfortunately, Vera, we live in THIS world in which my statement is completely true.

If that is a 'given', it was given by that same loving god. — Vera Mont

Yep. I see no issue other than your discomfort here. Which is reasonable. Just doesn't bear.

God had an idea that something very unpleasant and sometimes fatal was a good idea. I suspect that a kinder omnipotence would have found a better way to achieve those good ends. — Vera Mont

And you may simply be unable to comprehend reasoning beyond Human reasoning. Not sure why you'd think you could - or, at any rate, apply human reasoning to the (claimed) omnipotent designer. Seems totally ridiculous to me.

If it's deliberately inflicted, it's at least morally questionable. Or would be, if done by a mortal. — Vera Mont

Bingo. I'll leave that there.

unless invented and inflicted by an omnipotent creator, in which case that creator is not deserving or praise. — Vera Mont

Ah. So you're the omniscient one. Nice :)

I reject this.

But I disagree if the quote from Amadeus means the good never forms. There is an object, a definition, that forms, from our experience, called “good.” — Fire Ologist

There is not. I defy you to point at it.

Can be this, can be that... are not valid reasons for a loving god to torture the innocent. — Vera Mont

You've inserted several bits of fact-specific information in your objection that don't exist in the claim.

Much pain is beneficial. End of.

Rapid growth of bones may cause pain, but it's not the pain that causes growth. — Vera Mont

This is prevarication. The pain is required for the growth to accrue. Given we are pain-perceiving creatures, anyhow. So, either hte position is God imbued us with Pain, and sometimes that's a good thing (it is one way to know we are progressing physically, for instance, or to avoid otherwise deathly scenarios such as high or low temperature exposure) or it is that Pain is a moral wrong, in and of itself.

Why would you not assent to the view that pains can be arbitrary or not?

God tells us life is sacred. Remove God and life can lose its sanctity quickly. — BitconnectCarlos

Yes. Life isn't sacred. Sacred is an invented concept that applies to nothing without a mind apprehending that invented concept and applying it, to assuage some existential gripes.

Your premise is absurd and unsupported, even if it turns out true. Such is the way with religious thinking. Nonsense.

Next to nothing -- only that it is inevitable. Could be a good thing, could be a bad thing, could be neutral. [uAccordingly,[/u] we generally leave those decisions to a power beyond ourselves. — BitconnectCarlos

It is quite clear that this is a complete non sequitur. Even more so considering the(only) underlined direction you've taken it. This is the exact lapse in reason that leads to the utter insanity of apologetics.

The problem wouldn't be that these beliefs are arbitrary, but rather that they are determined by a biology, social and personal history, etc. that can be completely explained without any reference to "goodness," e.g., for the eliminitivist/epiphenomenalism, an explanation entirely in mechanical terms. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think I would conclude that this can be distilled into 'arbitrary'. We use that term in reference to basically 'unchangeable' characteristics elsewhere, so it seems apt here to me.I think that even on what you quoted, this still fits if you insert your description in place of arbitrary, and the flavour, for me, remains the same. But, this is all to say i more-or-less agree intuitively ..just in this context, anything but some external moral influence of some objective nature (whcih, I don't believe exists) is required to defeat the arbitrary label.

So, it seems that the truth value of a proposition can be more or less independent of beliefs about it. In some cases, they seem like there will be quite a bit of interdependence. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree with this. This might be what you're, in general, outlining, but it seems to me nothing moral at all to accept this.

I think it does though. My criticism is that P1 begs the question. — Lionino

I think the moral subjectivism will outright reject that very first premise. — Lionino

The discontinuity here is what I was 'agreeing' with. Not many subjectivists would accept that premise. This, to me, indicates it doesn't capture the position well. Perhaps this is just bad wording.

you would have to transform moral judgments from “one ought to X” to “I believe one ought to X”. — Bob Ross

This appears to be the only rational case in terms of encapsulating moral claims. I think it is simply ignoring, for convenience, the first two words, that has caused much of the debates. Obviously, to me, this precludes any moral realism, but that's by the by in terms of discussing this point.
But, even if some moral P is true in virtue of it being veridical in some weird, unascertainable metaphysical way, one's belief simply has no connection with that fact (by definition, here). The belief is still essentially a best-guess guised as a belief.
EDITED IN THE NEXT DAY: I see you, Bob, have noted this elsewhere. Sorry for repeating.

:ok: :ok: :ok:

Bull. Shit. — Vera Mont

Not at all. That you deny all of the suggestions he put forward is extremely perplexing. Swathes of pains are beneficial for various reasons. I am telling you this, from experience. It's not deniable in these terms.

