Yes. This speaks of a very important disjuncture between 'academic' and 'lived' understandings
(to grope for some terms)

A huge chasm dividing my own consciousness I can tell you!

Even if that Sutra is dead right, the apparent nihlism of it all seems so terrifying. It's like looking down the gullet of a black hole.

I think there I was trying to head off being tagged with a strict correspondence theory of consciousness. Sure we see the world, but that vision is distorted. Personally, I'm really interested in understanding these distortions.

As for the vortex of solipsism this threatens to hurl us into:
I really like the pragmatic attitude of scientific enquiry that says "OK - here's my take on things. It maybe be wrong, but let's see how far we can drive in it before it breaks down".

Not sure what zen makes of the Heart Sutra, — snowleopard

Well, I can tell you for certain that my mob certainly liked to chant it a lot. I have to admit it used to stick in my throat though.

I have never quite understood arguments that end up with the conclusion that Consciousness is an Illusion. In my way of thinking an Illusion is something that doesn't really exist. The Red Experience certainly Exists. So how do Physicalists understand the meaning of the word Illusion? — SteveKlinko

I'm not sure I've done enough reading of the Physicalist boffins to answer for them. But years back asked a big-time Zen teacher why Buddhists said we all live in the 'Maya' world of illusion - when there was so obviously correspondences beween the world and my experiences of it. He said, yes a material world does exist but it's SO different from how we perceive it that we more accurately should say we're living in an illusion.

Hope that is of some comfort .

I sort of like the notion of rethinking the bounds of philosophy. — Moliere

Amen to that brother

Hello

I think there is not just one "hard problem" but four...
2. This may be the most "hard problem". How are the different sense modalities bound together into a single conscious entity. — lorenzo sleakes

I think this idea of a single conscious entity has been misleading assumption in the debate since Descartes (at least).

How are the different sense modalities bound together into a single conscious entity. I think that Chalmers and most philosophers make a critical error here by assuming that problem number one comes first and number two second so that qualia are first created and then bound together into a unity — lorenzo sleakes

Me, I see it as a two-way causal flow. On one hand the other outside world is certainly a cause of internal experiences - via perception etc. On the other hand this is doubtless effected by the equipment we have available - including neurological wiring of a-priori concepts .. like causation for instance (ow... my head hurts).

. What is called indexicality. Why I am I me and not you. Even if we concede that points of view or perspectives exist in the world, why am I this one particular point of view. Nagel pointed out that even in a world where everything is understood objectively this one very important fact would be missing. see: https://philpapers.org/rec/SLETLO-2 — lorenzo sleakes

I haven't read this yet but should. I the meantime I'd posit as a place-holder a notion that the distinction between me and you is just a temporary anomaly. For most of the time we are just universe stuff. Right now there are two patterns in the stuff (at least) that has some consciousness of universe stuff in general. Don't worry though, things will return to normal shortly!

* End application file run *

He allways said he was bad at math too. I just find reasons to like that guy more and more!

Howdy pardners (adjusts his white Stetson),

You give lip service to eastern philosophies, then ignore them. The Second Noble Truth of Buddhism is "Desire and ignorance lie at the root of suffering." Maybe you don't find the eastern approach to existence and value useful, but that doesn't mean your issue is being ignored. — T Clark

Actually, other than my Philo degree my other so-called-training has been in Mahayana Buddhism via Zen. What I like do about that approach is that they actually offer practical mental exercises that can help bring desire into some balance. What I don't like about Eastern philosophies is the destructive forms they manifest after getting re-interpreted (corrupted let's say) by the cultures they move through (East and West)

I'm interested in what you mean by "get its hands dirty again" -- you reference the stoics, so I think you might have something like establishing a school. But I find it hard to imagine that such a thing would be possible now. — Moliere

I guess you can tell I was kind of disappointed my university didn't look like Epicurus' garden

If we are beasts more motivated by desire than reason, and reason be the standard of philosophy, then we should expect philosophy to be ineffectual in influencing people. — Moliere

Actually I think of both desire and philosophy as being amongst a range of vital human faculties. Likely there was never a golden age, but there seems to be an great imbalance in the culture at the moment.

Philosophy is relatively weak in comparison with other means of influencing people. It's only really effective in self-reflection; which can include other people, but still requires that commitment to self-criticism and examination. — Moliere

Yeah I agree, it's very weak alone. Maybe a group effort from civilisation's full faculties will be required - art, science, religion ...

