Then how did humans come to know chemical composition of an apple? — Harry Hindu

Experiments and building theories to test. We obviously can't see the chemical composition, or at least not without an electron microscope.

You are now talking about the light not the apple. I asked what we were missing about the appl — Harry Hindu

The color of the apple we see is the result of visible light reflecting off the surface. But that's not the only light reflecting or passing through the apple.

How do you know that's not how perception works, unless you had access to what perception really is? — Harry Hindu

I don't know what this question means. We have access to how perception works through biology.

You keep contradicting yourself in claiming that we can never experience things as they are, yet you make all these claims about things as they are. — Harry Hindu

I'm not, but you're taking my statements as if I'm saying we don't have access to anything about things, where I said the access was limited and creature based.

"The Earth is flat" cannot be falsified. Just like "The Earth is round" cannot be falsified. If you think scientific theories can be falsified, check the thread "What is a scientific attitude?". Thinking that falsification is what defines science is again an ignorant view. — leo

There's no point in continuing if you're going to argue for the sake of arguing.

So, are you saying that you have access to your mind, it's just that you don't have a good explanation of what your mind is for? — Harry Hindu

I'm just saying that introspection is limited.

You would have to know that there are things about some object that we aren't getting at with our senses to say that our experience is "limited". What is it that we are missing of the apple as it is when we look at the apple? — Harry Hindu

Humans didn't know this at first. Chemical composition would be one thing. The rest of the EM spectrum we don't see reflecting off or passing through the apple would be another.

What is the difference between getting at an object as it is and getting the perception of an object as it is? — Harry Hindu

It would mean experiencing everything about the object, but that's not how perception works.

How do you know that you are missing information, instead of you just misinterpreting the information? — Harry Hindu

Science. Or careful observation before then leading to a realization that we don't know everything about objects by just seeing or tasting them.

And who says what the facts are? You? — leo

People agree on what the standards are for facts, such as using a thermostat to measure temperature.

but that it isn't fine to coerce others to agree with us, — leo

I'm wondering why coercion is a topic in this discussion for you. Are you feeling coerced by participating in a discussion?

nd I don't like to see people having their views dismissed or ridiculed simply because they don't agree with the consensus. — leo

Some views are ridiculous, such as the Earth is flat. It contradicts everything we know. People are free to think that way, but they're going to be criticized for holding an ignorant view.

As the saying goes, you're free to have your own opinions, but not your own facts. Meaning that people are going to call you out if you disagree on facts.

So I don't see that view as inconsistent nor how living by that view makes life impossible, on the contrary. — leo

Individually, you can get away with it to a point, but society needs to agree on facts so bridges can be built and meetings can take place, and that sort of thing. And if you're doing anything with other people and you decide to not agree on something as basic as temperature, you're going to have problems.

because you are right and they are wrong, right? — leo

Facts aren't opinions, so yes. You haven't really thought out the implications of the radical relativism you're advocating, and how it would make life impossible.

You have noticed that not everyone agrees on some things. You can go a step further and notice that there is seemingly nothing everyone agrees on, including that statement. — leo

I notice people agreeing on facts when it's practical or important to do so, and only disagreeing when they have some other belief that's in contradiction.

Nobody seriously disagrees over a thermometer.

I think it would just be a discussion about different ways to use "belief." — frank

Eliminativism maintains that propositional content which includes beliefs and desires are fictions and will be replaced by future neuroscience with a scientific understanding of what really goes on when we say:

"Johnny did X because he believed it would get him Y."

But it sounds like creativesoul is wanting to debate what the content of beliefs are, not whether they exist.

There are some people who agree with me. — leo

Consider the implications for engineering or even meeting people at a certain time and location if we can't agree on facts.

Everything is relative to the individual is insanity. We wouldn't even be able to communicate.

So your feeling of coldness or warmness isn't JUST about the outside temperature, or JUST your temperature. It is about the relationship between the two. — Harry Hindu

Sure, but it's still a sensation and not what the thermometer is measuring.

So we can only be skeptical if we actually had access to both how they appear and how they are? But you keep saying that we never have access to how they are - only how they appear - so then why are we skeptical? — Harry Hindu

Actually, I said we do have some access to how things are because "I'm horsed" doesn't make any sense. So we can conclude that perceiving a horse has some objective properties not dependent on use perceiving it.

have no idea what you mean here. Do you question the existence of your mind - or that something exists at all? — Harry Hindu

No, only questioning that I have perfect knowledge of my experiences or thoughts.