How do we judge the giver and taker of life according to human standards who operates outside of nature? — BitconnectCarlos

This is one very, very good reason to ignore the concept of religious morality from a personal God. Its completely impossible to reconcile it with anything we know about suffering and death. The only thing what you've pointed out seems to make implausible is a personal God making arbitrary decisions about lifespans.

Well, I dropped some acid in my youth, but all I saw was the Void looking back at me. — Vera Mont

Try Psilocybin or DMT.

The seriousness with which people take the Stormy Daniels situation is utterly bizarre. It's the lowest level bullshit one could worry themselves with.

"the greater good" seems tenable only on a Consequentialist notion. Otherwise, there is no way to extend one's concept of 'Good' to 'greater' or 'lesser'. Consequentialism allows you to just run the calc and (I would recommend one engage probability here) act in accordance with that. If some die, so be it. It follows that the greater good is the desirable outcome, regardless of the act.

This would support your response about hte dog, but commit you to several very strange bullet-biting exercises I think. Such as cold-blooded murder of Baby Hitler and Baby Stalin(there may be better ways to achieve a 'greater good', but this one is infallible with regard to preventing the mid-20thC's spectacular suffering through fascism).

1. A belief is a (cognitive) stance taken on the truthity of a proposition; and
2. Beliefs make moral propositions true or false. — Bob Ross

I would agree with Lionino here, that this isn't capturing the position very well.

The concept of truth is not veridicality here, so the same types of objections don't hold. I've not thought long on this though. I think there is a much stronger problem with these arguments though:

Moral facts are 'truths about what we Ought to do'. These exist solely in the minds of those who can choose to act (ignoring determinism). One's belief in what one 'ought' to do is true in vitue of the fact that one believes it. This does, as Lionino point out, make it entirely arbitrary. I don't think many people would moral anti-realists would have much problem with this. The motivation to hold beliefs can be explained many ways that aren't veridicality (or expected veridicality anyway). If someone holds moral belief X about what one ought to do, then that is a true statement. They do believe that. That 'one' very much 'ought' do what they believe to be moral seems true too. This argument would work on any subjective-type theory, including mind (emotivism - though, I've added this where I do not think the position itself holds it). In this way, I just don't see any inconsistency. It's just somewhat unattractive to try to claim 'truths' which are literally about your beliefs, but somehow make your belief true. That certainly seems wrong - but I don't think that's what's being said. The 'truths' are not considerd 'objective' so its hard to note where the failure could be for those facts to then not obtain.

Idealism as I described and as entertained in the article I linked is completely consistent with external objects beyond your immediate experience so the idea of external objects is completely consistent, they just happen to be mental or experiential. — Apustimelogist

But do you not see - this IS incoherent? If everything is mental, there are not external objects. That can only appear external. There is nothing to be aware of, outside of mind as you've stipulated a mind-only universe. So this simply is not a consistent notion. If what you're driving at is a reading along the lines of 'transcendental idealism' i think perhaps you're not doing justice to what you're trying to get across. You've posited that this theory holds everything as mental. If that's hte case, there cannot be anything with extension - nothing can be external on that account. That's just not allowed by the theory, on it's own terms. You might need to
elaborate to make sense of how everything could be mental, yet 'something' has extension to be aware of?

I think your notion of idealism is far narrower than most people seriously entertaining idealism today. — Apustimelogist

I seriously., seriously think you're reading into utterances about it more than is intended. Perhaps you're thinking of some type dualism as analogous? Idealism is necessary precluded from including extension on it's own terms. It deny's the physical. Idealism is a narrow conception. Formal Idealism simply is not idealism, in any proper sense. It's just the same as a Kantian reading, which is actually fundamentally not idealistic. Its a form of mysterianism about perception. It's merely a description of our access to knowledge and not a metaphysical theory of what is available to be aware of.
In the alternative, where I am entirely wrong about how these things are being put forward in current times, I would just say given what I've described in these replies my position is: They are plainly wrong, and there's not really any grey areas to canvass. They are misusing words to maintain incoherent positions. Ryle would be proud.

The idealist would agree and then they would say the physical simply does not exist so there is no problem. There is no need to reduce the mental to the physical because the physical just doesn't exist. All there is are experiences. Consciousness doesn't supervene on the physical because consciousness is all there is. — Apustimelogist

And this position entails all i've said(you'll note this does fatal damage to the position, as above). I do apologise, but this is becoming very much an exercise in trying to understand how you're confusing certain concepts.