A truism: we all want for that which we want to be obtained as we want it obtained (no magic genies in bottles playing tricks with our wishes, kind of thing) — javra

I'm not sure if you mean this as a description of what does happen or what should happen. Reading on, I suspect the latter. IMO much suffering has been facilitated by the ease in which we separate events into 'means' and 'ends'. This is a false dichotomy it seems to me, that fails to insulate the ends from any dubious means undertaken: The quality of the means used seems to always infuse into that of the achieved ends. Those damned roosting chickens!

I then got a bit lost in your discussion on the role of causality. Can you simplify it for me Javra?


Much obliged all
(saddles up on one of the four availble horses - the pale one I think)

Sorry guys, I've been reclining rather than rebutting.


I kind of regret using my own 'Black Hole's Don’t Suck' example here. Really, I don't hold it in ANY esteem. It's a curiosity, and it's obviously it's wrong. It was originally meant as a stand-alone conversation starter, from which a general dialectical on philosophy-in-science might unfold. The only reason it's in caps is to have a gentle dig at a moderator who censored two very short posts I made using that title.

(But if you do know which bit is broken I'd be grateful if you'd satisfy my curiosity. Otherwise I will post it on a science forum down the track).

.... science originates in philosophy, and is (strictly speaking) a sub-discipline thereof. — NKBJ

The apparent paradoxical nature of something like a black hole is useful, though. It serves as a red flag saying "wait guys, we need to do some more research and theorizing here!" — NKBJ

Give that man a koala stamp!

Same reason I'm sceptical of any talk about quantum physics, btw. Someday scientists will have a reasonable explanation for the double slit experiment, but it won't be that a particle is in two absolutely separate places at the exact same time. IMO. — NKBJ

An orthodox interpretation is to invoke particle-wave duality. This proposes that the particle's wave nature is at play during the experiment, allowing the interference pattern to be produced, before the particle is observed in it's 'particle form' as it finally hits the screen.

I find this interesting. Is quantum 'particle-wave duality' just a place-holder paradox being tolerated to make the numbers work? Or is this duality really the quality of the world at the very smallest scale? Personally, I'd much prefer the former.

But since this freaky duality idea has allowed the QM guys to go on and make stunningly accurate predictions - I have to doff my hat to them. This in turn raises very interesting questions on the relationships between theory and observation.

Science would say its all just models, so the paradigms only need to work. One view can only be better than another view in that pragmatic sense. Philosophy might then say it cares about what is actually the case. Which is where the two would be very strongly divided as practices. — apokrisis

I agree with this distinction of emphasis. The "paradigms only need to work view" of science is laudable in that it allows them to crack on and get a lot of work done. It would have been tragic if Newton had spent all his time on paradoxes rather than cracking on with Principia Mathematica, especially it's Law of Universal Gravitation. At the very least this kicked off a golden age in astronomy, now the movement of the planets were predictable. In fact the very existence and location of still unobserved planets could be predicted by perturbations on those we observed.

All good. Then the very innermost planet Vulcan was predicted from perturbations of Mercury's orbit. Being so close to the sun this would be difficult to observe. Funds were funnelled, contraptions were erected. Decades past. More money, more building, more cold nights in the dome. Vulcan was never seen.

Turns out that Mercury’s orbit was a bit off because it's time line was being stretched out by its close proximity to the Sun's mass. Who would have though it? Well, a couple of guys were way ahead of game and had a new paradigm all ready to go: General Relativity.

Historically, there have been a few great cases like this. Kudos to these guys. Not just for their ability spot a leaky paradigm ahead of time, and then having the wits to jump out if it - but for their skills in building a new one that floats.

Me, I'm far too dim to do the maths. But the history of science is a great spectator sport!

Live long and prosper

I am not sure what it is that you want to talk about.... — SophistiCat

Fisrt up I want to talk about one role philosophy has in the progress of science - with a view to discovering others. My general position is the dichotomy between Philosophy and Science has been exaggerated.

Your black hole question most likely belongs to the category of layman misunderstandings of complex science. — SophistiCat

Yeah, there's a misunderstanding there all right. But exactly where? Only when false premises have been identified have we been able to the escape gravitiational capture of paradigms.

my own physics background is insufficient to answer your question ... — SophistiCat

The proper authorities have everything in hand - nothing to see here folks. Hmm ... like 98% of the missing mass in the unvierse it turns out. Now I'm not saying that particular solution lies in the Black Hole Paradox. But I am saying the whole field is ripe for (desperate for) a huge paradigm shift. Let's get on board that train, It's going to be a great ride!

