I understand why you don’t feel joy. Carry on. — Malcolm Parry

I don’t think you do, nor did you engage with my point.

No, it's not. — RogueAI

It is, the thought experiment has nothing to do with whether you think matter exists or not. Heck that was converted in the IEP link.

Is that true? That is a convoluted way to look at your existence. — Malcolm Parry

Why would I lie about that? Engage with what is being said. Why is it convoluted?

How does it not engage? I'm not sure what you mean. — Malcolm Parry

No I can’t imagine you would but I explained already.

Would I reply on a message board that was made up of AI bots and not some other humans? The replies would be probably more challenging and would would be perfectly tailored to my wants and needs but ultimately it would be unsatisfying as there is no connection. I have no idea if anyone on here is "real" but I'm convinced you are.
Then again, evolution has made us very adaptable so within a week the machine may be our new reality. — Malcolm Parry

Not really, and also not what is being said. AI was a different thread, not the experience machine. Though you assume AI will be tailored to your wants and not eventually beyond your reasoning ability.

And evolution sorta made us adaptable, humans don’t really like change so we’re sorta adaptable creatures. But so far studies show no one would plug in to the machine.

Anyway…your reply is still irrelevant to the main point and isn’t engaging with the thought experiment

Please explain how it works. I have yet to read anything that explains how physical processes give rise to subjective experience. — Patterner

You can look them up to get a picture of it. Though Blackmoor suggests consciousness is an illusion.

Though thinking about it I guess our storytelling does give meaning to the chemicals and gives them the context to do what they do, and the stories we tell can affect what chemicals are released.

So maybe it's not entirely chemicals, I mean...isn't the notion that it's all chemicals also just a story well tell to make sense of things?

I guess you didn't get the memo, Rogue: There are no antirealists (immaterialists, disembodied minds, etc) in foxholes. — 180 Proof

I mean I got two ends of the spectrum, one who says it's all chemicals and that mind just projects "fiction" (even though without that "fiction" you'd never know it was all chemicals) and someone who thinks matter isn't real.

It's an odd collection to be sure.

Can you give any links, or names of researchers? — Patterner

I know susan blackmoor is one person along with Anil Seth and Thomas Metzinger, Daniel Denett as well. I've read random stuff that show the hard problem isn't a hard problem

Okay, then perhaps try legal microdosing with psilocybin or cannabis if available. Or cognitive behavior therapy. I don't know what else to suggest. There may be other solutions, I'm no expert. Dwelling on these kinds of thoughts will only reinforce the cycle and exacerbate the problem it seems to me. — Janus

I'm aware of that, but it's not like I can stop the thoughts. Also microdosing isn't possible where I live. Cannabis did nothing for me but make me sleepy though.

Sure it is. Weren't you taking about chemicals? You just assume those chemicals exist, right? Maybe don't assume that. — RogueAI

They do exist, that's why I said I'm not doing this.

I don't think the evidence shows that at all. Quite the contrary. My own experience has also showed me this: years ago, I experimented for a while with MDMA. The following day or two I would be horribly depressed, almost inconsolable. — Janus

I actually does, especially since it suggests that SSRI's aren't really well understood. I used to be on them and they didn't really make a difference other than making me feel flat.

Your friend sounds like they got lucky.

How do you know? — RogueAI

I'm not doing this, it's not even related to the thought experiment.

Maybe it’s only because we have Mind which constructs and projects fictions, that we think there's some truth to our complaint that/if it's all just chemicals. If you think about it, Mind has, in its make-believe, the audacity to criticize Nature.

Yah, it's all just chemicals. We breathe, we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, feel, and bond because of these chemicals. The rest is just talk. — ENOAH

That talk though is the only reason any of this makes sense though, what you told me is a story to explain things just like we do for everything else (as someone pointed out to me).

It's also stupid to think mind and nature are separate when mind is part of nature, it doesn't exist outside of it. Also where does "Audacity" come from? Nature doesn't give a damn last I checked.

Like in my other thread, what you write makes little sense and isn't really related. What's your point? In fact in the last thread I told you that meaning making is the only reason you can type such things and have them understood.

