Comments

  • Plato’s allegory of the cave
    without mistaking our opinions for truth and knowledge. — Fooloso4

    Could you elaborate a little on the distinctions that Plato draws between pistis, doxa, and noesis? Do you think that he equates noesis with opinion?
  • On Chomsky's annoying mysterianism.
    However, the idea that if you don't accept that this is somehow reflected in the cosmos at large and you don't believe evolution has a purpose — Jamal

    That is rather ambiguous - can you explain what you mean by that?
  • On Chomsky's annoying mysterianism.
    I take it, following Galen Strawson, that consciousness is a wholly physical phenomenon, it arises from configurations of matter. So, there is no "immaterial"-material problem. — Manuel

    If there are real abstract entities, it torpedoes that claim.
  • On Chomsky's annoying mysterianism.
    ↪plaque flag
    Bought his At Home in the Universe a long while back. Neither he nor his ilk are targets of my criticism of neo-darwinism.
  • On Chomsky's annoying mysterianism.
    Am I to believe you'll stop loving your family if it's somehow proved to you that there is no god and just Darwinian evolution ? — plaque flag

    It's a simplistic way of putting it, but there are ramifications. Ideas have consequences. I read a thread on some other forum, or Quora, about someone who had really taken on board some philosopher's argument for determinism. He had really come to believe that he had no agency whatever and was deeply unhappy and dissillusioned by it, but couldn't free himself from the idea and it had driven him to despair. We have a current thread about wrestling with solipsism. These ideas do matter. Dennett's most insidious book was called Darwin's Dangerous Idea, in which he says that his form of Darwinism is like an acid that eats everything it touches, including the container it's in. Among its victims are any form of traditional culture and even philosophy itself.

    I don't want to defend this or that religious institution but I'm not atheist - my view is that the falsehoods of religions arise from distortions of an originally profound truth. Philosophically, I see enlightenment (not in the sense of the European enlightenment and scientific rationalism) as having cosmic significance, that the Cosmos comes to understand horizons of being that could never be revealed otherwise, through living beings such as ourselves, and that is what the higher religions reflect, although often poorly. So, no, I don't believe we are products of the Dawkins/Dennett dumb physical forces driven by the blind watchmaker. I believe it's an evil ideology masquerading as liberalism.

    I also noticed that Chomsky differentiates 'mysteries' from 'problems'. He says that the nature of consciousness is 'a mystery' - not 'a problem' that can be solved. Of course this is anethema to Dennett and materialism generally, whose role it is to drive out of consideration anything which cannot be accomodated in the procrustean bed of neo-darwinian materialism or brought within the purview of the objective sciences.
  • On Chomsky's annoying mysterianism.
    The point is humans choose their values and also ignore them and a belief in god or transcendence has never safeguarded rights or preserved the sanctity of human life. — Tom Storm

    The fact that religious institutions routinely violate their own principles is not an argument those principles.
  • On Chomsky's annoying mysterianism.
    It matters to us. What better reason do we need? — Tom Storm

    What if it doesn't matter to others? What if I am the authority in a one-party state who doesn't recognise human rights? Would that matter to you? What if your comfortable acceptance of subjectivism is the legacy of a culture in which the concept of 'human rights' developed in the first place, largely on the basis of Christian ethical norms which uniquely recognised the inestimable worth of every human soul. If you were part of a persecuted minority group in the PRC - of which Christians are one constituency - the absence of the recognition of the intrinsic worth of every individual might have profound ramifications.

    I haven't been able to find any of Chomsky's remarks about Dennett, but I know they'd be natural antagonists. In a review of Dennett's last book, we read:

    Dennett is one of those American philosophers of mind, so unlike most of their British counterparts, who is comfortable conversing with and responding to the work of evolutionary biologists and cognitive scientists. His heroes, cited frequently here, are Charles Darwin and Richard Dawkins in biology, Alan Turing and Claude Shannon in artificial intelligence and information theory. His enemies are creationists and mysterians in general, philosopher John Searle, polymath linguist Noam Chomsky, and biologists Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin. His aim is to provide a materialist account of the evolutionary origins of the human mind and consciousness by way of an extension of gene-based natural selection into human culture through the invocation of memes. — The Guardian
  • On Chomsky's annoying mysterianism.
    ↪Tom Storm
    I don't understand how it can't be demeaning. It completely undermines human agency and freedom. Dennett is a Darwinian materialist in his cosmology and metaphysics while also strongly affirming human dignity as well as a progressive brand of liberalism in his ethics and politics. Herein lies the massive contradiction of his system of thought. He boldly proclaims that we live in an accidental universe without divine and natural support for the special dignity of man either as a species or as individuals; yet he retains a sentimental attachment to liberal-democratic values that lead him to affirm a humane society that respects the rights of persons and protects the weak from exploitation by the strong and from other injustices. I don't think he can have it both ways - if we really are robots or blindly-propagating genetic machines, then the only reason to value humanity as such is convention or sentimentality, it has no real basis, because nothing important is at stake.
  • On Chomsky's annoying mysterianism.
    I also think Dennett is right to be frustrated with those who block the road of inquiry. — plaque flag