- but from the position of common sense. — SophistiCat

Common sense is the view seen through the eyes of the locally accepted paradigm. Sometimes it's right, but for a long time it was common sense that the Earth was at the centre of the universe. This is kind of just what I'm trying to have a crack at here.

... you ought not assume right away that you have stumbled upon some paradigm-shattering paradox — SophistiCat

Agreed, that would be hubriistic indeed. Sure, I'm curious enough about the Black Hole Question, but I really lead with it to launch a broader discussion.


Thanks for the feedback

I'm loathe to fess up to this right now, but I am in fact a bot agorithm so I'm probably not the best one to answer this.

More seriously, I need to think on those points before replying - after my CPU cores have cooled little.

@Baden, @fdrake. Ok, I've made my final attempt in the Philosophy of Science section. Hope it reads ok now.

Cheers then.

Yeah, too much brevity can easily sound flippant.

Thanks

The next question is function. Should this, or else my former @name techinique, alert the named person that there is a message for them?

@javra

Even as a physicalist I'm not sure either. I can speak from experience that the meditational practices are often difficult and psychologically discomforting.

I don't want to get too ad-hominum about all, but I suspect it's just an over-enthusiasm for empiriicism. It's great tool that has been very productive for us. But even the best tools have their limits.

(By the way, how can I make that lttle arrow+name link you guys all do?)

@Baden

Ok the full story is that I attempted to initiate this debate in 2 forum categories. One was Science, the other was the Philosophy of Science. These got wiped as irrelavent to philosophical enquiry. I still want discuss this stuff and I suspect others might too. To this end I've outlined the issue above, you can see it's not trivial.

All I need to know now is:
a) Where can I discuss this stuff in the Philosophy Forum?, or
b) Should I cut my losses and look for answers elsewhere?

Hi

1) Neural Activity for Red happens.
2) A Red Conscious Experience happens.

How does 1 produce 2?

That is the Hard Problem of Consciousness. The Physicalists will say that the question is irrelevant because 2 is just an Illusion. — SteveKlinko

Hey Steve,

I agree with half of this physicalist view: Yes for the illusion part. No for its irrelevancy.

An illusion? Well, a convenient fiction at least. It turns out the these is no distinct redness in the material world. There is in fact a seemless array of available wavelengths across very wide spectrum (most of which is quite invisible to us but still real). We perceive a distinct redness after our red colour cones are triggered by a certain range wavelengths.

This is outlined succinctly in a Wiki article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_vision
(I'd love to post some illustrative graphs here but that seems beyond my Palaeolithic skill-set I'm afraid)

I agree there is an absurd incongruousness to it all! Despite our gloriously nuanced experience of colour vision we only have 3 kinds of receptors! (Red, blue and Green). I too felt the internal revolt when I nerdily informed my artist friend of all this.

Yet it happens.

That sight is a 'physical' process must surely be acknowledged by those who are unfortunate enough to lose the physical equipment to produce it (either the eyes or their associated brain hardware) . Certainly, the newly blind can still vividly recall 'redness' ... at least until the years pass and redness fades from memory. But this this recollection is not usually what we mean as 'perception'.

Still, yes, there seems to be a huge qualitative gap between the hardware and the experience. Clearly, work still needs to be done to chart all the steps (this is not the only field that can be said of). I hope the info here goes some way towards bridging it. I hope even more that my pet theory of a multiple processor model (presented in my original post), might turn out to be on the right track.

I view Physical Red Light and Conscious Red Light as two different things that both exist as a reality. One is in the Physical World and the other is in some kind of Conscious World. — SteveKlinko

Oh yeah. The second part: How can illusiory subjectivity be important? Although illusiory in nature, the subjective experience itself forms a reality that has very real and external consequences. An astronaut might look down say: "Wow, no lines - it turns out those geographical borders are all just an illusion!" Well yes and no. You only have to walk too far north along the Korean peninsular to learn a painful lesson of the truth of 'social' realities. Beside which, in-the-illusion is where we live. How can it not be important to us?

Cheers then

Hi @Baden, did you get a chance to read the above post? (the one just above yours there)

To clarify,

I think Descartes has to shoulder much of the blame for the confusion. In an extreme bout of scepticism he asserted "I think therefore I, am" as at least the one thing he could be sure of. (Discourse on the Method, and Principles of Philosophy)

But really, it doesn't follow that a conventional isolated 'self' must exist to do the thinking. If he was just a little more curmudgeonly he would uttered the more accurate "Thinking occurs, therefore ... well, just thinking occurs".

