I was referencing the 'what its like to be a bat.'
I've read the essay, I just don't experience things like that. I've never felt like there's something which it is like to be me. How the hell am I supposed to tell? It's all so damn fleeting.
I've read the essay, I just don't experience things like that. I've never felt like there's something which it is like to be me. How the hell am I supposed to tell? It's all so damn fleeting.
Put your feet on the floor and just sit and feel your feet.
That there is a "what it's like" aspect to consciousness is plain.
Right, this really bugs me (sorry to pick on you Frank, it could have been anyone). Is it just a failure of my imagination, but I can't think what an answer to this could possibly be.
If I ask "what is that lemon cake like?", I might get one of a number of possible interpretations of 'like'.
1. Similar to - "it's 'like' an ordinary sponge but more lemony"
2. Metaphorical - "it's like jumping into a bath of lemons"
3. Emotional/judgemental - "it's lovely"
4. Sensate - "it's lemon-flavoured"
I can't think which of these could possibly answer questions like "what is it like to be... ". Yet the phrase is pretty much standard in discussions about consciousness.
If you think either science or philosophy could investigate such a question, what could the answer possibly consist of?
Yes. Well, no. What I actually did was I figured that if there was a what it's like to be me, it would be the same if I focussed on my ass where I'm sitting, and the sensations in my feet wouldn't matter for demonstrating the specificity of the phenomenon to me, but no, there wasn't a what it's like to be me.
If you think either science or philosophy could investigate such a question, what could the answer possibly consist in.
Chalmers suggested that a way to start would be to add the concept of first person experience to the scientific tool box (in the same way gravity was added, as something we know about but haven't explained yet.)
I really don't understand you. To my reckoning, there are these weird people who picked up a way of describing bizarre altered states of activity from a book, and I never understand what they're talking about. They always say "but what's it like to be you" or "what's it like to be a bat?" and things like that. As if they can literally feel it. I don't think very highly of their self awareness, they seem to be replacing their experiences with a description of their experiences. If they payed more attention, they'd see a flux with some continuity in it, and a persistent history that is accessed through memory, and some aspirations and anticipations, but a feeling of themselves as distinct from their sensory capabilities and self attending bodily processes? Madness! Madness I say. It's a cult, a cult!
Chalmers suggested that a way to start would be to add the concept of first person experience to the scientific tool box (in the same way gravity was added, as something we know about but haven't explained yet.)
Have a look back at @fdrake's earlier posts here. Science already does include the concept of first person experience, the whole of cognitive science is based on it.
Have a look back at fdrake's earlier posts here. Science already does include the concept of first person experience, the whole of cognitive science is based on it.
Neuroscientists confirm that their research doesn't go beyond functions of consciousness.
Anyway, the notion that we're all p-zombies isn't scientific. It's an odd philosophical view. It's not a cult. It's doesnt have enough adherents for that.
But that just goes back to the first person accounts neuroscience uses to correlate its mechanically detected data with. How is that not 'experience'? Science is obviously not going to merely describe experience, it's not journalism. But it definitely takes experience into account, otherwise it would have nothing to correlate brain states with would it?
The notion that experience does somehow reduce to functions of consciousness is an interesting speculation, but that's all it is presently.
No, it's a fairly robust theory. Virtually no one reports experience when in an unconscious state. Levels of reported experience even correlate with levels of consciousness. For example dream reports during lite wave cycle sleep (which is quite deep) are always less vivid that dream reports from REM sleep, which is more conscious.
People put into various states of coma with anaesthetics report levels of experience which correlate well with the dose of anaesthetic.
As far as theories go, the idea that experience is related to consciousness is pretty sound.
Do you have some reason for wanting to add some additional constituent (other than brains), that wouldn't also apply to every physical system too complex to describe reductively?
Or every physical system at all, as in my physicalist panpsychism described earlier. There is a first person what-its-like experience for everything, and because of that it’s trivial; the “hard problem” is only hard because there is no real problem, so there’s no real answer. The differences between the first-person phenomenal consciousness of different things is the real problem, and that’s philosophically “easy”, it’s just functionalism as an explanation of access consciousness, but the details are a much harder scientific problem.
Oh and for fdrake and all wondering what this “what it’s like” thing is all about: no amount of studying human sexuality in the third person can tell you what it’s like to have sex. You have to experience it in the first person to know that. Maybe that book learning can help you recreate an accurate first person experience of it, but you still have to then undergo that experience to know what it’s like. That’s all there is to “what it’s like”; nothing deeply ontological about it, but it’s something.
no amount of studying human sexuality in the third person can tell you what it’s like to have sex. You have to experience it in the first person to know that. Maybe that book learning can help you recreate an accurate first person experience of it, but you still have to then undergo that experience to know what it’s like. That’s all there is to “what it’s like”; nothing deeply ontological about it, but it’s something.
You see, this is the bit I just don't get the support for. It's just like the Colourblind Scientist. If she really did learn all there was to know about Red/sex/whatever, then what grounds have we got for denying that she would then know "what it's like" that aren't themselves question begging.
We can't simply say "she wouldn't" and expect that to demonstrate anything inductive.
My sex example is meant to make more clear what the Colorblind Scientist example is trying to get across. And it’s not so much question-begging as it is defining the thing we’re talking about: “what it’s like to see colors” just means whatever it is that a normally-sighted scientist understands that a colorblind one who can speak all the same third-person facts doesn’t. That doesn’t have to have any ontological implications, I’m a hardcore physicalist myself; it just means that observing someone else undergoing something is different from undergoing it yourself. That should be a trivial truism, neither denied nor held to be of some deep philosophical importance.
That doesn’t have to have any ontological implications, I’m a hardcore physicalist myself; it just means that observing someone else undergoing something is different from undergoing it yourself. That should be a trivial truism, neither denied nor held to be of some deep philosophical importance.
Yeah, I'm quite happy to agree with that. The Colourblind Scientist experiment though is supposed to demonstrate Mary could not, even in theory, know what seeing Red is like, no matter how much information she had about it. I think that just confuses something we can't conceive with something which isn't the case. You can't really conceive a billion people (this has been demonstrated) it just doesn't seem to be something the human brain can do. Doesn't mean a billion is an impossible number of people.
Well I agree that Mary could not know what it’s like to see color no matter how much other information she had. You have to undergo an experience to know what it’s like to have that experience. If that’s not the part you’re agreeing with then I don’t know what you’re agreeing with. I just don’t think that noting the difference between first and third person experiences means anything ontological, it’s the same kind of physical brain undergoing the same physical process whether or not that brain is yours or someone else’s; but it definitely makes a difference in how you experience that process for it to be your brain undergoing it instead of someone else’s.
But then you seemed to back away from that, and you argue that though we lack a robust theory, we need not expect a scientific revolution to cover phenomenal experience.
Robustness of a theory is subjective. It's robust enough for me.
We don't do science by eliminating any path that might turn the world upside down for us. We follow crazy ideas because we're courageous and flexible and amazingly good looking.
No (apart from the good-looking bit, which is true). We don't do science that way. And we don't for a bunch of very good reasons. We start with principles of parsimony and falsifiability. I'm more a Kuhnian than a Popperian, but as general guides when choosing theories to investigate, those are as good as any. Consciousness does not yet need any mystical forces, there's no reason to believe it isn't just something brains do.
Terrapin StationOctober 19, 2019 at 17:09#3433670 likes
Don't know how we got onto Mary's Room or what point was being made with it, but like most arguments of that sort, it rests on a very stupid notion. Propositional knowledge doesn't exhaust knowledge in general, including "physical knowledge." It's not the same thing as experiential knowledge/knowledge by acquaintance or how-to knowledge. That they're not the same thing doesn't at all suggest that experiential/acquaintance knowledge or how-to knowledge are not physical.
Robustness of a theory is subjective. It's robust enough for me.
There are a number of speculations about how phenomenal consciousness works. Which one is your favorite? There used to be one about a central drawing board. Is that one still in play?
Consciousness does not yet need any mystical forces, there's no reason to believe it isn't just something brains do.
I dropped the word "gravity" earlier. Newton was accused of dragging spirituality into science with the notion of gravity. He protested that he didn't have an explanation for it. He was just pointing to it.
Insisting that we wait for a decent theory of consciousness is a vote for de-mystification.
definitely makes a difference in how you experience that process for it to be your brain undergoing it instead of someone else’s.
How do you know this? Surely it's not a given. In fact experiments with psychotic hallucination seems to at least vaguely point in the direction of the fact that experiencing something through the senses and experiencing it through empathy, or imagination are actually the same.
There are a number of speculations about how phenomenal consciousness works. Which one is your favorite? There used to be one about a central drawing board. Is that one still in play?
At the moment I'm keen on the expanding connectivity theory. The work's currently being done at Sussex (one of my old haunts). If you stimulate an unconscious brain with electromagnetic waves, they echo only very locally. If you do the same to a conscious brain, they echo all over the place. The same extention of connectivity has been recorded when waking up from sleep.
I think conscious experience is just the association of multiple parts of the brain with senate inputs. What it's like to see Red (not that I agree with the terminology of the question) is to have multiple areas of the brain interact in response to the stimuli.
Reply to Isaac Hallucination etc are still experiencing it. Like I said, you could use third-person knowledge to recreate a first-person experience, so Mary could surgically stimulate the part of her brain that would be stimulated by red light in a normally-sighted person and so undergo the same experience and then know what it’s like. But just knowing HOW to do that doesn’t suffice; she has to actually DO it.
This is why I like using sex as a better example. There was a time long ago when I had never had sex, but nevertheless propositionally knew a lot about it. After the first time I had sex, I hadn’t gained any propositional knowledge; there were no new facts I could report that I couldn’t report before. But I nevertheless felt like I had gained experiential knowledge: I now knew what it was like to have sex, and none of that propositional knowledge I had already had before had been enough to substitute for that experiential knowledge.
Yes, but Mary knows everything about the colour Red. Literally everything there is to know about it, every connection anyone ever made with it, every emotion it ever generated, every memory it triggered. When you imagine yourself running, for example, the parts of your brain involved in running actually start working. When you se someone in pain, the parts of your brain involved with pain start working. There's an additional part which says "this is all made up". That seems to be the bit that's missing in some schizophrenics.
So Mary imagining all those thins is the same as seeing red, she'd just additionally know it wasn't real.
think conscious experience is just the association of multiple parts of the brain with senate inputs. What it's like to see Red (not that I agree with the terminology of the question) is to have multiple areas of the brain interact in response to the stimuli.
Cool. The central board idea was an attempt to explain how multiple responses take on the character of a unified experience.
Terrapin StationOctober 19, 2019 at 17:51#3433790 likes
Reply to Isaac When you imagine yourself running, you have memories of running or at least similar motor functions with which to generate that mental image. When you see someone in pain, you can sympathize because you have memories of your own pains. If Mary had gone blind later in life, or somehow had memories transplanted from a sighted person, or false memories of color generated from artificial brain stimulation, or whatever, I have no doubt that she could imagine redness from those memories. But absent her own brain having that configuration to draw from, she can’t, and just looking at other people’s brains doesn’t actually give her that same brain configuration, even if it tells her what configuration she needs to have. You keep giving examples of someone experiencing something in an unusual way, which don’t refute the point that knowing about other people experiencing is different from experiencing yourself.
I think part of the setup of Mary’s Room that is needlessly confusing if the stipulation that she knowns “everything”, just to then point out something she doesn’t know. The point is to highlight something that you can’t know just from observing other people. If Mary really knew “everything”, then if you showed her a collection of different colored balls and asked her which was the red one, she shouldn’t say “I don’t know”, but in stipulating that she’s colorblind we’re saying exactly that she would do that; we’re saying there’s something she doesn’t know. That thing that’s different between her and an otherwise identical person who isn’t colorblind is what it’s like to see color.
no amount of studying human sexuality in the third person can tell you what it’s like to have sex.
Nah. Don't understand this at all. I won't have the experiences associated with doing the sex act, but I can absolutely know what it's like to have sex. I don't think "what it's like to experience X" really makes sense as a thing; I have difficulty articulating why I'm so suspicious of it. I suppose part of it is that once people start talking like that, you end up with stuff like this:
When you imagine yourself running, you have memories of running or at least similar motor functions with which to generate that mental image. When you see someone in pain, you can sympathize because you have memories of your own pains.
No, you're not taking on board what I'm saying. That is not how the brain works. You might like it to, but the evidence contradicts it. Colour-blind synaesthetes have experiences of colour in response to other senses, colours they've never seen. Lifelong amputees have experiences of the lost limb that (if it happened before 5) they have no recoverable memory of ever having. Parts of the brain are wired to play the part delivering particular experiences. They usually do so in response to stimuli but not always. It is not necessary to have seen red to experience the same brain stimuli associated with seeing red.
The point is to highlight something that you can’t know just from observing other people.
No, the point was to refute physicalism by proving there were non-physical facts. To do this, Mary has to theoretically have access to all physical facts. Otherwise all Jackson proved was that if you lock someone away in a room they know less than they would had you not.
Is there a sexness? Do I somehow have access to sexness because I've had sex? "What is it like" is an analogy disguised as an event.
Exactly, there's no thing it is to have sex, it's a slightly different experience every time, the experience is, as you say, just an event, a period of coinciding mental activities which you arbitrarily label 'having sex'. To say one can't know what it is like until one experiences it is nonsensical, because one still doesn't know what it is like after experiencing it, one only knows what that exact event was, no other.
creativesoulOctober 19, 2019 at 20:33#3434060 likes
Agree with the rejection of using "what it's like"...
Colour-blind synaesthetes have experiences of colour in response to other senses,
And those are still experiences of color, and if they had not had them, they would not know what it’s like to experience color.
As I said before you keep bringing up examples of unusual ways to experience things as though they were counterpoints to the complete trivialism that you need to experience something to know what it’s like to experience it. A simulated brain in a simulated vat being virtually stimulated can have an experience of color without any actual photons striking any actual eyes or even any biological brains being involved, and that is still an experience of color, without the likes of which that virtual brain would not know what it’s like to experience color.
I know Jackson set out to disprove physicalism. I think he failed at that but proved something else much more trivial instead. Just like Searle’s Chinese Room, which I think soundly shows that syntax is not semantics, but does not thereby show that artificial semantics is impossible or that there is anything magical about consciousness, just that much more trivial point.
Also, none is this is meant to essentialize anything. Not every red is the same, but we have that name for a similar range of experiences. Not every act of sex is the same either. Not every moment of being you is the same. “What it’s like to be you” isn’t anything above or beyond whatever you’re experiencing right now, it’s not an experience of some essential self in addition to your ongoing experience of the world, it’s just the having of any experience at all, in the way that you are capable of experiencing (in contrast to ways that otherly-constituted beings might experience the same phenomena impinging upon you now). It’s completely trivial and not worth the words we’ve all spent talking about it.
Isaac, what was it you thought we agreed on earlier?
Descriptions of what it's like are analogies. Could Mary understand any analogy with seeing red if she can't even see red?
That is the entire point. What something is like to experience cannot be described, other than comparatively with other experiences. You fundamentally have to undergo the experience yourself to have experiential knowledge.
Reply to Pfhorrest If Mary can see other colours then of course that is the one salient analogy she could understand. Are there any other analogies at all you can think of?
It’s completely trivial and not worth the words we’ve all spent talking about it.
I dunno. What we think is trivial is usually fundamental to our worldview, and should usually be examined - special emphasis when others who we otherwise find sensible do not find it so. Especially if we're going to go from "you literally just saw a Red delicious apple" to "redness"; if it's literally just how we talk about our experiences or that we've experienced something, why the need to invoke stuff that resembles types/essences? If this wasn't so contentious a style of expression (smuggling in presumptions somewhere, or missing obvious facts), there wouldn't be such bitter argument around it when everyone thinks everyone else is missing trivial points.
It's like some arguments that we can have with the partners we live with; "this thing you do which you do not know you do, or this thing you do not do which you do not notice you do not do? Terrible. That cup you leave by the kettle in the morning? That feels like "fuck you" to me!".
I'm extremely suspicious that what goes on when we think about "what is it like to X" is that we aggregate over X experiences and form commonalities and analogies; and then we retroject the commonalities and analogies into the experience without giving a simultaneous account of how commonalities and analogies are always already embedded in first person experiences in the first place.
creativesoulOctober 19, 2019 at 21:20#3434170 likes
What's the difference between experiencing color and seeing/sensing/detecting/perceiving it?
Seems to me that we all see it by virtue of having what it takes to do so. However, there is no single correct answer to what it's like to experience it, because each person's experiences are different according to the content of their own thought. All experiences of red include drawing correlations between red and other things...
That's it as far as what it's like to experience red. To add detail fill in the variable blanks. Set out those other things. What you'll end up with does not even come close to being a standard of what it's like...
That holds good for all "what it's like" notions, which renders it useless as a measure of anything.
Reply to Janus No, and that’s kind of the point. If you have no experiential knowledge of anything like color, the only way to get it is to experience color. Whether that’s by having actual photons hit your actual eyes or the AI that runs the simulation you’re a part of virtually stimulating your visual cortex, it’s an experience either way.
Reply to fdrake I’m emphasizing the triviality to distance myself from what Jackson and his followers think. I concede that his argument makes A point, but I want to be clear that I don’t think it makes THE point that he wants it to be, but something much less significant.
As far as terms like “redness”, I don’t know why that has to evoke any kind of essentialism. Does “color” evoke that same essentialism to you, or “appearance”? To my ear, the redness of an apple is a narrower description of the color of an apple which is in turn a narrower description of the appearance of the apple, and I don’t mean “the appearance of the apple” to be some separate entity from the apple itself of course, just a name for a particular feature of it I’m talking about, the way it looks. Likewise it’s color, and its redness. I don’t know what other words I could possibly use to refer to the feature of the apple that consists of it being red other than its redness.
functionality, which is what varies between me and rocks and clouds and so on. A rock may have a "first-person experience"
See, I can pick the first thing you say and show you, the problem is a philosophical bind of non-sense, rooted in an unrealistic idealism. Medicine can't solve that problem. The solution only comes by understanding that the true reason that your "first-person experience" is not like a rock's "first-person experience", is not because of function, but life. That is why only philosophy can fix mental illness, and medication, as a pacifier and substitution, can be useful in buying valuable time for Him who does the healing work.
Reply to Serving Zion Life is a functional difference. A living thing stops being alive when it stops doing the things that constitute living. Also, life isn’t the difference between me and a tree, but our experiences are still significantly different, as are our behaviors, because both of those are products of our functions.
Serving ZionOctober 20, 2019 at 00:09#3434450 likes
Reply to Pfhorrest I just can't see past the deflection in this response. The most value I can offer you, is to suggest reflecting on why. If I was to indulge my own interests, there is a lot that we could establish about the difference between the life of trees and humans, and to secure the definition of consciousness. But I can't begin to do that while you are fixed on the idea that rocks have a perspective (in all seriousness).
Arguing about panpsychism is really beyond the scope of this thread.
Yes, I don't know why people keep bringing up these tangential remarks in a thread about Frank Jackson's Thought experiment! Seriously, I'm only continuing this current derailment because it's your OP. If you want to reign in discussion about qualia because it's off topic, just say, we can discuss elsewhere.
And those are still experiences of color, and if they had not had them, they would not know what it’s like to experience color.
This comes back to the issues I first raised about what an answer to the question "what is it like" would consist of with regards to qualia. The colour-blind scientist could not see red, and the claim is that without the experience of seeing red she would never know what 'it is like'. But the data from truly colour-blind synaesthetes is that they could know 'what it is like' to see red without actually seeing red, because 'what it is like' is to have the mental states associated with the activity and they seem to do that, simply because the part of the brain responsible for initiating the experience of 'seeing red' is stimulated in these people, by other senses.
So your assertion that one cannot know what a first person experience 'is like' from a third party account rests entirely of what sort of data 'is like' consists of. The various experiments with synaesthetes, phantom limb patients, split hemisphere patients etc give compelling evidence that Jackson own assertion that qualia are non-physical data is not right. So qualia must be physical data (data which can be altered by injury/problems with the structure of the brain. So if it's physical data we'd need a convincing reason why that physical data cannot be imparted verbally like any other data.
Say you've never had lemon cake before and I'm trying to tell you 'what it's like' to eat lemon cake. I could describe the taste in terms of things you have experienced "like a sponge cake but more tangy", I could describe the various ways it makes me feel "satiated, but moreish", I could describe the memories it generates "sitting at my Grandma's table when I was nine". You'd have a pretty good picture, no? But not a complete one, you'd argue. there's something missing. But what is missing these are the exact same set of things that happen when I actually do taste lemon for the first time - "Oh, it's like a sponge cake but more tangy", "gosh that's filled me up but I still want more", "I think my Grandma used to serve this cake when I went to visit". Nothing more is happening than these thought (I mean a vast quantity more of them, but not of any different type). I could, in theory at least, impart them all to a third party.
Essentially my disagreement is not about the quality fo third party accounts - they're massively flawed, gappy and biased. My issue is with the sublimation of first party experience - which is massively flawed, gappy and biased. Next time you think your first person experience is delivering you something so full of good data that a third party account could not possibly generate it accurately, just remember that you're blind for 2 hours in every day (your occipital cortex switches off signals every time your eyes move), you're completely making up the colours in your peripheral vision (which is actually black and white) and the two blind spots which your eyes have, and then the very second all of this data is recorded into the short-term memory, it is recalled and altered by the cerebral cortex to better fit the what it expects to see. These processes produce different results each time depending on mood and life experiences thus far. There's every possibility the third party description is more accurate than the one your brain is now delivering to you as your own memory of 'what it was like'.
I'm extremely suspicious that what goes on when we think about "what is it like to X" is that we aggregate over X experiences and form commonalities and analogies; and then we retroject the commonalities and analogies into the experience without giving a simultaneous account of how commonalities and analogies are always already embedded in first person experiences in the first place.
That's pretty much how I see it too. Interestingly, since we were talking about Ramachandran earlier, he has my personal favourite solution to the Mary's Room problem. He thinks Mary (on seeing a Red apple for the first time) will respond in one of two ways.
1. She will see the apple as grey. Having had no experience of colour, the sections of her brain that deal with colour will have simply atrophied (we can see evidence of this happening in real brains) and so she simply won't have a mechanism to deal with the different light waves hitting the retina. She might slowly develop one in later life, but it's possible she'll just always see grey. Note this is different to blind people who have their sight restored (another fascinating and again unexpected set of results) because the idea behind Mary is that she would have all the requirements of visual processing, so all the wiring would be attached already to shades of grey. Difficult (if not impossible in adulthood) to re-wire them.
2. She would simply say "Oh a red apple". In her colour isolation, the centres of her brain which deal with colour may simply send out their signals anyway in response to other stimuli (again we have examples of this happening in real brains), and so she would feel as if she'd always know what some colour was like. A bit like if you've never seen an exact shade of blue before, you still know what it is, even though the exact experience is completely new.
I'm extremely suspicious that what goes on when we think about "what is it like to X" is that we aggregate over X experiences and form commonalities and analogies; and then we retroject the commonalities and analogies into the experience without giving a simultaneous account of how commonalities and analogies are always already embedded in first person experiences in the first place.
Chalmers speculated at one point that Dennett might truly represent a different kind of consciousness, that he might be a sign that we're not all alike. I notice the way you pull the words apart trying to find the meaning in them and my instinct is that Chalmers was right.
Chalmers speculated at one point that Dennett might truly represent a different kind of consciousness, that he might be a sign that we're not all alike.
It would be extremely surprising that there were two different flavours of consciousness, that agree with each other almost all the time, but differ solely in whether they agree or disagree with (the framing of) a philosophical point.
Discussions about 'what it is like to...' are essentially discussions about the nature of being, although nobody puts it in those terms.
When Nagel wrote about 'what it is like to be a bat', he said that while it is possible to imagine what it would be like to fly, navigate by sonar, hang upside down and eat insects ''like a bat’, that would not constitute 'being a bat'. Nagel claims that even if humans were able to metamorphose into bats, their brains would not have been configured as a bat's from birth; therefore, they would only be able to experience the life and behaviors of a bat, rather than literally being a bat.
The reason 'being' is such a difficult subject to discuss, is that it's something we're never outside or, or apart from. It's never an object of perception, but rather that in which perception and thought inhere. The proper response to this realisation is something similar to Husserl's epoche or suspension of judgement, rather than attempting to articulate a theory about it. Which is why it’s an outrage to Dennett: if you can’t articulate a theory about it, well, then, it doesn’t exist. ;-)
Terrapin StationOctober 20, 2019 at 11:03#3435530 likes
"What it's like" in this sense/context isn't supposed to refer to analogies. It's a way of saying that there's an experiential quality, or a quale, with respect to something.