If we don't experience things directly or indirectly, then how do we experience things at all - even imperfectly? — Harry Hindu

We don't experience things directly or indirectly as they are. We only experience them in a limited fashion as human beings.

Do you experience your mind directly? — Harry Hindu

More so than other people do, but I'm a bit leery of using the word direct in this context. I'm not experiencing the mechanisms my brain uses to produce mental states.

What do you mean by "experience"? — Harry Hindu

Subjectivity.

Actually I would even doubt that. What if I'm blind — leo

Someone can tell you the temperature. There's probably thermostats that read off the temperature.

or I can't understand how to read a thermometer? — leo

When you learn to read it, you will get the same value as the rest of us.

But then why can't I just say that if you don't feel cold when I feel cold it's because you're disabled or stupid? — leo

Because all humans can feel cold or hot at different times.

Why do we have to agree that feeling cold is relative and not that what the thermometer says to us is relative? — leo

Because we can agree on the thermometer. It gives us an objective standard.

I would argue that even what a thermometer says or what we call a horse is relative. And then we don't need to force a subjective-objective divide. — leo

Sure you can do that, if you don't mind everything being relative, and there being no facts anyone agrees on. Meanwhile, the rest of us will be disagreeing with you.

It seems that difference and similarity are fundamental to human cognition and recognition, and are therefore not explicable in more basic terms. All explications rely on the cognition and recognition of difference and similarity, otherwise we could say nothing about anything, and then there would be no use or meaning. — Janus

Yes, it would seem that is so. I would contend this only works if the world has a related structure.

What Kant was intent on showing is that we should abandon the naive realist view that empirical objects exist iindependently in just the same way, or the same form, so to speak, as they exist for us. — Janus

I agree with this.

The whole solipsist dilemma is a strawman having sex with a red herring; it trades on the mere fact that we cannot prove deductively that the external world, other people or anything at all exists independently of our apprehensions (nor can we prove anything else that is not merely formally abstract, for that matter). — Janus

It's a little bit more than that. Kant was responding to skeptical implications Hume raised with his empiricism, which were raised by ancient skeptics as well. Plato and Aristotle were also responding to skeptical arguments. And so did Wittgenstein.

It's substantial enough to attract considerable attention from major philosophers throughout history.

When will people let this, and other vapid vacuities like BIV, "evil demon", p-zombie and so on, go, as they should, into the dustbin of intellectual history. They've been on the slaughterbench for long enough now for us to be confident that they are in fact dead ideas with nothing whatsoever to offer. — Janus

When a consensus has been reached that those arguments have either been refuted, dissolved or shown to be meaningless nonsense. Attempts have been made to do so, of course. But consensus is lacking.

You didn't mention the correlationist circle, which the continental realists have been struggling to get past. Their understanding of Kant, or those who followed Kant, is that it traps us into a world of how things appear to us such that we can't say there are things like mind-independent fossils.

However it seems on Kant's view that without the blind men (or anyone else), neither is there an elephant. — Andrew M

Wouldn't that apply to other humans as well as elephants? How do I know other people exist? The same way I know elephants exist. If that's just part of what appears to me, then solipsism is the logical conclusion. If that's what Kant meant.

This isn't to say Kant intended solipsism, only to show that this sort of view leads there. Why would other people be the one exception? Aren't they part of the world being perceived, just like elephants?

For that matter, don't elephants perceive?

In one case we call those qualities which we use an instrument that reads the same for ourselves the object-dependent qualities, and in the other case we just state how we feel to designate the perceiver-dependent qualities. — Moliere

Yes, the feeling of cold/heat cannot be the temperature the thermometer measures because the feeling varies between individuals and even the same individual when the thermometer does not.

I'd just say that it's a way of talking with one another, rather than something which exists. — Moliere

I don't see how that's possible. Language doesn't make us feel cold or hot. Animals and babies feel heat. It's biological. And language doesn't make a thermometer work the way it does. That's physics.

Physics gives us an explanation which doesn't depend on feeling at all. It says temperature is the result of kinetic energy of particles.