Once you formulate an idealist universe as identical to a physicalist one except that everything is made out of mental stuff — Apustimelogist

"made of mental stuff" is literally incoherent. If there is extension, there is matter. Either everything is internal, seemingly external(mind), which is entailed by a 'mental-only' Universe (A'), or we're looking at a world in whcih there are things, proper(A - apparently, the actual world). To put this more clearly, if there are only experiences there are no things. There just isn't, on the theory's own terms. Again, I'm having trouble understanding how you could posit a universe that is 'only mental' yet has 'objects'. Objects have extension. Mentation does not. Is the theory just more speculative, in that the mental can in some peculiar way extend, or something similar, in that Universe?

There will always be some point where it just doesn't have an answer - we don't know why things exist or don't exist. — Apustimelogist

I think this is a little bit of a cop-out - but there are clearly some base-levels that wont have a further explanation. So, yes, i agree with this statement, but I don't think this question is one of them. Either there are physical things, or there are no physical things. 'Why' is literally irrelevant. But that's like.. my opinion man. LOL.

The problem of why experience exists would reduce to exactly that problem for an idealist. — Apustimelogist

Hm, I can clearly see the confusion in this one, and it is plainly wrong to me. The existence of 'things' and 'experience' are not at all analogous. Again, having trouble. I've been over this twice I think. The two questions are entirely different questions. The idealist has an entirely different question to answer than "why is there something rather than nothing?" because they actually hold that there is nothing. Just experience. So, why the experience? Same question. But in world A' we also want to know why there are 'things' which are not conscious, for lack of a better delineation. One does not reduce to the other. One simply disappears, magically, if you posit idealism. This is why its such a faulty, untenable position to most. It simply says 'that's not real' without a shred of good reason.
Though, this is tied to it's fundamental incoherence, You cannot be experiencing an experience. This is one point Banno has made, that I agree with *but totally ruins his take*. You can't be aware, in consciousness, of perception. Experience is of something. Perception without content is no experience. So, where is the idealist drawing phenomena from? After several hours with Kastrup (not personally) it seems totally clear this is just ignored. Though, I note that given the idealist pretends there is no question to answer about matter, they just run with it as a free lunch. But that is ... really, really dumb. We have phenomena. You can't get around that in explaining reality. Mental "objects" giving rise to conscious experience sans anything else is just dumb. You'll need simulation theory or something behind it.

So the hard problem doesn't exist for the idealist and this is probably one of the major advantages amy idealist will give you to their theory. — Apustimelogist

I agree this si what they would say - but it's stupid. It's raises even less-sensible questions, to my mind. It isn't an advantage at all. Simply saying "i'll ignore that explanatory gap by making an extreme claim that is tenuous and essentially a spiritual position" isn't helpful.

The reply is saying that a dualist reality where there is a metaphysical divide between the mental and physical is unfounded. It has no basis in science — Apustimelogist

This seems patently wrong, also. This seems more like a dogma. In fact, I am quite convinced it is a dogma. It's just uncomfortable. Property Dualism explains the data better than physicalism, currently. We have zero scientific basis to claim that consciousness is a physical thing. None. Zip. Nada. Your later quotes seem to exemplify this, on idealist terms, well.

Now I can also say that I have experiences but the fact that I say I have experiences doesn't entail that there must be some other physical substance which is profoundly metaphysically different and from which experiences arise. — Apustimelogist

Semantically it doesn't but given that the conscious does not supervene on the physical, it is a better explanation than "Muhhh.. duhh Mysterianism". It's not logically entailed, but no other doors are unlocked in that room. Either you need to posit something supernatural causing phenomena of objects, or objects.
In any case any even semi-serious dualism doesn't posit that the Mental is some separate physical substance that is a plain mis-reading. It posits that Consciousness is a fact about the physical (a property - a 'further fact') which does not reduce to the physical (you've noted this.. Makes this an awkward clarification). Natural supervenience is the term used here, as opposed to Logical supervenience. Property Dualism avoids literally all the issues you've brought up, and raises little more than doubts about its reality, not it's coherence.

We have no idea about the intrinsic nature of what we scientifically observe beyond our experiences ..... there is absolutely no reason why we should be able to have any tangible access to some fundamental metaphysical nature of how the universe is, whether from science or perception. None of this comes from a particular realist viewpoint which I think is probably key. — Apustimelogist

Agreed. This doesn't seem to have much effect on either of our positions. It just sort of points out that where we see explanatory gaps, you're happy to lean into mysterianism. Not an invalid view, But i think its premature here. Though, again, prima facie, totally agree. We may just be incapable, regardless of what theory we posit. However, I don't think your reasoning entails that position.