    It's not 'enquiry' that is at issue, but subordinating the subject within the scope of the objective sciences. It's intrinsically demeaning to declare that really, humans are confabulations of unconscious processes that only appear to be intelligent due to the requirements of survival.

    To me the hard problem is maybe a diluted version of the forgetfulness of being. — plaque flag

    There's definitely a connection there - Dennett not only forgets being, but wishes to eliminate it altogether. Which I think is actually the motivation for eliminativism - it's to avoid the responsibility of facing up to what Eric Fromm describes as 'the fear of freedom'. Better to pretend you're a robot or an animal.
  • Component Entities, Acts, Ultimate Ground of Existence, and God
    We can mentally divide a component entity into its components, and we can then mentally divide each component into its own components. Do we ever reach bottom? Do we ever arrive at something which has no parts, which is pure and simple and homogeneous? — Art48

    As you started the thread with reference to the Buddha, this is another verse from the early Buddhist texts that is apposite, an account of a brief talk given by the Buddha to the monks on the subject of the unconditioned"

    There is, monks, an unborn–unbecome–unmade–unfabricated. If there were not that unborn–unbecome–unmade–unfabricated, there would not be the case that escape from the born–become–made–fabricated would be discerned. But precisely because there is an unborn–unbecome–unmade–unfabricated, escape from the born–become–made–fabricated is discerned. — Ud 8:3 Unbinding (3) (Nibbāna Sutta)

    (It has sometimes been argued that this verse is a Buddhist reference to the same 'wisdom uncreated' of the Judeo-Christian tradition, although Buddhists will vigorously contest that as they maintain a strict differentiation from the theistic traditions.)

    If you were to ask what the "unborn-unbecome-unmade" is, there is no easy answer to that, other than to point to the fact that coming to know it is the aim and culmination of the Buddhist path. It is not a concept or something amenable to conceptual or discursive analysis but becomes evident to the Buddhist aspirant as a consequence of 'unbinding', another name for Nirvāṇa, whereby identification to the illusory domain of craving has been anulled.

    In Western philosophy, I think the nearest equivalent is to be found in Plotinus and 'the One', which is likewise unconditioned and unmade. As a theme in traditional philosophy. the unmade or uncreated came to refer to the distinction between the compound, manifest, and created with the simple, indivisible and uncreated, customarily identified with God .

    My view is that there is no conceptual equivalent for the uncreated in the modern lexicon. The idea of the indivisible material unit, or atom, is long gone. I suppose you could, at a stretch, try and identify it with the idea of the quantum fluctuations which supposedly can be shown to give rise to the Universe, but there are many deep conceptual problems with that, as I understand it (such as, what gave rise to the Universe in which such quantum fluctuations exist in the first place?)
  • On Chomsky's annoying mysterianism.
    ↪plaque flag
    What would we expect from an explanation? It seems to me the motive of a great deal of the theorising about consciousness is to dispell any lingering notion that it is something mysterious or inexplicable. After all it's right at the centre of your existence, so the suggestion that something this obvious and fundamental might be at the same time irreducible to the categories of the natural sciences can't be allowed to stand. So I suspect that a lot of attempts at explanation are motivated by that itch.

    As for Chomsky's idea that we have no definition of the physical, he seems correct about that. Physical models are subject to constant revision and besides the 'standard model' of physics is known to be radically incomplete. I dispute that there is anything that can be described as purely or only physical. As an heuristic, it is useful for the description of the attributes and behaviours of 'medium size dry goods' but it can't be seen as anywhere near comprehensive or complete.