It's a way of saying that there's an experiential quality, or a quale, with respect to something.
Yes, but the point is that it doesn't really say anything at all without either analogy or attitudinal report, as every other question beginning "what is it like..." is seeking.
As Wittgenstein said...
Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology:
One would like to say ‘I see red thus’, ‘I hear the note that you strike thus’, ‘I feel sorrow thus’, or even ‘This is what one feels like when one is sad, this when one is glad’, etc. One would like to people a world, analogous to the physical one, with these thuses and thises. But this makes sense only where there is a
picture of what is experienced, to which one can point as one makes these statements
You can understand a stipulation without believing in it.
I think everyone agrees that there are first person experiences. I don't think everyone agrees with every conclusion people draw from that under every interpretation of how they work (it's so contentious some people might go blargh at even using "how" there, "it's not functionally reductive to anything!:)
So you understand it too? I'm not sure what the previous grief was about, but good.
Well, I don't understand how people find it so obvious, but I do understand what people mean when they say qualia or "what is it like". This is why I am so suspicious of it. What people go on to say as soon as they start talking in terms of "what is it like" and how bloomin' obvious it seems to them? And then suddenly there's "redness"... inverted spectra, weird shit with metaphysical possibilities and types and it's all so obvious apparently! And people begin imagining that the mere metaphysical possibility of something tells us stuff about the actual world... And there's so much appeal to intuition... All of this is often portrayed as falling naturally out of something we all feel.
Aight. Rather than hearing you being supportive and critical at the same time. I heard "I agree with you, by the way what I perceive as your worldview is wrong - here are some flaws I will not gesture to here", it seemed like a very mixed message.
Aight. Rather than hearing you being supportive and critical at the same time. I heard "I agree with you, by the way what I perceive as your worldview is wrong - here are some flaws I will not gesture to here", it seemed like a very mixed message.
Not at all. I know in what context it was mentioned, what it was trying to say. I certainly wouldn't say I fully understood what one is. I'm fairly sure the concept is either incoherent (something exactly like us in every way but with only consciousness missing), or trivial (something partly like us but with all the constituent mental processes of consciousness missing, whatever they turn out to be).
Why do discussions about consciousness always end up this way? With increasingly importunate claims that we really do know what you're talking about. We really don't.
Terrapin StationOctober 20, 2019 at 15:31#3435980 likes
Yes, but the point is that it doesn't really say anything at all without either analogy or attitudinal report
. . . the latter of which isn't necessarily an analogy. (Not that I'm agreeing with the dichotomy you're specifying . . .after all, there's not even any communication requirement for qualia.)
It's a simple error of people reading "like" to refer to analogies, but in this context, it doesn't refer to an analogy.
Attitudinal reports are analogous also, just not directly so. I felt happy, only works as an analogy to the times the person you're speaking to experienced happiness, otherwise it communicates nothing. It's saying "I felt a bit like you did those times when you reported being happy".
Reply to Isaac That Wittgenstein quote seems to agree completely with what I’m trying to say, so if you agree with it may we agree more than we thought. In saying that you cannot know what an experience is like without experiencing it, I mean precisely that there is no external, intersubjective “thus” to point at in the sentences Wittgenstein talks about; the things we’d like to point to to say “it’s like this” are internal, subjective states, and the only way to communicate what it’s like to be in that state to someone is to put them into that state, or invite them to enter into it themselves.
I mean precisely that there is no external, intersubjective “thus” to point at in the sentences Wittgenstein talks about; the things we’d like to point to to say “it’s like this” are internal, subjective states, and the only way to communicate what it’s like to be in that state to someone is to put them into that state, or invite them to enter into it themselves.
I don't read what Wittgenstein was saying that way, maybe taking it out of the context of the piece wasn't helpful of me. He's saying that the expression "what it is like" always refers to some this or thus, that it is incoherent otherwise. To say something is 'like' the thing it is doesn't make any sense as a proposition. So I don't think he's pointing out quite what you're arguing, but more along the lines of saying there is nothing 'it is like' to have some experience. It just is the experience, it's an event, it's not like anything, you couldn't communicate it to another person, even if you could somehow make them experience it themselves, because there is no it, the whole concept of 'the experience of seeing red' as opposed to just 'seeing red' is incoherent.
Descriptions of what it's like are analogies. — Janus
?
"What it's like" in this sense/context isn't supposed to refer to analogies. It's a way of saying that there's an experiential quality, or a quale, with respect to something.
Yes, but I was talking there about " descriptions of what it's like". I am familiar with the philosophical idea of quale, but I am not convinced it is useful or even coherent; it seems to be more of a reification.
In other words I am suspicious of the notion that there is a quality of experience which somehow is different or more than the things and sensations that are apprehended.
Reply to Isaac It sounds like you still think I am essentializing the experience of something apart from the thing itself, when the thing itself is itself an experience such that even phrasing this sentence is difficult. (I first wanted to type “...the experience of something apart from the experience of something”, because “the thing itself” in this instance just is an experience).
Seeing red is an experience. The experience of seeing red isn’t something separate from the seeing of some red, it’s just the specific experience that is the seeing of some red. Like how Los Angeles is a city, and the city of Los Angeles isn’t something different from Los Angeles, it’s just the specific city that is Los Angeles. Saying “the city of Los Angeles” doesn’t abstract some separate “city” entity apart from Los Angeles; Los Angeles IS the city.
You and fdrake seem to really want to take this really basic way of talking about things to imply a lot more than I mean by it. As for your interpretation of the Wittgenstein quote, that still agrees with what I’m trying to say in every substantive way. There isn’t anything you can say to communicate an experience to someone, they just have to have it. You can’t tell someone what seeing red is like, in a non-analogical sense of that phrase that just means to describe it to them; they just have to see it themselves.
The experience of seeing red isn’t something separate from the seeing of some red, it’s just the specific experience that is the seeing of some red.
No, the point is there is no such thing as the experience of seeing red. There is only an experience which may from time to time, involve seeing red. So...
You can’t tell someone what seeing red is like, in a non-analogical sense of that phrase that just means to describe it to them; they just have to see it themselves.
...doesn't make sense. They will never experience for themselves what you just experienced, only things like it. Things which can as easily be described with no less error.
If I have experience X and I want to get another person to understand what it was for me to go through experience X, I have only two imperfect methods. Put them through experience Y which I think is similar enough to experience X to invoke the same feelings, or describe experience X in terms of experiences A, B and C which they've already had and recall. Neither are really any better than the other, they each have their merits in different situations, neither actually communicate what experience X was, for me.
You still act like I’m trying to essentialize when I’m not at all. The point about particular experiences all being slightly different isn’t at all in contradiction of what I’m saying. You can’t step in the same river twice, in a really pedantic sense, but we nevertheless give rivers names and talk about multiple visits to them and whether or not two people have stepped in the same one. Likewise with things like “red”: that names a range of possible experiences people can have, and no two will be exactly alike, but the point of needing to have some experience in that range to know what experiencing something in that range is like still stands. You’re going way out of the way to import much deeper metaphysical baggage to this really ordinary way of talking than is called for, which makes it look like you’re just looking for something to disagree with just to win the argument, when nothing you’re saying in “rebuttal” disagrees with anything I’m saying so I really see no need for that.
So the sticking point is still an epistemological one because you're still suggesting that something about the experience can be learnt by having the experience, but this is not true if you accept that the two things are different. That's like saying you can learn something about Marx by reading Smith. The two books are different. You're not going to learn anything about seeing red (the family of experiences) by seeing red yourself. It might be that your experience is similar to others and so teaches you something about the family, or it might be that your experience is dissimilar to other (as for example with synaesthetes), in which case it tells you nothing about the family (as in the very next second a new synaesthete is born who changes the definition), and you'll never know which by your standards of knowledge here.
Furthermore, if you want to use some kind of Wittgensteinian family resemblance idea to say 'seeing red' is an experience you can learn about by having it, then the only way you'd be able to do that was by communicating with others. The very thing you're saying cannot be done.
StreetlightOctober 21, 2019 at 08:43#3439230 likes
One thing that always bothers me about 'what it is like to experience X' questions is the assumption - at least it seems to me like an assumption - that the thing in question (X) is already-individuated or 'picked out'. Like, if we take something less generic than 'red', and substitute my cat, 'Tabby', the question becomes far more ambigious.
Is there an experience of Tabby? And what does that mean? An experience of the weave of colors that is Tabby? The textures of her fur and the glossiness of her eyes? Or is there an experience of Tabby's movement as she knocks over the vase? What about her warmth? Do I experience Tabby-the-animal? Tabby-my-loved-cat? Do I 'experience' something named Tabby at all (does one experience a 'named' thing? - what difference does a name make?). Is my 'experience of Tabby' an aggregate of all these? Some but not others? In some situations but not others?
So I tend to find questions about 'what it is like to experience red?' to be a kind of cheat: it doesn't ask an interesting question. It takes for granted a certain 'how' of experience, it 'fixes' - in the sense of nailing down - the 'object' of experinece in a completely artificial way. It's a bad question. Everything interesting about 'what it is like to experience X' happens outside, beyond this question.
---
Merleau-Ponty has some beautiful passages trying to get at this:
"We must first understand that this red under my eyes is not, as is always said, a quale, a pellicle of being without thickness, a message at the same time indecipherable and evident, which one has or has not received, but of which, if one has received it, one knows all there is to know, and of which in the end there is nothing to say. ...
[Instead], Its precise form is bound up with a certain wooly, metallic, or porous configuration or texture, and the quale itself counts for very little compared with these participations. ... The color is yet a variant in another dimension of variation, that of its relations with the surroundings: this red is what it is only by connecting up from its place with other reds about it, with which it forms a constellation, or with other colors it dominates or that dominate it, that it attracts or that attract it, that it repels or that repel it. In short, it is a certain node in the woof of the simultaneous and the successive. It is a concretion of visibility, it is not an atom.
If we took all these participations into account, we would recognize that a naked color, and in general a visible, is not a chunk of absolutely hard, indivisible being, offered all naked to a vision which could be only total or null, but is rather a sort of straits between exterior horizons and interior horizons ever gaping open, something that comes to touch lightly and makes diverse regions of the colored or visible world resound at the distances, a certain differentiation, an ephemeral modulation of this world— less a color or a thing, therefore, than a difference between things and colors, a momentary crystallization of colored being or of visibility." (The Visible and the Invisible)
PossibilityOctober 21, 2019 at 09:08#3439290 likes
I like sushiOctober 21, 2019 at 09:39#3439360 likes
The following doesn’t really help other than to hone in on the title of the thread “What is it like to experience x?”
My answer?
“It is like experiencing y yet unlike experiencing y.”
This falls readily into the old Kantian question of what do we, or can we, know a priori? In more legible words, what is innate that provides us with experience?
Personally I’m more intrigued by the nature of the ‘question’ itself (as in the ability to question). My general, and poorly clad approach, leads me to the concept of ‘becoming’, or the ‘nascent’. It is clear enough that we quickly take up existence as an ‘exploration’ of experience. We ‘possess’ a memory bank, and then data it placed in it - the memory bank changes as more data comes in and the avail of a certain set of data comes packaged in multi-varied forms. Meaning an ‘experience’ is neither a singular unit nor a complex of singular units. This leaves us open to a degree of free association by way of which differences accumulate according to the flow of incoming information.
Our primary function is pretty much what Kant said it was. Our experience is ‘grounded’ in our ‘intuitions’ (which Kant meant as ‘grounded in our faculties of ‘knowing’ something only if grounded in both a sense of time and space - yet we are able after this matter of fact to abstract items that have no apparent ‘existence’ in time and space, but rather having reality as forms of distinction).
Before conscious sense experience (I mean awareness) there is a means of processing sensory input. Instantly the means of input becomes part of the ‘input’ - that is generally the conflation of dualism in action. We categorise items to understand, yet as we categorise items the categories themselves become items, and so on. A rather perplexing thought and one intricated by Kant’s CoPR, yet understandably he quickly finds he cannot ‘answer’ his own initial question but manages to glean a great deal of insightful thoughts and ideas from exploring the implications of the posed question of - excuse my clumsy attempt a paraphrasing his question in a more accessible parse - “What is there prior to sense experience in terms of something akin to ‘knowledge’?”
It's just a turn of phrase which some people find helpful.
X has first person experiences = there is something it is like to be X
There is something it is like for John to see red = John experiences red
There is nothing it is like for Roger the Robot to see red = Roger the robot does not experience red
In some contexts it's clumsy and unhelpful. I think the most helpful use of the phrase is to use it as another way to refer to things that have experiences. Human beings have experiences, but rocks don't. There is something it is like to be a human being, but there is nothing it is like to be a rock. (This is of course wrong, panpsychism is true. You know that now because I've told you.) We don't have to use this language if it is isn't helpful. Anyone who likes to use "what it's like" language could just replace it with something else involving words like 'experience', 'feeling', 'sentience', 'consciousness'.
Street's title is unhelpful as it mixes the two. "What it's like to experience X" invites the reader to think there is something over and above experiencing X that is what it's like to experience X. That's not how the turn of phrase is supposed to work, as far as I understand. And if it is used in such a way that it seems to imply that, then I suggest finding another expression.
So is experiencing eating cake different from eating cake?
Yes, although in a human the two would nearly always occur together. I mean, it is theoretically possible to separate them. You could somehow feed cake to a person who is asleep and dreaming about eating sausages. Then you would have the action without the experience. Conversely, you could fiddle with a brain in a vat to have the experience of eating cake without the action (although I don't know if this is actually possible or not).
EDIT: Also, depending on what you think about robots, it might be possible for Roger the Robot to eat cake without experiencing anything at all.
There's something profoundly amiss with the "...like..." in "something it is like...". We see what it is like for Roger to eat cake.
I like sushiOctober 21, 2019 at 10:18#3439500 likes
I don’t see the exact relevance of the manner in which you’re doing semantic somersaults. The question at hand is a ‘question’ of ‘experience’/‘experiencing’. There is a felt experience existent through variegations of held information. The ‘question’ arises due to differentiations of processing.
There's something profoundly amiss with the "...like..." in "something it is like...". We see what it is like for Roger to eat cake.
We see what it is like from our point of view: presumably a messy and pointless exercise. The point of using 'something it is like' is to try to focus attention on Roger's point of view, and if it has a point of view at all in the same sense that humans do. If the language of 'what it's like' doesn't conjure that for you, then yes, it is unhelpful and should be ditched, as it's not doing what it is supposed to be doing.
That's not how the turn of phrase is supposed to work, as far as I understand.
That is exactly how it is supposed to work, which is why I disagree with it so strongly. It is the basis for a whole load of mystical woo around consciousness. The phrase is used in discussions around whether there are non-physical facts. To make this claim it is necessary for there to be some thing it is to experience red, which is itself a fact, but which is not derivable from the physical facts of seeing red.
There is something it is like for John to see red = John experiences red
There is nothing it is like for Roger the Robot to see red = Roger the robot does not experience red
This is the very issue at stake. How can you demonstrate that this is the case? Of course there is something it is like for the robot to see red. It is like having some sensation register and some action occur in response.
Harry HinduOctober 21, 2019 at 11:06#3439670 likes
I don't understand Nagel's question. Is he asking what it is to be the whole bat, or just it's brain, or what?
And why are we saying "what it's like" rather than "what it is" to be a bat?
To make this claim it is necessary for there to be some thing it is to experience red, which is itself a fact, but which is not derivable from the physical facts of seeing red.
But you can make the same metaphysical point without 'what it's like' language. For example: one might assert that "It is impossible to derive experiential knowledge of seeing red from the physical facts of seeing red." No 'what it's like' language is necessary if you don't like it.
This is the very issue at stake. How can you demonstrate that this is the case? Of course there is something it is like for the robot to see red. It is like having some sensation register and some action occur in response.
Yeah, I wasn't making a metaphysical claim, these were just examples of language use. It was a statement about language. I was pointing out an equation between 'what it's like' language, and the language of experience.
I was pointing out an equation between 'what it's like' language, and the language of experience.
OK, then yeah, I think sometimes 'what it's like' language is trying to capture experience. But part of the problem is that it acts as a technical referring term in other cases.
Jon Farrell has written an excellent paper on this. The key point being that in order to avoid the critiques of people like Peter Hacker about the use of 'what it's like' in ordinary language, one has to treat the term as a technical one. Yet, as Farrell goes on to argue, the term is not properly technical either in that it was not introduced, it is never defined, and it is not used consistently.
So I think the linguistic issue is actually central. Something unjustified is being 'snuck in' by alternatating between saying it is a technical term not at all like other uses of the word 'like', but then when pressed for a definition, resorting to "oh, you all know what I'm talking about" as if, again, it were an ordinary use term.
Terrapin StationOctober 21, 2019 at 12:28#3439860 likes
I think the natural language use and techincal use (if there is such a distinction) intersect in, for example, the following reasonably natural exchange between two people at the beach:
Jack: I wonder what it would be like to be a seagull?
Jill: Fantastic, I would imagine. The feeling of swooping through the air, the effortless traversing of long distances. Pecking people, nicking chips. I'd love it.
Jack: I dunno, it might not feel like how you imagine at all. We're very different from seagulls. It's like trying to imagine what it's like to be a snail, we're just too different.
Jill: Maybe, but even though I can't imagine what it is like to be a snail, I reckon there is still something it is like to be a snail, even though I'm not sure what. I think they have nerves don't they?
Jack: Sure. Not like rocks though, there's nothing it's like to be a rock. No nerves or even cells, so they couldn't possibly have experiences.
Jill: Agreed, there's nothing it's like to be a rock. Although some philosophers think there is according to my friend bert1.
Does anyone not understand what these two people are saying?
It's just the qualitative properties of your experiences. You must have qualitative properties to your experiences.
It's not though. Not in Jackson, not in Chalmers, not in Lewis, Byrne, Janzen. In all of these uses, and the use it is put to here, it constitutes more than just the qualitative properties of your experiences (where qualitative is meant as in subjective judgement, feeling). The feeling one has when experiencing something is entirely measurable and comminicable "it made me feel happy". The argument of Jackson is that the facts there are non-physical. The argument of Chalmers is that they cannot be reduced to physical mental states, even in theory...
Having been so often accused by you of reading comprehension issues, the first thing I did before responding was to look up 'qualitative' in my dictionary, to check that there wasn't some odd way it's sometimes used that you might mean. The first definition was "relating to what something or someone is like". It's like a disease people have, some compulsion maybe to write anything difficult to explain off as 'what it's like'
Terrapin StationOctober 21, 2019 at 12:50#3439920 likes
It's not though. Not in Jackson, not in Chalmers, not in Lewis, Byrne, Janzen. In all of these uses, and the use it is put to here, it constitutes more than just the qualitative properties of your experiences (where qualitative is meant as in subjective judgement, feeling). The feeling one has when experiencing something is entirely measurable and comminicable "it made me feel happy". The argument of Jackson is that the facts there are non-physical. The argument of Chalmers is that they cannot be reduced to physical mental states, even in theory...
Your reading comprehension problem here: somehow you read me as implying something about "physical" versus "nonphysical." I didn't imply anything about that, and my comment has nothing to do with that.
Seriously, you've got to be one of the most annoying posters I've ever encountered because all you want to do is argue, but I don't think I've ever seen you respond to a single thing where you're not instead just exhibiting reading comprehension problems.
Usually I'd try to be more gentle and more or less ignore the reading comprehension problems, but you just won't stop trying to argue.
And by the way, no, "qualitative" does not denote a subjective judgment. Qualitative refers to properties (just not quantitative properties).
Anyway, how about intentionally trying to not argue with everything? That might work better.
less a color or a thing, therefore, than a difference between things and colors, a momentary crystallization of colored being or of visibility." (The Visible and the Invisible)
Thanks for the quote! I think there are multiple differences.
1. The difference between the color and the thing
2. The difference between red and other colors
3. The difference between orange-red, true-red, and purplish red
4. The difference between saturated and unsaturated red
Does anyone not understand what these two people are saying?
Yes, obviously. As I've just cited, whole papers have been written by eminent philosophers, cognitive scientists and psychologists entirely on the subject of the fact that 'what it's like' does not make sense in terms of conscious experience.
Jack: I wonder what it would be like to be a seagull?
Jill: Fantastic, I would imagine. The feeling of swooping through the air, the effortless traversing of long distances. Pecking people, nicking chips. I'd love it.
All the answers Jill gives here are measurable brain states. She's answering the question with an attitudinal judgement. "I'd like it" essentially. She's using her past experience to literally image what it would be like (as in most similar to) in her experience and reporting what her feelings were related to those things. If this were the case then we do know what it is like to be a bat.
I dunno, it might not feel like how you imagine at all. We're very different from seagulls. It's like trying to imagine what it's like to be a snail, we're just too different.
Jill: Maybe, but even though I can't imagine what it is like to be a snail, I reckon there is still something it is like to be a snail, even though I'm not sure what.
Now they are both changing the meaning. It was previously answered as "what in your experience is it most similar to and how did you feel about that?" but now, such an interpretation would not make sense "what (in the seagull's/snail's experience) is it most like to have the seagull's/snail's experience?" it's become nonsense.
Not like rocks though, there's nothing it's like to be a rock.
Now jack does know again this previously ineffable fact. Where before some barrier prevented him from knowing what it was like to be a snail, that barrier has now confidently been removed simply because rocks don't have nerve endings. But is 'what it's like' simply the having of nerve endings, the signals coming therefrom? Apparently not.
Terrapin StationOctober 21, 2019 at 13:13#3440000 likes
whole papers have been written by eminent philosophers, cognitive scientists and psychologists entirely on the subject of the fact that 'what it's like' does not make sense in terms of conscious experience.
Did you give an example of a paper that you believe is claiming that "'What it's like' does not make sense in terms of conscious experience"?
You’re going way out of the way to import much deeper metaphysical baggage to this really ordinary way of talking than is called for, which makes it look like you’re just looking for something to disagree with just to win the argument, when nothing you’re saying in “rebuttal” disagrees with anything I’m saying so I really see no need for that.
I don't think that's right. That we 'have experiences with content' in a pre-technical sense is uncontroversial. What's controversial about it is that as soon as we start describing it in a philosophical context, there's always lots of conceptual baggage. When "the content of our experiences" is transposed into this kind of discussion, rather than the usual stuff we do when we ask "how was your day?" or "how was that for you?" and answer it, we bring an interpretive style to it; a framing of the 'facts of first person experience'; what gets rejected or strongly questioned is the framing, rather than the facts.
Say I perform some mindfulness exercise (an instance of active attentive meditation @Wayfarer) and my current experiential state is attended to, I'll always have some focus (some things are attended with more intensity than others), colours are on objects; I recognise, say, the colour of my walls as white, but I perform such a cognitive act during the perception. I'm currently listening to a podcast, and my awareness keeps switching between what I hear, what I see, and what I think about while writing. Much of this is transparent, when I'm typing the thing I notice is the tactile feedback of the keyboard, but other than that I'm in some reflective flow state (interrupted by misphrasings, imprecisions, cool stuff on the podcast).
Even that description contextualises the "first person facts" of experience as occurring over time and leveraging historical understandings (why do I see the wall as white? Why do I automatically understand the words coming into my ears? Or write the next sentence as is?) an experiential context that I am currently in. Focussing on "what is it like" for me is an extremely artificial cognitive state, requiring effort to maintain. It removes most of the texture of the world as I experience it.
So, rather than doubting "what is it like" makes sense as a framing device because I'm being insufficiently attendant to first person phenomenology, I'm doubting that it makes as a framing device partly because how people talk about it just doesn't accurately describe how I experience the world. So I suspect that what people think of when they think of a quale is actually a rather structured concept; generalisations of experience, instances of memory, analogies; much different from the sort of stuff 'simply attending to your first person experience" is supposed to reveal.
And when you take all this texture as a given, inherent in a first person experience, all the hows fall away due to the framing of the intellectual exercise... so it's no longer surprising that it appears to be a "brute fact" or a "given" of experience, because the priming for interpreting experience induced by "what is it like" hides that it's ultimately a philosophical-intellectual exercise, rather than derived from a state of "pure self awareness".
StreetlightOctober 21, 2019 at 17:30#3440490 likes
Reply to fdrake What's even more fun is that if you actually artificially make someone just experience nothing but a saturated, unstructured color field - as with a Ganzfeld - the closest thing to the mytical color patch - you end up hallucinating. Color patch thought experiments are literally insane. 'What it is like', is visual madness.
Terrapin StationOctober 21, 2019 at 17:37#3440510 likes
Reply to Isaac
lol - you're not going to say which paper that was supposed to be?
It is a tricky question because it assumes first that there is something it is like to be X. What is this something? I would argue it is X and we’d have to ask X the question to get any coherent answer.
