And we can even put a highly skeptical slant on "real for us" and insist that this is a kind of bastard child of true Reality, consisting of illusions and "perspectives," without changing Nagel's point. Illusions actually happen; if we see something illusory and believe it is (deeply) Real, this is an experience we have. It has to be explained, just as much as anything else, if we want to give a complete account of the world we encounter. Of course, when we start parsing "real" in a way that requires a capital R, we start to confuse ourselves. — J

That is what is said by religions like Buddhism and Hinduism—that we live behind a veil of illusion, "maya". But there the illusion is the illusion of subjectivity/ objectivity, of separation—an illusory artefact of the discursive, dualistic mind. Nonetheless that illusion is a part of reality—That we have the illusion is not itself an illusion—the idea is that it shuts us off from a larger, non-discursive, ultimately non-dual Reality.

I doubt whether a complete account of the world we encounter is possible—it is always going to be a work in progress, and always limited by its very discursivity. For me the notion of reality with a capital R denotes the fact that our judgements, our accounts, although they are A reality, are not Reality in its fullness, but merely judgements and accounts. The map is never the territory.

To say that meaning does not come from being is little different than saying that meaning does not exist. Contrariwise, anyone who leads a meaningful life would of course reject such a "law." — Leontiskos

It seems to me this is really a pretty trivial strawman. Of course we can say, in one sense that meaning comes from being—simply because everything comes from being. Also the meaning in people's and other animal's lives comes from those lives, obviously—and life is being, but it is not merely being in the sense of sheer mere existence. The point is that the idea of meaning does not come from the mere idea of being.

Well, we see things very differently. For me the key is the arational, when it comes to any knowledge or understanding which is not empirical, discursive, dialectical or logical. if it can be captured in language at all the arational is more akin to the metaphorical, the poetic. It evokes rather than describing, measuring or explaining.

To be sure, that is part of symbolic language, but it is closer to 'symbolic' in the sense meant by Jung than it is the idea of a symbol representing something or other in the sense of strict reference.

"Meta-cognitive insight" is always given in symbolic language. So the question then becomes "what can it be insight into beyond linguistically mediated conceptual relations?". I prefer to think of insight which is beyond language as being both primordially pre-cognitive and pre-linguistically cognitive―and it seems to follow that anything we say about will be a distortion. So, it follows that what I just said is also a distortion.

And this takes us back to the question as to whether "the brain or mind constructing the world" is itself a (linguistically reificatory) construction of the brain or mind, and hence both a harbinger of infinite regress and a distortion. It's like the ouroboros trying to consume itself.

I wasn't trying to suggest mind/brain identity―the same question applies to mind as to brain: is "the mind constructing reality" itself a "mind-constructed reality"? "The mind constructing reality" seems to be a judgement and hence a much more conceptually mediated "thing" than our perceptual experience itself.

In relation to mind/ brain identity I think it makes no sense to say they are identical. I think the way it is usually understood by those who don't take mind to be a separate substance is that mind(ing) is an activity of the brain.

I would say it is an activity of the whole (enbrained) body, with perhaps some of the minding going on without requiring brain activity at all. Levin's work (with "zenobots" and "anthrobots") suggests that cells do their own "minding" without requiring a brain, and that even these zenobots and anthrobots (which are just clumps pf cells) are able to do some coordinated minding. It has long been known that jellyfish are colonies of cells with no central brain.

Is the "brain constructing reality" a brain-constructed reality?

And this Reason can tell us that we, or the animals being discussed, don’t and can’t know anything about the world. — Punshhh

Even if we frame 'the world' as the 'in itself', forever beyond human experience (as Kant would have it) it seems undeniable that if we and the animals didn't know anything the world we would not survive for long, and it seems that that "knowledge" is not discursive knowledge at all, but is given pre-cognitively (if what is cognitive is defined as that to which we have conscious rational access). So the conclusion would be that we do know things about the world, but cannot prove that we do. It is merely the inference to what seems to be (to me at least) the best explanation for what we do experience.

So for me it is meaningless to say that our experience gives us no true picture of the real. It doesn't give us a complete picture, but that is a different consideration.
— Janus
I can buy that.
— Ludwig V

Me too. As Nagel says, how the world appears to us is part of what is real. — J

I think that's an important point. We can say that what is beyond the possibility of experience, whether in principle or merely in practical actuality cannot be real for us except in imagination, and hence transcendental idealism follows. But that argument seems to me to be a kind of "cooking of the books" and for the sake of honest intellectual bookkeeping we should admit that we do think that whatever is beyond our possible experience is real in itself, with the other category being whatever is amenable to experience, which is thought of as being real for us.