But then again, neither the notion of "structure" or "what it is like"(experience) have any substantive definitions that let me pick out anything metaphysically or scientifically meaningful, — Apustimelogist

Ooof. That seems like a bear trap you've put your own foot in. We can absolutely pick out metaphysical notions based on empirical/mental structure. Given consciousness fails to supervene on the physical we actually have really, really good reason to think we are currently beginning to identity some metaphysically distinct concepts. And, it only makes sense that conscious experience alone would even give rise to the question, i think. Nothing else fails to logically supervene, in some way that explains it's emergence.
Experience clearly does. It just doesn't allow you to convey it. I couldn't possibly know that you are having a profound idea about X, but you are having it, on your own account. You dont need to prove it to another mind for that to be the case. So, "scientifically meaningful' would be wrong, practically but theoretically, its actually the closest to the bone you're ever going to get - entirely removing the problem of induction(or hard sci realism) you laid out further up this paragraph (which I note seems empirically true as a limitation of knowledge and does put a spanner in having strong views either way),

let alone any dichotomy between experience and the physical which would only lead to an incoherent type of epiphenomenalism. — Apustimelogist

It does not but even where it points toward EP, it's not incoherent at all. I would recommend reading Chalmers section-long treatment of epiphenomenalism (150-160 or so) in the face of his property dualism. It is very compelling. There really is no problem here as I see it. Further work since publication seems to do nothing for either side (other than we still have no fucking clue what's going on - as Koch has had to admit). To taste:

Epiphenomenalism is counterintuitive, but the alternatives are more than counterintuitive. They are simply wrong, as we have already seen and will see again. The overall moral is that if the arguments suggest that natural supervenience is true, then we should learn to live with natural supervenience — Chalmers(1996)

I don't think you have said anything here that distinguishes realism about scientific theories from that about objects of perceptual. — Apustimelogist

I clearly have. One is about experience, and one is about hte external world. Scientific realism posits there is an external world we can accurately measure. Perceptual realism posits that we, without measurement, can directly access an external world. They are plainly different considerations. One is necessarily prior to the other in explanatory terms. Ill leave that there.

seems to me just as much a concern — Apustimelogist

It may, but it's obviously not. It simply doesn't matter in A', as an example of why they're separate. You can subtract the one, and still ahve the other open question.

The question of "why the universe is the way it is?" is the same for any kind of metaphysical position because you can imagine the universe in a vast number of different — Apustimelogist

Yes, that's right and exactly why an idealist actually does not avoid any problems entailed by this question. I may prematurely be thinking you're starting to grok it here... Onward.

just as arbitrary — Apustimelogist

Not at all, on my account. Physicalists cannot entertain the majority of metaphysical theories because they posit something over and above hte physical, or remove/re-cast the physical as something other than it is currently understood. This is one of the biggest drawbacks. Physicalism begs several questions about it's foundational tenets. The problem of consciousness seems to pretty squarely jettison the sanguine notions of physicalists.

So too you can have an idealist universe where even what you are thinking of as non-experiential cognition is still experience or consciousness — Apustimelogist

This is a plain contradiction, unless your position is that I am empirically wrong - that doesn't seem to be what you're saying, so i remain in the position that this sentence is self-contradictory and does nothing for you. If A'- (our world, exactly, but there is no consciousness) exists, there just is no experience. Nothing else changes. Cognition and behaviour remains exactly the same, but is not accompanied, ever, by an experience in S. This specifically disallows phenomenal experience while losing precisely zero about our world that we actually know in the scientific sense.

An 'idealist' universe, on your account, is pure experience. Nothing else. Not experience of anything - just experiences on experiences on experiences. So, you've baked into your notion that both your sentence must be contradictory, and that you can't take an idealistic Universe seriously - you're trying to maintain non-experiential cognition in a world of experience - not cognition - from which experience can be subtracted without a loss of form, structure or function from what we know currently about A.

Personally I don't believe in some strong distinction between "conscious" and "non-conscious" cognition in the way that I believe you are thinking about it. — Apustimelogist

What's your take here, then? Pure curiosity. To come to table, 'cognition' doesn't seem to me something that is the same as experience. So, all cognition is 'conscious' but barely any cognition arises in experience

The problem of consciousness is only in contrast to the metaphysics of the physical and functional. — Apustimelogist

While, semantically, I agree, and I wrongly formulated discussions about hte Hard Problem earlier, i'm sorry, but the question of 'why is there conscious experience' is simply live on any theory that allows for experience. Nothing in those quotes changes this. The problem of experience looms over any theory that doesn't deny it. Which is why many theories simply deny it. Idealism being one that does the opposite - denies the physical s a non-problem. They are exactly the same tactics in terms of theorizing. And both are as silly as the other, imo. If the idealist position rested on cognition which is far more coherent than resting on experience you can see that this question is just as much a problem for the idealist.