It makes sense! We always come to an understanding instantaneously of what we experience (experience-of is always experience-as). Something with no patterns in probably calls higher-order sensory processing architecture without lower-order sensorimotor information constraining it much; yielding hallucinations and loss of the sense.
I'm reminded of an exercise of when you simulate a response variable and millions of predictor variables independently (no links), eventually the response variable is perfectly modelled by what is really noise, and occasionally you get a near perfect fit by coincidence. If we always have to 'fit' even when it's 'noise', the only sensible 'fits' would be extremely abstracted patterns of relationship from the noise (coinciding by chance rather than through genuine relation); probably leveraging memory and imagination more than sensory information. They're also probably going to be aleatory and episodic; since the sensory information's patternlessness would 'refute' any pattern imposed upon it through the high order sensory processing.
From brief Googling that's consistent with the first person reports of Ganzfeld subjects.
So, rather than doubting "what is it like" makes sense as a framing device because I'm being insufficiently attendant to first person phenomenology, I'm doubting that it makes as a framing device partly because how people talk about it just doesn't accurately describe how I experience the world. So I suspect that what people think of when they think of a quale is actually a rather structured concept; generalisations of experience, instances of memory, analogies; much different from the sort of stuff 'simply attending to your first person experience" is supposed to reveal.
I didn't realize anyone looked at it this way. With Chalmers, the focus is heavily on what we don't know, the approaches that are out there, and the challenge it all poses to science. He uses "first person data" pretty frequently. It's a pretty quiet, cautious, analytical approach.
I agree that some people can suspend an ontological approach and some can't. I'm fairly anti-realist about ontology, so I forget that others feel pretty strong commitments.
I'm fairly anti-realist about ontology, so I forget that others feel pretty strong commitments.
Having global suspicion about a domain is a pretty strong commitment! Chalmers himself gets a lot of mileage out of (what he sees as) conceptual consequences of his posits.
With Chalmers, the focus is heavily on what we don't know, the approaches that are out there, and the challenge it all poses to science. He uses "first person data" pretty frequently. It's a pretty quiet, cautious, analytical approach.
And yet he ends up in a qualified panpsychism and argues that all (or a strong most) hitherto existing science has not dealt with the problem he's posing?
Edit: What I'm trying to highlight is that the framing of this stuff is very much not theory neutral.
Terrapin StationOctober 21, 2019 at 18:20#3440650 likes
Qualia aren't supposed to have hows, they're just there.
That we have experiences is (probably) theory neutral.
If you label those experiences "qualia" as an independent(?) act of judgement, that's probably also theory neutral, though I would be suspicious that anyone would do that without exposure to the literature on qualia.
If you talk about those experiences in terms of qualia, that's usually not theory neutral.
SEP:Philosophers often use the term ‘qualia’ (singular ‘quale’) to refer to the introspectively accessible, phenomenal (phenomena are introspectively accessibe? or do only introspectively accessible phenomena have qualia?) aspects of our mental (inner? is inner=mental?) lives. In this broad sense of the term, it is difficult to deny that there are qualia. Disagreement typically centers on which mental states have qualia, whether qualia are intrinsic qualities of their bearers, and how qualia relate to the physical world both inside and outside the head (head = mental? experiential = in the head?).
This already makes me suspicious - an ontology populated by "mental states" which may or not be "accessible" in a (specified way) by "introspection" (so I have to introspect to "access" qualia? I thought they were immediate parts of experience...). I'm sure that there are coherent ways of fleshing all this out; but yeah, it's something in need of fleshing out, rather than immediate (in the Cartesian sense) understanding suggested in the phrase.
So, guide me through the process you would use to attend to a quale?
Having global suspicion about a domain is a pretty strong commitment!
I don't have suspicion. I don't understand how projects like idealism and physicalism are supposed to be saying anything informative. The philosophy football game that accompanies those ideas is fruitful. I think it's likely that the fumes of that game are fueling this very discussion.
So let me ask you: when you say that it's inevitable that baggage is drawn into the discussion, what baggage are you dragging in? What theory?
Did he? Do you know in which writings he settles down into the view of panpsychism (as opposed to just considering it)?
fdrake:..argues that all (or a strong most) hitherto existing science has not dealt with the problem he's posing?
There's a fair amount of scientific speculation about how phenomenal consciousness works. Chalmers writes about those efforts. It's a science in its infancy.
Terrapin StationOctober 21, 2019 at 18:55#3440770 likes
One, we could say that qualia are either accessible or not. The standard idea of supporters is that they're accessible.
But we can't just say that they're accessible and leave it at that. Because my qualia are not accessible to you. So we have to qualify just how they're accessible. "Introspection" refers to observing one's own mental state. That's how they're accessible. By observation or awareness of one's own mental state. So they're introspectively accessible.
"Phenomenal" refers to appearance, and could be contrasted with "noumenal." When we're talking about qualia, we're talking about appearances to our own mind.
You could say that "mental" is "inner" (re your question about this). Our minds are not directly observable to other people.
"Inside the head"--that's referring to your mind, on the view that minds are brains in particular states.
Did he? Do you know in which writings he settles down into the view of panpsychism (as opposed to just considering it)?
I don't think he's ever assented to it; or been totally convinced of it; but he has defended it as sensible. I think "worthy of consideration" is about as close to "I definitively believe this" as you get in analytic philosophy papers (hashtag snark).
So let me ask you: when you say that it's inevitable that baggage is drawn into the discussion, what baggage are you dragging in? What theory?
A specific theory? Nah. Don't have one. The conceptual baggage I'm dragging into any discussion of first person experience (which I'm aware of and want to write up):
(1) Distrust of the usual mechanisms of introspection to yield knowledge; they're just part of it and don't suffice by themselves. I have higher requirements for conceptual constructions than I do of the thinking I need to do in the street or interpersonally.
(2) Suspicion about thinking of people (including myself) as individuals with intrinsic character of experience; I see us as much more diffuse. It doesn't even make too much sense to me for me to "have" a quale. Pre-theoretically I'll own the experience (that the experience is happening to me is often part of phenomenal character); but theoretically to me it looks a lot more like my body and environment are in a certain configuration with a certain history (of which only parts "have" phenomenal character, and of which only parts are "mine") rather than all of that being present "in me" and "accessible by" introspection (introspection is a practice we have to do, not something that happens all the time; it's a lot more cognitive effort than we usually put in in most things to introspect).
(3) The underlying intuition I have about (2) is that even something like my "body" or "soul" are distributed over bodily and socio-cultural processes, and I'm an "output" that can interact with the parameters of my situation and (some of my) self. I see my experiences as something like "questions" my body is asking itself and its environment (they talk back); self modelling built on top of pre-individual processes that emerge as phenomenal characters (and are conditioned by my history). But I would also like to say that my body and mind are something that can play parts as unities in other processes; giving someone a hug is something done as a whole body (and as a person), not something my limbic system does or the recipient's does.
Deleuze and Guattari's body without organs ontological metaphor is a good mission statement for my intuitions there.
(4) In terms of the "translation" of our bodily processes into phenomenal characters, I have no idea. Not all bodily processes are capable of them (our nerves have to be involved somehow, areas with little nervous connection don't seem to have distinctive feelings). Our mental states look to me to be high order interactions of bodily processes with an accompanying bodily process of self modelling (which looks to occur in the brain, as mirror neurons and high-order processing occur there, and we develop self consciousness after neural-cognitive development). How (phenomenal character) I experience seems intimately tied up with how other people have treated me developmentally; pre-self conscious anticipations and memories developing into self conscious ones (this ties into the self as a socio-cultural process, a self is a learned self constrained by individual level bodily variation). Edit: I'm pretty convinced that we see ourselves as "in our heads" just because our eyes are there, though.
(5) Tentatively I think questions about "why is this physical state conscious?" should be translated into "how is this physical state conscious?"; and there I think I broadly agree with Chalmers - at least his intention of providing a vocabulary for linking phenomenal states with physical ones - but I'm suspicious of "the explanatory gap" in general and the metaphysical consequences arising from it. To me it seems like a similar question to "why does money turn into food?". Of course, it doesn't literally, but we turn money into food through purchasing things. I think our bodies turn bodily processes into phenomenal states through (partial) self modelling (though not necessarily algorithmically!); and that self modelling is in part a social process (embedded in social practices).
Terrapin StationOctober 21, 2019 at 19:54#3440830 likes
"Introspection" refers to observing one's own mental state. That's how they're accessible
Introspection's a lot different from awareness. And are they accessible in the same way? Are sex quales like food quales? If you say "qualia come from self awareness", that's consistent with lots of radically different accounts, and there being many different (partially overlapping) forms of self awareness. Moreover, "observing one's own mental state" is not something we do all the time; we're simply not attending to our own thoughts and experiences in our usual mode of functioning, they impress upon us when we're doing stuff in a context (and the context includes our current state of mind). If you start presenting things like this, you can gloss over the details; but every opportunity to gloss over the details is an opportunity to frame things as obvious.
But we can't just say that they're accessible and leave it at that.
What is accessible by what? Accessibility is a 2 place relation, what kind of thing goes on "one side" of the relation and what kind of thing goes on "the other"? X accesses Y, what does that mean in the context of a quale? Is the "access" to the quale introspective, or is it self aware?
"Phenomenal" refers to appearance, and could be contrasted with "noumenal." When we're talking about qualia, we're talking about appearances to our own mind.
I had no idea we needed to inherit the intellectual tradition of Kant in order to process our own experiences.
"Inside the head"--that's referring to your mind, on the view that minds are brains in particular states.
And now you're a physicalist.
Seriously Terrapin, what you think is just common sense and shared by everyone is batshit theory-ladened. And then you snark at me for being aware of (some of) my own bat-shit theory ladenedness?
Edit: I'm pretty convinced that we see ourselves as "in our heads" just because our eyes are there, though.
I think about this from time to time (sometimes when I'm looking in the mirror). I don't have the issues you do about selfhood, though. Look back at SLX's post about how qualia can't be independent items. The same is true of the self.
Monism's usually understood as a substance ontology. There's only 'one type of thing', and neutral monism says that the 'one type of thing' is both mental and physical or either (as modes which possibly interact). Right?
Reply to fdrake So when you talked about phenomenal states being linked to physical states, how should I understand that? What do you mean by "physical states"?
Why do you accept MP's thoughts about the dependent character of qualia, but balk at applying the same insight to the self?
No, you're reading that into it. A common definition of "introspection" is "the examination or observation of one's own mental and emotional processes." Observation can obtain via simple awareness.
Introspection can be more than that. But it isn't necessarily. In the context of qualia, we're simply talking about properties from a subjective perspective, as you experience them. Awareness is sufficient for that.
I had no idea we needed to inherit the intellectual tradition of Kant in order to process our own experiences.
You don't. But it's something you should be familiar with when trying to read and understand a philosophy encyclopedia.
I'm not being snarky about anything in the post in question. You said that you didn't understand the passage you quoted. I'm trying to help you understand it. You can't expect an entry in a philosophy encyclopedia to be divorced of any theoretical commitments or background. It would be impossible to write an article for an encyclopedia that way.
The properties in question. Accessible by individuals.
You experience properties? Weird. Do phenomenal states consist of properties? What does that look like? How do you access them? A whole individual accesses a quale which is somehow a part of their phenomenal state through a posited process of "self awareness" which coincidentally links properties to individuals?
This looks to me like a stipulated characterisation of experience, rather than an experience (the internality/externality dichotomy cuts both ways). It seems just as plausible to me that self awareness is part of everything we could recollect as an experience, and that stipulated properties within those experiences are actually conceptual (not affective/sensory) understandings derived from them. Rather than a quale being the experience (or quales composing experience, depending on how they're individuated), it's a representation of the experience, filtered through our interpretations into words like "property" or "redness" or "red". Too pedantic a distinction? I don't think it is, it's really important to try and track how the experience of the walls in my room "counts as" an experience of white(ness), say, and whether that "counting as" is a retrospective act of conception/synthesis over experiences or "just" an instance of "self awareness".
Since we're self aware, we bring interpretive baggage (theory-ladened ness) to everything we think and perceive; so I'm suspicious of the (stipulated) neutrality of qualia at al.
What makes you so sure you experience properties? Does the thing you're calling a "property" there work like a concept or a percept? Is it both?
You said that you didn't understand the passage you quoted. I'm trying to help you understand it. You can't expect an entry in a philosophy encyclopedia to be divorced of any theoretical commitments or background. It would be impossible to write an article for an encyclopedia that way.
Aye. I don't expect an encyclopaedia article on qualia which goes through the positions to be completely theory neutral. What I do expect is that a stipulative definition of something which is supposed to characterise our experiences to be mostly theory neutral (ideally it only contains inherent thought biases and tricky to eliminate ideological biases). But the ways it is conveyed (and the way you're conveying it) always have some conceptual baggage. For previously stated reasons, it isn't surprising that the conceptual baggage is there, but I want to call a spade a spade.
Everything interesting about 'what it is like to experience X' happens outside, beyond this question.
Merleau-Ponty has some beautiful passages trying to get at this:
That is very much like the point I'm trying to make to distance myself from what Jackson thinks he's proved. The first-person experience of phenomenal consciousness, the so-called hard problem of consciousness, is really a complete trivialism; yet still not something to be denied. Like how, to a naturalist like me, calling something "natural" is a completely trivial descriptor that adds nothing of note; but at the same time, that doesn't mean we say that the thing is not natural. Just that it being natural doesn't really mean much. And there being a first-person experience of phenomenal consciousness doesn't really mean much. It's functionalist access consciousness that's important and differentiates things meaningfully from each other, and that can be studied in the third person because a thing's function is also observable in the thing's behavior, not just in its experience. But there is still that first person experience. There's just nothing more interesting to say about it.
Terrapin StationOctober 21, 2019 at 22:32#3441470 likes
You experience properties? Weird. Do phenomenal states consist of properties?
There isn't anything that is absent properties. So yes you experience properties, and yes, your phenomenal states have properties . . . and that's all that qualia are--those qualities or qualitative properties of phenomenal states.
By observation or awareness of one's own mental state. So they're introspectively accessible.
Another thing that bugged me; observation or awareness of one's own mental state. If I'm observing a quale, the observation of that quale is part of my mental state, surely (in some sense anyway; my walls are not in my mind). So we have this criterion where "qualia only accompany self aware experiences"; or maybe "a quale only accompanies experiences that are aware of the quale"; but why would "an experience which is aware of a quale" be a typical experience?
When I look at the walls, they're white, they're textured; I guess they're also yellow due to the light, but when I look at them for a bit they seem kinda pink or purple. If I force the wall to be in my peripheral vision, turning my head, and focus my attention on the wall, I'm not really seeing it as white in the same way; the larger topographical features of the skirting board and the undulations of the wooden brace that skirts my room are by far the most notable features. The whiteness off the wall diminishes in felt intensity towards the edge of my field of view (presumably because the limits of my visual field are less sensitive).
When I was describing the experience of the wall, I was reaching for words that seemed appropriate during the cognitive act, "white" came to mind first. When I actually focussed on the suitability of "white" in describing the walls; it's not quite right, they're illuminated, little patches of shadow form revealing the raised parts of the wallpaper patterns... There's so much more detail there.
If I wanted to pull apart that experience (which was extended in time... not "instantaneous" if such a thing is even possible) in terms of felt properties, I'd be doing some intellectual (and writing) exercise. I'd focus my attention on certain parts of the walls, and certain distinctive property types that seem to apply ;topography, colour; and I'd used these properties to indicate the general features of my experience for public consumption.
But notice, I've had to pull apart my experience with a certain conceptual grammar; topography, colour. When I started describing things in terms of colour, the walls provided the same visual impression to me (well, not quite the same, the increased attention on writing dulled the intensity of things in my visual field outside of the screen), but my intellectual attention shifted, and I was processing memories with language; reflecting; at the same time as looking at the walls; experiencing.
This "pulling apart of experience with a certain conceptual grammar" is a cognitive act; intellectual post-processing of experience; for the purposes of describing it. It shifts attention to generalities which can be communicated, rather than singularities which are experienced. Where did the conceptual grammar come from? Does the wall have "topography quales" and "colour quales"? I don't think I see either in isolation, the partition of the wall into topography quales and colour quales is something I do using my sensory information with some interpretive heuristic... I really just see this wall.
Terrapin StationOctober 22, 2019 at 10:00#3442640 likes
Because they are different questions. The first is about consciousness, the second is about the definition of 'bat'.
I still don't see the need for the term, "like".
Then we should be saying "what it is to be a bat's consciousness" and "what it is to be a bat's body" which consciousness is just part of? Seems like an incoherent distinction to make.
Harry HinduOctober 22, 2019 at 11:41#3442820 likes
The purpose is to underscore that if bats have conscious experiences--and presumably they do have some sorts of conscious experiences, then (a) those experiences are probably quite different from human conscious experiences (if for no other reason than they have some very different faculties than we do, such as an ability to employ echolocation with high precision during high-speed flight), and (b) it's not possible from a third-person perspective, a perspective which is the only one from which we can talk about bat consciousness (and bat brains if we're physicalists or "reductionists" as Nagel puts it in his paper), to know the properties of the conscious experiences of bats, from the bat's perspective, as the bat knows the same.
As far as terms like “redness”, I don’t know why that has to evoke any kind of essentialism. Does “color” evoke that same essentialism to you, or “appearance”?
I guess what I'm trying to emphasise is that maybe associating qualia with facets of experience; like redness or whatever; is rather artificial. There's got to be some principle by which you attend or demarcate the facets; it's not like I can separate the "shape quale" from the "colour quale" in my perception of this table, shape and colour are conceptual demarcations that use perceptual information, rather than perceptual information itself. Concepts rather than percepts.
I'm not going to deny that I see this table as browny-beigy with a wavering wood pattern; but I'm very careful to attend to the processing of experience this requires. The experiential state I have doesn't "have" browny-beigy with a wavering wood pattern - that's there in the table. The table doesn't effect me browny-beigy-wood-patterny-wise; there's a table here, and it looks like this and it suggests interpretation as browny-beige wavey-wood-patterny table.
How this "as" works looks really important to me. I'm not too happy to think of it as a "property of" the experience; that sets up some relational problem of the experiential property and the table properties; which is precisely what that as seems to address. So to put it "in the experiential property"? That looks like it might miss how experience works from the beginning; by asking questions whose framing precludes relevant information.
I see the table. (an event)
[math]x R y[/math] (x = me, R = sees, y = table)
I see the table as brown.
Is this: [math]x R y[/math] ? [math]x R (B(y))[/math] ? [math]x R y \cap x R B(y)[/math]? (x = me, R = sees, B(y) is the brown of the table, y is the table) [math]\cap[/math] is logical and.
What's the quale here? I have a quale? Is this:
[math]x R y[/math] or [math]x R B(y) [/math] or is this [math]x S (xRB(y))[/math] where S is some "access" relation, for self-awareness of the relationship I have with the table. Is this the right parsing? Or is it a property of the person... [math]P(x) \leftrightarrow xS(xRB(y))[/math] (in that case, where does the y go, does its existence become irrelevant under an epoche? Is usual perception "functioning like it's under an epoche"?)
Let's say there's some entailment relation:
[math]x R y \rightarrow (x R B(y) \cap xS(xRB(y)) \cup P(x)[/math]
[math]\cup[/math] is logical disjunction. What's the status of that entailment with respect to perception? Is it something our perception "does"? Is it really a biconditional (this is what perception is)? How do we get from one to the other?
Terrapin StationOctober 22, 2019 at 17:59#3443570 likes
I don't think that trying to parse it in terms of formal logic is going to be helpful at this point.
First, most people would say that the shape of the table (let's use shape for a minute so we don't get sidetracked with the usual discussions regarding colors and whether they're secondary properties, etc.), as a property of the table, isn't identical (as in literally the same thing) to the shape of the table in your experience (or we could say in your perception of the table).
What I asked about has nothing to do with the underside of the table.
Disagreeing with what I said would amount to you believing that the shape of the table in your experience IS identical with the shape of the table as a property of the table.
Your reading comprehension problem here: somehow you read me as implying something about "physical" versus "nonphysical." I didn't imply anything about that, and my comment has nothing to do with that.
For Christ's sake, stop answering everything by telling me what you didn't mean, it's not a fucking guessing game. If you didn't mean the thing I interpreted you as saying, why can't you just say what you did mean in response? What on earth is prompting you to give half a response all the time?
It's just the qualitative properties of your experiences. You must have qualitative properties to your experiences.
Where in that does it make clear that 'it's' refers to your personal opinion and not, the standard treatment of the matter in philosophy (which I'm almost certain was what fdrake was asking about). If the latter then my response is entirely appropriate, it is not treated as you claim by most of the philosophers who use the concept.
lol - you're not going to say which paper that was supposed to be?
Why would I do that when the citation is barely a page back and the philosophers I've additionally mentioned are hardly obscure? The main paper on the subject is by PMS Hacker, as I have already mentioned twice, if you can't even be bothered to look it up I can't see why I should.
Terrapin StationOctober 22, 2019 at 18:11#3443640 likes
Again, I'm asking if you agree that the shape of the table, as a property of the table, is different than the shape of the table in your experience or as part of your perception of the table.
If you disagree, you're saying that the two are identical.
Sigh, you don't discuss with someone who refuses to answer return questions and defines your options. I don't want a rhetorical pissing match, I want a discussion.
Terrapin StationOctober 22, 2019 at 18:18#3443690 likes
For Christ's sake, stop answering everything by telling me what you didn't mean, it's not a fucking guessing game. If you didn't mean the thing I interpreted you as saying, why can't you just say what you did mean in response? What on earth is prompting you to give half a response all the time?
I wrote what I meant initially. I didn't write anything about physicalism in that post. No matter what I write, you read it with weird reading comprehension, so it's not as if it's a simple matter to clear that up. Any clearing-up attempt is going to be read with reading comprehension problems.(Based on a lot of experience.)
I'm not referring to qualia in any unusual manner.
Okay, so I'm guessing that you mean Hacker's "Is There Anything It Is Like to Be a Bat"? I'll have to read through that again, but I don't recall him saying anything that amounts to "What it's like' does not make sense in terms of conscious experience"
Terrapin StationOctober 22, 2019 at 18:21#3443710 likes
Reply to fdrake
Sure, and in a discussion, you'd answer a simple question like "Do you agree that the shape of the table, as a property of the table, is different than the shape of the table in your experience or as part of your perception of the table"?
Especially when the aim is explaining something to you that you apparently do not understand/apparently are not familiar with.
If you respond without answering that, as if you didn't even understand what you were being asked, then I'd clarify with respect to your response and ask again.
In a discussion, you'd not just ignore it and ask your own question and then get pissy about not moving on until you've answered the first question. That's rude behavior, not a discussion.
Terrapin StationOctober 22, 2019 at 18:22#3443720 likes
Do you agree that the shape of the table, as a property of the table, is different than the shape of the table in your experience or as part of your perception of the table"?
And I did. No. The shape of the table isn't experienced as a totality. If you like; there are table properties that are not experiential properties. Since there are table properties which are not experiential properties, the set of table properties is not identical with the set of experiential properties. Some subset of table properties might be identical to experiential properties of the table, but I don't know how to match the two. How do you match the two? How do you ensure the identity?
Especially when the aim is explaining something to you that you apparently do not understand/apparently are not familiar with.
Dude. I'm familiar with qualia (though I do not claim to be an expert). I quoted the SEP article's summary for the purposes of pointing out ambiguities I see in it. If I blur my eyes and drink the kool aid it makes perfect sense.
In a discussion, you'd not just ignore it and ask your own question and then get pissy about not moving on until you've answered the first question. That's rude behavior, not a discussion.
"Is not technical talk" in no way amounts to "does not make sense in terms of conscious experience"
Did you even read past the abstract? Or did you substitute a lazy assumption about the whole argument and what's at stake in it with what they say? It's not just about "it's not technical talk" => "does not make sense". It's about how "it's not precise" allows assumptions to creep in.
Which is largely what we've been discussing, in another form.
Terrapin StationOctober 22, 2019 at 18:31#3443770 likes
And I did. No. The shape of the table isn't experienced as a totality.
Again, this is a problem, because it suggests that you do not understand what I'm asking. I'm not asking anything about a "totality." That's completely irrelevant to what I'm asking you.
Again, this is a problem, because it suggests that you do not understand what I'm asking. I'm not asking anything about a "totality." That's completely irrelevant to what I'm asking you.
More words then please.
Terrapin StationOctober 22, 2019 at 18:44#3443840 likes
A common view is that there's some shape to the table, as a property of the table (whether we're talking about a "totality" of the shape of the table or not--that doesn't matter), AND that that shape of the table, as a property of the table, is different than the shape of the table as you experience it, or via your perception.