I think that is a very common way of thinking―people think of God like that. We cannot prove or know whether God exists, but if he exists he must be real and if he doesn't exist then he is imaginary. So we would then have empirical realism and transcendental realism, two different categories of the real, the nature of the latter of which we are terminally ignorant about iff we don't allow that what is real for us tells us nothing about what is real in itself. That question is the one which cannot, even in principle, be definitively answered―if we hold a view about it we take a leap of faith.

The question then becomes as to whether there can be any worthwhile point arguing about which faith is true.

Individually we inhabit the inner world of our own experience―yet that experience is always already mediated by our biology, our language, our culture, our upbringing with all its joys and traumas. Our consciousness is not by any means the entirety of our psyche. — Janus

No, we don't. We inhabit the world in which we live. Inner experience is what reveals that world to us. — Ludwig V

What I meant was that each of inhabits an individual Umwelt. Others of course appear there. We know that others have their own Umwelts, and we also know they see what we see, and from this we know (leaving aside radical scepticism which is fuelled by mere linguistically imagined
possibilities) that there is a real world distinct from all our Umwelts. We experience, and only experience, that world via our Umwelts (world models). So for me it is meaningless to say that our experience gives us no true picture of the real. It doesn't give us a complete picture, but that is a different consideration.

As usual: quotes from your authorities and attempts to dismiss what I've said by associating it with empiricism or positivism instead of addressing what I've actually said. You claim I've been inconsistent but apparently can't point out any inconsistency. :roll:

Experience can show us what is the case. It can never show us what must be the case or what should be And logical necessity lives entirely in that second domain. — Wayfarer

Experience shows us what is the case. Due to our symbolic linguistic ability we can reflect upon and generalize about the features of our experience to derive what must be the case in regards to anything we would count as perceptual experience. What should be the case is another matter, and concerns the pragmatics of the relations between individuals and communities, such that each may thrive. Social animals are always already instinctivley good to their own, for the most part.

You'd be well advised to heed your own advice! — Wayfarer

If you think I've been inconsistent please point it out by quoting the relevant material. You never seem to be able to resist making personal slurs. That tells me you must feel threatened.

Yes—animals must have perceptual systems that are adequate to guide response. That’s a claim about functional adequacy. It says nothing about truth in the rational sense: about propositions, validity, necessity, or justification. — Wayfarer

Functional adequacy, in fact extremely precise functional adequacy, does say something about what our rational truth propositions are based upon, which you would know if you have ever seen a bird flying at high speed through a forest. The bird has a true picture of where the trees are, of the "state of affairs", otherwise it would smack into them and die.

The issue under discussion (which is tangential to the 'mind-created world' argument) is not whether perception must be good enough to survive, but whether survival explains the existence of a faculty that can grasp what must be the case—logical necessity, valid inference, contradiction, mathematical truth. That kind of truth does no direct survival work at all, and yet as the rational animal we are answerable to reason. — Wayfarer

Logical necessity, valid inference, contradiction, mathematical truth are symbolically enabled elaborations of that functionally adequate picture of the world that is enabled by the senses. Reason has no authority beyond consistency, and must remain true to that which supports it, i.e. actual experience, or lose all coherency.

Functionally accurate in what sense? As said, non-rational animals can and have survived ever since the beginning of life without a rational grasp of truth. — Wayfarer

Rational grasp of truth is not the point. If our senses did not give us an adequately true picture of what is going on around us we wouldn't survive for long. And by "we" I mean animals also.

I’m implying there is a uniformity beneath the surface. If we look at biology we can start to see the uniformity. If we list the organs in the body we will find that they are present in most animals without exception. — Punshhh

Right, but I don't see that as "uniformity, but as similarity. By 'animals' I presume you mean invertebrates. If evolution is right, then all we animals without exception, and even plants and fungi, share a common ancestor. We find repetition and difference.

I don’t like to get bogged down in discussions about DNA, but in essence all DNA is the same, it’s only the sequence that differs, the encoding. This encoding determines everything about the variation in the body of the being in question. — Punshhh

I don't think that is in line with current understanding in biology. It's now thought to be also a matter of which genes are activated―eopigenetics. Also Michael Levins works suggests other factors in play.