And then what's the next step if it's all chemicals? Then what? You never really draw complete thoughts out. Also if it's all chemicals how is there Mind? And if we construct meaning that's chemicals too, so it's not really fiction then right? Like I said, incomplete thoughts.

Courage, e.g., is not an emotion and requires fear which is painful: the experience machine is about pleasures (as far as I understand).

Like I said before, even if it does include suffering, it being fake makes it less valuable than it being real. — Bob Ross

I think an earlier poster was going on about how we can't really tell if it's fake or real since it's all cascading neurons.

That said what is so special about courage and all those other emotions? Don't those also involve chemicals and areas of the brain that generate the fear response. Again we could just replicate it.

We can feel depressed due to dopamine or serotonin deficiency or depletion, and this can lead to the kinds of thought s you are having. On the one hand you are saying it's all just chemicals and yet on the other you say that these thoughts about it all being chemicals are not just due to chemicals but are "logical conclusions". Do you not see that you are contradicting yourself? — Janus

Well that's part of the problem as well and seems to reinforce the experience machine. But I also know thinking like this is causing the depression I feel.

What someone said is that I'm depressed and therefor thinking like this when it's the other way around, there is no contradiction. They assume I'm depressed. Though if it is just due to a chemical imbalance that would be unfortunate. Though evidence does seem to show that the chemical imbalance is a myth when it comes to depression.

They're not just chemicals in the brain. All roads lead to the Hard Problem. The idea of consciousness arising from matter is incoherent, which is why there's been no scientific progress on it and there will be no progress on it. Matter doesn't exist. This is all an elaborate dream. — RogueAI

Matter does exist though. We also have made progress on the hard problem, at least from the research I've seen.

And why we are discussing this topic? Because this topic is encoded in chemicals? If you put elements x, y, and z together, bringing about a certain reaction, and you throw some a, b, and c into it, do you get the idea that you chose to post about? — Patterner

Probably, we know that brain chemistry can impact how people think and behave.

Are particles, the forces, and the laws of physics, the reason computers exist, enabling us to communicate like this? Because computers come about naturally through chemical reactions, and other interactions of physical things?

No. Computers exist because we wanted them to exist, so that we could use them to do things we can't do otherwise. So we did things that the laws of physics would never have done, and made things that would not exist, but for our purposeful, future-serving actions. — Patterner

The argument could be made that it was due to the reward system that our brains evolved in order to do stuff. If you didn't find things rewarding you wouldn't do them, that includes developing computers.

Only "If everything we take to be meaningful is just the result of chemicals that can be replicated..." But maybe we are more than an extremely complicated bunch of billiard balls bouncing off of each other. — Patterner

And if we're not? What would suggest otherwise?

However, let's stipulate that the experience machine is just a 1:1 simulator of the real world (including suffering) like the matrix: why would we choose one over the other? Because the more real a thing is, the more valuable it is. E.g., ceteris paribus, an imaginary chair is not as good as a real chair (even if they have the same properties other than existence). — Bob Ross

That could just be status quo bias, I believe this already covered that line of reasoning: https://iep.utm.edu/experience-machine/#H5

To sum up, the aforementioned studies and the scholarship on them have challenged the inference to the best explanation of the abductive argument based on the EMTE. Note that something can be considered good evidence in favor of a hypothesis when it is consistent only with that hypothesis. According to this new scholarship, the fact that the large majority of people respond to the original EMTE in a non-hedonistic way by choosing reality over pleasure is not best explained by reality being intrinsically valuable. In fact, modifications of the EMTE like the REM and the stranger NSQ scenario, while supposedly isolating the same prudential question, elicit considerably different preferences in the experimental subjects. The best explanation of this phenomenon seems to be the status quo bias, a case of deviation from rational choice that has been repeatedly observed by psychologists in many contexts.

The experience machine doesn't give people the higher goods: it just gives people this shallow sense of hedonic happiness. The goods worth pursuing require suffering to achieve and maintain: there's a big difference between hedonic and eudaimonic happiness. E.g., courage, temperance, etc. don't exist in this experience machine. — Bob Ross

Those emotions are just chemicals in the brain, why wouldn't they exist in such a machine. You're not engaging with the thought experiment.

I encourage you to seek out a professional therapist. Feeling a lack of joy may be indicative of a mental health need or signal depression. — NotAristotle

No, it's due to the potential logical conclusions of thinking about this.

