Is "mind is an illusion" a legitimate position in Philosophy of Mind?
Some people in both the idealist and the materialist camp (in much different fashions) want to claim that first person consciousness is an "illusion" of some sort. Is using the term "illusion" just another term for the "mind" and this "illusion" still has to be accounted for or can the concept of illusion have its cake and eat it too? In other words, can illusion really claim that the mind only "feels" like it exists, but does not really and that's the end of the story or does the "feels like" phenomena of illusion still have to be accounted for in some way?
Comments (93)
I don't know whether we can determine such things, or not. If we can not, which seems to be the case so far, then it really isn't arguable. We'll just be going around in circles.
IF it is an illusion, its an enduring and ancient trick which continues to be very convincing. It seems like there must be some organic mechanism which produces either the mind, or the illusion of the mind. It's presumably somewhere in the brain, or maybe in many places in the brain. But such speculation doesn't answer the question, "If so, where the hell is it?"
Further research, time in other words, will tell. If in 25, 50, or 100 years we haven't found the locus of mind, then we might have to settle for illusion, or worse, what is to me totally unpalatable, that mind doesn't exist in the brain at all, but elsewhere.
Yes, or so they claim. The feel-like qualia of the mind still needs to be accounted for. But I'm not entirely convinced that we can reduce qualia to something non-qualitative. For something to be non-qualitative, we need to have a concept of what a qualitative thing is. There needs to be a flaw in the very concept of qualia to be able to eliminate or reduce it to something non-qualitative
For example, we can clearly imagine something supernatural happening. Thus, everything we see not supernatural we dub natural. But we also know of qualitative things, and to say that everything is non-qualitative would require us to ignore the very reasoning process used to come to terms with the concept of qualia, unlike in the supernatural/natural example. It would be self-defeating to say qualia is actually not qualitative at all.
The position most familiar to me regarding the elimination/reduction of the mind would be eliminative materialism. As far as I have seen, eliminative materialists tend to be very bold and passionate, and everyone else is like "eh okay then".
That being said:
Quoting schopenhauer1
I would like to know who is claiming this.
Yeah, but you don't "get" it man..we are all one with no separate minds and you are living in an illusion. I'm not even saying this right now.
Oh wait, at the end there it looks like you do "get" it. Here's the thing, even if consciousness is mirage-like, this mirage "exists" in some way, even if the origins of the consciousness is somehow descriptively from something else. What's funny about Dennett's position is he seems to go into painstaking detail to say he is not committing the homunculus fallacy but then does so by saying the mind is an illusion. Why? Because the illusion has to subside somewhere. Explaining the "actual" origins of the illusion, and ways in which it "we" are fooled, means that all these tricks and mirages are happening "somewhere" and that implies that there is a projector of mind where the illusion is playing out and that is the homnuclus fallacy. The illusion itself has to be accounted for as something that "feels like" it is happening.
Indeed! At least to the extent that one is doing the accounts. I rather think that one is better off attacking the question than trying to answer it. Much as I dislike qualia-talk as the atomic theory of consciousness, the denial thereof is even more uncomfortable.
To ask what is consciousness is close to asking what is what-ness. One might say that consciousness is identical with its content - I am the world. And if it was something other than its content, how would one know ? But this is going to lead to foolishness too. As if what-ness is whatever one rightly answers a 'what' question with.
But in this case, the right answer, I believe, is 'fuck off with your meaningless question'. No thing, but not nothing. But I haven't the energy today to do the full Wittgensteinian exposition.
Please do. Tell us how the question itself in nonsense. I see it as a conundrum and a head scratcher, but meaningless, not as much. We are referring to something quite readily available to us. In fact, it can be argued the most intimate thing as it is the very "you" that all other things become some-thing.
Not just all other things, but 'the very "you"' itself as well. In which voice one objectifies subjectivity, making consciousness an intimate thing. (Mumbles something about beetles in boxes...).
Or I could liken it to Kant's space and time, as a condition of talking meaningfully about thing-hood and therefore necessarily no-thing itself. One can talk of time being an illusion as well, but what is one saying?
It strikes me that there's a difference between the "I" that we might speak of as a transcendental condition, and the voice that one speaks in. Neither are 'things,' but there's something earthy and forceful about one's voice (when one's speaking in one's own voice, which happens often for some, rarely for others) which, though not quite material, feels less immaterial than the cogito.
I hope I am understanding you here?
I would say that the voice that one speaks in is a construction of thought; of identification; an earthy, forceful illusion. Consider what one's condition is when there is no thought. Perhaps one has been shocked by a particularly insightful post that blocks for a moment the train of thought. There is consciousness, but it is silent. I don't know if you have experienced it?
There is a close connection with time again here. One might say that psychological time ends, (while physical time continues of course). No one (no-thing) is awake... Psychological time is the result of identification with the past and future, giving rise to fear and hope, suffering and pleasure. This is the sense of continuing, the stream of consciousness that is indeed the narrative voice. It is wrong perhaps to call it an illusion; it is real enough and fills one's life from day to day, yet it is a fabrication of thought endlessly reacting to itself. It is not a precondition of life.