    The term physical is just kinda like an honorific word, kinda like the word 'real' when we say 'the real truth'. It doesn't add anything, it just says 'this is serious truth'. So to say that something is 'physical' today just means 'you gotta take this seriously'. — Noam Chomsky
  • Politics fuels hatred. We can do better.
    Politicians and commentators on behalf of political parties rely on demeaning and degrading their opponents to attract attention and gain support. — AntonioP

    This is particularly true of American politics in the last 2-3 decades. Here in Australia, the state I live in recently had a State election, and it was a highly civil affair, with leaders of both parties maintaining a focus on policy and principles rather than personal attacks and criticism. And in fact generally speaking Australian (and I think English) politics is considerably less vituperative and spiteful that US politics, especially since the Orange Emperor's reign.
  • On Chomsky's annoying mysterianism.
    *1. New mysterians : — Gnomon

    I see that list is drawn from Wikipedia. I don't trust the provenance of that article and I'm sure few of those names would be willing to be described with that name. I'm sure Nagel shouldn't be on it. The only one who willingly adopted it was McGinn afaik.

    Besides what would it be to 'explain' consciousness? The whole idea might be a red herring. Of course it is true that psychology is not a precise science, but then you're dealing with the subject of experience, not objects whose properties can be precisely specified.
  • On Chomsky's annoying mysterianism.
    some things are just beyond the scope of human beings. — Mikie

    So ‘man know thyself’ was a furphy?
  • Politics fuels hatred. We can do better.
    Politicians and commentators on behalf of political parties rely on demeaning and degrading their opponents to attract attention and gain support. — AntonioP

    You’re writing from America?
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    I deleted the remark of mine you’re commenting on because it was impulsive and not constructive.

    You mean, the reality that exists in the absence of any observers, right?
    — Wayfarer

    I mean the reality that the observers are part of and that is bigger than them.     — Jamal

    As the issue at hand is the role of the observer in the construction of reality, then the assertion of a reality that is 'bigger than the observers' begs the question - it assumes what needs to be shown.
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    [deleted remark]
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    This is why I like to talk about our 'lifeworld' — plaque flag

    And who is well-known for having introduced the concept of 'lebenswelt' into the philosophical lexicon? (Oh, and yes.)

    When philosophers talk about the “I”, they presuppose the “we”, because they do not mean a single empirical subject but the universal form of subjectivity, an idea that assumes its instantiation in a plurality of individuals, i.e., society. — Jamal

    That's more or less straightforward Hegelianism, isn't it?

    That is to say, idealism is parasitic on the real. — Jamal

    You mean, parasitic on the reality that exists in the absence of any observers, right?
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    If you can give an account like that — Banno

    any point of view is not no point of view.
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    Where is the observer ? Does it have a body ? — plaque flag

    By 'observer' I'm referring to humans. 'Imagine that all life has vanished from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed. Matter is scattered about in space in the same way as it is now, there is sunlight, there are stars, planets and galaxies—but all of it is unseen. There is no human or animal eye to cast a glance at objects, hence nothing is discerned, recognized or even noticed. Objects in the unobserved universe have no shape, color or individual appearance, because shape and appearance are created by minds. Nor do they have features, because features correspond to categories of animal sensation. This is the way the early universe was before the emergence of life—and the way the present universe is outside the view of any observer' ~ Charles Pinter

    What the observer brings to experience is a perspective, a point of view, only within which any statement about what is real or what exists is meaningful. Realism forgets the subject and seeks only explanations and fundamental causes which are inherent in the objective domain. But that is impossible, as the very source of that order is the mind of the observer (that's more or less straight out of Schopenhauer).
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    ↪plaque flag
    The point of that paragraph is to illustrate the sense in which time and space - or duration and location - are provided by the observer and have no fixed or absolute reality outside that. As the whole argument is about whether or in what way the world is mind-independent, this is a central point. Here I’m arguing in favour of something like Hoffman’s cognitive realism despite my many reservations about some aspects of his overall view.
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    what can be meant by perception if there are no brains? — plaque flag

    Picture a tranquil mountain meadow. Butterflies flit back and forth amongst the buttercups and daisies, and off in the distance, a snow-capped mountain peak provides a picturesque backdrop. The melodious clunk of the cow-bells, the chirping of crickets, and the calling of birds provide the soundtrack to the vista, with not a human to be seen.

    Now picture the same scene — but from no point of view. Imagine that you are perceiving it from every possible point within it and around it. Furthermore, imagine seeing it from every possible scale: as if you were seeing it as a mite on a blade of grass, in every location, and then also, as a creature of various sizes, up to a creature the size of the mountain peak, and from every possible vantage point.

    Then subtract from all these perspectives, any sense of temporal continuity — any sense of memory of the moment just past, and expectation of the one about to come.

    Having done that, describe the same scene.