Therapists can't help because they cannot address such philosophical questions, let alone even understand them.

From what perspective? At what level of analysis? Why not instead: if it's all just quarks ...? C'mon, the premise is weak, reductive nonsense. — 180 Proof

Neuroscience clearly, it's not like there is magic that makes it happen.

If everything we take to be meaningful is just the result of chemicals that can be replicated then there is nothing special about what we take to be meaningful. Treasured relationships can be replaced with a machine that just gives you the chemical rewards that having them would, it would render everyone, every thing, and every experience replaceable via a machine that can do the same.

In short there is nothing special about the things we value, it's just chemical inputs from the brain...

Neither of those posts answer my concerns or the question.

So I guess you are worried about the causes of the “chemicals” in your brain. You seem to want those causes to be “outside” your brain. But the causes of an experience machine are outside your brain.

Maybe reading Sartre might help when it comes to making a choice in life. But maybe not, thats a choice as well. — Richard B

It’s more like wondering if all that is meaningful is just chemical signal and therefor nothing special. Hobbies, relationships, all that. I’ve stopped feeling joy because of it, I think that if I do something I like it means I value joy and pleasure and would have to accept the experience machine and plug in.

That long drawn out section from ChatGPT doesn’t add anything to the discussion. You should be able to summarize your ideas quickly rather than letting somebody else,something else, do your “thinking” for you. There is a creepy parallel between your question about the experience machine and you use of AI to do your thinking for you. — T Clark

I asked it because everywhere else I asked people just insisted the question was either nonsense or impossible and didn’t really engage with the points I was making.

What GPT told me was honestly what I knew already and heard before, though I noticed it didn’t really answer the question truly either.

Isn't our experience just cascading neurons? (I love the phrase, I think I first read it in Self Illusion by Bruce Hood)
If a machine could replicate exactly the pathways we would not know it was a simulation.
However, we do have a part of the brain that detects fakeness (No idea of where it is and where I read about it) so any machine that you aware was a machine would ultimately fail because you would "know" it was a fake and discount the experience. — Malcolm Parry

In some ways it’s just that and in some ways it’s not.

but that’s not an answer to the question nor does it engage with the thought experiment.

But we do have a part of the brain that detects “fakeness” (it's how people can spot AI generated content). However that’s not the question.

Apparently there are some recent studies they did on it, but I dunno how reliable they are since the machine is just a hypothetical: https://iep.utm.edu/experience-machine/#H5

Some say we have a status quo bias towards what we know but I dunno, thought experiments are abstract. Even if you ask people it's not like it proves anything right?

Yet despite the advances in AI I don’t think it can match the human touch when delivering many types of services and jobs like the care sector for example as in doctors nurses or other hospitality catering industries. — kindred

That's kinda what AGI is for, the next step. It's meant to replace that level of cognitive work for humans.

Also the Industrial Revolution is a terrible example to use. We still are suffering from that one. The environment being poisoned, people working more than ever before, and lets not forget we had to sign a whole bunch of legislation to prevent workers from being just meat puppets (though that's getting over turned). The over reliance on cars has also been bad because it makes cities and towns more dangerous for pedestrians and now we have less walkable cities. It also gave rise to the massive environmental disaster that are the suburbs.

People like to think technological progress has all been good, unaware of the heavy cost and who's paying it. Though people who think the dangers of AI are overstated clearly don't understand what's happening. I gave one example about it solving the purpose of human existence and just having people hooked up to drugs instead of having to perform experiences for the same thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa8k8IQ1_X0

Simply put, humanity is fundamentally unprepared for such a thing.

Your obstinate dismissals without argument, sir, are now dismissed by me without (further) argument. Hopefully, someone much more thoughtful than you will offer credible counters to my arguments. — 180 Proof

They already gave them and you ignored them, you just doubled down insisting subjective feelings and assessments are objective. I even explained how your "list" is still subjective evaluations and not everything on there is a fact of suffering because there is no fact of suffering due it's subjective nature, for every thing on your list there is someone who doesn't suffer due to it.

That's also why they stopped responding to you.

You have made no argument, only insisting it is so and I had to keep pointing out how it's still a subjective experience and there is nothing objective about it or a fact. I even listed an entire branch of philosophy that argued otherwise, maybe try Buddhism.