I was perhaps too vague in talking about 'voice.' There are so many different kinds of voices. The narrative voice -the story of the self, told by the self to the self, in order to maintain the self - is certainly a construction of thought. (Though what is a 'construction of thought'? I guess the most basic sense of 'construction' is the creation of a whole out of parts, in a way that that whole serves a purpose the parts alone, scattered, could never achieve. Is the narrative voice a way of collating memories of our expedient actions in such a way that the collation, topsy-turvily, is meant to explain the actions which led to its construction? To make those actions seem less expedient or ad hoc? But what constructs here, and what's constructed, and what are the rules of construction, and what's the process of construction? It seems endlessly complicated.)
In any case, there is another voice which seems to speak through us at the same time we speak in it. I mean voice literally here, since this usually happens when speaking to another of something important to oneself. The type of talk where you find yourself saying things you never knew you actually felt or believed, but which you recognize as having felt and believed all along. I feel most like myself when talking like this, in my own voice, but it happens very rarely for me. I'm certainly not talking in my own voice right now.
What is that voice though? It seems so different from the cogito or the transcendental subject.
Ugh, Wittgenstein. It's like code for "stop philosophizing". So what if I can't point to an actual consciousness. It is the very platform for which everything is conditioned, and thus rightly, you brought in Kant's space and time. The very fact that you say, or objectify anything, including your own consciousness is because you have one. But I think it's rhetoric to say it's "no-thing".
So "where" is thought endlessly reacting with itself the aether? Because your "no-thing" and "nowhere" is pretty much code for that. In what way to does calling it the "no-thing" change anything?
If that is what he means, then I would be more sympathetic with the argument, but is that what he is getting at that no-thing is similar to the "thing-in-itself"?
This is where I think the Wittgenstein influence probably makes people stop at a dead end. Because it is the very process which all other processes and things arise, it should somehow be considered nonsense to discuss? Also, how does this make it an illusion because it is "no-thing"?
Agreed. But, in a way, Schopenhauer claims it is an illusion (like Maya). How can it be real if there is something "that feels like it is real" even if it is not? The actual feeling like it is real is still something. Tying this back to the other thread- that is why I claim that Representation is not secondary (it does not "come from" or "derive" or "arise") from the monistic Will, but must be simply the double-aspect of Will. To claim that the Will "does" anything to itself so as to make an illusion is to anthropomorphize Will and give some sort of Neoplatonic unwarranted superstructure that one cannot fairly posit without jumping to some wildly speculative ideas.
I would highly recommend the chapter called Epiphilosophy, the very last one in Vol. II.
Will affirming itself, seems a bit magical.. just like a bunch of biological molecules interacting with the environment "giving rise" to consciousness. There is always something missing. Also, again, I can be in agreement with the will "affirming" itself, if the affirming never takes place at any "x" point but is simply the double aspect of Will. If the affirming is "after" some more primary stage, then that is suspect as there is no causality that would have a before (primary ONLY WILL) and after (WILL AND AFFIRMING OF WILL). It would have to be there from the beginning with Will. Original sin implies there was a Garden of Eden "before" this fall into time, but that cannot be the case.
So much selves, so little consciousness. This is getting a bit off topic perhaps, but I would say that most of the time I am performing, conforming to an image that I hold onto and from that nothing new can come. But to be 'authentic' (is that the right word?) is not to make that division for a moment but to respond from the whole of what one is, and in doing so one learns - recognises -something of the truth of what one is. Unfortunately, what tends to happen is that the same process of thought immediately makes a new image of this, and one starts performing it.
Where is where-ness is not a better question than what is what-ness, or when is when-ness. I could point to a place in your experience where your experience happens - 'the human brain'. Or more poetically I could say 'It's behind you.' Or I could simply and more usefully say it happens in thought, which is to say that it is not an event in the world. But even this is wide open to misinterpretation, because thought is a physical process; it is however not the physical process that is the content of the thought.
Yep I agree with all this. I know you are trying to do the Witt preciseness of language and kind of make it a linguistic tangle so we can see that a real question cannot be even asked (no what-ness, where-ness)...but cutting the bullcrap, what is your answer to this besides that it is "no-thing"?
Right, and Schopenhauer admits as much. However, consider also that the will, being outside of time, is absolutely free; in this case, free to affirm or deny itself. We only possess and understand freedom negatively, as the absence of anything that impedes or obstructs. In other words, there is no free will in the world of representation, wherein the will appears in time. Yet in itself, the will is free in a positive sense, for nothing does or can impede or obstruct it. Seeing as we are self-conscious of ourselves as will, we know the will affirms itself, but because it is absolutely free, we know it is possible to deny it as well. What does it mean to deny the will? It's not a change in the will, for the will cannot change or be destroyed. It's rather a change in knowledge. Now, from the perspective of the affirmation of the will, we are obliged to say that the will has always affirmed itself, and thereby that the world as representation has always existed. But from the perspective of the denial of the will, we are obliged to admit that representation is illusory.