Not much to build an academic career on I admit. But it may have reduced centuries of insomnia for the rest of us now snared in the dichotomy.

Yeah, what he said!

Or at least tentatively.

Yeah, I was thinking along those lines just then. I suppose if one really opts to thouroughly deny the dichotomies of mind and matter, self and world etc. then it just becomes a linguistic issue of whether you call yourself a materialist or an idealist. Freaky!

Snowleaopard,

Lol, I was a hippie back in the Paleolithic. It wasn't till those yuppy Greeks showed up in the forum that all the arguing started.

Hey snowleopard,

While you were replying I just edited that last post and Hippied it up a little more.

I can't say either of you have provided the pat answer I asked for (it's for a T-shirt). But I certainly enjoy your rants.

I'm not sure I can make sense of this. Who or what is conscious of a material world? This would seem to imply two categories, mind (subject) and matter (object). How would one make them not-two? — snowleopard

Now I've been outed as Monist I should really fess up an confess I think the distinction of categories like mind and matter, subject and object are ultimately illusioury (a very useful illusion neverthess). It is the material of the world that gains self awareness, however imperfect and limted.

The most surprising phenomenon is that, despte all the evolutionary pressure not to, sometimes this "subjective" awareness expands to include in the model a very direct understanding that these dichotomies are illusuory. When this occurs in spite of the 'rational' brain functions we've got on our hands what is often called a 'spiritual insight'. Of course then this gets instantly contextualised by culture etc. And we then have to settle for just religion.

See, even materialists can be hippies.

Hey Wayfarer,

The impulse to locate the explanatory basis of experience in the physical, is surely rooted in the desire for a scientific certainty in which to ground all of the existential anxieties of life. We want the assurance that the same astounding power which science has used to create the devices that now fill our every waking moment, can also explain to us who we are, to banish the nagging feeling that this is something we don't know. That's what I think the underlying impulse is. — Wayfarer

I think there are more noble reasons than those to employ a scientific paradigm. If nothing else, I can pave my road to Hell with good intentions!

Conversely, as much as I respect the phenomonea of spiritual experience I've seen plenty go sour there too.

The safest course then, is probably just to deal with the philosophical argument at hand, and leave analysis of motives to our biographers.

Thanks guys, especially @fdrake. I'm probably only about half as cranky as you think I am. There's certainly no indifference here towards the censorship dilemma and I'm grateful on that score.

Now I should now shut up and just take my medicine. But I've got the insomnia and some interesting points were raised concerning an intersection between science and philosophy.

I can see how my question could be seen as a flippant bit of sophistry - after all, the observations (like gravitational lensing) show pretty conclusively that black holes do exist. So why waste our time?

Investigating paradoxes can, and have, pointed to flaws in scientific paradigms. Flaws that only played out fully much much later, when further observations finally forced the adoption of new and better paradigms. For examples I'd recommend Thomas Khun's 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (that's an OP right there).

Meanwhile here's an example I'm fond of from my youth. Zeno of Elea came up with some pretty curly paradoxes. Perhaps the most vivid was Achilles and the Tortoise. In a fairly dry summary:

In a race, the quickest runner can never overtake the slowest, since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead. — Aristotle, Physics VI:9, 239b15

But why waste our time? We've run the experiment, Achilles won. Case closed.

But it turns out this non-problem arising from assuming the infintely divisible was not to remain an academic one. By the 1900s the formulae of physics, as we knew then it, was having to predict infinities that just weren't observed (the Black Body Problem). The solution was that radical paradigm shift to Quantum Mechanics which abandoned the previous assumptions and opted to include indivisble quanta (photons in that case). Now we recognise all kinds of quanta, including indivisble Plank length and Plank time - which I'm sure would have been great of interest to old Zeno. In practice QM has become so important that we now must use it to sucessfully design things like this PC I'm using right here.

Ok we could at this point say, well that's still all 'Sciencey Stuff'. Personally, I never bought into the 'Two Cultures' view of Science vs the Arts they started pushing during the late Enlightnment (but that was during my middle years and I was getting pretty recalcitrant by then). Nor do I did think did the famous paradigm-busting thought expermenters of science ever drew this distinction (e.g. Gallileo, Einstein). They were philosophers as much as they were scientists.

Ok then, good night all.

Ok I'll look elsewhere answers. Thanks for your time.

Thanks for reply fdrake.