So unless you have anything beyond insisting it's objective then you're easily dismissed, like how your earlier point about AI had nothing to do with the topic.

Suffering is not measurable quantity and therefor not objective fact, even your link shows that...

Yes, "a personal" objective fact like every physical or cognitive disability; therefore, suffering-focused ethics (i.e. non-reciprocally preventing and reducing disvalues) is objective to the degree it consists of normative interventions (like e.g. preventive medicine (re: biology), public health regulation (re: biochemistry) or environmental protection (re: ecology)) in matters of fact which are the afflictions, vulnerabilties & dysfunctions – fragility – specific to each living species. — 180 Proof

No, not an objective fact, it's personal therefor not objective. Physical and cognitive "disabilities" are also not objective facts.

is objective to the degree it consists of normative interventions — 180 Proof

Again, you have to be told it's not objective.

in matters of fact which are the afflictions, vulnerabilties & dysfunctions – fragility – specific to each living species. — 180 Proof

Again not matters of fact, just interpretations. Suffering is open to interpretation and exists only subjectively. Though there are those who do not suffer, like I mentioned before. Again just insisting it is doesn't make it so.

So you believe that there isn't any aspect of suffering that is a fact of the human condition (i.e. hominin species)? — 180 Proof

Suffering is though it is a personal thing.

"Master, I see now… the mountain is once again a mountain."

The master laughed. "Now you truly understand." — praxis

It's an old zen story about how true enlightenment acknowledging the two truths of reality and to live the paradox. It not that it exists or doesn't exist, both are true and to know both is to see the truth.

Or put another way, ultimate reality and conventional reality, both true and exist in tandem. To label one as false and the other true is to err.

Nonsense. Human facticity is not "subjective". Being raped or starved, for example, are not merely "subjective feelings" just like loss of sustanence, lack of shelter, lack of sleep, ... lack of hygiene, ... lack of safety .... injury, ill-health, disability ... maladaptive habits ... those vulnerabilities (afflictions) are facts of suffering. — 180 Proof

Incorrect, again. It's not facticity, it's subjective. Those are also not facts of suffering, Buddhism and Eastern philosophy already addressed that.

These are merely subjective, no matter how bad they are to the person experiencing them at doesn't make them any more fact than any other feeling.

Which of the following are only "subjective" (experiences) and not objective, or disvalues (i.e. defects) shared by all h. sapiens w i t h o u t exception (and therefore are knowable facts of our species) — 180 Proof

I'd have to agree with them, it doesn't matter if humans share them (though not all humans) it's still subjective feelings, not objective facts. Everything on that list is subjective feelings and everyone might not feel the same about all of them.

I know some Buddhist monks who wouldn't suffer from any of those for example, and that's just one case, therefor it's not objective but subjective.

As for AGI I guess there is no point in speculating about it since if such a thing did come to pass it's computing power would be far beyond our ability to comprehend or do anything about.

Humanity isn't ready for such a scenario.

The central mistake of that hypothesis is the inaccurate equation of pleasure with happiness. As I've attempted to demonstrate earlier, pleasure is simple and fleeting; happiness is sustained and complex. — Vera Mont

But if it's chemicals whats the difference?

https://x.com/Merryweatherey/status/1516836303895240708

Are those meanings the same in ancient Greek and modern English? I think Epicurus had a wider vocabulary of pleasures, or pleasurable experiences, than can be accessed via drugs. — Vera Mont

I mean if we are talking about the brain isn't it all chemical reactions? Like the comic is saying, you would get the same chemicals from doing anything so why not plug in?

I still haven't stopped trying to find another way around it, this is very distressing. Though I feel that wanting a solution would just be proving the thought experiment right.

The central mistake of that hypothesis is the inaccurate equation of pleasure with happiness. As I've attempted to demonstrate earlier, pleasure is simple and fleeting; happiness is sustained and complex. While some short-term goals may focus on some particular pleasurable experience, long-term goals are aimed at individual varieties of happiness. — Vera Mont

Aren't they just both chemical responses? It's everything we do just a vehicle for our own pleasure. Whether it's love, relationships, a job we like, hobbies...