I’m only suggesting this in viewing the one being (our biosphere as one being), as a whole, this being lives in a solipsistic world in it’s interactions with the neumenon of the world. All individual animals and plants are living in different aspects of that whole experience. It is solipsistic in the sense that it is an isolated arena, that of a planet in space (the sun does exert some influence). — Punshhh

Yes, it is true that we are corporeally isolated from the rest of the Universe here on Earth. I am certainly not denying that we (all organisms) share a world that is in itself (as opposed to the myriad experiences of it or "Umwelts"), independent of all of us.

Quite, but not just unconsciousness, but a common arena of activity. A common landscape, scale, temporal manifold. Take two people sitting in a restaurant eating pasta. They may have different hair clothes sauce on their food. But so much of what is going on is a shared experience and circumstance, one which may well require an underlying unity of being for it to happen. — Punshhh

I think that shared experience requires an actual world, which is in various ways perceived by all.

I've lost track of what we were disagreeing about, or whether we were disagreeing at all.

Husserl sees mathematics as absolutely necessary, ideal truth that is constituted by the universal structures of intentional consciousness, — Wayfarer

I am not seeing how that is different than saying mathematics is constituted by mind.

No, I'm not at all sure. I see mathematics along Husserlian lines as necessary structures of intentional consciousness. So neither 'in' the mind nor 'in' the world. That's the rub. — Wayfarer

Note, I said "may be, to be sure" not "is, to be sure". I think the notion of "intentional consciousness" is somewhat vague. If mathematics is not an inherent aspect of the mind nor of the world, or of the interactions between mind and world, then from whence does it come? We know number is inherent in the world of experience simply because there is diversity, and there can be no diversity without number.

Potted histories don't really explain anything.

Mathematics may be somehow inherent in nature, to be sure. Or it may be a formal abstraction from the human experience of diversity, or both. Wigner's "unreasonable effectiveness" may only relate to human experience if we assume that human experience tells us nothing about what may be beyond it.

You offer psychological explanations for what is generally believed by materialists in terms of "commitments" and "fears" and you say this constitutes a predicament of modernity. I think this is a projection, and I think the real problem is that our society is polarized. There is still plenty of religion around―in terms of traditional religious cultures and syncretic new age beliefs, and the religious are often opposed to the materialists and vice versa. Why can people not accept that we may have different faiths in the presence of unknowing?

For me, the real problem is the dogma or rational-based insistence on there being "One Truth" for all, rather than a more relaxed pluralistic acceptance of different worldviews, and the understanding that good, sensible ethics is not wedded to any particular system of metaphysical thought.

You seem to be identifying the idea of objectivity with naive realism. To think that there is nothing apart from the human seems unsupportable. On the other hand we have perceptual access only to what affects human senses. And we have conceptual access only to what is embodied in our common languages.

We have the concept 'objective' and it generally denotes whatever actually is independent of human perception, thought and judgement. We don't have to know just what it is, but our experience shows us that it is. It also doesn't follow that human perception, thought and judgement have no access to what is. We think that way because we rationally conceptually distinguish human experience from what is and then imagine that they are separate, which leads us to think our experience may be mistaken. But this is just a thought construction, like any other.

So, there are two points here. First, it seems inescapable, given human ignorance and confusion regarding what is really real, to think that there is nonetheless a reality, and that it should count as an objective reality. It is arguably not the objective reality as envisaged by naive realism. It may not be in itself like any system humans have envisaged. That may be because our envisaging is always in terms of our dualistic thinking. Or it may be that our intuitions do show us something of the Real. How can we know which is true?

It seems undeniable that the world presents itself to us, and to other animals, and that there are commonalties between the way animals perceive the world and the way we do. For instance we see trees bearing fruit, and we pick the fruit and eat it. Birds and other animals, including even insects, also perceive and eat the fruit (much to our dismay sometimes). This shows that we and these other species see the fruit and understand it as a source of food.

This suggests the existence of an actual world that is perceived by all and is independent of all in itself. It is also possible that consciousness is in everything, and we and the animals all see the same world due to some kind of entanglement. Or it is all in God's mind. We can imagine many possibilities, but how to tell between them? They might all be wrong, or not so much wrong, as inadequate to the reality.