This is simply a feature of transcendental idealist philosophy. Two seemingly opposed positions might be simultaneously true depending on what perspective we take. From the perspective of time, we cannot but apply this category to all things, but from the perspective of the non-temporal, no such category exists.
My argument was that representation "always existing" comes with it the very odd notion that there was a representing organism that was always there as there was no "time" before "time" and "time" is only recognized in a representing organism according to Schop. However, the contradiction goes away sort of, if we interpret Schop as a panpsychist and that micro-representations are around even BEFORE the first blown conscious organism, such that micro-experiences have always been occurring in force, matter, etc. Schop does say as such when he discusses force and the like, so this can be a legitimate move.
However, if we do not make that move.. we are stuck with an ever present organism such that representation can always be in the picture. It "seems' like time happened billions of years before this organism, but the organism itself has to always be around if that is where representation "exists".
As far as the illusion thing and denying the Will, I can understand denying the Will as an act of symbolic rebellion but as to leading to an actual metaphysical state called Nirvana where the life-denier is in some sublime state- this might be questionable. Maybe ego-death means that one just doesn't give a shit about eating, doing, being, not being..but even if ego-death exists, one's body and object/subject is still subsisting, and such, so one is still "in" the world of representation. It seems like not ego-death, but death death probably ends representation.
Two things: 1) there has always been a subject, we might say, but not necessarily a representing-organism, and 2) time is not recognized but supplied by this subject.
'Mind is an illusion' is not a legitimate position in philosophy of mind. Or did you mean some other question?
I'm not sure if you agreed or not but I laid out the argument earlier that there was no "before" or after in an atemporal world. I know you used words like Will is completely free in a positive sense, but either I don't understand or I don't think it actually does answer this question of how representing can "come on" the scene AFTER pure Will is on the scene. To my mind, representation is ALWAYS there along with Will (as it's flipside double-aspect) because it cannot "arise" when "arising" implies causality. Schopenhauer seems to admit to this conundrum in Book 1 section 7, and I don't think he really explains it other than it is like the myth of Kronos. It is very much one hand writing the other writing the other writing the other.. Time cannot "exist" all of a sudden, it cannot arise, it cannot just appear at some "x" time, so it has to have been there all along, which means, there has to have been an organism all along.
Quoting Thorongil
And this "supplying" does not happen after any original state of completeness, but has to always been there doing its supplying thing in order to not create the contradiction. And again, since organisms are the ones where this subsists (at least according to section 7 in Book 1), then it is a conundrum. Csalisbury also recognized this and is having a similar discussion in the "This Old Thing" thread.
I agree with that answer, but I guess now it has turned to this notion (influenced by Wittgenstein) that one cannot even discuss this matter because there is no "there" there.
I agree. I think people do a switcharoo and try to explain the causes of consciousness as some sort of hitherto unexplored origin and then because it is some genus of causes which is not what we originally thought, they want to then go an extra step and say the actual consciousness is therefore an illusion. If we want to bring in Wittgenstein, we can bring it there. It's not even an illusion as much as something that was not what we originally thought. They are confusing everybody by misusing the word illusion.
I didn't mean for it to answer this question, for my point has been that this question cannot be answered, as to do so would involve something like a category mistake.
Quoting schopenhauer1
So you say from an empirical perspective, which is quite correct. However, there is another perspective, resultant from the denial of the will, in which time ceases to be. While in time, timelessness is unthinkable, but while in timelessness, time is unthinkable.
That's fine, but how about the prospect of an ever present organism or ever present "something" by which representation must subsist? I get ever present Will, but ever present organism? If you deny the ever present organism, you will then say representation came on the scene "after" and we both agree that cannot happen if all is Will.
Right, so ever present "knowing subject". The knowing is the keyword here. The thing is, in this construct, it seems he is saying that even though it "appears" that organisms arose in time qua the organism doing the reflecting, really everything is atemporal. However, being that the "illusion" of the appearances subsist, this illusion is also atemporal being that it cannot have arisen "anywhere". Thus, there is an ever present organism because it did not "arise" (because arisen would be as if there was causality when there really is not). The illusion cannot be taken out of the equation. It cannot be explained away because "really" everything is atemporal Will. There is still the illusion to be accounted for, and which CANNOT have arisen. I'm adding in what I see to be a necessary conclusion to Schopenhauer's framework which is the ever present organism part. I'm not sure if I'm explaining myself well though.
My experience is very similar. To my therapist, I've likened that moment, where an image is immediately made of authentic expression, to those scenes in horror movies where the protagonist finally escapes the lair of their captor, runs out into the street, flags down a car --only to realize their captor is the one driving it. (Probably a bit melodramatic, but it sometimes feels that disheartening.) (& the turn of the screw here is when I first came up with this metaphor, it was spontaneous, to the point where I teared up a bit. Now its something I've rolled out a couple times in various places as yet another set piece)
I wonder to what extent this is universal though? You certainly see this kind of thing discussed a lot in philosophy, but perhaps that's because the type of people drawn to philosophy are the same type of people who struggle with 'authenticity'? (You have to be at least a little of a narcissist to think you can uncover profound truths through the exercise of your reason.)