This comic gets at the heart of things:

https://x.com/Merryweatherey/status/1516836303895240708/photo/1

I looked at the quora entry. It's a too-heavily illustrated opinion piece.
So? If you're convinced, go with it. — Vera Mont

It's not like I want to be, I want to think that life is more complicated than that. But what if it really just boils down to that?

Good abstracts of articles on the subject - including some points I made in my original response - well presented. Shows that everything on the subject has already been written and posted on the internet. But it's remarkable how the bot chose and organized the relevant bits.
I don't see it pleasuring anyone to death.... or running the world. — Vera Mont

Well the thing is this is more getting into advanced AI, like AGI that the link is talking about. The issue is sorta "solving" human purpose by just giving the most immediate explanation.

If you think about it a lot of our lives and goals do revolve around pleasure, so much so that happily ever after is a common ending in a lot of media. So why not just cut to the end and never have to experience or do anything to get to pleasure or happiness? Right now everything we do and assign meaning to is just a roundabout way to get to pleasure. Even the goals of building a better society and human flourishing and wellbeing just seems like the same thing.

So if AI (AGI) could determine the purpose of human existence is pleasure from looking at all that then why wouldn't the simplest solutions just be to do the drugs instead of the uncertainty of life?

Like I said, I can't argue against it, and the more I think about the more it has me doubting the meaning of human existence and my reason for doing things. That all that stuff about love, meaning, and everything is just fanciful storytelling to avoid the reality that pleasure is what drives it all. It's very...bleak.

That maybe AI would just give it to us straight and cut through the stories we tell ourselves.

Every time we advance technology that replaces tons of jobs we come up with new things we didn't think of before that requires humans. We'll still need oversight on AI, manual labor, and who knows what else.

What we probably aren't prepared for is AI without morality. We have no objective morality that AI can reference, therefore it may usher in one of the deepest immoral eras of human history. — Philosophim

Not really the main thing I'm getting at, again read the links.

Could I ask, have you spent any time interacting with any of the new AI systems? ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude or one of the others? I think whether you like them or are apprehensive about them, there are some insights to be gleaned from actually using them. — Wayfarer

I have not, mostly because it doesn't really answer questions well from what I see. That prompt you listed is a key example.

Nor does it have anything to do with what is being discussed.

Simple enough. Thre guy who wrote that article didn't start this thread; you did. I asked you some questions early on, because I was interested in what you think. — Vera Mont

Yeah but there is a reason I linked and quoted it.

Then there are things we enjoy on several levels, like making pottery (which is both sensual and creative), repairing airplane engines (which requires both dexterity and detection) or researching a cure for some illness (which takes discipline and meticulous observation). These pursuits can go on giving intellectual pleasure for years or decades - even in intervals of frustration and setbacks. — Vera Mont

But doesn't that boil down to just pleasure like he's saying it is. It reminds me of a thought experiment meant to argue against hedonism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_machine

If you choose to reduce it to chemical narrative, you are much the poorer for that decision. — Vera Mont

I keep saying I don't want to do that but no matter what I do I always end up coming back to it.

No. I was only interested in your original thoughts on the subject. — Vera Mont

Maybe you should as it explains it a bit more.

As so often happens, the operative word there is if. I argue that this assumption is simply wrong. So I go on to investigate why I think it's wrong and rely on my own observation, experience and reading to find alternative explanations. — Vera Mont

Maybe, but if we do things we enjoy isn't that more or less the same thing?

Chemicals that invent stories are far more interesting than chemicals that just want to experience physical pleasure. Still not an explanation for human complexity, of course. — Vera Mont

Maybe not or maybe we just want it to be more than it really is. I don't really know.

There is a whole lot more to life than "just chemicals". There were plenty of chemicals floating around in the primordial ooze before some of them bumped into one another and formed complex molecules and eventually RNA. We've come a considerable way since then. You can't reduce human experience, thought, feeling, aspiration and activity to chemical reactions. — Vera Mont

Some would argue that's just storytelling, making things out to be more than what they really are.

It should. What more reliable information will you ever get about reality than what you know? — Vera Mont

Well our observations and experience could be mistaken.