Or in other words, there's a common view that there is a table, but you don't literally have a table in your perception--that is, your perception is not made out of wood, you can't set a coffee cup on your perception etc. as you can with the literal table.
So on this view, the shape of the table, and the wood texture of the table, and so on, are not literally the same properties as your perception of the table.
Or in other words, there's a common view that there is a table, but you don't literally have a table in your perception--that is, your perception is not made out of wood, you can't set a coffee cup on your perception etc. as you can with the literal table.
I agree with this. How could I not? What I don't agree with is that it says the same thing as this:
A common view is that there's some shape to the table, as a property of the table (whether we're talking about a "totality" of the shape of the table or not--that doesn't matter), AND that that shape of the table, as a property of the table, is different than the shape of the table as you experience it, or via your perception.
"There's some shape to the table, as a property of the table" - when you experience the table, are you saying you experience the shape of the table as a distinct part of the experience? When you experience and attend to your experience is the shape of the table distinct from the table?
To my reading, you've living in a world where there are table properties and experiential properties, and experiential properties are distinct from table properties. My question, and my site of criticism is regarding the phenomenal character of the experience; within the quale. You may say "I am describing what the phenomenal character of the quale is", but I still want to know what account you have of the shape of the tablewithin the quale?
Reply to Terrapin Station FWIW I completely understand what you're saying (and it seems to me that you've understood everything I've said here so far) and I'm baffled about how Isaac and fdrake manage to not understand it. I'm usually good at explaining things to people who have trouble understanding them, and these seem like generally smart guys, so I'm kinda stymied for a solution to this impasse. Thank you for helping.
FWIW I'm pretty sure we all actually agree on the actual substance of this matter and this discussion is entirely about people thinking things other people are saying mean other than what they mean by them.
I'm baffled about how Isaac and fdrake manage to not understand it.
It's funny. Qualia discussions on here usually go like this in my experience. Everyone gets baffled because "the other side just doesn't understand". I don't think I'm baffled by this, because qualia talk has a set of base assumptions which are rarely examined; you have to "buy in" to grok them.
qualia talk has a set of base assumptions which are rarely examined
You thinking we are implying those unexamined assumptions that we explicitly deny implying is exactly what I mean about people thinking things other people are saying mean other than what they mean by them.
You thinking we are implying those unexamined assumptions that we explicitly deny implying is exactly what I mean about people thinking things other people are saying mean other than what they mean by them.
What assumptions are you explicitly denying? What's a quale to you?
Edit: run me through an encounter you have with a quale?
I don't think I'm baffled by this, because qualia talk has a set of base assumptions which are rarely examined; you have to "buy in" to grok them.
It's like we're each trying to look past what the other is saying in order to grasp how the train went off the track.
Like psychoanalysts we say "You arent aware that you're assuming this, but you're just in denial, or just a poor self-historian. More self reflection will show you... something.
I think for the qualia-team, p-zombies are a marker, where the whole raft of existentialism that zeroes in on that "quality of being that comes to rest in the sanctuary of the form" is not working.
The marker for the anti-qualia side is what? That I just really have no idea what you're talking about? I've never had the experience of seeing red?
But it's not that, is it? It's that: your theories make me nervous. Even the theories you dont realize you're employing.
But it's not that, is it? It's that: your theories make me nervous. Even the theories you dont realize you're employing.
Maybe! I see the cup as blue. The (my) phenomenal character (in terms of colour) of the cup has a blue quale. "What it is like to see the cup? Partly, its colour is blue."
Does this pass your "I can talk in terms of qualia" test?
Terrapin StationOctober 22, 2019 at 19:40#3444110 likes
"There's some shape to the table, as a property of the table" - when you experience the table, are you saying you experience the shape of the table as a distinct part of the experience? When you experience and attend to your experience is the shape of the table distinct from the table?
No. I'm not saying that. The distinction is between the shape of the table as a property of the table, and the shape of the table as you experience it.
The only way for you to have the shape of the table as a property of the table in your experience is for your experience to be identical to the table--so that your experience is made of wood, can hold a cup of coffee, etc.
The only way for you to have the shape of the table as a property of the table in your experience is for your experience to be identical to the table--so that your experience is made of wood, can hold a cup of coffee, etc.
Right! And in the quale is there some corresponding shape property of the table?
Terrapin StationOctober 22, 2019 at 19:42#3444140 likes
Right! And in the quale is there some corresponding shape property of the table?
The shape as you experience it is a property of your experience. Whether there's a corresponding shape of the table, as a property of the table, is kind of irrelevant to the qualia question.
What assumptions are you explicitly denying? What's a quale to you?
Edit: run me through an encounter you have with a quale?
I don't really talk in terms of qualia, but if I had to define them I'd say they're just facets or aspects of subjective, first-person, phenomenal experiences. I don't think they (either experiences or qualia) are "things", separate ontological objects apart from the objects that those experiences are of. That kind of separate-ontological-stuff talk is the sort of assumption I've been explicitly denying.
[I think there are only physical things, and that physical things consist only of their empirical properties, which are actually just functional dispositions to interact with observers (who are just other physical things) in particular ways. A subject's phenomenal experience of an object is the same event as that object's behavior upon the subject, and the web of such events is what reality is made out of, with the nodes in that web being the objects of reality, each defined by its function in that web of interactions, how it observably behaves in response to what it experiences, in other words what it does in response to what is done to it.
In an extremely trivial and useless sense everything thus "has a mind" inasmuch as everything is subject to the behavior of other things and so has an experience of them ("phenomenal consciousness", the topic of the "hard problem"), but "minds" in a more useful and robust sense are particular types of complex self-interacting objects, and therefore as subjects have an experience that is heavily of themselves as much as it is of the rest of the world ("access consciousness", the topic of the "easy problem").]
My trivial point of agreement with philosophers like Jackson that I've been trying to explain without implying any kind of ontological baggage could basically be summed up as "we are not philosophical zombies". I don't think philosophical zombies are possible or even coherent, but I also don't think supernatural things are possible or even coherent, so while I don't think "is natural" or "is not a philosophical zombie" really communicate much of interest, they are complete trivialisms when properly understood, I nevertheless confidently assert that everything is natural and there are no philosophical zombies to be clear that I disagree with that nonsense.
By definition philosophical zombies could not be discerned from non-zombies from the third person, only in the first person can one know that oneself is not a philosophical zombie, and the only trivial thing I think Jackson proves is that there is such a first-person experience that we have, the likes of which philosophical zombies would not have. Which, again, is a complete trivialism because I think everything necessarily has that and it's incoherent to talk about not having it so saying something has it really doesn't communicate anything of greater interest than disagreement with such nonsense.
Terrapin StationOctober 22, 2019 at 20:26#3444350 likes
Yes, otherwise there would be no way to make a distinction between them experientially. You'd not be able to experience the same shape with a different color or the same color with a different shape. That makes them necessarily distinct in phenomenal character/properties/qualia.
y. You'd not be able to experience the same shape with a different color or the same color with a different shape.
(1) I see the table, it presents as a certain shape and a certain colour.
(2) The shape and the colour present together. There is a shape-colour quale.
(3) There is no shape quale (in this experience of the table) independently of the colour quale. There is no colour quale (in this experience of the table) independently of the shape quale.
(4) There is a conceptual distinction between shape and colour.
(5) The distinction between "the shape quale of this table" and "the colour quale of this table" is conceptual, it is not based on the percept of this table.
(agree/disagree to list or items?)
You seem to want to say that "the shape quale of this table" and "the colour quale of the table" are distinct within the percept. That they are based on the phenomenal character of this experience. If this is true, what in this experience furnishes the distinction between the shape and the colour of the table?
If they are not distinct in the percept (2), then they can only be distinct in the concept.
I don't think philosophical zombies are possible or even coherent, but I also don't think supernatural things are possible or even coherent, so while I don't think "is natural" or "is not a philosophical zombie" really communicate much of interest, they are complete trivialisms when properly understood, I nevertheless confidently assert that everything is natural and there are no philosophical zombies to be clear that I disagree with that nonsense.
Quoting myself to add: it occurs to me that supernatural things are not just a useful analogy for my take on philosophical zombies, they're actually ontologically very similar if not identical things on my account of ontology. For something to be supernatural would be for it to have no observable behavior; for something to be a philosophical zombie would be for it to have no phenomenal experience. Both of those are just different ways of saying that the thing is completely cut off from the web of interactions that is reality, and is therefore unreal.
No. I'm not saying that. The distinction is between the shape of the table as a property of the table, and the shape of the table as you experience it.
To my way of thinking this is an unhelpful, misleading way of talking. The shape of the table is not different than the way the shape of the table is perceived from different vantage points. The appearances of the table from different vantage points reveal the shape of the table as such; we could say they are functions. as it were, of the actual shape, they are not different shapes.
So, what is the actual (in itself) shape of the table, anyway? Is it as it would be seen, as it were, from no vantage point? Or is it some imagined totality of how it would be seen from every possible vantage point? I would say the actual shape of the table is just an idealized or formal abstraction derived from the information accumulated from different views of the table.
Would you say it is ever possible for the shape of the table as it appears to be the same as the actual shape? If not, then what, for you, is the actual shape of the table?
Terrapin StationOctober 22, 2019 at 21:15#3444610 likes
what in this experience furnishes the distinction between the shape and the colour of the table?
Not that any of this matters for whether there are qualia, by the way, but one is extensional relations and the other is an electromagnetic frequency. Those aren't the same thing experientially.
I'm not referring to qualia in any unusual manner.
You said "It's just the qualitative properties of your experiences. You must have qualitative properties to your experiences."
In Nagel, Jackson and Chalmers (three of the major users of the term you were trying to define) it does not simply mean the qualitative properties of your experience without you using 'qualitative' in some specific or technical way (which is why I specified the definition I was using). 'Qualitative' properties, by my definition, are attitudinal responses - like/dislike, positive/negative. These are things which could - in theory - be measured and determined by a third party. The position of Nagel, Jackson and Chalmers is that qualia cannot - even in theory - be reduced to facts which are accessible by a third party, As you later specified with regards to the question of what it's like to be a bat.
Chalmer's P-Zombie, for example, is predicated entirely on the fact that all brain functions (including feeling - happiness, sadness etc) could go in and yet still some aspect of qualia be missing - this elusive 'what it's like' that we're trying to get you to define.
But as Hacker points out, if attitudinal feeling is what they meant then "Such questions can be answered, and one need not be an X or similar to an X in order to answer them. One merely has to be well informed about the lives of Xs"
A lot of what you call my 'reading comprehension' issues are me trying to charitably interpret something you've said that is superficially trite and uninteresting as if it were a meaningful contribution to the debate. To do that I have to do an awful lot of reading in to what little you write. As @fdrake said "More words please".
This is a case in point. My first reaction to that single sentence you felt like gave an definition of qualia was that by 'qualitative', you meant the second definition I quoted - 'what it's like', the 'quality' of the experience. I charitably dismissed that option because to define it that way would be pointlessly circular. Perhaps I was wrong and you did in fact mean to be pointlessly circular?
I'm guessing that you mean Hacker's "Is There Anything It Is Like to Be a Bat"? I'll have to read through that again, but I don't recall him saying anything that amounts to "What it's like' does not make sense in terms of conscious experience"
even for the limited range of being transitively conscious of something or other, it would be quite wrong to suppose that there is always or even usually an answer to the question ‘What was it like for you to be conscious of ...?’
It is equally misconceived to suppose that one can characterize what it is to be a conscious creature by means of the formula ‘there is something which it is like to be’ that creature, something it is like for the organism.
The sentences ‘There is something which it is like to be a human being’, ‘There is something which it is like to be a bat’, and ‘There is something which it is like to be me’, as presented by the protagonists in this case, are one and all awry.
it is wrong for Nagel to suggest that ‘we know what it is like [for us] to be us’, that there is something ‘precise that it is like [for us] to be us’ and that ‘while we do not possess the vocabulary to describe it adequately, its subjective character is highly specific.’ It is mistaken of Edelman and Tononi to assert that we all ‘know what it is like to be us’, and confused to of them suppose that ‘there is “something” it is like to be us’. And it is a confusion to think, as Searle does, that for any conscious state, ‘there is something that it qualitatively feels like to be in that state’.
creativesoulOctober 23, 2019 at 07:36#3446140 likes
Some experience does not involve words. All characterizations thereof do. There are extremely important existential and elemental distinctions between a characterization of an experience and the experience being reported upon. All "what it's like" descriptions are existentially dependent upon words. Not all experience is.
To put it a bit simpler:There is experience prior to words. What that experience amounts to and/or consists of is what matters here, it seems to me.
If all stipulated characterization(what it's like) is a report, and that which is being reported upon is something that exists in it's entirety prior to words(to be a bat), then that report can most certainly be mistaken. Some experience(bat experience) is prior to words. When something is prior to words, it can be neither existentially dependent upon them nor consist of them. Any and all reports that stipulate otherwise are mistaken.
When it comes to what we say about the experience of a non linguistic creature, we can be mistaken, in exactly the same way that we can be wrong in what we say about that anything and everything that exists in it's entirety prior to our report of it.
We can be wrong about the elemental constituency thereof.
There is most certainly experience prior to words. There is most certainly experience that does not consist of words. There is most certainly experience that is not existentially dependent upon words.
What does all experience have in common such that having it is exactly what makes it an experience?
Not words, so not Quale.
Bats do not experience the brownness or smoothness or roundness of the table they are hanging beneath. Those terms are used - they are the means - for us to draw distinctions between kinds of colors, textures, and shapes. As such, they are an aspect of a comparison/contrast. Those are all existentially dependent upon language use. A recently awakened/disturbed bat hanging beneath a brown round table is having some sort of experience, no doubt, but brownness, smoothness, and roundness are not a part of that experience.
This is not an attempt to set out 'what it's like' to be a bat. There is no universally applicable minimalist criterion for "what it's like" to be anything. Rather, there's most certainly something that all experience has in common such that the combination thereof is adequate for rudimentary level experience. When we realize that the same 'set' of basic elemental constituents are present in each and every undeniable/obvious case of experience, we will have made progress setting out what all experience consists of.
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 10:03#3446350 likes
'Qualitative' properties, by my definition, are attitudinal responses - like/dislike, positive/negative.
???
I even addressed this before. "Qualities" are properties. But qualitative properties are different than quantitative properties. In other words there are properties that are qualities and properties that are quantities. Hence why I'm specifying qualitative properties, because usually when we're talking about qualia we're not talking about quantities.
It's not saying anything at all about attitudes, preferences, valuations, etc.
It's not using the word "quality" in the colloquial, evaluative sense as in when you'd ask, "Is this a quality computer?" (Just as "like" in "what's it's like" isn't using that term to refer to analogies or similes, which papers that you linked to, such as the Hacker paper, emphasize--that "like" isn't being used in the sense of or to refer to comparisons.)
It's not saying anything at all about attitudes, preferences, valuations, etc.
Unfortunately I'm not trying to establish what it's not saying, otherwise that response would have been very helpful. Call me crazy, but that seems like a rather long-winded way of going about establishing what you mean. What I'd prefer to know is what it is saying.
So,if not attitudinal, then what kind of property are qualitative properties, how does the term qualitative help us understand what 'what it's like' language is trying to capture?
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 10:29#3446380 likes
The issue here is trying to define in more precise terms what the expression /question "what it's like" is referring to, or being used to communicate.
So far, after having got over the knee-jerk "...but you know what it means", we've had suggestions that it is referring to something consequent to experience, but which is somehow unique and ineffable (but we haven't established how it has either property). We've had that it refers to qualia, but defining 'qualia' seems no less mired, and we've had that it refers to 'qualitative' properties of experience, but 'qualitative' here seems to just mean 'what it's like', so that doesn't get us anywhere useful either.
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 10:31#3446400 likes
I just don't experience things like that. I've never felt like there's something which it is like to be me. How the hell am I supposed to tell? — fdrake
It's just the qualitative properties of your experiences. You must have qualitative properties to your experiences.
I don't understand Nagel's question. Is he asking what it is to be the whole bat, or just it's brain, or what? — Harry Hindu
The qualitative properties of the bat's experiences, from the bat's perspective.
You were referring to any property of experience that isn't a numerical?
So the property of judgement (attitudinal properties) which you said you weren't talking about, are they numerical, or excluded for some other reason?
Are you fixated, for some reason on defining things by what they're not? You seem to only want to clarify what you're saying by talking about what it's not. Why is it proving so difficult to say what it is? Are you suggesting that there's such a near-infinite number of properties that would count as qualitative that simply listing them is impossible, leaving you only with the option to say what they're not?
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 10:40#3446430 likes
It's not a complicated idea, by the way. It's just that some people deny qualia, partially because they don't want it to be the case that there's something about mentality that's inherently third-person-inaccessible, because that's a problem for tackling mentality from a scientific perspective.
This whole issue grew out of attempting to devise scientific theories of mind/mentality, as well as functional theories, and practically, out of working on AI, etc.
StreetlightOctober 23, 2019 at 10:41#3446440 likes
Once you start to treat 'properties' as nothing more than a reification of the quirks of ancient Greek grammar, watching people treat it as an ontological category is like watching shamans on a small isolated island argue over which voodoo doll is the most effective. Like, once you distance yourself from it, it becomes almost an anthropological study of a bunch of culture-bound humans who have learened to use words in a funny way.
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 10:43#3446450 likes
Qualia talk is typically focused on experiencing things-in-the-world, not our own mental content per se. So in other words, experiencing sights and sounds and tactile sensations and so on, and not our judgments and desires and emotions and so on.
Could we talk about our own mental content in terms of qualia? Sure, but that's kind of redundant, because the whole issue is focused on properties per experience being non-identical to objective properties.
So if one were an ontological idealist or a solipsist, the whole issue would be moot, because you'd think that there's no difference between a table and the table in your experience. You'd think that everything IS your experience, or at least is experience without necessarily being yours. (Although possibly in the latter case this would still be an issue, since there would be no way to know that different experiences were similar).
It's referring to the properties of experience, or we could say "the things in experience," from the perspective of that experience.
What does "from the perspective of the experience" mean here? The properties of the experience might well be the brain states it instantiates, but that's accessible via third parties, so that's not it. The difference is something to do with this "from the perspective of the experience", but I cannot fathom what that might mean. I don't understand how an experience can have a perspective.
(b) "The properties of the table as you experience it"
If for no other reason simply because your experience doesn't literally have a table in it.
(b) are qualia
Again, (b), by this definition, might well be brain states completely accessible to a third party. The 'properties' of the table as you experience it might well be the effects it has on the brain, in the same way as the 'properties' of the table in reality could be the effects it has on passing photons, gravity etc..
some people deny qualia, partially because they don't want it to be the case that there's something about mentality that's inherently third-person inaccessible, because that's a problem for tackling mentality from a scientific perspective.
I don't see how this helps, we could equally say that some people need to cling to qualia to preserve human-uniqueness, or pet theories about consciousness and free-will. As @fdrake pointed out, there's all sorts of baggage going along with these concepts. Neither party can play the innocent.
once you distance yourself from it, it becomes almost an antropological study of a bunch of humans who have learened to use words in a funny way.
I think that's true, but I don't think it precludes any value in such an anthropological approach, nor does it preclude an attempt to unravel what is meant by it in their own terms. Unless I've misunderstood what you're saying?
What does "from the perspective of the experience" mean here?
As opposed to talking about the table as the table. Or from the perspective of the table, using "perspective" in the sense it's used in the visual arts.
(In other words, what I just explained above re the post with (a) and (b) where I explained that (b) are qualia.)
It almost seems like you're intentionally trying to not understand this, because you don't want to, or because you want to be difficult or something like that, because it's difficult to believe that it would be this difficult for you to grasp these relatively simple ideas.
StreetlightOctober 23, 2019 at 10:59#3446500 likes
I think that's true, but I don't think it precludes any value in such an anthropological approach, nor does it preclude an attempt to unravel what is meant by it in their own terms. Unless I've misunderstood what you're saying?
Nah for sure, it's interesting to understand why 'properties' tend to be our 'go-to' when thinking about this kind of stuff. But I am honestly amused - like it makes me smile irl - to think people look out at the world around them and honestly believe in their heart of hearts that what they see are 'properties'. Like, the amount of cultural conditioning it takes to get someone to think that this is their 'spontaneous' self-report is incredible. The degree of abstraction from perception is actually thoroughly impressive, when you really stop to think about it.
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 11:03#3446510 likes
Yeah, agreed. I come at this stuff from a very different angle to you, I think, but I feel the same way about this idea that objects (physical or otherwise) have 'properties' somehow attached to them which can later be dissected for analysis - this 'property' is its colour, this 'property' is its shape...and so forth.
But I reach that point out of nominalism, I sense you're getting there some other way?
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 11:11#3446540 likes
As opposed to talking about the table as the table. Or from the perspective of the table, using "perspective" in the sense it's used in the visual arts.
That's not helping I'm afraid, I've no idea what perspective might mean in the visual arts either. It seems you just want to say that some 'properties' are attached to the table where others are attached to our experience of it, but I can't see how properties attach to a table.
(I'm going to stop putting properties in inverted commas, I don't really hold to the concept but it's a phaff to make that clear by my punctuation every time I type it).
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 11:14#3446560 likes
What do you think that properties are? I'm asking because apparently you think they're something separate from other things that somehow can "attach" to them.
I'm a nominalist, so you're going wrong somewhere.
I love this. You see things some way, so anyone else simply must be going wrong! Classic.
I don't think there is such a thing as a 'table' outside of our experience of it, so there's nothing to attach these properties to other than the ones in our experience. Otherwise you seem to be making a universal out of 'table', 'brown', 'wooden'...etc.
I think it's a term used to sub-divide the experience of a thing into arbitrary chunks. It's convenient sometimes, but it's not something that 'tables' can have.
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 11:19#3446590 likes
I don't think there's any one 'kind of thing' we see. I mean, I'm mostly on board the embodied cognition train that says we see for the most part "affordances", opportunities for action, sites of relief and rest, goals to arrive at, hazards and safety, speed and rest, and so on. Perception understood in a bodily sense, according to categories that matter to living, moving, metabolizing beings. We perceive significance far more than we perceive things and stuff (phenomenology teaches us this: perception is normative). We're animals before we're anything else.
But even then I don't think this exhausts perception: I don't doubt that we see things and stuff and properties too. But we have to learn how to see this stuff (a bodily learning, and no less than we have to learn how to see what is significant), and sometimes we 'see' some kinds of things and not others, and sometimes there's a mix of things we 'see', different schemas of perception, as it were, that we engage depending on the particular circumstances of the time (if you're looking for a 'property', you'll likely find it). There's a plasticity to perception, and the important thing is to relate it to the kinds of beings we are and what we do with it.
Call it a Wittgensteinian theory of perception: perception is use. And attempting to come up with an a priori theory of it is neither helpful nor interesting.
"Property" doesn't imply "universal" or "type," by the way.
I think it does. I don't think one can discuss a 'property' of a thing without engaging in reifying universals. Even to say 'shape' is one type of property and colour another.
I don't think there's any one 'kind of thing' we see. I mean, I'm mostly on board the embodied cognition train that says we see for the most part "affordances", opportunities for action, sites of relief and rest, goals to arrive at, hazards and safety, speed and rest, and so on. Perception understood in a bodily sense, according to categories that matter to living, moving, metabolizing beings. We perceive significance far more than we perceive things and stuff (phenomenology teaches us this: perception is normative). We're animals before we're anything else.
So in other words, you're conflating how we think about things, how we evaluate and value them, etc., with what we're perceiving.
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 11:25#3446640 likes
No, although I could easily be. I think there is external matter. It's the division of some of it into 'table' I think is arbitrary.
In order to refer to the external matter, we have to use a type term, since that's how language works. So you're again getting confused here because you're conflating concepts and what they're in response to/about/of.
No one is saying that the external matter is a table a la the concept of a table. But we have to refer to it some way to talk about it in a setting like this. So we have to use terms like "table."
But I am honestly amused - like it makes me smile irl - to think people look out at the world around them and honestly believe in their heart of hearts that what they see are 'properties'.
I mean, I'm mostly on board the embodied cognition train that says we see for the most part "affordances", opportunities for action, sites of relief and rest, goals to arrive at, hazards and safety, speed and rest, and so on.
!
StreetlightOctober 23, 2019 at 11:27#3446660 likes
So in other words, you're conflating how we think about things, how we evaluate and value them, etc., with what we're perceiving.
It takes a particular kind of abstraction to think that we perceive things in their neutrality first, and then evaluate them, as if a two-step process. It's valued all the way down (although not all the way up!)