And I guess you could say, even in those 'authentic' moments, one is performing. The difference, maybe, is that its a performance you truly believe in, deep down, all the way down to those primitive emotional currents we can never really leave behind. I've always liked the phrase 'Transcendence is absorption.'
Yeah, I tried to read Dennett's Consciousness Explained (recon to know the enemy better, I guess) but, even though I expected to disagree, I was legitimately disappointed by how shallow the argumentation was. It's exactly as you say - he just attacked the 'cartesian theater', again and again, as if the only two positions were eliminative materialism and Homunculism.
Maybe the book gets better, but I gave up after a couple hundred pages.
Sounds about right for Dennett.
Why do you think we are "best off" applying Peirce's maxim to mind, self, and consciousness? And why even comment on it if we should just "get on with life"? Why even comment on a philosophy forum about it in the first place? It sounds like you aren't following your own maxim. Of course, you might just like being troll-y.
Un, Just to say this is exactly how I feel. Thanks for articulating it in a way I haven't been able to. I would say 'authentic' too but then I'm irretrievably stuck with Sartreian categories I mis-learnt about 45 years ago.
'Mind' is a word used more by philosophers than anyone else, but if there's something illusory about it, it's still handy to have some term to describe what the creature does, from her point of view, in a mental way, even when she looks as if she's idly staring out of the window. So if you declare mind an illusion you have to reinvent something very like it to explain stuff. Quite often it seems to me that physicalists/materialists start to say 'brain' or 'nervous system' instead of 'mind', which seems to me an error. It's the human being that is conscious, deliberates, decides, speaks, moves, acts in the world, not dissectable bits of the being.
The hope is that in applying the pragmatic maxim, one might achieve some sort of clarity regarding concepts. But it has a negative function as well, as a tool of criticism.
I think application of the pragmatic maxim would suggest that it's inappropriate to speak of "the mind" or "the self" or "consciousness" or "the Will" in the abstract, without context; in other words, without consideration of what is meant by them when applied to actual situations arising in life, If I'm right, its application would thus indicate that we should stop speaking of them in that manner, and so get on with life.
Now, is it "troll-y" (I think "trollish" is better) to make such a comment in the august, sublime confines of a philosophy forum? I would hope not.
Right, because no one else wants clarity or has clarity using any other methodology. We are all just flies in the bottle, and you are releasing the fly. I'm glad you came along to single-handedly save the day show us all the error. Ok, I'm done trying to out snark you.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
The question was "is it legitimate to say that mind is an illusion, if the illusion itself has to be accounted for". Again, how does the pragmatic principle apply to this? I'm not saying it doesn't, but I want your interpretation and application specifically to this case, since you brought it up. I'm not looking for a rough outline of the pragmatic maxim itself. If you want an explication of Will, I can do that.. It is discussed at length as to how it "applies" in everyday life in Schopenahuer's book. I'm not saying it is "truth" but you certainly are not charitable with it based on your short statements here.
You should really thank Peirce for the pragmatic maxim, not me. I don't know what other methodologies you refer to.
I'm afraid the only work of Schopenhauer I've read (that I can recall; I may have had to read something of his in college in a history of philosophy course) is his little book on wisdom of life, which I wasn't impressed by as I thought it entirely derivative, but may have been an eye-opener when written for all I know. He seems to have been somewhat lacking in that wisdom since he assaulted that poor woman for talking too loudly outside his door. It appears he had a poor opinion of women in general, though.
The Will, from what I heard/read is some mindless, non-rational force or urge that is the foundation of everything in the universe; but this understanding is second-hand. If that understanding is correct, I'm inclined to think that the application of the pragmatic maxim would indicate the concept is idle, as it would seem to be the case that the Will either is everything or some unverifiable, perhaps unknowable, impulse that makes everything happen which Schopenhauer chooses to call "Will."
As for the mind being an illusion, I think we have to determine what the mind is before we can make such a statement, and I think the pragmatic maxim would mandate that we do so by considering what it is that we say "the mind" does that influences our lives. It would seem that in a broad sense, it can be said that what the mind does is pretty much everything that we do, except perhaps or in most cases what we do of necessity as a living organism, e.g. breath, excrete.
So, we think, we feel, we dream, etc. It would seem unnecessary at best to say that our minds do such things. That doesn't mean "the mind" is an illusion, though. It just means that there is no basis on which to distinguish our minds from ourselves.
By that I mean, anything that is not Peirce.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
So how is it idle? You just explained the theory and framed it in a negative way.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
That's fine, I guess you agree in a roundabout way that saying "mind is an illusion" still has to account for the illusion.
I tried to note that what I've read of Schopenhauer's Will may be incorrect in some way. If what I've read is correct, though, I think it would be idle in that it would be a mere assertion along the lines of the claim that God is the impulse that makes everything happen. It tells us nothing, explains nothing.