It seems odd to even have to say that we and the animal share a world as well as each of us inhabiting our own perceptual Umwelts, as obvious as that seems to be. It is perhaps when our discursive, analytical minds start working on this basic perceptual human reality that we can cook up all kinds of weird and wonderful schemes, without realizing that all of those are only artefacts of the discursive mind―our rationality perhaps leading us astray.

:up:

I don't know how to compare the extent of the differences between people and the commonalities. I don't think we are one "hive mind" at all―look at the great differences between cultures, and the polarizations within particular cultures. I think we do basically understand others (well perhaps some people do that better than others) and I don't think we are locked in our own little solipsistic worlds. I even think it is possible that we share some kind of collective unconscious, as Jung suggested, but the work involved in bringing anything from that to consciousness precludes the vast majority, even if they thought about the possibility, from doing that.

I don't even believe that each cell is identical to all the others. Like the leaves on a particular kind of tree, each has the same metabolic function, but no two are exactly the same. I don't know, of course, but I suspect the same is true of individual cells. I see Nature as endlessly creative and diverse.

Maybe this is a good place to remind ourselves that there are other ways of "observing consciousness" than doing phenomenology. Deep meditation is also a type of experience that pares down subjectivity to some sort of essence that is surely prelinguistic. So I don't think your question is merely rhetorical. It's very hard to answer, though! My cat knows the answer, but is unable to tell me.
8 hours ago — J

Yes, I agree meditation is a way of (potentially) getting free for a time of the discursive, analytical mind and seeing what is there 'beneath' that superficial layer of consciousness. The problem is that we want to translate whatever we find there into the terms of discursive, analytical consciousness, and that doesn't really work very well. Poetry is a better language for that, I think.

I think we've reached a measure of agreement.

I know several who appear that way. The ones I know well enough make it quite clear to me that this is a mask. — AmadeusD

That is of course quite possible. None of us are perfectly psychologically healthy though (whatever that might mean) so I cannot think of any more apt measure of illness than the inability to function adequately, or even at all.

I wonder what principally causes the suffering associated with gender dysphoria and the transgender state generally, if it is not entrenched social attitudes around gender, which make transgender people feel as though they don't fit in. Some might not suffer much or even at all because they simply just don't give a shit what others think. We are all different.

Yes, but it is relativism of belief, not of truth. We may indeed intuitively know truths, but just can't rationally or empirically demonstrate that we know, even to ourselves let alone others. For myself, if something seems intuitively true to me, that seems sufficient. I don't expect others to agree, and many of the things I hold true I would not even attempt to argue for.

If my subjectivity is indeed not the same thing as yours (other than numerically), explain why not. What might cause such an odd circumstance to arise, given that we're both human beings who understand each other quite well, when it comes to consciousness-talk? — J

Interesting question. Given that the brain is the most complex thing known, our consciousness may possibly be very different, but it's impossible to determine other than by subjective reports, and given the generality of sharing the same language differences might be glossed over.

In any case we were discussing, not how consciousness seems to us, but whether or not it is conceivable that there could be a completely satisfying explanation as to how the brain produces consciousness (if it does). By contrast we have a very good model of how seeds develop into trees, but even there there are gaps. No one really knows how DNA could have a blueprint that alone determines morphology, and that is an interesting area currently being investigated by Michael Levin, who proposed the ingression of intelligence from what he calls a platonic space that is not a part of the physical world. The truth of such an idea would seem to be impossible to determine though...like, for example the multiverse hypothesis.

But . . . couldn't we raise all the same questions about any phenomenon? The trees seem a certain way to us; but are they really that way? — J

As you go on to say, it's hard to make sense of such a question. And the same could be said about how consciousness seems. At least with the tree we have well researched, cogent models that explain how it reflects light, which enters the eye...and so on...you know the story. On the other hand we say we know how consciousness seems, and give accounts of that, but how can we tell whether language itself is somehow distorting the picture via reification? How would consciousness seem to us if we were prelinguistic beings? That's obviously a rhetorical question.

The only way the veracity of philosophical arguments is demonstrable is through their logical consistency and their ability to persuade. But they can't necessarily be adjuticated empirically. Case in point is 'interpretations of quantum physics'. They are not able to be settled with reference to the empirical facts of the matter. — Wayfarer

Exactly, that is just what I'm always saying in my discussions with you. The only point I would challenge would be that persuasiveness could be thought to be a good measure of veracity. The question would be "persuasive to whom?".