It takes a particular kind of abstraction to think that we perceive things in their neutrality first,
You can't perceive how we think about something, how we value it, etc.
"Perception" has a connotation of "sensing information from outside of us." How we think about things, value them, etc. isn't something that exists outside of us for us to perceive.
This is not to suggest that we don't think about things however we do, value them however we do, etc. at whatever stage in the process, but it's not perceiving those things.
StreetlightOctober 23, 2019 at 11:30#3446690 likes
Reply to bert1 Yeah yeah. But how else would you put it? I see food on the table, I start to salivate, and move towards it, I reach out to the sweetness, the oil glistens on its surface, my stomach rumbles, etc etc. At some point you have to use words.
In order to refer to the external matter, we have to use a type term, since that's how language works. So you're again getting confused here because you're conflating concepts and what they're in response to/about/of.
Yes but a linguistic affectation can't possess properties can it?
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 11:33#3446730 likes
And you're seeing properties of it. Again, if anyone is thinking that this is saying that you're seeing types/universals, "property" doesn't imply that. If one buys nominalism (as I do), every property is actually unique, That doesn't imply that it's not a property. Properties are simply ways that things are, characteristics they have.
StreetlightOctober 23, 2019 at 11:33#3446740 likes
You can't _perceive_ how we think about something, how we value it, etc.
"Perception" has a connotation of "sensing information from outside of us." How we think about things, value them, etc. isn't something that exists outside of us for us to perceive.
Ah but you're wrong. Valuation is built-in to perception. It's why we are susceptible to visual illusions, it's why people have visual disorders where they can't recognize faces even though they can 'see' them perfectly well and so on. There's a bodily thinking that is irreducible to a rational process of abstraction. Go read about the science of perception, it's interesting.
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 11:34#3446750 likes
Valuation is built-in to perception. It's why we are susceptible to visual illusions, it's why people have visual disorders where they can't recognize faces even though they can 'see' them perfectly well and so on. There's a bodily thinking that is irreducible to a rational process of abstraction. Go read about the science of perception, it's interesting.
Again, "perception" has a connotation of taking in information external to us, through our senses.
So if valuation is perceived, you're saying that valuations exist external to us, and we see or hear or smell or feel or taste them.
StreetlightOctober 23, 2019 at 11:38#3446780 likes
Reply to Terrapin Station I don't philosophize off the back of linguistic connotations. We bring a great deal of ourselves to what we perceive. Any study of perception will tell you this. Maybe you can start with Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception. I've already mentioned the affordance approach of Gibson. Lots of cool things for you to study.
Cool. Goodman was agnostic as to what we construct from what, though. Are you siding with what he would have called a phenomenalist basis, as against e.g. a physicalist one?
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 11:46#3446840 likes
Cool. Goodman was agnostic as to what we construct from what, though. Are you siding with what he would have called a phenomenalist basis, as against e.g. a physicalist one?
Oh yes, I knew that. So you assume a physicalist basis, but properties are part of it, not something you would (like Goodman) expect to construct?
Yes, for maybe the fifth time now, properties are simply ways that things are, characteristics they have.
We create abstractions/construct concepts about properties, of course, but that's not all that they are. It's important to not conflate concepts and what the concepts are in response to (again, for about the fifth time in this thread, and maybe the 500th time on this board in general).
So how could there be anything that isn't some way or other?
Easily, every "way or other" is a judgement we make sufguced with our habits, moods etc. So nothing is some way or other outside of that we perceive it to be, and as @StreetlightX has pointed out, the evidence from the neuroscience of perception is very much that we do not perceive anything absent of local and variable influences from our mental state and environment.
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 12:05#3446910 likes
So you believe that if no people existed, objects would be in what--some quantum, indeterminate state?
Possibly, yes. But at the moment I'm more inclined to think of reality as a heterogeneous sea of stuff (where maybe that stuff is not matter but whatever fundamental thing physics might find beneath matter). Certainly no 'tables'.
Why do you say 'browness' is a property of the table? Surely by your own terms, with nominalist, at best it's a property of 'the bit of the table I happen to be looking at'. Why impart it to the rest of the table, unless you're treating 'the table' as a platonic object?
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 12:13#3446940 likes
No, no. If there are no people (or perceivers, rather) then there is no perception. It's a bad question ('how would one perceive it if one were not around to perceive it?'. It's very silly, don't fall for it).
Right, it's a property of that object reflect[ing] that wavelength of EMR, and it's also a property of your experience per se (which is what qualia are).
Ok. One more thing, for now. This property... is it meaningful to ask: what is it? E.g., I want to ask: is it a disposition or ability to reflect the certain wavelength?
No, no. If there are no people then there is no perception. It's a bad question ('how would one perceive it if one were not around to perceive it?'. Very silly).
OK, I see what you're saying. I didn't really answer the question as "what difference do people make" so much as "what model do you personally have of reality" (a model which, for me is obviously unaffected by people because I took him to be asking about what it is I think people's perception acts on). Does that make any sense at all?
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 12:19#3446980 likes
I didn't really answer the question as "what difference do people make" so much as "what model do you personally have of reality" (a model which, for me is obviously unaffected by people because I took him to be asking about what it is I think people's perception acts on). Does that make any sense at all?
Yeah. I would only be careful: we are of reality, and don't stand outside of it looking in. "If no people existed, objects would be...?" is still a strange question. "If there are no clouds, objects would be...?" - one has to wonder: what even is this question? How does the one relate to the other? It's loaded, but badly.
Why would that be the only way you can see objects being? How would you even see that?
'See' as in conceive of, bad choice of words in the circumstances. I can't conceive how matter could not exist at all (what would we base our perception on), but I can't conceive of it divided up into objects in any sense at all when it's clear that such object division (and existence) can be so readily altered by our mental processes.
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 12:26#3447020 likes
we are of reality, and don't stand outside of it looking it. "If no people existed, objects would be...?" is still a strange question.
Yeah, so I guess my 'model' is inevitably flawed by being one without me in it, yet without me there'd be no place to put the model. I still find some need to have one though, flawed as it may be. Do you manage to do without?
StreetlightOctober 23, 2019 at 12:27#3447040 likes
Yeah, so I guess my 'model' is inevitably flawed by being one without me in it
Not flawed! It tells us something about the world that it must be 'modelled' in this way (in any way): it is 'objectively the case' that you must include yourself in your model - this is an opening, not a limit. Anyway, sorry to be obscure. We're far away from perception now, and I don't want to derail.
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 12:33#3447070 likes
I can't conceive of it divided up into objects in any sense at all when it's clear that such object division (and existence) can be so readily altered by our mental processes.
So let's consider something like a comet orbiting the sun. We've got a chunk of rock--water, carbon dioxide, ammonia and methane ices, mixed with dust. Then we've got interstellar space where there's very sparse amounts of hydrogen and helium gas, etc. Then we've got the sun, a very dense aggregation of hydrogen and helium gases in a plasma state, etc.
How would our mental processes alter that?
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 12:34#3447080 likes
So let's consider something like a comet orbiting the sun. We've got a chunk of rock--water, carbon dioxide, ammonia and methane ices, mixed with dust. Then we've got space where there's very sparse amounts of hydrogen and helium gas, etc. Then we've got the sun, a very dense aggregation of hydrogen and helium gases in a plasma state, etc.
How would our mental processes alter that?
They already have. "comet", "space", "sun". None of these separate things are really separate. We've decided that spatio-temporal patterns are going to be the thing which separates one object from another, as opposed to, say, ecology, information, systems etc.
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 12:41#3447120 likes
None of these separate things are really separate.
We're not saying something about whether they're really "separate."
But you're saying that they're not really a lump of water, carbon dioxide, etc. ices and then a far less dense patch of hydrogen and helium gases, etc., right?
But you're saying that they're not really a lump of water, carbon dioxide, etc. ices and then a far less dense patch of hydrogen and helium gases, etc., right?
"Water" and "carbon dioxide" are still separations we've imposed, why stop one type and begin another based on the arbitrary shape of its molecules. Even some pretty basic chemistry (isotopes etc) shows how this distinction breaks down on analysis.
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 12:45#3447140 likes
You don't think that there's really a shape of molecules, do you?
No, I'm aware it's just a model. I'm trying to get at the arbitrariness of making the distinction on that basis, not present a scientifically accurate account of it.
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 12:50#3447160 likes
I'm asking you about something with scientific accuracy though.
So how do you think we get to creatures that impose structure on anything via their consciousness?
We have a completely uniform sea of whatever, with no properties, and then what? How would a creature appear amidst that, much less one with consciousness?
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 12:51#3447170 likes
We have a completely uniform sea of whatever, with no properties, and then what? How would a creature appear amidst that, much less one with consciousness?
The fact that a "creature" has appeared is again, just a human artefact, as is 'conciousness'. All that has happened is that stuff has interacted with stuff (even 'stuff' is difficult to get out of). No 'creatures' have appeared outside of us, to whom would they 'appear'?
Let me ask you this, if a 'creature' has appeared with consciousness, where do we stop, and some other creature with some other conscious start?
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 12:57#3447190 likes
All that has happened is that stuff has interacted with stuff (
How? According to you it's a completely uniform sea of property-free stuff. How would it "interact," especially without having/exhibiting any properties?
Do you think that humans just appeared whole cloth out of nothing, as the first thing that existed?
According to you it's a completely uniform sea of property-free stuff. How would it "interact," especially without having/exhibiting any properties?
I quite specifically said I imagine a heterogeneous sea of stuff, not a uniform one. I imagine variations in many possible fields, some of which we arbitrarily select to distinguish objects over, others we ignore, others still we probably can't even detect.
Yes, I think I'd grant that. I can see where you might be going - to say that at least something has at least one property. I think I might well agree with that (with the proviso that such would only constitute a description of my model in your terminology, accepting that my model is definitely flawed by pretending to exclude me from it).
Oh, and I'm just referencing here Ramachandran's (slightly) famous experiments with rubber hands, and tables. I have to go out now so can't explain the whole thing. Will do so when I get back, presuming you don't already know.
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 13:18#3447340 likes
Yes, I think I'd grant that. I can see where you might be going - to say that at least something has at least one property.
Yeah, that's a property. In fact, even a homogeneous soup that's indeterminate would be properties. Since properties are simply ways that things are.
The table thing--that was just a perfect opportunity for that. That's from the album that Lou Reed and Metallica did together a handful of years ago, Lulu. In one of the tunes, "The View", James Hetfield periodically sings "I am the table." The album was largely castigated, and people saw lines like that as indicative of its many problems. So someone made a video looping all of the "I am the tables" from that tune.
I actually like the album quite a bit, but it's still conventionally considered a bomb/a big mistake, especially by Metallica fans.
Harry HinduOctober 23, 2019 at 13:25#3447360 likes
The purpose is to underscore that if bats have conscious experiences--and presumably they do have some sorts of conscious experiences, then (a) those experiences are probably quite different from human conscious experiences (if for no other reason than they have some very different faculties than we do, such as an ability to employ echolocation with high precision during high-speed flight), and (b) it's not possible from a third-person perspective, a perspective which is the only one from which we can talk about bat consciousness (and bat brains if we're physicalists or "reductionists" as Nagel puts it in his paper), to know the properties of the conscious experiences of bats, from the bat's perspective, as the bat knows the same.
Right, but what is useful in knowing what form the bat's consciousness takes? Are we trying to get at what the bat knows, or the form its knowledge takes, or what, and why?
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 13:30#3447380 likes
Right, but what is useful in knowing what form the bat's consciousness takes? Are we trying to get at what the bat knows, or the form its knowledge takes, or what, and why?
It's underscoring a problem with developing a scientific account of mind.
Harry HinduOctober 23, 2019 at 13:34#3447410 likes
It's underscoring a problem with developing a scientific account of mind.
Science is asking what the problem is. Again, what is what is useful in knowing what form the bat's consciousness takes? Are we trying to get at what the bat knows, or the form its knowledge takes, or what, and why?
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 13:42#3447450 likes
Science is asking what the problem is. Again, what is what is useful in knowing what form the bat's consciousness takes? Are we trying to get at what the bat knows, or the form its knowledge takes, or what, and why?
Presumably an important part of consciousness is what things are like experientially to the bearer of the consciousness in question. So if we can't tackle that scientifically, we have a problem with devising scientific accounts of consciousness. We can just ignore it and not care about it, but then we're ignoring a big part of what we we're supposedly addressing. An alternate track--one that many have taken--is to try to deny that there is such a thing in the first place, or at least deny that it's any different than what things are like outside of consciousness.
Right, it's a property of that object reflect[ing] that wavelength of EMR, and it's also a property of your experience per se (which is what qualia are).
Ok. One more thing, for now. This property... is it meaningful to ask: what is it? E.g., I want to ask: is it a disposition or ability to reflect the certain wavelength?
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 14:43#3447570 likes
I want to ask: is it a disposition or ability to reflect the certain wavelength?
With respect to the object (the objective stuff), it's the fact that it reflects that wavelength of EMR, sure. That's not what it is with respect to our experience, though--our mental phenomena don't reflect that wavelength of EMR. In terms of our experience, it's a particular dynamic state of synapses, neurons, etc.
There's a difference, which is really difficult to maintain, between talk that identifies objects we're all used to distinguishing and talk about the non-constructed basis for those things. When I say "inside our minds" I mean to refer to what we culturally (probably even biologically) distinguish as "our minds". When I say "there is no 'we'", I'm trying to talk about what there is that is not thus constructed, that's 'out there' as the stuff we construct objects from.
Yeah, that's a property. In fact, even a homogeneous soup that's indeterminate would be properties. Since properties are simply ways that things are.
Yes, but my caveat is important. We couldn't say, that anything was a property of 'it' because even the idea variation, 'lumpiness' as you put it, is suffused with our way of life.
James Hetfield periodically sings "I am the table."
Periodically? Thanks to you I spent the entire afternoon with "I am the table" on a loop in my head!
So - the actual 'I am the table'. If I place your hand behind a screen on a table, I stroke both the table in front of you and your hand with the same pattern, I then approach the table in front of you threatening to hit it with a hammer, you have a galvanic skin response exactly as you would if I threatened your real hand. The same parts of the brain fire, and most people report a genuine fear.
Two minutes of deception and your brain is happy to think of the table as part of your body.
In terms of our experience, it's a particular dynamic state of synapses, neurons, etc.
Right, but this now starts to sound physicalist about properties of experience. "Particular dynamic state of synapses, neurons, etc" is definitely something accessible to a third party (at least in theory). I thought you were saying it's something more than that.
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 15:55#3447700 likes
I want to focus on this first because I think it's more important: Quoting Isaac
Yes, but my caveat is important. We couldn't say, that anything was a property of 'it' because even the idea variation, 'lumpiness' as you put it, is suffused with our way of life.
Again, properties don't depend on us, our ideas, etc. Whatever the world is like sans us is a matter of the world having whatever properties it has. There's no way for there to be something without properties. That claim would be incoherent.
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 15:56#3447710 likes
the amount of cultural conditioning it takes to get someone to think that this is their 'spontaneous' self-report is incredible
Very much this. Though I take a pretty cynical view of it. The kind of description of experience going on here is reflection upon it with a certain priming; we're in a philosophical discussion, people will necessarily bring their philosophical background to bear upon how the experience is parsed.
@Terrapin Station is having difficulty imagining that our experience isn't parsed into properties (with properties of those properties distinguishing things like colour properties and shape properties), and that it's either a philosophical or folk-theoretic means of interpretation to parse it that way. "This is just how my experience is".
What I've been attacking with @Terrapin Station is where the distinctions between these properties come from, whether it's a conceptual distinction imposed reflectively (and thus retrospectively) upon experience (between colour quales and shape quales), or our (visual) experience really is (or must be) parsed into distinctive property types. Where do these distinctions come from? is the central question I've been asking here.
When people use qualia language, they perform precisely these conceptual distinctions and then impute those conceptual distinctions into their experience; as if there are grounds for distinguishing colour qualia and shape qualia (of a table) within the phenomenal character of experience. The perception isn't furnishing the distinction, the conception of experience is.
A lot of philosophical framing devices have to be unproblematically assumed to even parse experience in that way, to have it 'read off the world (phenomenal character)' misses an extremely crucial point; when we reflect on our experiences, we apprehend them with a loose knit interpretive framework that was not necessarily present during the experience reflected upon. That presumptions are read into the phenomena is the sort of stuff faith is made of, not analysis (even though we all have 'faith' in this sense).
It is difficult to highlight an intellectual commitment which is enacted rather than articulated; a performative presumption, rather than a declared one. Exposing these presumptions is the goal.
Well this is where we differ. I don't think it's incoherent at all. I think quite the opposite in fact. I can't think of what a 'property' might be without someone to define it.
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 15:59#3447740 likes
Right, but if "Particular dynamic state of synapses, neurons, etc" is what 'properties' of experience are - in their entirety, then what is missing from the third party account? More importantly for a physicalist, where is that missing thing expressed physically?
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 16:03#3447780 likes
Terrapin Station is having difficulty imagining that our experience isn't parsed into properties
I'm not saying something about concepts in that. I'm saying that your experience has to be some way or other, has to have some characteristics or other, etc.
I'm not saying something about concepts in that. I'm saying that your experience has to be some way or other, has to have some characteristics or other, etc.
That you think you're providing a theory neutral description of phenomenal character is part of the problem.
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 16:06#3447810 likes
That you think you're providing a theory neutral description of phenomenal character is part of the problem.
You were hinting at concepts. I'm not talking about concepts. I'm not saying something about it being theory-neutral. I'm just saying that I'm not talking about concepts.
I just answered this: the perspective of being those states.
But where is that perspective if not in "Particular dynamic state of synapses, neurons, etc"? I'm afraid "At various reference points, including the reference point of being the thing in question." isn't really a coherent location for me.
You were hinting at concepts. I'm not talking about concepts. I'm not saying something about it being theory neutral. I'm just saying that I'm not talking about concepts.
I know you are not talking about concepts, you are being influenced by ones which you have that you are not articulating.
But where is that perspective if not in "Particular dynamic state of synapses, neurons, etc"? I'm afraid "At various reference points, including the reference point of being the thing in question." isn't really a coherent location for me.
So forget about talking about mind for a moment.
Take a coin for example. There's a frame of reference that is the coin itself, and there's a frame of reference that's not the coin itself, but that's relative to the the coin from some other position, right?
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 16:16#3447910 likes
That's fine. Nevetheless, I'm not talking about concepts.
If I tell you that the cat ran outside when you opened the door, I have to employ concepts, as you do in order to understand what I'm saying, but what I'm saying isn't about concepts.
Take a coin for example. There's a frame of reference that is the coin itself, and there's a frame of reference that's not the coin itself, but that's relative to the the coin from some other position, right?
No. I don't see how there can be a frame of reference that is the coin itself. Just identifying it as a coin requires a person. With no one to identify it, it is just stuff, nothing more. (by stuff here I'm referring to whatever it is our perception arise from, noumena, if you like).
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 16:19#3447930 likes
No. I don't see how there can be a frame of reference that is the coin itself.
There's a coin, and it has a location, right? I have to use the word to refer to it on a message board. I'm not talking about the concept, or identifying it, or anything like that. Just "that lump there" or whatever. (Again, I need to refer to it here so you know what I'm talking about)
Nope. There's no coin without a person to decide 'this bit of matter ends here and I shall call it a coin'. There's no location without a person to construct a 3d model of a reality which might well have 20 dimensions or none at all (dimensions just being some model we made to help us live).
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 16:23#3447950 likes
Apparently you are incapable of understanding language usage without thinking that we're necessarily talking about concepts as such. Re the use/mention distinction, you must think it's incoherent. We can only do mention.
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 16:26#3447980 likes
Again, it's hard to believe that you'd not just be trolling in not being able to disentangle concepts from what the concepts are about or in response to.
I don't really talk in terms of qualia, but if I had to define them I'd say they're just facets or aspects of subjective, first-person, phenomenal experiences. I don't think they (either experiences or qualia) are "things", separate ontological objects apart from the objects that those experiences are of. That kind of separate-ontological-stuff talk is the sort of assumption I've been explicitly denying.
This seems agreeable to me. I'm still curious over exactly what kind of stuff counts as a 'facet of experience'; where are the boundaries? How did the boundaries get there? But given a suitable (pragmatic or conceptual) reason to demarcate between different facets, we probably agree.
There are concepts, but the concepts are not about themselves.
No, but the stuff they're about doesn't actually have the properties we phenomenological conceive them having, all 'properties' are concepts related to the stuff (again, presuming there is even 'stuff' at all). I can't see how stuff could have properties. Any time I think about those properties (shape, location, colour..) they're all concepts, some of which I even know to be shaky at least because modern physics can't seem to fit them together.
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 16:33#3448020 likes
1. That conception is done in our minds and I can't think of a single reason why we would, by chance, construct the exact properties that somehow reality has (if maybe you take a Berkelean view that God conceives of properties).
2. Physics has demonstrated to my satisfaction that many of the properties I think objects have cannot be reconciled with each other.
3. Different people seem to have different phenomenological conceptions and so it seems impossible that the 'real stuff' is some way or other, that someone is just right about some of it.
4. I think it's impossible to even think without foundational model, concepts on which to base thought. So I can't conceive of anything without those models.
1. That conception is done in our minds and I can't think of a single reason why we would, by chance, construct the exact properties that somehow reality has (if maybe you take a Berkelean view that God conceives of properties).
Why would you think it's by chance? We seem to have access to the world, right? Via our senses. So you'd need a reason to believe that that's not in fact the case.
2. Physics has demonstrated to my satisfaction that many of the properties I think objects have cannot be reconciled with each other.
Physics can't demonstrate anything if you think we can't tell at all what the world is like. Besides, you have to conclude that you made all of physics up.
3. Different people seem to have different phenomenological conceptions and so it seems impossible that the 'real stuff' is some way or other, that someone is just right about some of it.
You'd need a reason to believe that (a) the world can't be different from different perspectives, and (b) that some people can't be wrong while others are right
4. I think it's impossible to even think without foundational model, concepts on which to base thought. So I can't conceive of anything without those models.
If you need to construct a foundational model in order to think, then how would you even get started? Don't you need to think in order to construct a foundational model? Otherwise it would be the case that you could think without a foundational model.
Yes, that's right. The idea of 'a person' is something I've constructed.
Right. So essentially you're a solipsist--at least an epistemological solipsist. So why would something like hate speech ever be a problem? You're just constructing the other people anyway, and can't you construct them however you'd like to construct them?
In short, your ontology is a complete mess, and I'm guessing there are psychological reasons behind it. It probably stems from needing a way to cope with things that you otherwise feel you can't cope with. Keep in mind that apparently this is your concepts telling you this.
Ok, and "yellowness" might be a property of my experience while perceiving an object reflecting a certain wavelength?
— bongo fury
Right, it's a property of that object reflect[ing] that wavelength of EMR, and it's also a property of your experience per se (which is what qualia are).
I want to ask: is it a disposition or ability to reflect the certain wavelength?
— bongo fury
With respect to the object (the objective stuff), it's the fact that it reflects that wavelength of EMR, sure. That's not what it is with respect to our experience, though--our mental phenomena don't reflect that wavelength of EMR. In terms of our experience, it's a particular dynamic state of synapses, neurons, etc.
Particular in the sense of general but awaiting a clear physical definition (which would decide if a particular brain state was an instance of it)?
— bongo fury
Say what?
No, particular as in particular. And it has nothing to do with definitions, etc.
Ok, but I thought you were happy to at least class all the particular cases of yellow-wavelength-reflection together as cases (albeit different particular cases) of possession of "yellowness" (in the objective sense) by an object?
So I thought you would be happy to form a corresponding class of cases (each of them particular and different of course) of possession of "yellowness" (in the mental sense) by a brain state?
TheWillowOfDarknessOctober 23, 2019 at 17:55#3448180 likes
So the trouble with this line of argument is an absence of these properties also amounts to concepts.
How can we say there are an absence of these properties when we aren't even taking in the part of the world in question?
There is nothing wrong with supposing an absence of certain properties of course, the unobserved world might exist without them. The trouble is this commits to as much of a postion of what is there, nothing with these properties, as claiming everything we see was there when no-one was looking.
Either way, our concepts are not just our own, they are of what the world is doing.
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 17:56#3448190 likes
Ok, but I thought you were happy to at least class all the particular cases of yellow-wavelength-reflection together as cases (albeit different particular cases) of possession of "yellowness" (in the objective sense) by an object?
So I thought you would be happy to form a corresponding class of cases (each of them particular and different of course) of possession of "yellowness" (in the mental sense) by a brain state?
"Classing all the cases together" is a way of talking about the concepts we formulate as such--those are abstractions that range over a number of unique instances. And sure, insofar as we're talking about concepts, that's fine.