So any a priori philosophy is illegitimate, and since empirical science does not answer the question either, we should move on. How is it that it tells us nothing and explains nothing? He ties our own wills and subject/object relationship with the rest of nature, and extrapolates an underlying Will. He uses Kant's transcendental idealism as a launching point for speculation on the thing-in-itself. I'm not saying his theory is absolutely correct, but your uncharitable interpretation does not even let you look at his arguments.
Thanks. It's all stolen from Krishnamurti and rephrased. Psychologically, he says, the trick is 'learning without accumulation'; always learning in the present, and never knowing from the past about oneself.
The problem with using a priori is it takes an empirical state (us, in the world, in each moment) and tries to turn it into the infinite. Will is idle because, in forming that universal idea, it leaves out where the action occurs, in each moment of existence, where every little thing is distinct and change occurs.
It is an abstraction of meaning expressed by states of the world. Desire might be everywhere at all times, but no instance of it is the same as another. Will is not what acts. It's merely something expressed in any action. Those actions differ vastly. One soldier is Willed to fight. Another soldier is Willed to flee. Different consequences, different meaning, an understanding of which is not dependent on understanding Will (i.e. that everyone is willed to act), but rather on the states themselves.
The so called "it-in-itself" is a red-herring. With respect to the world, it gives us understanding of nothing, for it only refers to the infinite expression found in any state. It our escape from the world into an abstract realm free of finite difference and change. About the world and its relationships, it says nothing at all.
And that's why a "reason" cannot be found for Will. It doesn't have one. To pose the question is to ask, "Why is making a post making a post?" Unlike states of the world, where existence defines whether or not something occurs, Will contains no action and cannot be said to be or not be. The infinite nature of Will means it cannot have a reason. It's necessary. No matter what we do, Will is still expressed.
I guess @Ciceronianus the White passed the baton to you? Ok..
Then you miss the point that Schopenhauer made which is a furtherance of Kant's point which is the thing-in-itself (non-spatial/non-temporal aspect) and the world as representation (world individuated in space/time). That is not idle, that is simply speculating based on what we know about our own bodies, and the limits of our epistemology.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Will is not simply every action though, but the underlying striving below the surface. It's context in language-dependent and situation-dependent instances are simply minor variations on the same theme.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
This just sounds like TheWillowofDarkeness's (not surprisingly) grumpy feelings of the matter, not necessarily the matter itself. I am pretty sure it is saying a lot. It is giving a principle behind which all is connected. It gives a ground of unity in an only apparently individuated world.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
You are eating your own tail here. Schop's (and Kant's) point was you cannot use empiricism to ground empiricism.
Anyways, I have made a great deal of criticisms of Schopenhauer lately, but this "a priori SMASH" approach of just denying the approach all together is too uncharitable for my taste. We may agree more than you think, but typically, because you get all frothy at the mouth the instant you see something you disagree with I cannot have a dialogue only a shouting match.
Indeed, and what does the knowing subject know? In consciousness, it knows representation, but in self-consciousness, it knows not a representation, or a "thing" called a self or a soul, but simply willing, or the will, which Schopenhauer calls the subject of willing.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I still think you're confused by categories. Perhaps the following will help. The will can be said to be the reason for the existence of the world as representation, but not its cause. Reasons and causes are not the same, though often conflated, as Schopenhauer shows in the Fourfold Root. The will is a logical explanation of the world, not a physical one. If you recognize this distinction, then I think the force of your concern evaporates.
Yeah, but the Fourfold Root only applies to the world of representation- it cannot be applied to Will itself. Also, since we are talking about when "time started", it actually does apply to the category about time and sufficient reason.
Since we are essentially talking about the same thing, why don't we move this conversation to the "This Old Thing" thread.
Ciceronianus gets a bit busy now and then; no doubt due to the Will which underlies him, the law, his clients, the court system, and everything else.
I like Dewey better than Peirce, but agree with Peirce about such things as Kant's "thing in itself." Peirce admired Kant, but thought the "thing in itself" was meaningless surplusage, as must be anything the nature and existence and nature of which cannot be determined, located, found, investigated, known, and regarding which propositions cannot be made and analyzed--propositions which cannot be said to be true or false, likely or unlikely. The same, I think, can be said of the Will. Certainly we can speculate if we wish, but that is all we do in that case, but when our speculation is unable to be judged correct or incorrect, or even probably correct or incorrect, that speculation is idle.
Of course, "judging correct or incorrect" being the crux. If there are different criteria for this, then even that statement cannot be made. Why is the speculation idle though? The word idle is kind of not doing anything for me right now, so maybe use something else to explain it? Is it because it doesn't allow people to "do" anything with technology or science? You can debate it because one can point out flaws in the argument, etc. Again, you are assuming empiricism, but there are ways to debate non-empirical arguments.
This brings me to a larger point: You assume what is "true" is what is goal-oriented. That in itself could be false. What is useful to "achieve" a a goal, might be good if that is your goal, but then you must argue why being goal-oriented should be the goal, and when you start arguing for the basis of this without any a priori appeal, you will be begging the question and then what happens is you can only use snark and smugness to assert your claim, which would be sad and annoying.