In any case the point about arguments (presuming logical consistency which really says nothing about truth) that are not decidable in any terms other than persuasiveness is that their ability to elicit belief or disbelief is a subjective matter. Again that says nothing at all about the truth or falsity of such an argument.

When it comes to beliefs that cannot be proven or empirically demonstrated to be true or false, a better measure, which could perhaps be empirically investigated, might be whether or not holding such a belief was beneficent or maleficent in terms of inducing flourishing and happiness or stagnation and unhappiness. But again, that might depend heavily on the diverse dispositions of different individuals.

I didn't see figures in those links identifying the percentage of trasngender people who experience gender dysphoria. I skimmed them, so may have missed that information, if it was there.

Anyway, I asked Claude:

Hi Claude, I wonder if you would be able tell me if there are studies which have detremined statsitics concerning how many transgender people suffer from gender dysphoria

I'd be happy to help you find information on this topic. Let me search for recent studies and statistics on the prevalence of gender dysphoria among transgender people.

Based on the research, there's an important distinction to understand: not all transgender people necessarily experience gender dysphoria, and the statistics vary significantly depending on how these terms are defined.

Here's what the studies show:

Gender Dysphoria Diagnosis vs. Transgender Identity:

Gender dysphoria (GD) as a clinical diagnosis according to the DSM-5 is relatively uncommon, with prevalence estimates ranging from 0.005% to 0.014% for people assigned male at birth and 0.002% to 0.003% for people assigned female at birth.

. However, the DSM-5 acknowledges these figures are likely underestimates since they're based on clinic referrals.

In contrast, studies find that about 0.8% of U.S. adults (over 2.1 million people) identify as transgender, and 3.3% of youth aged 13-17 (about 724,000 young people) identify as transgender
Williams Institute
.

The Key Difference:

Gender dysphoria specifically requires clinically significant distress related to gender incongruence. There is a higher prevalence of people who self-report as transgender than there are patients being treated for gender dysphoria
PubMed Central
. This means many transgender individuals may not experience the level of distress that meets diagnostic criteria for gender dysphoria, or their distress may resolve with social transition and support.

So to directly answer your question: studies show that while a significant number of transgender people do experience gender dysphoria (enough to seek clinical treatment), the actual percentage who experience dysphoria varies and is difficult to pinpoint precisely. The relationship isn't one-to-one—being transgender doesn't automatically mean someone has gender dysphoria as a clinical condition."

It appears, if Claude is correct, that there may be people who experience gender dysphoria but have not being clinically diagnosed as such. The other problem is that the term 'gender dsyphoria' itself is not a precise one and feelings of dysphoria could be on a spectrum form very mild to very intense. I would only class it as a mental illness if it causes sufficient distress to make life extremely unpleasant and/ or render people socially dysfunctional. So, we can only guess.

I do know one person (a fifteen year old female who is the daughter of a good friend) who identifies as a man, and shows no signs of being very distressed about it at all. That said, I don't live with her. Her father does not seem much concerned when I have talked about it with him.

People may regret many different kinds of decisions in life which cannot, for practical reasons, be undone. That fact does not justify intervention by the state to "protect" people from themselves, unless perhaps if regret were found to be intense in the majority of cases.

Right, if we say that gender dysphoria is a mental illness, and we have a cure (transitioning) then problem solved. For the rest of the transgender folk who don't experience intense pain and suffering, but perhaps just some milder confusion and suffering attendant upon feeling "different" on account of their desire to identify as the gender opposite to their biological sex, there should be no major problem if they receive the counseling they may or may not need.

But why isn't this just as much of a problem for understanding trees as it is for understanding consciousness? — J

The reason is that if we are standing in front of a tree we can point to its features and we will necessarily agree. I say it has smooth bark, and if I and you are both being honest we must agree. I say the leaves have toothed margins, and again we must agree. I say the trunk diameter at base is 400 mm, that the leaves are compound or that they they single but opposite, and again we must agree if we are being honest. If we are suitably trained we will agree as to what species the tree is, and if one of us or both or not we can refer to a guide to tree species and identify the tree. We can agree even about more imprecise aspects, such as that it has a dense canopy or not, a columnar form or a wide-spreading form and so on.