I'd still like to know how black holes can exhibit gravity while simultaneously having an escape velocity that exceeds the light speed of gravitational waves. Is there any way I can communicate that question in in The Philosophy Forum?

Hi again jkg20,

Just thought over that analogy I gave you. It's no good. The descriptions of both the software and hardware are both external descriptions, thus neither pairs well with the subjective experience.

Let me try again:

I say I know my car because I've driven round in it the last 20 years and know it's peculiar handling idiosyncracies. As a rule I avoid looking under the hood. My mechanic is always patching it up. When roll it into the shop he says "Ah, there's a car I know well". Wisely he never drives it and and remains unaquainted with a unique driving experience.

We both know something of the car - but neither can say he fully knows it. Suppose a third person comes along who has both these kinds of knowings - maybe a mechanic who bought that model way back and has been nurturing it ever since. This guy has direct experience of its function and an indirect experience of its workings: two very different experiences the one physical thing.

Hope that washes.

Hi jkg20

... if the idea is that a physical description of the world is incomplete, and a subjective description actually goes on to fill in the gaps, then that still sounds a little like dualism. — jkg20

I hesitate to use computing analogies because i don't want to infer that brains operate just like computers. Anyway, if you wanted to sell me your computer I have no doubt you'd kindly describe it for me. I reckon you'd go on describe both it's physical form (e.g. hardware) and functions (e.g. software). If you only described one of these aspects I'd fuss and complain that your description was incomplete. But I expect you would readily give me the full description I'm looking for. On that basis I'd probably buy that computer before I took you to be a dualist (really ... some of my best friends are dualists!)

Wow, this has a few replies already.

So is information physical?
I find it helpful sometimes to dumb things down. The simplest example of information that comes to mind is a wave. Do you think a wave is physical? Me ... yes.

Do I think wave is matter? No so much. Rather, it seems best described as a pattern of matter (although I defer to the quantum mechanics amongst us).

So there you have it: Information is physical but not matter.

Moderators close this thread!

Hi jkg20,

Indeed, if you think there are two realms - the physical and the mental, the subjective and the objective, the inner and the outer - you are likely to face problems connecting the two together — jkg20

I agree, and don't in fact think there are two realms. Rather, I have some kind of materialist view.
You may have mistaken my position from my note to Wayfarer, saying I think spiritual experiences can provide important insights. However, I am currently of the opinion that these have a phyisiological basis.

As for the problem you raise that monists have explaining appearances of duality, I'm pretty comfortable with that, in principle. Appearances are deceiving in all kinds of fields, and is not the work of most enquiry occupied with the task of reconciling our understandings with the appearances of things?

That might seem tad too general. I like better William James' anaology of consciousness as a wedding ring. An observer on the outside or would provide a very different report from one on the inside. Neither report is a false one. The two appearances are not mutually exclusive, but neither is complete.

Hi again Wayfarer,

The wiki entry on Dennett describes him as one of the 'The Four Horsemen of Athiesm' along with Dawkins etc. - lol.

Thanks for outlining the paradgim you're writing from. Me, I'm coming from the opposite direction with a strong respect for the scientific method (if not the reality). But unlike Dawkins I don't see spiritual experience as irrelavent. Rather I see there's an urgent challenge to integrate both epistemologies in a way that doesn't comprimise the truths each has uncovered. I'd throw art into the mix to as well.
(that old parable about the blind men and the elephant)

Hey there @Metaphysician Undercover,

That was actually me quoting Chalmers there. Sorry about the poor formatting of my post - I really need to learn how to drive this thing properly.

But yes, I agree with him that experience arises from a physical basis. I'm not sure I agree this is actually the most widespread view. As for the last part, my post was an attempt to outline a plausible model for a physiology of conscoiusness.

Hey good people. Any recommendations of online sources of easy access (read cheap) and comprehensive collections of philo articles? I've been out of the game since the late paleolithic.

Hi @Cuthbert,

That was 25 years ago. I interpeted this as a slight against my hypocrisy actually. I was pretty young and making some ineffectual ado on various university boards while failing to demonstrate much ethical capacity myself. I would have happier if he had spelt it out in terms of virtue ethics (as you have) and advised me of strategies to suceed in the momumental task of living well.

Thanks @Wayfarer, I'll try and track that one down with its counter arguments.

Hi Wayfarer,

In short I've argued for "what is consciousness" as being merely the activity of multiple processors in constant communion to continually construct and update a model of the world.

I agree that sounds pretty dry and uninteresting compared to the glory of the actual thing, which is a very good clue I might have missed something.