I would say, instead, that what we would be justified in calling "true" or provisionally "true" or probably "true" is that which the best available evidence indicates is the case. That evidence can be gained only through observation, investigation, experiment, life experience--living and interacting with the rest of the world, trying and failing or succeeding, seeking solutions to problems, answers to questions, and finding out what happens when we do.
Certainly the Schopenhauer's Will can be found in our own striving nature which is hard to simply deny by fiat. Our own striving is something immediate to us. Try stopping it..
I don't think Schopenhauer's Will, if I understand it correctly, is something that can be inferred from the fact that we have wants, needs, or desires we try to satisfy. And in fact, if we focus on the contexts in which we want something or to do something, we find instances when we can regulate our desire or refrain from indulging it.
Actually he does just that as one of his main proofs for Will in his book 2 of the World as Will and Representation.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
It is not just motivations but voluntary movements of the body. Here is Schopenhauer:
[quote=Schopenhauer]As we have said, the will proclaims itself primarily in the voluntary movements of our own body, as the inmost nature of this body, as that which it is besides being object of perception, idea. For these voluntary movements are nothing else than the visible aspect of the individual acts of will, with which they are directly coincident and identical, and only distinguished through the form of knowledge into which they have passed, and in which alone they can be known, the form of idea.
But these acts of will have always a ground or reason outside themselves in motives. Yet these motives never determine more than what I will at this time, in this [pg 138] place, and under these circumstances, not that I will in general, or what I will in general, that is, the maxims which characterise my volition generally. Therefore the inner nature of my volition cannot be explained from these motives; but they merely determine its manifestation at a given point of time: they are merely the occasion of my will showing itself; but the will itself lies outside the province of the law of motivation, which determines nothing but its appearance at each point of time. It is only under the presupposition of my empirical character that the motive is a sufficient ground of explanation of my action. But if I abstract from my character, and then ask, why, in general, I will this and not that, no answer is possible, because it is only the manifestation of the will that is subject to the principle of sufficient reason, and not the will itself, which in this respect is to be called groundless.[/quote]
Judging from your quote, Schopenhauer effectively disregards what we want and do in his analysis. Instead, he presumes that there is a "Will" distinct from the ordinary "acts of will." Apparently, he thinks there must be something which induces us to act which is not what actually motivates us to act in a given situation, and this something is not motivated by anything. However, it is because of this something that we engage in "acts of will" which are motivated by "a ground or reason outside themselves." Sorry, but this makes no sense to me.
No, he doesn't. There is only one will that gets broken up into distinct acts by the form of time. The latter (which, being in time, are quasi-representational) are grounded in the former.
Well, he refers to "individual acts of will" which will always have a ground or reason outside themselves, and distinguishes them from what "I will in general"; but fine. It would still seem to me, however, that there is a distinction between the "individual acts of will" and what "I will in general." That distinction, presumably, is wrought by "time." So, what "I will in general" is outside time in some manner, I suppose, though it would seem to me that I am not. I rather doubt that there is anything "I will in general" so I don't need to struggle with how that is "groundless" as he says. "The Will" is starting to sound more and more like some kind of supernatural force.
This all sounds correct.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
I'm not sure I understand the force of your seeming criticism here. It's not that esoteric. There's the act of running to the store, running to the finish line, running to get out of the rain, etc, and then there's running in general. We use and understand the language of X qua X all the time.
The question I have is: What is it I will in general? I never "run in general" as I when I run I do so for a reason. I know what running is, true; however, I don't maintain that I run in general "outside of time" and for no reason, without any ground. I don't accept the idea of a kind of Platonic Form of running or "to run." Is the Will something similar?
Life.
It is more than mere Platonic universals in Schopenhauer's conception. Will is like an inner force that strives but with no aim. I think he vascilates between it being apparent in our voluntary wills, and our subjective inner experiences. Is Will akin to the inner "what it's like" aspect of things or is akin to the drive we have to move about to survive and pursue goals in general? Or is he tying the two together such that the inner "what it's like feeling" is like the necessary vehicle for which the Will can move forward in a world of subject/object dichotomy? Maybe @Thorongil has a take on this.
I don't miss Kant's point about the thing-in-itself verses the world as representation, I'm pointing out is a grave error. One of the biggest in Western philosophy. Our world is representation. In the end, anything we don't know always comes back to the world or representation. Unknown forces split our bodies apart. Some unknown things is deep space sends out a single which makes it snow all over the world. Everything always comes back to us, to what we know, to how we are affected, no matter how distant or stage it might be. Even the time before our universe is linked in representation to us, whatever it was: prior to us casually, the state of the world we are referring to now, something we lack information about. To be non-temporal and non-spacial it to be apart from the word in which we exist, no matter how distant or obscure. The "thing-in-itself" cannot exist. It can only be idle because it cannot pass in and out of existence, it cannot move or change: a logical expression which is never any state of the world.
This criticism misses the point. Will was never said to be every action. It cannot be. Since Will is an infinite, it cannot be any state of the world, any action we have willed. Since it is not language or situation dependent, it cannot be any act action or instance of striving.