It seems, again, to come down to a difference between experience and explanation. I can never experience your subjectivity, but why would that mean I can't explain how it comes about? — J

If you study the brain you can theorize about how it comes about, but that theory will never be provable, as is the case with most, if not all, scientific theories. The difficulty will be to explain why mind or consciousness seems intuitively to be the way it seems, and how could we ever demonstrate whether or not that "seeming" is veridical or not? It seems to me that whether it is veridical or not is the wrong question because the seeming stands on its own as what it is and cannot be compared with anything else. To try to do so seems like it would be a kind of category mistake.

The point of falsifiability is not that it's the gold standard for all true theories — Wayfarer

Falsifiability and confirmability are the gold standards for scientific observations, hypotheses and some scientific theories, and I was discussing the possibility of a scientific theory of mind or consciousness.

So, for example, Take the thesis that all swans are white, it will be falsified by discovering one swan of another colour. On the other hand in the case of the opposite thesis that not all swans are white, it will be verified by discovering one swan of another colour.

The other consideration when it comes to theories of mind or consciousness, is that we develop them natively in terms of how mind and consciousness intuitively seem, and the ways in which that seeming is mediated by culture, language and biology itself seem too nebulous and complex, as well as different in individual cases, to be definitively unpacked.

Also there is the general incommensurability of explanations given in terms of reasons and explanations given in terms of causes.

But conversely, that doesn't mean that rationalist philosophy of mind can't be true, because it is not empirically falsifiable. — Wayfarer

It's not a matter of strictly rational, i.e. non-empirical, theories being true or false, but of their being able to be demonstrated to be true or false. Even scientific theories, as opposed to mathematical and logical propositions and empirical observations, cannot be strictly demonstrated to be true. "Successful" and thus accepted theories are held provisionally unless observations which cannot be fitted into their entailments or that contradict them crop up.

Well he said this,

The majority of trans people are not victims of anything but the unfortunate situation of having a mental illness. — AmadeusD

and my response was misworded and should have been referring to the "majority" rather than "all'. So, it should have read: " the assumption that the majority of transgender people experience gender dysphoria, i.e. profound unhappiness and psychic distress, is an unfounded generalization.

I see two initial problems, firstly the problem of how a mind can talk about itself with itself and not be convinced that it’s impossible to do it impartially, or that it’s an insurmountable stumbling block. — Punshhh

But people can talk about their minds―we do it all the time. But we do so from the perspective of how things seem to us. And how all things in that context seem to me may not be how they seem to you―even though there will likely be commonalities due to the fact that we are both human.

Individually we inhabit the inner world of our own experience―yet that experience is always already mediated by our biology, our language, our culture, our upbringing with all its joys and traumas. Our consciousness is not by any means the entirety of our psyche. There can be no doubt that most of what goes on in us is below the threshold of awareness. If Jung is right there is a personal unconscious and a collective unconscious, that some recent theorists believe is carried in the DNA―like a collective memory.

I don't know if you have heard of Iain McGilchrist, but his neuroscientific investigations have led him to believe that the right hemisphere drives the arational intuitive synthetic mode of consciousness and the left the rational analytic mode. His ideas are presented in The Master and His Emissary. It makes intuitive sense to me, but it is (at this stage at least) obviously not a falsifiable theory of the human mind, and even if it were it still wouldn't answer the deepest questions about the relationship between the mind and the brain.

In any case if his picture is right, when we try to force the "right' mode of understanding into the 'left' mode of thinking we inevitably lose the creative "livingness" of our intuitive understanding. The rational left mode demands logical validity, and intersubjective confirmability, as is the case with science, but our individual intuitive understandings cannot be experienced by others―they have their own, and so the attempt to develop an overarching theory seems to be doomed to fail.

That doesn't mean there cannot be expressions which evoke sympathetic responses by those of like mind of course―but I think that's the best we can hope for.

They have a direct break with the reality of their actual, objective body. If you have to quibble with the language to make this work, so be it. But semantics clearly aren't hte big issue here. — AmadeusD

The assumption that all transgender people experience gender dysphoria, i.e. profound unhappiness and psychic distress, is an unfounded generalization.

But if our goal is to give a complete account of what there is, then to leave consciousness out would be laughable. This tells me that we're still in early days of forming such an account. You say that we have cognitive science and psychology to deal with consciousness, and in a way we do, but neither field provides a grounding theory of what consciousness is, or why it occurs. Like the hard sciences, consciousness is accepted as a given (or, for some, deflated or reduced or denied).