Drugsare the middleman. I don't know about you, but I enjoy my experiences first-hand, directly. Emotions may be partly chemical, but they're also cerebral: what you think and remember is as much of your experience as what you taste and smell. Sight and hearing are more than simply chemical, too. Drugs and entertainments are an escape from experience that is unpleasant or tedious - not an acceptable substitute. The Quora poster is wrong, afaic. — Vera Mont

That's what I hope, though I find it hard to argue. I think what he's trying to get at it with the thermodynamics bit and the simplest solution being "best" is that bit about how if pleasure is the goal of human existence then just being hooked up to drugs is simplest instead of "living". Did you read the link?

Is that what you see as the purpose of human existence? (assuming it has one) Is that what you desire for yourself? Being blissed-out on drugs and lying around in a sustained orgy of self-gratification? The notion doesn't do a thing for me. It sure wouldn't for a baseball player, an engineer, a psychologist or a composer. There are pleasures far more complex and satisfying than the chemical. People have talents and ambitions. Most don't have the time and opportunity to reach their potential - or even try to reach for their imagined potential. — Vera Mont

It's more like trying to expand on the quora answer and what he's getting at and extending things to their logical conclusion. I don't think such a thing is appealing but I find it hard to argue against since it does come down to chemicals when emotions are involved. I don't agree with his conclusions but I can't argue against them. I mean...why go through all those experiences? Just cut out the middleman.

Is that what you observe in your own daily contact with people? There may well be a fair whack of escapism these days, but look around and you'll understand what people are escaping from. The far greater danger we're increasingly witnessing is the degeneration of youth into brutality and blood-lust - savagery. Social media as Lord of the Flies. — Vera Mont

Does it matter what I observe? What if I am mistaken about what's happening and our justifications are just storytelling trying to run from it just being chemicals. Why care about the process of doing something or the journey if it's just the chemicals making us feel that way and driving us toward it? Again I don't like thinking that but can't argue against it.

What we have is artificial, but not intelligent. A chat bot sounds clever by parroting words written by humans. They're kind of like the white plastic face on a robot, to make it more appealing.
The real function of self-teaching or adaptive computer programs is in operating machines for industry, commerce, transportation and communications. That's where the jobs go. There is no point in a diploma that can be earned by parroting a parrot and there is no job at the end of it. — Vera Mont

What about with AGI?

I was more motivated by this post:

https://www.quora.com/What-ethical-dilemmas-should-we-consider-as-technology-evolves-rapidly/answer/David-Moore-408?ch=15&oid=1477743839367290&share=118d711a&srid=3lrYEM&target_type=answer

Where it suggests AI will solve the purpose of human existence and he lists some things like of pleasure is the goal then we’d just be hooked up to drugs all the time without needing to bother with experiences. That sounds like either ruining the human experience or “revealing” it for what it is, that being just chemical reactions with our storytelling to make it seem like more.

I don’t think those posts hold any water, especially given how ai is lately.

Our downfall, maybe just speeding up our fall?
Do you see any benefits of AI for humanity? Maybe,we should work towards a curtailment of AI to them?
The genie is already out of the bottle, now maybe is the time to ask the right questions or curb its potential harms?
So no, not a downfall. Just, like all new techs, more and different work to do to minimize its faults/flaws and maximize its better qualities/potentials. — kazan

We can’t even manage social media let alone cars. We also, despite the tech, work more than previous generations

I dunno, the thought give me a lot of dread lately as it seems like the hopeful future I grew up believing in turns out to be the opposite. SO far tech just makes life either more complicated or worse.

Sure reference, for example, ostensive definition is a way of learning words, but ultimately use is the driving force. If I teach a child by pointing to a pencil and saying, "Pencil," that is a tool that informs use. How do we know if the child understands? We observe how they use the word across a wide range of contexts or language games. If the child points to a cup and says pencil, then we know that they aren't using the word correctly. There has to be community agreement (cultural and social practices otherwise referred to as forms of life).

Use, for the most part, isn't determined by the thing itself (the dog); it's determined by language users and the explicit or implicit rules involved in the respective language game. What we use as a name for a dog could be almost anything. — Sam26

That's sort of why Wittgenstein said a private language is incoherent, language is exclusively public and carries the meaning we agree it does. It's how we can communicate anything.