No doubt Schopenhauer views it as a striving, but he is confusing the infinite expression of Will given by any action (i.e. any action involves someone trying to do something, a striving, a burden to get something done), for the instances of action and striving themselves. He then miss reads Will as a prior foundation for human action, desire and striving, as if Will was the ground in which our actions, desires and striving grew.
Our attention is shifted away from what constitutes any instance of our world, that it exists rather than not, and we become obsessed with the supposed "universal," Will, which grounds us all together. We start thinking of ourselves being put together be pre-existing universal of Will, rather than recognising we are always separate states of the world, linked with other states of the world, which express a whole, together. Just as Kant did before him, Schopenhauer is coveting the infinite, trying to turn our finite world into the infinite, so he can say it is, and is known beyond, how it appears in finite representation.
I was never trying to so. The empirical has no ground. There is no reason why any state must exist or not. Schop and Kant are chasing something without any relevance. Absolute certainty about empirical states is not something required. In fact, it's incoherent. To have such certainty, we would need to posits states of the world as logically necessary, such there was no possibility there could be different states.
For us to do that we would have to be able to use empiricism (knowledge of our world) to ground empiricism (that our representations must always be correct). The inability of empiricism to ground empiricism is also why we cannot (as Kant and Schop want to) use logic to ground the empirical either. Since the presence of an empirical state is defined by whether or that state exists, no logical expression, such as Will or the thing-in-itself, can be used to ground the presence of any empirical state. Trying to do so is to commit a category error. It is to suggest that Will or the thing-in-itself are individual states of the world, such that their presence can be used to say that an individual empirical state must exist.
I'm not seeing a great difference here. It's both I would say.
No, there is a there, there.
Wtf is happening to these forums that are being invaded by these non dualist parrots?
I remember, very vaguely, a member touching on this issue a couple of months ago. Sorry, I can't find a link to that thread.
S/he said something to the effect that mind is nothing more than a name/label for the entire set of brain functions. The mind isn't a thing that exists independent of the brain but is just a convenient term for all that the brain does.
Think of a mobile phone. It has multiple functionality - you can make/receive calls, take pictures, make movies, play games, etc. We can give a name to the set of all these functions - call it something e.g. polly but as is obvious, polly is just a name you've given to the phone's multifunctionality and doesn't exist in the sense of something separate from the phone itself.
Likewise, the mind is simply a name for the many things a brain does and lacks an existence beyond the brain itself.
Perhaps in this sense the mind is an illusion.
I'm interested to hear what you have to say about this. :chin:
Is it all a part of some greater philosophy that posits us all as drones? It's absurd and extremely dangerous.
The meaning of illusion doesn't even suffice. We live it every day; it is real.
"Feels" like it is real is just an underhanded way of saying it seems like it is real, and all we have to go on is how things seem. And it seems a nefarious thing to say to me, that the mind is an illusion. That's something a serial killer would say.
Wow, you brought back one of my oldie but goody threads. Yes, the non-accounting for things like qualia and the primary experiences themselves is never accounted for. It is greedy emergentism if you will. You posit the very thing that you are trying to explain. Illusion is still something.
So what is this integrated experience we feel in any given time? If you say "brain states" how are they the same? That's simply the hard question, not necessarily a claim that the mind is illusion, but in the same realm of discourse I guess.
Ha, I can understand that sentiment. It just seems to me positing a duality in different terms (illusion/real). The illusion itself has to be explained other than being a "seeming" event. What's funny is people keep saying that we are making Descartes' error over and over.. But no one seems to really qualify that. Not talking in terms of mind/body pretty much reduces to pansychism, but this doesn't seem intuitive or scientific.
Clearly, the mind is real. Even illusions are, technically, "real." Ie. they do occur in objective reality. Likewise, the mind isn't something we can snap out of. It's something, and not because of a preference that it be something.
It's what allows us to have thoughts at all. And thoughts are defined as relating to emotion. If we had no minds, we wouldn't exist. But we do exist. Therefore, the mind exists.
As I said, the "integrated experience" is all the brain functions taken together and the word "mind" is just a label, perhaps for convenience of discourse, applied to it but, fortunately or not, the word "mind", the claim goes, doesn't have ontic significance in that it refers to something immaterial that exists apart from the brain.
What are brain functions taken together then? At some point there is "something" that we currently refer to as mind, and at some point not.. You are simply restating the error with not recognizing the hard problem at this point.
Been there. Done that. No conclusion in 22K posts. :worry:
Indeed, you're correct. I've simply repeated myself but perhaps only because you haven't addressed my point satisfactorily.
Let's start from ground zero then. What is mind?
If you will be so kind as to permit a conventional definition and not a philosophical one (although the two definitions will concur in relevant respects):
Google definition:
mind (noun):
1. the element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences, to think, and to feel; the faculty of consciousness and thought.
2. a person's ability to think and reason; the intellect.
The definitions 1 & 2 elucidates the point I've been trying to get across.
Definition 1 suggests there is thing, mind, separate from the brain itself but that exists in the same sense that a brain exists.