Thus we have an appearance of heat/cold that's biologically based, and we have the temperature reading, which is physics based. The feeling didn't tell our ancestors what temperature was, only that we should avoid things that were too cold or hot for us, and that certain things happened when it was hot (fire starting) or cold enough (water freezing). But they didn't know why.

The skeptics thought we couldn't know, but the stoic retort, "I'm horsed", shows why it is possible to know.

That’s all a very good point. I had not considered any of that in context of meaning is use until your earlier post. Same sort of generalization issue also crops up for the phrase language games. If they’re all unique, then how does Witty genaralize to one phrase?

Arguing in circles makes one dizzy.

Full circle, eh?

Skepticism would still exist even if we experienced things as they are, for how would we know if we experience things as they are? What would it mean to experience you, or the apple, as you are? — Harry Hindu

Skepticism only becomes an option when we notice a discrepancy between how things appear and how they are. Or when we can't tell the difference between an appearance and reality, such as during a dream.

Again, are you not experiencing your mind as it truly is? — Harry Hindu

No, our first person access is imperfect and error prone.

f you can experience things as they are indirectly, — Harry Hindu

We don't experience things as they are, directly or indirectly. We experience them in a limited fashion, imperfectly based on the kind of senses and brains we have.

'm not sweet, the orange is. I don't feel sweet, I taste something sweet. I'm not red, the apple is. I don't feel red, I see something red. I guess I don't get the point you're trying to get across. — T Clark

What's the difference between feeling cold and tasting sweet or seeing red? You have those experiences because of the kind of animal you are. The point of the ancient skeptics was that those properties couldn't be objective properties of things themselves because they vary and depend on the kind of perceivers we are.

s this really the source of any confusion? If I say "I'm cold." You generally know I mean "I feel cold." If I pick up a beer or if I'm outside and say "It's cold, I generally mean the temperature of the beer or the air is below about 40 degrees F. Just because there's a lot of play about whether to use 40 degrees F or 32 degrees F, doesn't mean there's really any confusion. — T Clark

It means that our feeling of cold is due to the kind of bodies we have, not the temperature itself. Feeling cold isn't a property of the air or whatever object we're touching.

That's why science ends up with explanations such as temperature as energy of the particles making up the air or object, and not how we experience temperature.

They don't differ so much that we call them different names. Dogs, horses, sharks, and lizards all have noses and eyes and nervous systems. They differ only in complexity. — Harry Hindu

They differ in ability and range. Also, some animals have eyes that see more than three primary colors. And some senses that humans lack, such as sonar or detecting the Earth's magnetic field.

What would be the difference in "experiencing" something exactly as it is and "experiencing" the aboutness of how something is? — Harry Hindu

If we experienced things exactly as they are, there would be no skepticism, and we wouldn't need science. We would just know things as they are. This is the naive view people have before they're exposed to science or philosophy, or start questioning appearances.

Just as I can point to the thermometer and say it is cold, I can point to your shivering body and say that you are cold. — Harry Hindu

Not always. People can feel cold without shivering. They can feel pain without jumping around and hollering. We can't always tell what someone is experiencing. Reading body language has its limits. Language also has it's limits and doesn't always tell us exactly what people feel. Sometimes they struggle to put it into words. And sometimes they don't want to tell us the truth.

Then how is it that I'm able even understand any of the scribbles you put up on my computer screen? — Harry Hindu

You're a human being and are part of the same language community.

Saying anything is a type of behavior. Saying, "the wine is good." is the same as seeing someone enjoy the wine. — Harry Hindu

It's really not.

If the horse laps up the wine and begs for more, — Harry Hindu

Horses probably don't deceive. But like other animals, they can be stubborn, and we don't always know why. People do deceive and can pretend to like your terrible cooking and may even beg for more, if they feel like they really need to sell it.

Or you're put on trial for a crime you may have committed. Question is, can the jury tell whether you're being truthful? How good is your lawyer? Will the judge allow the results of the lie detector test into the trial that you failed three times? Is the jury influenced by the prosecutor painting you as a misogynist, homophobic racist who hates mankind and supports anti-natalism?

Point is, we struggle to really know what other people think and experience, and we're not always sure how much they're telling us the truth. There is a division between us and others.