What those concepts are in response to, though, what any occurrence of yellow is in an object, or in experience is a particular state, a particular brain state (on my view) in the case of experience, or a particular object (reflecting EMR) state in the case of the external thing we're perceiving.
. . . or in other words, I'm a nominalist, so the only "reality" of types is as concepts (and even there, every instance of the concept in someone's mind is unique). But types make sense as a particular occurrence of a construction that abstracts certain features from particulars to range over a number of them.
Why would you think it's by chance? We seem to have access to the world, right? Via our senses. So you'd need a reason to believe that that's not in fact the case.
Physics can't demonstrate anything if you think we can't tell at all what the world is like. Besides, you have to conclude that you made all of physics up.
I said "to my satisfaction". I prefer consistency, I can't really conceive of a reality that can be two ways at once, so two apparently conflicting models are sufficient to convince me that they can't both be right.
You'd need a reason to believe that (a) the world can't be different from different perspectives, and (b) that some people can't be wrong while others are right
For (a) we're talking about some way the world really is, so perspectives don't enter into it. The fact that they do is the very reason I don't trust 'there is a coin' type foundations. For (b) if it is possible for someone to be wrong, then our brains are not inevitably arranged to reflect reality accurately. Therefore it seems to me to follow from that that anyone doing so would do so by chance. That seems prima facae unlikely.
If you need to construct a foundational model in order to think, then how would you even get started? Don't you need to think in order to construct a foundational model? Otherwise it would be the case that you could think without a foundational model.
I think genetics wires models into our brains. We're born with a basic model.
So essentially you're a solipsist--at least an epistemological solipsist. So why would something like hate speech ever be a problem? You're just constructing the other people anyway, and can't you construct them however you'd like to construct them?
The fact that I'm constructing people does not lead to the fact that I can construct them however I'd like to construct them.
I'm guessing there are psychological reasons behind it....
Yeah, we can all play that game. You like to cling to strong libertarianism (probably fear of being constrained), the only way you can maintain strong libertarianism without becoming a sociopath is to convince yourself that you do not have a direct effect on others. This requires a strong sense of disconnected 'other' and a model where other people are in full control of their mental events. We can all play pop-psychologist.
So the trouble with this line of argument is that an an absence of these properties also amounts to concepts.
I didn't say the absence of properties wasn't a concept. There's a difference though between positing the absence (or skepticism) of properties and the positing of some particular property (light, location, shape etc) as being real.
But where is that perspective if not in "Particular dynamic state of synapses, neurons, etc"? I'm afraid "At various reference points, including the reference point of being the thing in question." isn't really a coherent location for me.
TheWillowOfDarknessOctober 23, 2019 at 18:50#3448330 likes
My point was rejecting these properties is to suppose a world of a certain form (absence of these properties) exists. It's actually proposing the world is things which do not have these properies.
As such, the rejection of properties is not an agnostism, but an alternative emprical account. It is a claim that, when no-one is around, things exist without these properties.
Yes, but a default position that no thing exists that we do not require as a necessary contingent fact is not the same as saying some thing exists which just happens to seem to me as if it does.
I'm not even favouring one over the other here, but a model with the absence of all features is not of the same dogma as a model with some given feature, despite the fact that both are conceptual commitments, they are not both of the same class.
Take a coin for example. There's a frame of reference that is the coin itself, and there's a frame of reference that's not the coin itself, but that's relative to the the coin from some other position, right?
Subjects are points in spacetime?
TheWillowOfDarknessOctober 23, 2019 at 19:00#3448380 likes
Claiming some properties are absent when we aren't looking is commiting oneself to a presence of contingent states without these properties. It functioning on the same level as any claim for a state with those properties. Both arguments are claiming contingent states of certain properties. My point is they are of the same class.
Claiming some properties are absent when we aren't looking is commiting oneself to a presence of contingent states without these properties.
The claim is that properties are incoherent without a person to define them thus. Not that they aren't there. You're looking at this as if it were an unknown sheet of paper, I'm saying there's no words on it, you're saying that's no less a commitment than saying there are words - we're both committing to what the paper looks like.
But this is not what I'm trying to say.. . Firstly, the right analogy would be between assuming the paper is blank and assuming it has the soliloquy from Hamlet written on it. The soliloquy from Hamlet is just as good a guess as 'blank', but a different type of commitment, it has baggage. Secondly, to continue the metaphor, we're talking about what the paper is without people. The soliloquy from Hamlet is not the soliloquy from Hamlet without people. It is not even marks on paper (marks are only distinct to people who can distinguish black from white).
In my view everything has a spatial and temporal location, at least defined relationally with respect to other things. (I don't buy the idea of "spacetime" as a thing in itself.)
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 20:23#3448690 likes
We're getting way off topic with fundamental ontology. I want bring you back to the question this whole sideshow seemed to distract from
what is missing from the third party account? — Isaac
I just answered this: the perspective of being those states. — Terrapin Station
But where is that perspective if not in "Particular dynamic state of synapses, neurons, etc"? I'm afraid "At various reference points, including the reference point of being the thing in question." isn't really a coherent location for me. — Isaac
I don't think there's a way to straighten it out for you without you sorting through the more general ontological mess you've gotten yourself into.
Terrapin StationOctober 23, 2019 at 20:32#3448720 likes
I said "to my satisfaction". I prefer consistency, I can't really conceive of a reality that can be two ways at once, so two apparently conflicting models are sufficient to convince me that they can't both be right.
Given your ontology, there's no way to make sense of "this model is right." You don't even believe that there are any objective properties.
For (a) we're talking about some way the world really is,
The way the world really is is perspectival. "Perspective" there isn't referring to persons or their consciousness. It's referring to frames or points of reference (not strictly in the physics sense, so don't be misled to think that I'm strictly talking about Special Relativity) or situatedness--relative spatiotemporal locations. Frames/points of reference can be "of" a person, but they need not be. There's no frame-of-reference-free frame of reference, so to speak, or there's no "view from nowhere." Properties are unique from every point of reference, and there's no preferred point of reference.
For (b) if it is possible for someone to be wrong, then our brains are not inevitably arranged to reflect reality accurately.
They're not infallibly fixed to get things right. That doesn't imply that we can't get things right. To even say that we can't things right would require knowing that things are different than we suppose, but we can't know that unless we know how things are.
I didn't say the absence of properties wasn't a concept. There's a difference though between positing the absence (or skepticism) of properties and the positing of some particular property (light, location, shape etc) as being real.
One is simply agnosticism, the other dogmatism.
You weren't being skeptical. You claimed that there are no objective properties.
There's no frame-of-reference-free frame of reference, so to speak, or there's no "view from nowhere." Properties are unique from every point of reference, and there's no preferred point of reference.
Right. Which is exactly what I'm saying. There is no 'way things are' there's only the 'way things seem from here' or the 'way things seem from there' (where 'here' and 'there' are not here limited to spatial specifications), so where does this leave your "there is a coin"? Only from a certain perspective.
You weren't being skeptical. You claimed that there are no objective properties.
Yes. Like there is no god is skeptical of all God claims. I've not yet been convinced by any so I'm an atheist. I've not yet been convinced by any noumenal properties.
Presumably an important part of consciousness is what things are like experientially to the bearer of the consciousness in question.
How is that an important part of consciousness? Important for what? What do we even mean by, "what things are like experientially to the bearer of the consciousness"? What is a bearer of consciousness and how can something be experientially to it? What does that even mean? I think we take many of these ideas and patterns of speaking for granted without really understanding what it is that we are saying.
So if we can't tackle that scientifically, we have a problem with devising scientific accounts of consciousness. We can just ignore it and not care about it, but then we're ignoring a big part of what we we're supposedly addressing. An alternate track--one that many have taken--is to try to deny that there is such a thing in the first place, or at least deny that it's any different than what things are like outside of consciousness.
The latter is what I would propose because if it's not the same, then how does consciousness and the world interact? What would the experience be about, and then how can things that aren't consciousness be about other things that aren't consciousness?
So let's imagine that there's an experiential state someone is in. This is how what they're doing feels. (edit: pay no attention to the situation and agent demarcations here, they are behind the curtain, there's also a fixity to the experiences in the presentation which arguably is not there - fixed by a phenomenological approach to description itself)
I'm currently in a room, with a mood, and doing some stuff.
I can stratify that into some distinct experiences.
I am in my room, I am curious, reflecting, I am typing on my laptop.
I can stratify those experiences in various ways. One way would be by sensory modality:
Vision: I'm looking at this page on TPF.
Hearing: Ringing in my ears, keyboard clicks.
Bodily position: sitting down.
Touch: fingers on keys, bum sitting down, pressure from headphones.
Thought: state of attention, introspective.
Smell: nothing of note.
Temperature: not of much note, a bit cold maybe.
I can stratify the vision experience into objects with positional relations between them, each object has shapes and colours.
I can stratify the hearing experience into distinct sound sources; ringing in my ears, keyboard clicks, occasional noise from the road outside.
I don't seem to be able to stratify the bodily position experience very well; it is a general sense of attended parts and where I am in the room, different parts are highlighted more or less at different points; my felt bodily position also seems to involve my vision somehow - where is my body? involves vision (but need not...).
I can stratify the fingers on keys into individual keystrokes; decomposing into pressure and... but this relies upon the positional awareness and visual information (where the keys are, the words on the page provide feedback, typo correction etc)
The thought experiences; I dunno, I'm catching thoughts and expressing them, the thoughts come as the words appear on the page; the thought formation and the keystroke experiences intermingle.
Smell: nothing of note, not really part of the experiential state.
Temperature: tied up with position feelings and bodily awareness, different parts are different temperatures, felt temperature variation occurs over my body, the intensities of temperature are not discrete, more a general sense over my body.
Which parts do we attach the label "quale" to?
I can very easily do that with my vision in a limited way; shape qualia and colour qualia - but are there distance qualia (how far something away is)? Brightness qualia? Opacity qualia?
Hearing: well I guess there's a 'what's it like' to have this ringing in my ears, but there are tonal variations, different intensities, the 'position' the sound appears to be emitted from in my ears changes with its pitch. Does each tone have a quale? Each pressure? Each felt location of origination?
Bodily position: interesting really, I'm not aware of most of my body during most of this state of awareness; my state of awareness does not chart every piece of leg, say, just bits of contact with the chair that are deemed relevant (those that are in contact). The "qualia" I'd associate with my leg positions seem to go away when I focus close to my bum, there's just a.. 'leg-bum' location, the contact area is treated as a single experiential unity with differences of intensity over it.
Touch: well, when I'm typing, not every keystroke I type actually has the same quale - is there a G key quale? When I'm hitting the space bar, I don't always notice it. I do always notice the end of the sentence, though. Maybe there are full stop quales. Or are these 'sentence ending" quales?
But I'm not really experiencing the end of the sentence through my sense of touch; there is a pause for thought. The touch quale there is really a thought quale and a bodily position quale (of stopping motion).
I could go on, but this is already long enough. It seems to me that that 'chopping up' of experience that we do prior to applying the label "quale" to it isn't particularly reflective of what it's like at all. What it's like to be in any experiential state is a colossal feedback and intermingling of my senses and thoughts.
And qualia aren't supposed to label "experiential states", they're supposed to label "components" of them. Where do the components come from? What principle distinguishes them? Are these distinctions retroactive or part of the phenomenal character?
It seems to me the types of qualia people usually talk about just aren't so independent or distinctive after all; the principle that individuates the components of phenomenal character is not tracked by the principle of individuation that generates phrases like "red quale".
I don't know if this is where you were going anyway, but I wanted to raise this angle now just in case it wasn't.
What you've said here speaks to the distrust I, and I think you, have about qualia talk (what it's like talk) not being a genuine reflection of experience but a post hoc modelling.
Regular in the literature about qualia (certainly Jackson and Chalmers) is mention of the "experience of redness" or something similar. That there is something it is like to experience red.
But there's obviously no such thing as the experience of red. It simply never happens. So whilst the 'what it's like' talk can be theoretically linked to some experience or other (though I still think there's no referent), talk of it being linked to something like the experience of 'redness' is clearly bogus. No one in the world has ever had an experience of redness, its always been an entire lived event involving a red thing.
its always been an entire lived event involving a red thing.
I think this is about right. I would emphasise, though I don't know if this is relevant to colour specifically, that when we perceive; language and conditioning plays a role, as do innate features of our sensory capacities (like the perception of motion when we step off a boat onto the land, say). The "the table is part of your arm" thing from Ramachandran plays with fundamental bodily processes, but there's also social mediation of perception.
Whatever we experience, we experience in an evaluated context to the task at hand, and what we experience in something can very much be informed by what we've learned. A doctor might be able to (non-figuratively) seeabnormal lung structure in a lung x-ray. Where that 'abnormal' came from isn't something innate to any sense, it's a complex convolution of norms being embedded in our perception, and perception informing norms.
I suspect "norms informing perception" is why it seems so natural to some to describe their experiences as containing "red quales" or "seeing redness". "Perception informing norms" may be why colour words are cultural universals and roughly map onto each other (most of the time). This is more than just a change in vocabulary, experience has an ontology to it, what the 'beings' of experience are (facets of phenomenal character) isn't something we can ignore when studying it.
There's no "brute" sensory information or experiences, there are only relatively autonomous sensory processes that are still context sensitive (illusions, Ramachandran's stuff, lesions); or full blown socially mediated perceptions.
"Classing all the cases together" is a way of talking about the concepts we formulate as such--those are abstractions that range over a number of unique instances. And sure, insofar as we're talking about concepts, that's fine.
What about insofar as we're using concepts to talk about (e.g. compare and sort) the unique instances? Not fine? E.g.,
Given we're both looking at some distinct particular objects classed nonetheless together under the concept (which is to say, under any or all of my and your countless mental instances of the concept) of 'yellow-wavelength-reflecting', I notice that my dynamic brain states during this period all have properties which it is natural for me to class together as (which is to say, under any or all of my countless mental instances of my concept of) yellow (in the mental sense). And I wonder (as y'do) if my concept of mentally-yellow is roughly coextensive with yours, as I assume is the case with our concepts of EMR-yellow, and as might be tested if I got the right kind of acquaintance with your brain states and their properties?
Is that fine?
Terrapin StationOctober 24, 2019 at 21:21#3450850 likes
The first question seems to be about concepts where they aren't abstractions ranging over a number of particular instances. I wouldn't say that would qualify as a concept. It would just be a name and/or description of the particular. ("Description of" isn't really possible without concepts ranging over a number of particulars, though.)
But the paragraph that you're quoting after that question doesn't seem to be what the first question is about. Re the content of that paragraph, I don't think there's any way to experience someone else's consciousness--I think that in principle that is impossible.
I suspect "norms informing perception" is why it seems so natural to some to describe their experiences as containing "red quales" or "seeing redness".
Not sure about this. I think 'redness' as a concept, enters much later than actually informing perception. I seriously wonder how much people do describe their experiences in these terms outside of philosophical qualia talk. I've never heard anyone answer "how was your train journey?" with anything like "well, it was pure 'redness'". 'Red' seems primarily used as a description of external states of affairs, never internal ones. I think there's still some sleight of hand being done here to define a post hoc division of the memory of experience into the 'qualia' of actual experience.
If one were to look at, say, a red wall (about the most purely red but still real thing I can think of). I still think that their 'experience' of seeing that wall would be undivided. The red, the sounds, the texture, the accompanying sounds, the feel of their clothes, the reason why they're staring at a red wall, the curisoty about why the wall is red...
The brain certainly divides things up, different cortices deal with different aspects of the experience, but evidence from synathetes, phantom limb, paraprenalia, psychosis...all indicate very strongly that the consciousness does not have any direct isolated access to those cortices. If it did, then synathetes, for example, would be able to divide up their number identification experience from their colour identification experience prior to the hyper-connection between the two which causes the mixed sensation.
Other than that, your point is well taken, we should include the social environment as well when understanding the extent to which 'experience' is constructed. All of which put together makes a 'redness' quale nothing but a philosophical conceit.
'Red' seems primarily used as a description of external states of affairs, never internal ones. I think there's still some sleight of hand being done here to define a post hoc division of the memory of experience into the 'qualia' of actual experience
Agree that red is a concept. Stuff is also red. There's an interplay between language use and perception; the language we are used to invites us to parse our self reports in accordance with its rules. There are probably effects in the inverse direction; playing with associations of signifiers for dramatic effect. Maybe sometimes we can expect red and see green? Movies, green blooded human = replicant or something, the basis of surprise there.
Unsure the internal/external distinction makes sense for most things like this. When your phenomenal self model (Metzinger) can assimilate to include a table, or when your apartment becomes a living memory bank (alzheimers patients); the boundaries break down due to what is involved with what. It seems more productive to think of these structures as ones of involvement that span the distinction between mind and body, rather than retroactively imposing more categorical distinctions which don't seem to be there. To my mind:
is a chain of associations that acts to straitjacket thought; a madness purporting to be its own cure. Thinking in these terms generates access and interaction problems everywhere that the manifest relations between each pole have already undermined; why ask how can when we can already ask how? I hope we can eat just the best bits of these concepts' already dead bodies.
The brain certainly divides things up, different cortices deal with different aspects of the experience, but evidence from synathetes, phantom limb, paraprenalia, psychosis...all indicate very strongly that the consciousness does not have any direct isolated access to those cortices. If it did, then synathetes, for example, would be able to divide up their number identification experience from their colour identification experience prior to the hyper-connection between the two which causes the mixed sensation.
Yes! Components seem to call other components, there's both specialisation and plasticity, relative independence and specificity; seemingly contextually (sensorimotor process, social cue etc) dependent too. Reflection seems to be a high effort process that reorganises (stratifies/contextualises/conjectures) pre-reflective (and evolutionarily older) bodily processes; it takes time. What this doesn't preclude, however, is that someone's ideas can change cultural norms which change... You see what I mean.
All of which put together makes a 'redness' quale nothing but a philosophical conceit.
I certainly think it's a retrojection to put it back into experience without heavy qualifications. I'm quite happy with "red" though.
Aside: a friend of mine is a synesthete. He had numbers and letters with colours. He let me experiment on him for a bit, drew him a few pictures and made a powerpoint slide - studying, say, how far away would two 0's need to be on a page before they got seen as an 8. He could tell that from what colour association he saw from the image. I made him something like this abomination:
so it would be like a Necker Cube for his synesthetic sight. Apparently very disorienting. The different colours shifted to reflect the gestalt form of the image (whether overall it's an 8, or focussing on the 1 interconnections, or the individual 9s...). The most interesting thing there seemed to be that his attention coincided with the synesthetic impression; even though he didn't seem aware of or able to tell which gestalt shifts would occur when just looking at the image. I guess that's not surprising if it's neurological-architecture-of-sensorimotor-systems deep; he may as well have been trying to exert the vaunted force of his will over the micromovements of his eyes.
He could also smell the letter U, it was palma violets (lavendery-violety-lilacy sweeties), from the previous stuff with the 0's and 8's we found out that continuous transformation (translation on a powerpoint slide) eventually produced a gestalt shift and changed the synesthetic impression. The letter C was just gold for him.
So I picked a font where C and U were rotated copies of each other, and slowly rotated C to U. The gestalt shift caused him considerable feelings of panic, which is perhaps not so surprising.
We are not used to a colour rotating into a smell.
sometimes we can expect red and see green? Movies, green blooded human = replicant or something, the basis of surprise there.
Yeah, I get what you mean now. The expectation of red informs the perception in some way unique to 'red'. 'Red' I can definitely do. 'Redness' I think should be consigned to use only by printers and paint manufacturers!
Unsure the internal/external distinction makes sense for most things like this. When your phenomenal self model (Metzinger) can assimilate to include a table, or when your apartment becomes a living memory bank (alzheimers patients); the boundaries break down due to what is involved with what. It seems more productive to think of these structures as ones of involvement that span the distinction between mind and body, rather than retroactively imposing more categorical distinctions which don't seem to be there
You're absolutely right. One of the biggest problems with my writing here is laziness. I generally write on the phone whilst supposedly doing other things, and mostly when I write my thoughts race ahead of my writing. They seem to impatiently call back to my actual written words "come on, that'll do, we've got more stuff for you to translate". I often end up writing stuff even I don't believe just to get the ideas that surround it down before the next ones take over.
So my apologies to anyone having to pick up the slack of my sloppy writing. I agree internal/external is an unhelpful distinction. I suppose what I was trying to say was more something like 'red' being used primarily in a technical sense, to communicate some fact about an object, rather than in an experiential sense.
Wonderful stuff with your synasthete friend. My daughter has synaesthesia, but we learnt early on that most experiments of that kind made her extremely panicky (having a two psychologists for parents is not always a good thing, but we did stop experimenting eventually, promise). As I'm sure you know, the panic is the brain's response to contradictory information, just like travel sickness (motion feedback from the eyes, no motion feedback from the body). The interesting thing, for me, is the strong extent to which most of what we think of as our model of reality is the brain's kind of buffer against this panic. Most sensations, including memory-based ones, are actually contradictory to some extent. The stories our brain tells us, the illusion of self, is all about minimising the confusion. I think that's why we love stories so much.
I often end up writing stuff even I don't believe just to get the ideas that surround it down before the next ones take over.
I figured you were all about the extended mind stuff, I wasn't just writing for you there, I wanted to highlight that it's easy to use a vocabulary that we're used to that nevertheless contradicts the nature of the topic. Sort of like trying to draw on white paper with white chalk.
(having a two psychologists for parents is not always a good thing, but we did stop experimenting eventually, promise).
I can't imagine not being academically interested in your kid if you're academically inclined. I'm more surprised that you stopped experimenting than that you started!
he panic is the brain's response to contradictory information, just like travel sickness (motion feedback from the eyes, no motion feedback from the body). The interesting thing, for me, is the strong extent to which most of what we think of as our model of reality is the brain's kind of buffer against this panic. Most sensations, including memory-based ones, are actually contradictory to some extent. The stories our brain tells us, the illusion of self, is all about minimising the confusion. I think that's why we love stories so much.
This is very cool. Do you have a citation for this type of account? I'm a bit skeptical that "panic" is one sort of thing; my understanding of it neurologically, which is probably wrong, is that it's a neural/endocrine response to some threat that sets off a bunch of bodily cascades (including behavioural), the "threat" can be really abstract; nowadays a work meeting can be a tiger in the bush. It seems to me the underlying threat (threat in general, like kidney the organ) is unanticipated but now sufficiently negatively valueddifferences rather than contradictory information sources (not talking about people who get the panic response due to anticipation or memory here I guess too?). Anyway, these are causal types rather than causal instances; "excessive caloric intake causes weight gain" vs "if I keep eating 1 kg of carrot cake every day I'm going to be obese very soon".
it's easy to use a vocabulary that we're used to that nevertheless contradicts the nature of the topic. Sort of like trying to draw on white paper with white chalk.
Yes, I've lost count of the number of times in this topic I've wanted to actually use the expression "what it's like" despite disagreeing that it means anything at all! Academic technicalities can end up creating their own referrents, castles in the air, and they leach into topics where they do not belong.
I can't imagine not being academically interested in your kid if you're academically inclined. I'm more surprised that you stopped experimenting than that you started!
Oh, you wouldn't believe the number of experiments we've surreptitiously carried out, it's a wonder they're sane!
m a bit skeptical that "panic" is one sort of thing; my understanding of it neurologically, which is probably wrong, is that it's a neural/endocrine response to some threat that sets off a bunch of bodily cascades (including behavioural), the "threat" can be really abstract; nowadays a work meeting can be a tiger in the bush.
Yes, that's quite right, but the brain seems to perceive an inconsistent environment as one of the bigger threats. It's possibly an attached consequence of our reliance on 3d integrated modelling of our environment (catching hold of a tree branch swinging towards you is actually really hard and takes up the vast majority of our brains). So, the idea of panic (and I should stress this is all highly speculative) is that it shuts down certain systems, particularly automotive ones, so that we don't go jumping from branch to branch when we're not sure where the next branch is.
Ever wondered what the evolutionary advantage could possibly be of legs turning to jelly at the exact moment you need to run away from said tiger in the bush?
but the brain seems to perceive an inconsistent environment as one of the bigger threats.
That makes sense. Sudden noises, people going apeshit on shrooms, forgetting your keys, leaving the oven on while you're out... I wonder what the scope of environment is there? I guess as abstract as can be habituated within. (germaphobe panic response? "your disease only makes sense in the light of our understanding of infection and contamination..")
Ever wondered what the evolutionary advantage could possibly be of legs turning to jelly at the exact moment you need to run away from said tiger in the bush?
I thought it was so you could politely ask the girl to go on top.
I wonder what the scope of environment is there? I guess as abstract as can be habituated within.