Definition 2, on the other hand, identifies the mind as an ability of the brain and isn't making an ontic claim about something immaterial that is different from the brain.
What people might mean when they say, "the mind is an illusion", could be when some of us switch meaning 2 for 1: we gather all the abilities of the brain under one banner and we call it "mind" and that's all there is to mind - it's just a convenient label for the myriad things a brain can do but lacks any kind of ontological import at all.
The brain is constantly posited as something mundane, as if that's just common sense, but it isn't. Are our computers mundane? Our iPad's?
Yet they are nowhere near the complexity of the human brain.
You can say it's all an accident, but the universe is not accidental. It's arbitrary. It happens to be so, just as the mind happens to be so. It's not an illusion. Being a product of the brain wouldn't make it an illusion.
Mental states are the internal aspect of what is going on in an individual subject. So, if you see an object, it's the feeling, thinking, sensation, and all the subjective things going on with an individual. The brain processes are the neurons firing, the neurotransmitters transporting, electro-chemical reactions happening, synapses, blood supply, etc. etc.
So the hard question of consciousness is not whether or not brain processes cause and are associated with mental states, it is why it is that brain states have mental (subjective "what it's like to feel/think" states) that correlate with the brain states. Thus we have all our theories in Philosophy of Mind.. Dualism (there is an irrevocable split in either substance or property between material and mental states), Materialism (everything is just brain states.. and hence mental states have to be explained somehow.. here is the "illusion" idea coming from people like Dennett), and Pansychism (somehow physical reality has a mental aspect to it). The problem is much more complicated than you are making it seem.
The problem with the Materialist conceptions is they keep pointing back to the brain states, but never quite figure out how mental states are brain states. Why would materials like neurons and chemicals have mental properties ("what it feels like" internal states)? The problem here is they will then make the move to say that mind "emerges" from material events. Again, what exactly then is "emerging"? This "feels like" is not the same as neurons, materials, chemicals, etc. If you just make the move from processes of the physical to mind without that explanatory gap being explained, you still have not explained the very thing that needs to be explained. You are making an illegal move, declaring "checkmate!" without actually doing so.
They are like swirling-in phenomenon that happen, again, in contained spaces.
So it sounds like the mind IS partly a illusion.
(the way it crept into position).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Chalmers
Right, but the hard question is asking what actually "is" this interpreting to begin with. A misrepresentation, is still a presentation, whether it has misplaced causes or not. A mirage exists against the backdrop of consciousness. What is the backdrop of consciousness itself? If you say neurons/physics, then you have went from one to the other without explanation, except the placeholder "It's an illusion!".
Firstly, I hope you remember the two definitions of mind I provided from Google. For me they reveal very clearly, in the difference between them, the conflation of brain abilities with something that is different to the brain, an immaterial mind that has the abilities. The fact that what is of concern here (thoughts) have the distinct quality of being non-physical makes this such an easy mistake that not commiting this error would've been even more surprising. I've again repeated myself but only to make it known to you that there are certain features regarding mental processes that appear inexplicable in terms of a physical brain.
Coming to the hard problem/question of consciousness, it seems to be claiming that the physical brain can't provide an account for mental phenomena. My reply to that would be to ask anyone who thinks that's true to take a close look at sleep. Where is the so-called qualia and "what it feels like" when the brain shuts down for the day? Doesn't this indicate that brain activity is necessary for qualia and "what it feels like"? Then when we awaken, when brain resumes activity, qualia and "what it feels like" are restored. Doesn't this show that the brain activity is sufficient for these experiences? Ergo, contrary to what the hard problem of consciousness claims, it seems brain activity is both sufficient and necessary for us to have the experience of qualia and what is referred to as "what it feels like".
This clearly demonstrates that we're making an error by positing such a thing as mind, either immaterial or made of a different substance, that experiences mental states and this takes us back to my original statement that the word "mind" is nothing more than a label we attach to the set of various mental states and which we mistakenly assume to exist distinct from and as real as the brain.
In actuality we could be a transfer of information that is abstract and alien to our senses. You could live in an intricate video game and pick apart all the ins and outs of your reality without ever realizing that the whole thing was a cartridge in a system.
So this isn't quite the hard problem though. The hard problem is basically, "How are physical states (like brain states) equivalent to mental states (like qualia or cognition)?"
Yes, I guess what I'm saying is we can't possibly say beyond a shadow of a doubt how they ultimately relate...only how they seem to relate from a human perspective.
Because even, hypothetically, if qualia were just your brain, you can't prove your brain is any good at measuring what your brain is. We just assume the chemicals therein are self-reflective, but in reality they may produce a universal abstraction. People do hallucinate. And dream.
Ultimately I think we need to consider that communication is the exertion of the essence of a thing physically outside of the confines of its body. That's where qualia is. A rose communicates. Information is shared. It effects us each differently, and, like it or not, becomes a part of our essence, which travels outside of the body. If it were all inside, no one would be able to see us. Truly we are star stuff, all projecting the light, all belonging to the light. And it's all just communication.