You can lead a horse to wine, but it might not drink it. Maybe it's not thirsty. Maybe it doesn't like the smell of the wine. Or maybe it's distracted by your body language.

Are you a bot? If so, can you describe your subjective experiences, if you have any?

if the brain is not a type of machine than what is it? What does it do? What is it for? — Harry Hindu

An organ, part of a an animal. It's for survival and reproduction. Also, wasting time on forums.

What if silicon-based life evolved by natural selection on another planet? — Harry Hindu

They would be life forms.

Would you consider that silicon-based life as conscious? — Harry Hindu

Depends on their behavior. But I admit we don't have a good way to know with any confidence.

What would be the difference between the silicon-based life and a robot with a computer brain and cameras, microphones and tactile pressure points for senses? — Harry Hindu

That is one of the challenging questions. You're assuming the right functions result in consciousness. But I don't know what a functional definition of subjectivity looks like, so I can't say whether a machine or a silicon-based life form would be, or even which earth life forms are besides humans. I assume animals similar enough to us would be.

An explanation of the consciousness in my book would explain how certain brain states are conscious and others are not. It would tell us whether a machine would be conscious. We would understand how the philosophical zombie argument goes wrong. We would know what a bat experiences when it uses sonar, at least in the same way Mary knows what blue is while she's still confined to the black & white room.

And there wouldn't be any need for further philosophical debate on the matter. There would be a consensus and it would be resolved. There would be no more mystery. It would be like the sun rising and setting, in that we understand what gives rise to the experience of the sun moving through the sky, and there's no debate.

I’m wondering how we can use language at all if every instance of using a word is unique. As you pointed out, even the word use is a generalization. Language is full of general terms used across instances.

What I'm rather doing is highlighting what the real problem is when it comes to the "hard problem." A real problem that no one wants to address. — Terrapin Station

Well then, just spell out the real problem. Give your analysis of what an explanation is. I can't think of a non-controversial or overly simple definition.

Well, that's kind of really a general statement, where does one begin with such a statement? — Wallows

For starters, treating psychiatric conditions isn't an engineering problem.

There is no such thing as "use" in a general sense because each instance of using something is unique and particular. — Metaphysician Undercover

Are we willing going to go down the road that we can't use language to speak in the general sense? All word meanings are unique and particular?

Maybe I misunderstand, but if so, I can't help but think something has gone badly wrong. It's language's ability to generalize which is so very useful.

when it should have led to a story about the difference between being awake and asleep. — Banno

This doesn't inspire confidence in me that using the language game approach can solve philosophical problems.

However, I was reminded of it when trying to think of what explanation means, and not having a good answer come to mind without consulting a dictionary. Or at least, not one which didn't lead to murky waters.

the biological part.

But not also medical problem?

explanation is like pornography. You know one when you see it. The dictionary definition you gave is very generic and simple. Say for example I asked for an explanation of water. There are simple explanations one would give a child, and there is chemistry, which explains the properties of water. The second one is what I would expect for consciousness.

thats if the technology delivers on those goals someday. I take it’s too early to know how effective Neuralink will be in treating psychiatric conditions or transmitting thoughts to other minds.

problem is I don’t think the brain is a machine, and I think awareness and discrimination can be performed by a simple enough device that we don’t have reason to consider conscious.

Define it for me.

I feel like invoking @Banno at this point. Definition of explanation?

Okay, go for it.

That's fine that you think that, but that you do is a combo of the reasons I explained. Including that you are confused in thinking that it's a category error. That was part of my explanation. — Terrapin Station

Since you're not suffering any confusions on the matter, can you:

1. Explain why only certain brain states are conscious?
2. Say whether a machine like Data would be conscious?
3. Draw a line on which animals are conscious?
4. Say whether a perfect simulation of your brain would be conscious?

Goddammit man, I just explained why there's a "hard problem." — Terrapin Station

You tried, but I think there's a hard problem without the quotes, and that's why I'm explaining it to you.

Ohhhhkay . . . and? — Terrapin Station

You're making a claim about the world that's problematic for several reasons. If it wasn't, there wouldn't be a hard problem, for all the reasons that have been stated many times before.

What's being claimed, however, is in no way based on talk. It's based on what the world is like. Talk is secondary to that. — Terrapin Station

I can say the world is like a square circle, and you can rightfully tell me that's a contradiction.