Good question, I hope not so wide as to end up saying nothing useful at all. I'd agree that it has to be first habituated, but it does seem to be strongly linked to sensory inputs too, so habituated conceptual environments don't seem to have the same effect. Faced with conceptually contradictory knowledge, people tend to become more entrenched in the original concept, so there's still some strong incentive in the brain towards predictability, but real panic (failing limbs, sweating, fainting etc..) seems to need sensory initiates, even if hallucinatory ones.
So, one interesting study here (I'll try to find it) was to do with panic attacks among hyperchodriacs. Here, what they thought they'd found, which would apply to the public speaker, the exam, the first date etc, was that a normal preparation (raised heart rate etc) was being picked up on and the brain was kind of going "hey, why's my heart beating faster, there's no tiger I can see" and panicking about the difference between the autosomal information and the perceptual information and completely ignoring the conceptual information that would have made sense of it all.
so habituated conceptual environments don't seem to have the same effect.
My (broadly Humean) guess is that concepts typically are learned associations; iterated relations of relations of neural patterns (patterns of patterns..., patterns articulating previous patterns partially articulating previous patterns partially articulating...) that interface less strongly with the neural architecture for sensation. There's something about energy expenditure in thought and parts of the brain which are involved too (prefrontal cortex shit, an imagined - my fanfiction - neural basis for Kahnnemann's 2 system approach).
So my take is: concepts mediate and inspire bodily processes and comportments rather than being strongly (probabilistically) tied to the neural architecture involved with executing (most types) of them. Concepts; and the contexts they are articulated in; are reflective, usually calm, memory and imagination focussed (most of the time), so any strong feelings are likely to be felt as through a memory or an anticipation; if strong feeling happens it's probably leveraging some architectural shortcut (limbic shit, "that's unnatural" = "I am disgusted") or (non exclusively) intermediary strong association between cogitation and the other association schemes of neural patterns ("If I'm wrong on the internet my identity is a lie"). No one runs away from a keyboard in panic while typing, but guys do sometimes smash their computer in nerd rage.
"hey, why's my heart beating faster, there's no tiger I can see" and panicking about the difference between the autosomal information and the perceptual information and completely ignoring the conceptual information that would have made sense of it all.
That's really cool. Do you think there's any correspondence with model averaging in stats, if you're familiar? If we imagine anticipation and memory as models of input states based on previous patterns of association; there might be more than one anticipation (model) running at once; a multithreading of thought-action chains (neural+sensorimotor impetus for the body's comportment, including thoughts) that originate in multiple places; these will amplify and die out in accordance with continual feedback (models learning different weights); but the feedback mechanism might 'get stuck' in a certain pattern of valuation. Edit: perhaps when, say, two patterns (which are models in this analogy) generate predictions (anticipations) that are "valued" very highly by each other? (edit: analogy breaks down a lot here, models and loss functions... stupid loss functions).
Edit: oooh, random thought, if there are lots of models permeating the brain at once, any proposed model could be evaluated relative to any other one in terms of difference in predictions, and we'd get a domination effect if the models modulated eachothers' behaviour to be more in accord with what the 'most typical' model was proposing - so we model until we have annihilated differences in expectations/anticipations (sources of panic) coming from aberrantly proposed models. The hypochondriac's situation model down weights any mere conceptual mediation; it differs too strongly from the anticipations generated through the autosomal and perceptual decoupling), so 'forcing oneself to think' contrary to the situation doesn't do much (maybe the multithreadeded bits don't always implicate themselves in the bits that generate our phenomenal awareness... uncountable subselves appearing and dying to the routine of our personality).
"Classing all the cases together" is a way of talking about the concepts we formulate as such--those are abstractions that range over a number of unique instances. And sure, insofar as we're talking about concepts, that's fine.
— Terrapin Station
What about insofar as we're using concepts to talk about (e.g. compare and sort) the unique instances?
[That] question seems to be about concepts where they aren't abstractions ranging over a number of particular instances. I wouldn't say that would qualify as a concept. It would just be a name and/or description of the particular. ("Description of" isn't really possible without concepts ranging over a number of particulars, though.)
Oh, I get it. I'm right to interpret your "concepts" as mental events analogous to general terms like adjectives. (No?) But when I blithely speak of using them to sort particulars you are alarmed because you see a general term as naming (or pointing at or designating or referring to) a whole class of or abstraction from the instances, as an entity in its own right. You can't see it referring to a particular and still being general? (Correct me.)
But can't a nominalist deny the class or abstraction, and reconstrue a general statement (e.g. a predication or attribution or description) quite simply as shared naming, i.e. as ascribing the property to, or simply pointing out and thereby sorting under the term, all of the instances, severally? I'm not saying that approach doesn't throw up problems. But it's what I was about in the second paragraph.
Re the content of that paragraph, I don't think there's any way to experience someone else's consciousness--I think that in principle that is impossible.
Fair enough. Inconceivable, even? If my ability to compare my successive mental events (dynamic brain states) is afforded by continuous neural connection between them, couldn't I in principle get a similar bridge between mine and yours? I mean I can quite believe it might be inconceivable on your view. Just trying to see the view.
Terrapin StationOctober 25, 2019 at 13:49#3452850 likes
Oh, I get it. I'm right to interpret your "concepts" as mental events analogous to general terms like adjectives. (No?) But when I blithely speak of using them to sort particulars you are alarmed because you see a general term as naming (or pointing at or designating or referring to) a whole class of or abstraction from the instances, as an entity in its own right. You can't see it referring to a particular and still being general? (Correct me.)
But can't a nominalist deny the class or abstraction, and reconstrue a general statement (e.g. a predication or attribution or description) quite simply as shared naming, i.e. as ascribing the property to, or simply pointing out and thereby sorting under the term, all of the instances, severally? I'm not saying that approach doesn't throw up problems. But it's what I was about in the second paragraph.
I'm still confused about what you're getting at here. Concepts are a means of calling/considering phenomenon a and phenomenon b the "same thing"--namely whatever the concept term is. So I think we used "yellow" as an example. That way you can see the color of, say, a car and the color of a guitar and use the term "yellow" for both. (Which is using a general term--that's what concepts are, and referring to particulars--the particular yellow of that particular car--for example, if that answers that question).
I don't know how someone could deny that we do this--that we utilize concepts this way, because if we don't utilize concepts that way, then language is impossible. It would just be a string of proper names (effectively) with never-ending variety . . . and even then, writing would be difficult, because the whole idea of writing "g" and having a particular repeatable set of sounds indicated by it is a concept per what I describe above.
Terrapin StationOctober 25, 2019 at 14:31#3453060 likes
Right. Which is exactly what I'm saying. There is no 'way things are' there's only the 'way things seem from here' or the 'way things seem from there' (where 'here' and 'there' are not here limited to spatial specifications), so where does this leave your "there is a coin"? Only from a certain perspective.
That wasn't at all what I was saying though. I'm not talking about seeming first off (or not just about that--again this is not about consciousness). There is a way that things are, but the way that things are is always from some point of reference. Things aren't identical from every point of reference. That's not a seeming. That's a reality.
Because the whole gist of it is (subjective) experience.
How is it subjective when your experience is part of the world and is an effect and a cause of other things? What does that even mean to insert, "subjective" into this?
We don't have direct access to apples either. We are stuck in our own heads.
How is it subjective when your experience is part of the world
Is there a reason to believe that I'd say that "subjective" implies "not a part of the world"? No. It's subjective because we're talking about a brain functioning in a mental way, and that can only be experienced/observed by the brain in question. It's a phenomenon, in the world, that only occurs from the perspective of being a particular material in particular states.
Both of which aren't conscious-like, so how does consciousness get input from the senses and produce output in our behavior?
Your eyes, for example, send information (electrochemical signals) to your brain. Your consciousness is your brain functioning in particular ways. Likewise your brain sends signals to muscles and so on so that you can speak, move your limbs, etc. Why in the world would I need to explain this to you? Are we in kindergarten or something?
Concepts are a means of calling/considering phenomenon a and phenomenon b the "same thing"--namely whatever the concept term is. So I think we used "yellow" as an example. That way you can see the color of, say, a car and the color of a guitar and use the term "yellow" for both. (Which is using a general term--that's what concepts are, and referring to particulars--the particular yellow of that particular car--for example, if that answers that question).
"Classing all the cases together" is a way of talking about the concepts we formulate as such--those are abstractions that range over a number of unique instances.
With respect to the object (the objective stuff), it's the fact that it reflects that wavelength of EMR, sure.
... where "yellow" is applying wherever the physical definition is satisfied, and by the way we clearly are "classing all the cases together" yet talking about instances as much as concepts... and then on the other hand,
In terms of our experience, it's a particular dynamic state of synapses, neurons, etc.
... where I just thought it made sense to point out that we would likewise be distinguishing cases of mentally-yellow from mentally-non-yellow (and again using the concept to sort the instances but not thereby be talking about concepts), despite having no corresponding physical definition of when a (unique) brain state or brain state property counts under someone's general concept of mentally-yellow.
Do you not intend your example of the car and the guitar to play out on both levels, objectual and mental, in roughly this way?
Shouldn't it make sense to discuss the extensions of our phenomenal colour concepts as well as, and perhaps in relation to, the more easily defined extensions of physical colour concepts?
They have experiences. Those experiences have properties.
You say it that way.
What if I said: Things appear (where 'thing' is taken in the broadest sense as objects, processes, colours, basically anything you can think of). What is it then that "has" properties? Are not properties just among the "things" that appear (if we allow that shapes, colours, textures and so on are even separable from shaped, coloured and textured objects)?
creativesoulOctober 26, 2019 at 05:58#3455950 likes
It seems to me that that 'chopping up' of experience that we do prior to applying the label "quale" to it isn't particularly reflective of what it's like at all. What it's like to be in any experiential state is a colossal feedback and intermingling of my senses and thoughts.
...what in this experience furnishes the distinction between the shape and the colour of the table?
Very well put fdrake.
Taking account of having the experience is itself it's own experience. Thinking intently about all the different aspects of one's experience is much the same experience aside from it need not be spoken, but could be, if need be. It's precisely what it's like to think about our own thought and belief.
Language used as a tool to slice up(think about) our experience... that's what furnishes the distinction between the shape and colour of the table.
creativesoulOctober 26, 2019 at 06:07#3455990 likes
What if I said: Things appear (where 'thing' is taken in the broadest sense as objects, processes, colours, basically anything you can think of). What is it then that "has" properties? Are not properties just among the "things" that appear (if we allow that shapes, colours, textures and so on are even separable from shaped, coloured and textured objects)?
So my take is: concepts mediate and inspire bodily processes and comportments rather than being strongly (probabilistically) tied to the neural architecture involved with executing (most types) of them.
Right, so this is where the Bayseian Brain feedback stuff comes in (that I gave you the link to in PM). I think your model is right, but the conceptual stuff does seem to be able to make some pretty strong links with the neurons involved in executing bodily processes, so that leaves us with the slightly puzzling question of why concepts around what words, images mean to us (which can only possibly be learnt culturally) can have a massive impact on how we gather data, and how we respond to it (even subconsciously), and yet concepts like "It's OK, it's just my heart beating faster because I'm nervous", or "it's OK that the world is moving past but I'm sat still because I'm in a car", don't seem to be able to exert that same level of feedback control in panic attacks.
The most obvious answer (and my personal favourite because I've seen it work in therapeutic environments), is that they can exert that level of feedback, and the reason they don't generally is exactly to do with Kahnnemann's system 2 energy requirements, as you suggest. It's just too damn hard.
A little digression, but a worthy one, there's yet another book which I strongly recommend by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir called 'Scarcity'. It's basically about economical psychology, and it's very good, but in it they develop the idea of bandwidth. Simply because of the energy requirements of the brain, we cannot think of too many things at once, it's like we all have a bandwidth throttle. This really only applies to the frontal cortex, and even then to limited sections of it, as the post-natal development of the brain isolates some important parts (possibly because of this problem, like reserved bandwidth for the important bits). I think that's why bringing new concepts to bear on sensory inputs and bodily feedback is so damn hard, but not impossible. Digression over.
That's really cool. Do you think there's any correspondence with model averaging in stats, if you're familiar? If we imagine anticipation and memory as models of input states based on previous patterns of association; there might be more than one anticipation (model) running at once; a multithreading of thought-action chains (neural+sensorimotor impetus for the body's comportment, including thoughts) that originate in multiple places; these will amplify and die out in accordance with continual feedback (models learning different weights); but the feedback mechanism might 'get stuck' in a certain pattern of valuation. Edit: perhaps when, say, two patterns (which are models in this analogy) generate predictions (anticipations) that are "valued" very highly by each other? (edit: analogy breaks down a lot here, models and loss functions... stupid loss functions).
This is unbelievably close to Karl Friston's work on Bayesian feedback in brain processes. The first time I read through what you wrote I thought of his work, but on the second reading it's almost identical, astonishing. This article gives an overview.
There's no way to check anything about any model if there are no objective properties. What would you be checking?
Whether it works. Whether you think it helps you achieve whatever it is you're trying to achieve with it (prediction usually, but also justification, comfort...)
There is a way that things are, but the way that things are is always from some point of reference.
Then how is that a property of the thing and not of the point of reference (or the two combined). If that point of reference suddenly popped out of existence, what would happen to the 'properties' the object had that were only from that point of reference?
How if biology is a concept you created and it has no properties independent of that?
You're confusing concepts I create with concepts I voluntarily create. My nominalism here doesn't fit in with your magic free-will woo I'm afraid, so the idea that my mind creates these concepts is not necessarily synonymous with any ability to control them.
.......implies two separate and distinct mechanisms from which concepts arise. Is that what you meant to suggest?
Yes, I think of concepts arising in one of three ways (mostly based on standard child development work). There are clearly concepts we're born with (spatiotemporal models for one), then a whole bunch seem to come along immediately post-natally (object permanence for example), then the refinements come in adolescence/adulthood (social theories, science etc).
The first are virtually impossible to change (though in childhood, ways round them can be constructed), the second are very hard to change, and third are fairly malleable by comparison.
How can both inhere in a pure wetware environment? In effect, law is subsumed by mere rule, which contradicts itself.
What do you mean by "mere rule". Isn't a contingent just as powerful as a law. Isn't a contingent just a law that describes a necessary function - if->then? Markov chains are perfectly computable are they not?
The question then arises, how is it possible to distinguish whether concepts arise from different mechanisms, or concepts arise by degree from a simpliciter, or, divide into simpliciters from a whole, from one mechanism? The obvious answer would seem to be, the difference in concept kind, or, the difference in their respective application, demonstrates the difference in their respective source.
Is it not reasonable to suppose, that if concepts arise from different mechanisms, they should be different in and of themselves? It follows necessarily that if the difference in concepts is given, there needs be a faculty whose sole modus operandi is to determine, not which concept but which kind of concept, is required for that which concepts are designed to accomplish. Then, have we not succeeded in complicating the human rational system without proper warrant?
Isn't a contingent just a law that describes a necessary function - if->then?
I thought that was called a conditional. There are lawful conditionals, yes; “if/then” is merely a form of cause/effect, which has the power of law in its a priori principles. There are no lawful contingents.
I reject the idea that contingency has the power of law. Law incorporates the principles of universality and necessity, whereas rule does not. Mathematics being the prime example: if the human understanding of mathematical principle doesn’t hold no matter where a human finds himself, he has no access to knowledge whatsoever, at least in his present evolutionary status.
Although, in the Grand Scheme of Things of course, everything is contingent because absolute truth is unknown. Even so, we generate conditions under which understanding is prevented from contradicting itself, and the predicates of law are such.
Then, have we not succeeded in complicating the rationally system without proper warrant?
I think what @Isaac is imagining as a concept is quite different from, in virtue of being a more general form of, ideas about what we do with rationality. Philosophical concepts like justice or modus ponens or "The Private Language Argument" are just one type of concept (I think) in what Isaac is discussing.
We can populate an entire philosophy through (rational/reflective) concepts, concept generating mechanisms (interpretive paradigms, ordinary language philosophy and deconstruction, say), conceptual links (logical inference, induction, ampliative reasoning). These concepts are for the most part articulable; we know of them, we can relate to them as (roughly) distinct objects or themes, we can write about them, discussion surrounding them allows them to propagate, research about involved topics allows the concept to grow. This is an apophantic domain. Broadly concerned with articulation in language; declaratives, knowing that, knowing how to reason; how to think rationally. This is typically the domain we study in epistemology (what are items of knowledge, how do we know what we know). It's the surface of a much deeper sea.
But that's just one type of concept (with this reading of it); if you try to articulate how you would catch a ball, you'd probably only be able to do something like; "Keep your eye on it, judge the distance and speed, raise your hand and make the best corrections you can to your position to grab the ball"; "judge the distance and speed" there isn't apophantic; it's pre-reflective even. We can't articulate that kind of concept so readily; it's a know-how, an embodied concept, requiring adaptive regulation between our body's state and the ball's state through how we process our senses and integrate information from all of 'em and about ourselves. The modes of linkage between the ball and our body are much different from the modes that link concepts in argument and rational thought. This is what lays below the surface.
When we reason, we do a lot of borrowing from what lays below the surface, and we do so without being aware of it. The kind of mechanism that notices a contradiction between propositions is probably a more abstract form of the kind of thing that notices a discrepancy between the ball and the position of my body; reasoning is (well, conjecture with some evidence) just one way of attenuating discrepancies and forecasting our actions.
Seeing the world from a purely apophantic viewpoint; an ontology of properties and objects, concepts, subjects and predicates, propositions and propositional content -minds and bodies even; misses a lot. And for analysing ourselves, it's a disastrous error; it stops us asking where all that shit comes from and how it works.
But when we reason, we can't avoid taking something similar to that perspective; but we can be aware of the blinkers it prediposes us to and cultivate habits of thought that circumvent them (hyper reflection). Moreover, it's not always relevant to think about this stuff: we don't need a neurological description of a bad argument to practice critical thinking. We're still active beings no matter how we describe ourselves.
The question then arises, how is it possible to distinguish whether concepts arise from different mechanisms, or concepts arise by degree from a simpliciter, or, divide into simpliciters from a whole, from one mechanism?
For me, a combination of neuroscience and psychology, but I don't suppose that's the only way.
Concepts, for me, are just dispositions to behave, I don't divide ideas from the behaviour they entail, and, being a physicalist, those dispositions have to be brain states, the physical cause of certain behaviour in response to certain stimuli.
It's just that talking about them as if they were this is totally unhelpful because we can't get outside of them. We can't talk conceptless language to articulate, or categorise concepts. Like trying to arrange items in a drawer when one of the items is the drawer.
So we take the first group (of the three I mentioned in the last post) at least, as a given, probably much of the second group too (immediate post-natal concepts) even when examining the neuroscientific basis of those very groups. Personally, that doesn't fill me with the existential confusion professed by the "hard problem" crowd.
The thing is not to see these 'concepts' as static input/output machines, but as Markov-like calculating devices, capable of subtlety adjusting their structures in response to stimuli, so as to produce something different in different circumstances. So it's not really fully described by if/then laws, I don't know how to parse it in if/then logic, but it would be something like...
If A then B (where B is "change A a bit, its not quite right, I was expecting it to do C").
Coming back to this draft, I see @fdrake has already explained this.
The kind of mechanism that notices a contradiction between propositions is probably a more abstract form of the kind of thing that notices a discrepancy between the ball and the position of my body; reasoning is (well, conjecture with some evidence) just one way of attenuating discrepancies and forecasting our actions.
Absolutely.
This is exactly the kind of unification (or rather avoiding an artificial divide) between action and the concepts that dispose one to it. The 'law of non-contradiction' is no more than "I can't do that and that".
I don’t understand the sense of “contingency” people seem to be using here. As I know that word, it’s just the negation of necessity: something is contingent if and only if it’s not necessary.
Logical contingency (in this context) might be A=B (when C). I'm no logician so I'm sure there's a more accurate way of putting it.
In the brain we could say A is sensory input, B is the response (signals to other areas, production of neurotransmitters, production of neural extension) and C are various environmental and mood circumstances.
The difficulty with applying the term to the way the brain seems to work is that one possible B is to change A. A is not faithfully reported from some objective external state of affairs, the report is biased by the response to it.
True. "Earth" is just a name, "concept" is just a name, in fact all proper nouns are just names. Were you trying to point out something more than just that?
creativesoulOctober 26, 2019 at 21:58#3458130 likes
Are we naming something that exists in it's entirety prior to our name? If so, what supportive argument are we using to say that? If it's simply because we say so - by definitional fiat - then that's inadequate here. The saying so requires some knowledge of what the thing being named consists of.
As it pertains to the thread, and the notion of properties and their part in our experience, well it gets interesting when the person using the notion explains how properties play a role in experience.
Yes, I think of concepts arising in one of three ways (mostly based on standard child development work). There are clearly concepts we're born with (spatiotemporal models for one), then a whole bunch seem to come along immediately post-natally (object permanence for example), then the refinements come in adolescence/adulthood (social theories, science etc).
I'm not convinced this is helpful. In trying to diversify your conceptualization of what constitutes a concept I think you are, ironically, in danger of flattening the distinctions between basic intuitions or cognition (your first category), inductive or habit-induced expectations (your second category) and concepts as they are ordinarily conceived.
It seems reasonable to think your first two categories are shared by animals. Concepts as ordinarily understood are dependent on symbolic language.
it's a know-how, an embodied concept, requiring adaptive regulation between our body's state and the ball's state through how we process our senses and integrate information from all of 'em and about ourselves.
I think that would better be called an embodied cognition than an embodied concept, since animals do these kinds of things just as well as we do.
Reply to creativesoul So do properties, for you, exist prior to our naming them? I think it is reasonable to say that they do, but they are not in any way separate from, or "had by" or "attached to" things (much less experiences!), as naming can make them seem to be.
creativesoulOctober 26, 2019 at 22:50#3458300 likes
So do properties, for you, exist prior to our naming them? I think it is reasonable to say that they do, but they are not in any way separate from, or "had by" or "attached to" things, as naming can make them seem to be.
So, if I read you correctly, you're claiming that properties are not in any way separate from things.
I'm inclined to agree with that. Different, but not separate.
Some things exist in their entirety prior to our naming them. The properties of such things must also exist prior to our naming them if such things consist, in part at least, of those properties.
Some things exist in their entirety prior to our naming them. The properties of such things must also exist prior to our naming them if such things consist, in part at least, of those properties
The question then arises, how is it possible to distinguish whether concepts arise from different mechanisms, or concepts arise by degree from a simpliciter, or, divide into simpliciters from a whole, from one mechanism?
I'm not convinced this is helpful...I think that would better be called an embodied cognition than an embodied concept, since animals do these kinds of things just as well as we do.
Why is it unhelpful to have an understanding of conceptual architecture which does not distinguish us as well from animals? Or conversely, what is it about distinguishing us from other animals that is so helpful it must be maintained in any understanding of neural systems?
I think that would better be called an embodied cognition than an embodied concept, since animals do these kinds of things just as well as we do.
I think that's a nice corrective, but I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water. I did consider writing "embodied cognition", but I didn't think that conveyed well (in context) that embodied cognition has sub processes that inter link. "an embodied cognition" might've been better.
I also wanted to portray the relevance of embodied cognition to conception; so using concept in both places seemed appropriate. Conception still leverages body stuff that we usually take as conceptually unrelated to it.
Reply to fdrake A panpsychist would be comfortable with "embodied cognition."
We do experience the world. The universe experiences itself via us. Drop the mysticism and see it as an amazing scientific challenge, not a philosophical one.
It’s a fine line between comparison and relation. It suffices to say comparison, when the rational chronology is from knowledge backwards to perception, insofar as knowledge may or may not compare one-to-one apodectically with the object. In the case of that chronology from perception forward to knowledge, which is the major concern of reason anyway, wherein all procedural methodology is strictly a priori, the much more general relational operative is better suited for deducing precisely what the object is, out of the manifold of possible objects it might be.
What if I said: Things appear (where 'thing' is taken in the broadest sense as objects, processes, colours, basically anything you can think of). What is it then that "has" properties? Are not properties just among the "things" that appear (if we allow that shapes, colours, textures and so on are even separable from shaped, coloured and textured objects)?
First, properties definitely are NOT separable in that way.
It seems like you're asking about things having properties sans experience, which is fine, but presumably you're not just saying there's no experience period, are you? (In other words, you'd just be saying that there is no consciousness/no conscious beings, etc.)
I can’t walk and walk. Isn’t that more incomprehensible than contradictory? I didn’t think comprehension to be the proper measure of contradiction.
Two different 'that' s. I thought that might be clear from the context. All I mean is that some seemingly abstract concepts like the law of non-contradiction need not be represented in the neural architecture as a single concept at, but merely present in each model. So the spatiotemporal model would deny the possibility of being both 'there' and not 'there', the somatomal models denies both sensation and no sensation, etc...