So, one of the most extraordinary and omnipresent facts about the world -- that many of its denizens have an "inside," a subjectivity -- still awaits a unified theory. I know many on TPF doubt that science can provide this. I'm agnostic; let's wait and see. — J

I'm a little inclined to be on the side of thinking that a unified theory is impossible, but I'm not adamant about it. It seems to me that we understand things via science by being "outside" them, by being able to analyze and model them in accordance with how they present themselves to us. I don't find it plausible that how they present to us is determined by consciousness, but I think it is more reasonable to think that it is determined by the physical constitutions of our sensory organs, nervous system and brain, as well as by the actual structures of the things themselves.

The problem with trying to model consciousness itself is that it is the thing doing the modeling, and we cannot "get outside of it", so we seem to be stuck with making inferences about what it might be from studying the brain being the best we can do, or going with what our intuitions "from inside" tell us about its nature.

That precise point is written all over the history of quantum mechanics. The customary dodge is 'well, there are different interpretations' - but notice this also subjectivises the facts of the matter, makes it a matter of different opinions. If you don't see it, you need to do more reading on it. The fields of quantum physics are in no way 'building blocks', which is a lame attempt to apply a metaphor appropriate to atomism to a completely different conceptual matrix. — Wayfarer

I don't have the time to search for specific citations to present, but I know from having watched many interviews with Quantum Physicists that the idea of particles as real entities is still a live option. So, I asked Claude, and this is the answer I received:

Hi Claude, I wonder if you can tell me what the consensus is today in Quantum Mechanics as to whether fields are composed of particles?

This is a fascinating question that remains actively debated among physicists and philosophers of science. There isn't a firm consensus, but rather several competing views:

The main perspectives:

Fields as fundamental - Many contemporary physicists and philosophers view fields as real, continuous entities, while particles are merely useful approximations in specific contexts
In this view, what we call "particles" are actually excitations or disturbances in underlying quantum fields.

Particle ontology - Some defend a moderate form of object realism with respect to particle-like entities, particularly when distinguishing between quantum field theory as a framework versus specific theories like the Standard Model.

Mixed or functionalist approach - Some recent proposals argue for a mixed ontology of particles and fields, suggesting both are legitimate descriptions that serve different functional roles in the theory.

Key challenges to a particle interpretation:

The evidence weighs against viewing fields as "composed of" particles in any simple sense. The number of particles and their energy-momentum are not invariant in curved spacetimes, particularly in the presence of black holes, while what remains invariant is the energy-momentum of the fields
MDPI. This suggests fields are more fundamental.

Current state of debate:

The question remains philosophically complex. As of 2024, there's active debate about whether this is even the right question to ask - some argue we should focus on how particles and fields function consistently within quantum field theory rather than which is "more real."

In any case even if energy fields are fundamental, and matter and energy are equivalent, and fields exist, then it follows that something exists independently of minds if QM is actually showing us something about objective reality. On that view embodied minds and bodies and entities of all kinds as well as perception and thought itself would also be "excitations in a field".

The other point is that, if you think science shows us only things as they are apparent to us, then the idea of independent existents cannot be ruled out on that view. You might say that all we know is that there appear to us to be independent existents, but what appears to us cannot answer the question as to what is independently of us and so we cannot know whether there are or are not such entities.

I am not interested in defending one view or the other, but only in establishing what can, with intellectual humility and honesty, be said.

As to the Wheeler diagram, it says nothing about whether the ways in which the world can be divided up are more or less in accordance with the actual structure of the world.

The majority of trans people are not victims of anything but the unfortunate situation of having a mental illness. — AmadeusD

You have asserted that trans people are mentally ill. Do you have an argument to support that assertion?

That's a new one to me. — Ludwig V

That doesn't tell me anything much. Do you have anything more to add?

Interesting point. In general, I think scientific realism had better include some truths about the role of consciousness -- it would be drastically incomplete otherwise. But what are these truths? Stay tuned . — J

I'm not sure what you mean by "scientific realism", but the study of consciousness seems to be irrelevant to most of the hard sciences, and we do have cognitive science and psychology to deal with consciousness, among other things. I'm not sure it qualifies as a science, but we also have phenomenology.