Don't bother. You really believe that thoughts, feelings, intentions and purposes travel through the air when two people talk to each other. Imagine a tape recording where something you say is recorded. You have the tape and you literally believe that there are thoughts, emotions and so on on the tape. That is a type of mentalism and magical thinking that I do not share and is patently false. — JuanZu

Because that's literally how language works. Thought, intent, feeling, purpose, these are what make the sounds and lines into words that carry weight. It's how you can type and argue your point. Under hard materialism this would be impossible because there would be no words or meaning.

There are thoughts, emotions, and "so on" on the tape because that's how language works. It carries the meaning we imbue onto it and our intent and emotion and what we want to get across. That's why we use it. You're thinking too narrowly about it. Heck the different cultures with different worldviews around the globe prove your position wrong.

It's not "mentalism" or "magical thinking" it's literally how language functions, you're doing it whether you accept it or not. If your logic was right you'd be wrong because nothing you said would carry meaning or anything like that because it would just be a bunch of "lines" and not even that. Ink would not be ink and sound would not be sound, I wouldn't even be able to read what you're arguing. I'm guessing you wouldn't understand art either or other forms of communication.

You really don't understand how your "materialism" isn't supported by reality and is self-refuting. You seem to think language exists in a vacuum and that's obviously false, never mind the differences across cultures proving you wrong.

If you look closely at what you have said, in no case is there a transmission of something. — JuanZu

There is though, you're doing it now. Language is transmission albeit mentally because these words only make sense in a shared understanding. It's why Wittgenstein argued that a private language is incoherent.

We assign meanings to words and use them to communicate, that's why we use certain ones when we feel a certain way. But this is imperfect and prone to error. But javra is right, when you "Decode" so to speak their message then their feelings and purpose and meaning are transmitting. Hence why materialism (your version of it) doesn't explain what's happening, and can't.

Since there is no such thing as passing from one head to another, you have to infer from the ink and sound (and also from its context), which implies an active role for both. — JuanZu

There is no active role in the ink or sound, it's all the person. The ink and sound only carry meaning if there is someone else. It's like the zen koan of one hand clapping.

Here inferring is nothing other than creating meaning for itself which we indirectly link to another agent. But there is nothing that is transmitted. — JuanZu

Again, there is. That is literally the point of language. Otherwise by your logic you have said nothing. It's not indirectly, these sounds and ink only have meaning to us because we made it so, that's as direct as you can get. Yeah inferring is part of the imperfection because they could be lying or not finding the words, but ink and sound are only one method of transmitting something.

Again, you can't see how your logic breaks down when you really look closely at this. You keep insisting it's the ink or sound when all evidence shows that's false.

It's weird that you are hung up on whether it's indirect or not, because our whole experience of reality is indirect. The brain just constructs a best guess of what's out there and it's a smoothed version for our convenience.

If you want to get technical with your materialism, sound doesn't exist. Outside our heads it's only pressure waves, our brains take that and convert it into sound. Same thing with color. So as you see, a lot of reality is our interpretation of it. The only meaning is what we make and assign and that allows us to transmit how we are feeling and thinking.

Language is a public sphere so the very act of writing and talking is transmitting something, despite your insistence otherwise.

Also by not espousing the particular species of materialism you seem to currently endorse - which seems to preclude the very possibility of this. — javra

That's what I meant by ignoring them because what they said does not track. If it were the medium and not us we wouldn't have so many cultures with different interpretations of reality. There is a "Ghost in the ink" because there is intent and purpose to a message being said and (like you mention) by trying to understand everything behind it you can understand what they were trying to convey. That's pretty much what historians do along with literary analysis in Literature.

His views just aren't supported by reality, if anything they're effectively arguing against communication and (ironically) refuting their case since apparently nothing they said is being transmitted to us. By their logic art wouldn't have the impact it does to people.

Never mind that materialism itself doesn't hold up in light of recent findings in quantum physics and that eliminative materialism is self refuting. Our understanding of the world is a model, built on concepts that only exist in our heads that we use to navigate the world, and our experience of reality shapes how we interpret things. Matter is useful for our day to day but according to new quantum physics findings what we take to be "solid" might not be such. Heck we don't even know what's at the fundamental level, all we can do is measure probabilities and hypotheticals.