    “Impossible!” you object. “How can I imagine any such thing?! It is really nothing at all, it is an impossibility, a jumble of stimuli, if anything — this is what you are asking me to imagine! It is completely unintelligible.”
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    ↪Banno
    Read a great critical analysis of the idealism of Jeans and Eddington recently, I'll see if I can dig it up. But the memes that entered popular culture in the 30's and 40's are often quoted:

    The stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter...we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter. — James Jeans

    The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory. — Arthur Eddington

    The physical world is entirely abstract and without actuality apart from its linkage to consciousness. — Arthur Eddington
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    Can you clarify? — Tom Storm

    I'm reading it again - it's the subject of several chapters in Crisis of European Sciences which I bought recently (dense and difficult text). Husserl's claim to fame is, obviously, the founder of phenomenology, and as such the principle source of what is now 'the Continental Tradition'. The schools of enactivism and embodied cognition draw a great deal from phenomenology. (All these sources I've only become familiar with through the Forums in the last decade or so and am trying to get up to speed on. By the way, very interesting article here on Collingwood, Gilbert Ryle, and the origin of the analytic/continental divide.)

    ↪Banno
    There are forms of idealism that are suggested by both cognitive science (Hoffman and others) and also by at least some interpretations of quantum physics (going back to James Jeans and Arthur Eddington but with many contemporary representatives.) It might be that 'idealism' is really the wrong term for a lot of these ideas but what they have in common is the sense in which the world is constructed and shaped by the experiencing subject, rather than simply being a given (subject of 'the myth of the given') inscribed on the tabula rasa of the mind.
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    ↪plaque flag
    Problems arise in respect of the indubitable reality of one's own being when treated as object. What kind of thing is it? Does it exist? etc. All empty questions. The self as subject of experience is never the object of cognition but that to whom they appear. It's worth reading up on Husserl's analysis of cogito ergo sum in this respect. Husserl's main criticism of Descartes' argument was that it relied on the notion of the self as a substance. According to Husserl, Descartes assumed that the self was an enduring subject that remained constant over time, but Husserl argued that this assumption was not warranted, instead saying that the self was a process that was constantly changing and evolving.

    Husserl also criticized Descartes for relying on the language of subject and object, which he believed reinforced a dualistic view of the world. According to Husserl, this dualism created a separation between the subjective and objective worlds, which he believed was a mistake. He credited Descartes with the breakthrough of realising the fundamental role of the subject, but then mistakenly portraying it as a 'thinking thing' - a 'little fag end' of the natural world was an expression he used. That is what becomes the subject of Ryle's criticism of the ghost in the machine, subsequently rectified by the analysis of the embodied cognitivists.

    (Plaque Flag? I thought we were done with rotating user ID's.)
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    But who will doubt that he lives, remembers, understands, wills, thinks, knows, and judges? For even if he doubts, he lives. If he doubts where his doubts come from, he remembers. If he doubts, he understands that he doubts. If he doubts, he wants to be certain. If he doubts, he thinks. If he doubts, he knows that he does not know. If he doubts, he judges that he ougth not rashly to give assent. So whoever acquires a doubt from any source ought not to doubt any of these things whose non-existence would mean that he could not entertain doubt about anything. — Augustine, On the Trinity 10.10.14 quoted in Richard Sorabji, Self, 2006, p.219
  • Problems studying the Subjective
    Is "The Aristos" worth reading — T Clark

    I took it out of the library decades ago. It is his meditation on Greek philosophy with a large collection of Heraclitus’ aphorisms, that one has always stayed with me.
  • Problems studying the Subjective
    I would say yes but it is very difficult to resolve since one has to deal with such a deep conditioning on many levels. — TheMadMan

    Right. Ever since we became selves, back on the African plains.
  • Problems studying the Subjective
    It might be relevant to introduce a Buddhist perspective on this question. It is often said that Buddhism holds that there is no self, but that is not quite right. The Buddhist teaching is that everything ('all dharmas') are without self (anatta). My interpretation is that by the very act of identifying something as 'me' and 'mine', then you're introducing a separation or a division between self and other - 'this is mine'. That is the basic act of 'I-making and mine-making' as the Buddhist saying has it. Then as soon as you create that conceptual division, there is space within it for all kinds of differentiation of 'mine' from 'yours', and what I understand versus what you understand, and so on. This leads to a proliferation of concepts and 'thicket of views'. I think the Buddhist view is that, so long as you're preoccupied with what is peculiar to you, or specifically yours, you can find an endless number of items to occupy that list, but then it becomes something that weighs you down, cuts you off from others. I think that is the import of 'anatta', no-self.
  • Problems studying the Subjective
    'The many dwell in their own private world, whilst the awakened have but one world in common' ~ Heraclitus (quoted in John Fowles, The Aristos).
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    So the snake is... and here I'm trying to work out what it is Hoffman would say... some sort of community of interweaving conscious agents. — Banno

    There's a frequent simile in Indian philosophy of mistaking a piece of rope for a snake. Typically it is used to represent misjudgement or being fooled by appearances. But in Hoffman's theory, if the snake is not really a snake, but only an icon, what does the icon represent? If it's not really a snake, then what is it? Answer seems to be 'we don't know'.