I’ve been studying Michel Bitbol on philosophy of science, and he sees many of these disputes as arising from a shared presupposition: treating mind and matter as if they were two substances, one of which must be ontologically fundamental. In that sense, dualists and physicalists often share two assumptions—first, that consciousness is either a thing or a property of a thing; and second, that physical systems exist in their own right, independently of how they appear to us. — Wayfarer

I don't see it as a question of substances. I think that way of thinking is anachronistic. We don't need to talk about 'physical vs mental'. Existence or being is fundamental. First there is mere existence of whatever, then comes self-organized existence (life) and with that comes cognition. Self-organized existents are able, via evolved existent structures known as cells and later sensory organs composed of cells to be sensitive to both the existents which constitute the non-living environment and of course other living existents that share the environment with them. Science shows us that the ability to model that sensitivity has evolved to ever-increasing levels of complexity and sophistication, with a major leap coming with the advent of symbolic language.

Is consciousness a thing? Not if you mean by 'thing' 'an object of the senses'. Digetsion is not an object of the senses either yet consciousness, like digestion, can be thought of as a process, and processes may be referred to as things.

On Bitbol’s reading, quantum theory supports neither position. It doesn’t establish the ontological primacy of consciousness conceived as a substance—but it also undermines the idea of self-subsisting physical “things” with inherent identity and persistence. What it destabilises is the very framework in which “mind” and “matter” appear as separable ontological kinds in the first place. — Wayfarer

I agree that quantum theory supports neither position (re fundamental substances). I don't agree that it undermines the idea of self-existing things, meaning things that exist in the absence of percipients. I also don't think it has anything say about mind and matter being different ontological kinds, as that is merely a matter of categorization. They are different kinds of things, since matter is thought of as constitutive and mind is thought of as perceptive. Matter is thought of in terms of particles or building blocks, whereas mind is thought of as a process. I don't see that QM dispenses with the idea of building blocks at all, although obviously the old 'billiard ball' model is no longer viable.

The irony enters when those, who generally take science to have only epistemic or epistemological, and not ontological, significance, nonetheless seek to use the results of quantum physics to support ontological claims, such as that consciousness really does, as opposed to merely seems to we observers to, collapse the wave function, and that consciousness or mind is thus ontologically fundamental.

So yes, the original separation of bathrooms was by sex. So now we can go to what I think your real question is. Should we continue to separate bathrooms by sex, or now by gender? Why or why not? — Philosophim

As I said, sex and gender were not separated at the time when the first gender separated toilets were created. Now for many people gender has been separated from sex. So what you wrote below, which I provided a citation to correct you have not acknowledged.

Gender as a sociological concept was created long after bathrooms were separated by sex. — Philosophim

I think you should do some research into the history of public toilets, and you will find that initially there were public facilities only for men. I don't have the time to tell you more, but you can do the research yourself.

I think your argument about "deceit" is woefully weak, and you know my position as to whether transwomen should be allowed to use women's facilities. I am not inclined to discuss this any further with you, as it seems to me that you will only double-down on your assertions, and I have little interest in the subject anyway.

Have fun researching.

Your second line admits the answer I gave you for your first line. — Philosophim

If gender and sex were equivalent in the past then the separation could be said to be for either. You chose to say it was for sex, because that supports your argument. Someone else can say it was for gender, and since the two concepts are now disentangled your argument, on that interpretation, fails.

I don't know why you are talking about "good faith"―do you take disagreement as a sign of bad faith?

No, if toilets are divided by sex, you disguise yourself as the other sex and enter anyway, that is defacto deception. — Philosophim

Even if that were so, which I think is questionable, since a person's sex is no one else's business, your argument fails since it can now be said that the division is gender, and not sex, based.

You have omitted one important element for your argument. How do you know that public toilets are separated according to sex, rather than according to gender? If in the past sex and gender were equivalent, that is no longer the case―so it now becomes a matter of interpretation.

As to your 'deception' argument―if it is not possible to know what sex others in the public toilet are, in the absence of asking there is no deception.

You will need to provide actual arguments and evidence to support them―simply repeating the same assertions will not do.

As to the origin of the term 'gender' I searched and found this from the Online Etymology Dictionary at the top of the page:

Historical Context
The term "gender" has its roots in the Latin word "genus," meaning "kind" or "sort," and was historically used to categorize individuals based on biological distinctions, primarily male and female. This usage dates back to around the 1300s, where it was synonymous with sex, referring to the reproductive functions of individuals.

Gods no! That would be too sensible....