    For that matter - is the Interface Theory of Perception falsifiable, in Popper's sense. It's hard to see how any empirical facts could be used to falsify a theory about the nature of empirical cognition.
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    ↪Tom Storm
    The clincher for me is that , if 'fitness beats truth', then how is it different from regular scepticism? And life's too short - there are many other things to pursue and read up on. Oh, and his inability to say what 'conscious agents' are or what that term means. It seems absent an overall philosophical framework far as I can see.
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    Myself, I'm done with Donald Hoffman, no further interest in the topic.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    ↪180 Proof
    Remember when Republicans complained bitterly that Obama had the audacity to appear at a press conference wearing a tan suit?
  • Neuroscience is of no relevance to the problem of consciousness
    My philosophy is ALWAYS based on the latest scientific epistemology and on the actual goals of science — Nickolasgaspar

    You make my point for me.
  • Neuroscience is of no relevance to the problem of consciousness
    ↪Nickolasgaspar
    Do your own research on ‘subjective unity of experience - neural correlates’.
  • Neuroscience is of no relevance to the problem of consciousness
    The dude who wrote the above doesn't understand the role of cognitive science and neuroscience. — Nickolasgaspar

    Maxwell Richard Bennett is an Australian neuroscientist specializing in the function of synapses. He has published a large number of text books and journal articles on neuroscience.

    the philosophy of mind you are referring to has nothing to do with the actual science — Nickolasgaspar

    You don't demonstrate any understanding of philosophy.
  • Neuroscience is of no relevance to the problem of consciousness
    Jerome Feldman isn't a Neuro or Cognitive scientist — Nickolasgaspar

    As stated in that article, there is no scientific account for the subjective unity of experience. If you go back and check it, that claim is thoroughly validated by the references in that paper, and is central to this whole argument. Just to re-state, Feldman shows that science has no account of which specific brain function gives rise to our sense of the experience of world as a unified whole. It can certainly help when something goes wrong with neural functioning and people mistake their wives for hats, and so on. But about why we experience the world as a unified whole, there is no current theory:

    What we do know is that there is no place in the brain where there could be a direct neural encoding of the illusory detailed scene (Kaas and Collins 2003). That is, enough is known about the structure and function of the visual system to rule out any detailed neural representation that embodies the subjective experience. So, this version of the NBP really is a scientific mystery at this time.
  • Neuroscience is of no relevance to the problem of consciousness
    Well neuroscience can only describe the brain mechanisms responsible for creating the subjective experience of being — Nickolasgaspar

    It can’t.

    What [neuroscience] cannot do is replace the wide range of ordinary psychological explanations of human activities in terms of reasons, intentions, purposes, goals, values, rules and conventions by neurological explanations . . . . And it cannot explain how an animal perceives or thinks by reference to the brain's, or some parts of the brain's, perceiving or thinking. For it makes no sense to ascribe such psychological attributes to anything less than the animal as a whole. It is the animal that perceives, not parts of its brain, and it is human beings who think and reason, not their brains. The brain and its activities make it possible for us—not for it—to perceive and think, to feel emotions, and to form and pursue projects. (p. 3) — Review of Bennett and Hacker, Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience

    First of all,made up pseudo philosophical ''why" problems are not "hard problems". — Nickolasgaspar

    If you want to criticize something, you first have to demonstrate that you understand it.

    We have being doing it for decades, this is why we have Medications on psychopathology, this is why we have Brain Surgery protocols for different pathologies and this is why we can make Diagnosis (predictions) based on the physical condition of the organ (brain imagine). — Nickolasgaspar

    I have had near and dear relatives saved by neuroscience, for which I am eternally grateful, but that doesn't have any particular relevance to philosophy of mind.

    Jerome Feldman isn't a Neuro or Cognitive scientist — Nickolasgaspar
    Makes no difference to the facts presented.
  • [Ontology] Donald Hoffman’s denial of materialism
    ↪Tom Storm
    :rofl:
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