I figured as much, that you were intending “I can’t do this and that”. It would be semantically nit-picky, if we were talking about anything except the logical law, which doesn’t allow any ambiguity.
Aristotle would shake his head in great dismay to hear us talk of “two different that’s”.
creativesoulOctober 27, 2019 at 17:40#3460600 likes
The question then arises, how is it possible to distinguish whether concepts arise from different mechanisms, or concepts arise by degree from a simpliciter, or, divide into simpliciters from a whole, from one mechanism?
It’s a fine line between comparison and relation. It suffices to say comparison, when the rational chronology is from knowledge backwards to perception, insofar as knowledge may or may not compare one-to-one apodectically with the object. In the case of that chronology from perception forward to knowledge, which is the major concern of reason anyway, wherein all procedural methodology is strictly a priori, the much more general relational operative is better suited for deducing precisely what the object is, out of the manifold of possible objects it might be.
So, we're talking about methodological approach here, aren't we? I find some of the language quite unhelpful. Unnecessarily complex.
If the question is how is it possible to distinguish whether concepts arise from different mechanisms, or by degree from a simpliciter, or divide into simpliciters from a whole, aren't we asking two questions about our candidate?
What does it consist of?
What is it existentially dependent upon?
creativesoulOctober 27, 2019 at 18:13#3460660 likes
Another broader point, I think, is that in order to determine a relation(or lack thereof) between two concepts, in order to even make a comparison between a plurality of things, we must first know the answers to the aforementioned questions. That is required prior to being able to determine the relation, or perform a comparative analysis.
So, we're talking about methodological approach here, aren't we?
Dunno about anybody else, but I am. No one denies that humans do things, but examination of methodology is required for understanding how it is possible those things are done. If there is an interest in it, of course.
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If the question is how is it possible to distinguish whether concepts arise from different mechanisms, or by degree from a simpliciter, or divide into simpliciters from a whole, aren't we asking two questions about our candidate?
Not so much about the candidate, for the candidate, in this case, a concept, is presupposed. In effect, we are asking two questions about possible mechanisms which serve as sources of the candidate.
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If the question is how is it possible to distinguish whether concepts arise from different mechanisms, or by degree from a simpliciter, or divide into simpliciters from a whole, aren't we asking two questions about our candidate? 1.) What does it consist of? And 2.) What is it existentially dependent upon?
Because the candidate is presupposed, it’s existence is given but that of which it consists is at this point, irrelevant, because the source that facilitates its existence has yet to be determined.
1.) Without a source, there is no indication of what kind of concept it is, nor what it is used for, which makes its constituency moot. Not to mention, there is no indication concepts have a constituency, even if they absolutely must have a source. After the source is identified, it is the purview of the logical laws of rational thought, as to whether or not a concept has the capacity to do its job as reason asks. Whether or not the concept is drawn from the correct source, is the determining factor of its employment, not that of which it consists.
2.) That which a concept is existentially dependent upon, is the entirety of the argument, is the only potentially informative question to be asked about concepts, for from that, both 1.) and 2.) are answerable.
Back to methodology. Reason the verb, is of course, a procedural methodology. A speculative procedural methodology predicated on logical relations. Logical relations having to do with what we think about the world as it appears, with respect to the world as it actually is.
All that to say this: you’re on record as saying we are too far apart in our thinking, so.....enough is enough, right?
creativesoulOctober 27, 2019 at 20:15#3460970 likes
I'm more than willing to continue this one. Are you?
Sure. I’m old, retired and lazy. Perfect for philosophical musings. Have to acknowledge, however, we’ll bore the holy bejesus outta the physicalists, anthropologists, empirical psychologists in the audience, as well as the subjective idealists and phenomenalists. Hell...just about every -ist ever invented, except maybe empirical realists, and even those guys are apt to shrug off most speculative metaphysics.
creativesoulOctober 27, 2019 at 21:10#3461290 likes
How can we know what a concept is existentially dependent upon if we do not know what a concept consists of?
Would it matter, if concepts don’t consist of anything? What does a notion consist of? An idea? Other than to say what each of those does, or from whence they arise, what else can be said about them? If objects are predicated on the concepts that characterize them, how is it possible to characterize the concept, except with another concept, which tells us nothing about the constituency of concepts.
What do you think is the constituency of concepts?
creativesoulOctober 27, 2019 at 21:16#3461310 likes
Concepts do not correlate different things. Thinking and believing creatures do, and they do so by virtue of drawing correlations and/or associations between different things. Concepts are developed by virtue of drawing correlations between names and referents.
Reply to Janus You may be interested in this as well. It has everything to do with our earlier exchange, and it ties directly into a much earlier conversation in the Kripke thread(reading group).
Oh, ok. We draw correlations and concepts are the results of the correlation of names and things named. Does that mean the thing and the named thing are things of thought or things of belief then?
creativesoulOctober 27, 2019 at 21:54#3461470 likes
I agree we do correlate things. And such correlation develops out of thoughts. I hesitate to call such correlation the development of concepts.
Concepts begin with naming. They gain in complexity by talking about the referent using it's conceptual identity(name), for doing so is to multiply the correlations drawn between the referent and other things.
Simply put, there is no difference between one's concept of a dog and one's thought and belief about dogs.
there is no difference between one's concept of a dog and one's thought and belief about dogs.
This is agreeable, but doesn’t say anything about what concepts consist of, which is the base of the dialectic. And to say concepts begin with naming only kicks the constituency can down the thought/belief road, for now we have not only concepts presupposed as extant with respect to their source, but also names presupposed with respect to their concepts. If concepts begin with naming, the names must already have occurred somehow, in order for them to begin the correlations from which concepts develop.
Try this: concepts do not begin with naming, but end with it. This way, the presupposition of names is eliminated, as well as their constituency, because the concepts are the names. Now, all that remains is the actual correlation, that which a conceptual identity relates to.
And the source of them. Can’t neglect that. Probably the most important aspect of this whole thing.
Done for the night. Been real.
creativesoulOctober 27, 2019 at 23:51#3462040 likes
What do you think is the constituency of concepts?
— Mww
Thought and belief
Step 1: reconcile the chicken/egg temporal dichotomy. Do we think, thereby develop concepts to justify the thinking, or do we conceptualize, then think by means of them.
Eneenie meenie miney moe.....
creativesoulOctober 28, 2019 at 15:57#3464580 likes
You've proposed this in past. It's not a good characterization. It's not just a matter of which came first. It's also matter of what both consist of. Correlations drawn between different things...
So, it's not so easily characterized as chicken/egg. Eggs came first though, as far as that goes. Chickens evolved from reptiles. Reptiles lay eggs.
The evolution part is important to keep in mind. One's theory of mind(thought and belief) must be amenable to evolutionary progression.
It certainly is if there’s no way to tell which one of two or more somethings came first. How are we supposed to keep in mind evolution is important if it isn’t just a matter of which came first. How can there be said to even be any evolution if the matter of a first, and thereby a succession in time, isn’t resolved?
This I think is only important if we think concepts consist of something other than just other concepts. Actually, I guess it could get real muddy, depending on the scope of reductionism being played with.
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There is an inductively quantitative evolution, as major name concepts multiply in complexity by a compendium of minor names inhering in the same phenomenal object, which always comes first. There is deductively qualitative evolution, as the procedural method itself reduces from the compendium of possible named identities for a phenomenal object to a particular named identity judged as belonging to it, which always comes last.
There’s your evolution!!! Happy now? Simultaneous bi-directional evolution. Betcha never saw that one coming, didja!?
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Nevertheless. You brought up evolution, so.....lay it on me. What do you consider evolving and how do you consider it evolving?
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I would also propose that some of our concepts are capable of describing and/or pointing towards that which existed in it's entirety prior to our reports.
Of course, no argument here. Their names are in the literature, if one knows where to look. Do you have names for them of your own, or from some other literature?
I call our reports cognitions. Will you agree reports are at the end of the cognitive chain? Or for you, where are reports located? Where....when.....does a report manifest?
from the article:This can be seen by expressing the free-energy as surprise
plus a [Kullback Leibler] divergence between the recognition and conditional densities. Because this divergence is always positive, minimising free-energy makes the recognition density an approximation to the true posterior probability. This means the system implicitly infers or represents the causes of its sensory samples in a Bayesoptimal fashion. At the same time, the free-energy becomes a tight bound on surprise, which is minimised through action.
If I've read the article right, we have that actions and anticipations are both generated to minimise predictive surprise of their motivating model. In turn, actions and internal states are sampled from the internal model and used for this predictive task, then re-incorporated as representations (sufficient statistics) of previous states (specifically their parameters). Predictive surprise and entropy are tightly related, and entropy minimisation is linked to energy expenditure; it makes sense that the relation between our embodied minds and their environment would be an entropy minimising process in a non-incidental manner, as that's an efficient solution to acting in accord with environmental and bodily regularities - utilising both to act.
How this is postulated to work in practice is set out in Box 1.
These is an overall process of external states, sensations, internal states and actions.
External states at time t: are samples from a model of form M1 based on previous external states at t-1 and actions at t-1 with some error.
Sensations at time t: are samples from a model of form M2 based on external states at time t and actions at time t-1 with some error.
Internal states at time t: are samples from a model of form M3 based on internal states at time t-1 and sensations at time t. The specific model of form M3 which is formed at this stage is an approximate minimizer over all models of type M3 with respect to criterion C1.
Actions at time t: are samples from a model of form M3 based on internal states at time t and sensations at time t. The specific model of form M3 which is formed at this stage is an approximate minimizer over all models of type M3 with respect to criterion C2.
(Edit: something interesting here is that precisely what counts as a "time step" is just... one part of the process feeding into another, the paper doesn't write it out like that, it does it in terms of dependency arrows.
Edit 2: another thing presenting it as time steps under emphasises is that a perturbation can intervene at any one of the processes and will propagate its effects through the arrows; if a perturbation happens in, say, the sensations component, it will propagate to the internal state and action components without the intermediary action step, but also with mediation through the action step. Imagining, say, holding an electric fence makes the hand clench up, it might well propagate to the actions component as the clenching reflex but also the internal state as "i'm being electrocuted" or "what the fuck")
Criterions C1 and C2 are functions of model type M3; specifically they minimise the free energy.
In both, there is a representation of the previous internal states and the current external states, a "recognition density", that represents the causal structure of the environment in terms of change propensities given interventions (our actions and environmental activity); this is called Q. Then there is a representation of (the representation of) the previous sensations and the representation of the current external states, which is like a current 'self model' (our anticipations and memories and presence at the time), this is called P. Both criteria add the mismatch of P from Q (the kullback liebler divergence) to the surprise (informational discrepancy) of P given the previous self model.
C1 minimises (the above paragraph) over the panoply of internal states that have previously been sampled; an adjustment of our internal state to the current situation representation.
C2 minimises (the above paragraph) over the panoply of suggested actions that have been previously sampled; an adjustment of our behaviour to minimise the distinction between our model of the causal structure of our environment and our self model.
Our self model updates through a variational inference procedure.
The proposal I gave would have there being more than one functional form in the M3 class; and the functional forms would interact. Less parsimonious, messier. They may be consistent with each other depending on whether the models in M3 factorise over input sources; like partitioning a likelihood into different factors (say, a model for people in Africa and people in America for birth rates, the two being different; analogously a model for visual information and proprioceptory information being independently weighted).
What both emphasise is that our minds realise from a "set of available minds" consistent with its history.
It seems like you're asking about things having properties sans experience, which is fine, but presumably you're not just saying there's no experience period, are you? (In other words, you'd just be saying that there is no consciousness/no conscious beings, etc.)
I'm not asking about things having "properties sans experience": I would say that properties are only known via cognition. To speak about properties "outside cognition" would be to posit that noumena have positive attributes. That would be problematic, but in any case was not my concern.
Of course I would not deny that things appear to us, but the idea of experience seems to arise as a reification of the abstract generalization which is thought of as the process of appearance as such.
I also wanted to portray the relevance of embodied cognition to conception; so using concept in both places seemed appropriate. Conception still leverages body stuff that we usually take as conceptually unrelated to it.
Yes, it seems reasonable to think that animals, to varying degrees, do something like what we call imagining and thinking, and this seems justified since human imagination and thinking is not strictly dependent on language, but also consists in multi-sensory processes of "visualization" or image-forming.
I guess we could also call this pre-linguistic activity conception, as distinct from language-based conceptualization. So, I think that it's reasonable to say that animals conceive, but that they do not "have concepts", because the "having" relies on the hypostatization that language enables. Something like that anyway
Why is it unhelpful to have an understanding of conceptual architecture which does not distinguish us as well from animals? Or conversely, what is it about distinguishing us from other animals that is so helpful it must be maintained in any understanding of neural systems?
Just as I say to fdrake above, I think it is more helpful to maintain distinctions between linguistically and culturally elaborated conceptualizing capacities, and the primordial somatically-based embodied cognition we share with animals.
creativesoulOctober 29, 2019 at 03:58#3466410 likes
It's not just a matter of which came first.
— creativesoul
It certainly is if there’s no way to tell which one of two or more somethings came first. How are we supposed to keep in mind evolution is important if it isn’t just a matter of which came first. How can there be said to even be any evolution if the matter of a first, and thereby a succession in time, isn’t resolved?
This I think is only important if we think concepts consist of something other than just other concepts. Actually, I guess it could get real muddy, depending on the scope of reductionism being played with.
Indeed, it could get muddy, but it need not. It is most certainly quite complex, but there's also a very basic simplicity about it, as must be the case given the evolutionary progression of thought, belief, and concepts. It's notall reduction, though. Not on my view anyway. I mean, language is recursive, so that must also be taken proper account of. The framework we offer must take all sorts of things into account.
Of course I would concur with the need for a timeline. As you've asserted here keeping evolution in mind requires some sort of succession. With all that in mind...
What I meant by "it's not just a matter of which came first", was that that is an gross oversimplification of the methodological approach needed in order to even be able to acquire the knowledge we're seeking to obtain here. I think you'll agree with this? Knowing which came first requires knowing what all thought, all belief, and all concepts consist of. For when we know what each consists of, it offers us solid ground to be able to deduce which came first, by knowing what each is existentially dependent upon.
For example, if all A's consist of B, then no A exists prior to B. If all A's consist of B, then each and every A is existentially dependent upon B. That which is existentially dependent upon something else cannot exist prior to that something else. These are the sorts of reasoning that come into play here.
If you could be so kind, I would like for you to confirm whether or not I adequately understand what you've offered here. I've broken it down for easier reference. I don't think that I've broken anything up that needs to stay together, if you know what I mean. It's an interesting take, if I understand you correctly. There's some agreement, I think...
There is an inductively quantitative evolution, as major name concepts multiply in complexity by a compendium of minor names inhering in the same phenomenal object, which always comes first.
The above seems to be referring to the quantitative increase of our concepts via naming practices. I take it mean something like our concepts increase in quantity along with the number of names we use. Specifically speaking, you seem to be also claiming that there is a hierarchy of namesakes involved within our use of concepts. I take this to be referring to all the different names of all the different features of a referent(the same phenomenal object). So, for example, if I have read you correctly, the major name concept could be "tree", and the compendium of minor names would include all of the names for the features, properties, and/or attributes of the tree. "Leaves", "roots", "trunk", etc. would all qualify for being in this compendium of minor names.
Do I have that much right?
What I'm left wondering still, is not only what exactly is it that you're claiming "always comes first", but "first" - as in prior to what else? I want to say that the primary namesake comes first, but I'm hesitant for you may be saying that the phenomenal object comes first. If it's the latter, then I would agree that some conceptions are of phenomenal objects and in those cases the object 'comes first'.
There is deductively qualitative evolution, as the procedural method itself reduces from the compendium of possible named identities for a phenomenal object to a particular named identity judged as belonging to it, which always comes last.
This bit I cannot understand. Could you set it out with an example?
I would also propose that some of our concepts are capable of describing and/or pointing towards that which existed in it's entirety prior to our reports.
— creativesoul
Of course, no argument here. Their names are in the literature, if one knows where to look. Do you have names for them of your own, or from some other literature?
I thought we would agree there.
:smile:
Do I have names for those concepts of my own? I wouldn't say that. I am very fond of simple ordinary language when adequate. Given that we're discussing the evolution of concepts, thought, and belief, we must also keep in mind that the proposed complexity level that we're claiming exists at some specific time period must belong to a creature capable of having such complexity. I mean, in the beginning, the thought, belief, and/or conceptualization must be at a rudimentary and/or very basic level of complexity. In addition, those rudimentary thoughts, beliefs, and/or conceptualizations must consist of that which is amenable to evolutionary progression.
To directly answer your question, or at least what I think you're asking me for...
Thought, belief, meaning, and truth all exist in their entirety(on the most basic level/degree of complexity) prior to our conceptualizations/names of/for them... that is... prior to common language use.
I call our reports cognitions. Will you agree reports are at the end of the cognitive chain? Or for you, where are reports located? Where....when.....does a report manifest?
That all depends upon what we're reporting upon. Metacognitive endeavors, such as the one we're involved in, are most certainly "at the end of the cognitive chain". Thinking about our own thought and belief is metacognition. Not all thought and belief is metacognitive.
Not all reports are existentially dependent upon metacognition though. A young child - particularly an honest and talkative one - will offer their own report of all sorts of stuff that they're thinking about. This youngster's report is not at the end of the cognitive chain. Well, strictly speaking, until the child learns to start talking about it's own thought and belief, and it's own language use, it's at the end of what's cognitively possible - at the time - for them. However, assuming that they go on as most do, the end of the cognitive chain(metacognition) comes later.
:smile:
creativesoulOctober 29, 2019 at 04:10#3466430 likes
I think it is more helpful to maintain distinctions between linguistically and culturally elaborated conceptualizing capacities, and the primordial somatically-based embodied cognition we share with animals.
That's precisely the divide that needs bridged...
creativesoulOctober 29, 2019 at 04:38#3466460 likes
Because you hold the reverse, that thoughts (and beliefs) are the building blocks of concepts?
Yes and no...
Thought and belief are the building block of concepts(on my view), but, that's not exhaustive enough. Correlations drawn between different things are the building blocks of everything ever thought, believed, spoken, written, and/or otherwise uttered.
Of course, I'm setting that aside in order to understand the position you're presenting, for the time being anyway. I hope to compare the two later.
creativesoulOctober 29, 2019 at 06:08#3466640 likes
Try this: concepts do not begin with naming, but end with it. This way, the presupposition of names is eliminated, as well as their constituency, because the concepts are the names.
This approach puts all concepts on equal footing as being the names. It would only follow that there are no concepts prior to naming. I could agree actually, but something tells me that you may not? My agreement to that would lead to a denial that that which exists prior to it's namesake is a concept.
There are cases in which we would find ourselves in dire need of drawing a distinction between our conception and it's referent. There's no difference between our conception of games and games. There is most certainly a difference between that which exists in it's entirety prior to our naming it and our name. There's an distinction regarding existential dependency to be drawn and maintained here...
How else do we discriminate between such pre-existent things and our names for them?
Here is where elemental constituents come to bear alongside the considerations of existential dependency...
it makes sense that the relation between our embodied minds and their environment would be an entropy minimising process in a non-incidental manner, as that's an efficient solution to acting in accord with environmental and bodily regularities - utilising both to act.
Yes. The great thing about the free-energy approach is that it gives both a mechanism and an evolutionary story to the Bayesian modelling system which we already have a good idea the brain uses.
The specific model of form M3 which is formed at this stage is an approximate minimizer over all models of type M3 with respect to criterion C1.
I can't find a non-paywalled version, but the paper which started all this is Ernst and Banks's 2002 paper on visuo-haptic relations. Basically, they presented a ridge-measuring task where visual stimuli were deliberately made uncertain and haptic stimuli more certain (we traditionally trust our vision more readily that we trust our touch). They modelled an estimation method using Bayes Theorem and a normal Gaussian distribution for widths of the ridge as the prior. They then tested people's actual estimates and found a really strong correlation indicating that people were somehow actually using Bayesian inference to estimate the width of the ridge in the face of visual uncertainty.
Similar experiments have been since to confirm this (Ernst and Banks didn't really set out to find this). A classic one with poor contrast moving dots where participants had to estimate the direction of movement despite not being able to see the dots clearly. Unbeknownst to them, there was a slight probability bias in favour of one particular direction. It took, I think, abut two minutes for their Bayesian model to pick up on the fact that the dots more often moved in one direction and adjust their priors for movement accordingly, even when there were really no dots at all, in fact. We do Bayesian modelling in our heads, it seems.
something interesting here is that precisely what counts as a "time step" is just... one part of the process feeding into another, the paper doesn't write it out like that, it does it in terms of dependency arrows.
There was an experiment done on this, but I can't remember it well enough to even look it up. If I recall correctly, there are time steps involved but they're specific to the model being used (visual, auditory etc). I wish I could track down the paper, but I don't even know where to start.
The proposal I gave would have there being more than one functional form in the M3 class; and the functional forms would interact. Less parsimonious, messier.
I'm inclined to agree. Most work on this has been done on perception and although the data correlates well, there is some discrepancies. My guess is that the discrepancy is caused by other models in other areas of the brain interfering at a sort of meta level.
Back to the topic...the sense is that our feeling of 'an experience' is exactly this meta-model trying to put some sharp edges to the whole fuzzy procedure. We can't actually work well with fuzzy data, we can't possibly 'look behind the curtain' to actually have an awareness of the variational inference procedure going on. Why not? - Well on an ecological level, we simply wouldn't behave as efficiently as a creature which had a clear answer, on an epistemic level, how would we experience that with some means of modelling it...
I think it is more helpful to maintain distinctions between linguistically and culturally elaborated conceptualizing capacities, and the primordial somatically-based embodied cognition we share with animals.
I don't see how they can be distinguished. When a chimpanzee rejects a previously gratefully accepted cucumber as reward on the grounds that the other chimp has been given a grape, are they not using a model of justice, or fairness? We verbalise such a concept, chimps don't, but the model (in terms of expectations and behavioural response) is still in some social animals. I'm struggling to think of an example where we, as humans, might verbalise a concept which is completely absent in its entirety in other social animals.
creativesoulOctober 29, 2019 at 08:24#3466910 likes
When a chimpanzee rejects a previously gratefully accepted cucumber as reward on the grounds that the other chimp has been given a grape, are they not using a model of justice, or fairness?
Nah, Chimpanzees also favour fair (50:50 split) offers in Ultimatum Game experiments to unfair ones (80:20 split), even when the unfair split is in favour of the proposer.
Well on an ecological level, we simply wouldn't behave as efficiently as a creature which had a clear answer, on an epistemic level, how would we experience that with some means of modelling it...
I like this conjecture a lot. Explaining the unity of consciousness in terms of our body's self modelling processes as realising a single action-sensation-internal state from a space of possible ones is pretty neat. We must act in some specified way, and that specification coincides with a collapse (through sampling) into a unique state.
Yes. The great thing about the free-energy approach is that it gives both a mechanism and an evolutionary story to the Bayesian modelling system which we already have a good idea the brain uses.
One thing I'm generally apprehensive about with Bayesian brain approaches is the parameter optimisation mechanism. A lot of effort is put into the neural implementation of the modelling procedure, but less seems to be put into the neural implementation of the optimisation mechanism.
A rough guideline for how this works is that there is some neuroscientific model [math]M(\theta)[/math], where [math]M[/math] is the total model (the whole dependency loop in the referenced paper) and [math]\theta[/math] are the model parameters. In order to make a prediction of a specific value; say the ridge width in your example; the model has to be mapped to a specific set of parameters [math]\hat{\theta}[/math] which then allow the model to output a prediction based on the mapping; our predictions of the ridge width at a given time. This mapping is called a point estimation procedure.
One strength of the paper (again, if I read it right) is that it dodges the problem of "which point is output from a probabilistic model for our action?" by having random sampling from a posterior distribution obtained by variational inference (what sampling procedure though? How is it in the wetware?). But the optimisation; model choice steps; in constraining the M3 functional forms are conjectured to work through steepest gradient descent.
Without any math detail, steepest gradient descent is like pouring water onto a landscape defined by a function; a valley with elevations and contour lines; it travels down into the valley down the (locally) steepest slopes, the 'flow of water' is the iteration of the algorithm from step to step down the valley towards its basin. Unlike in nature, the water's movement needs to 'know' which directions are which and what they mean. In the algorithm, the "valley" is a cost function, whose "elevation" and "angle from the bottom on a contour" are parameters (directions) which are optimised over; there is also some geometry applied to the directions; how far is what from what. Steepest gradient descent finds the closest thing it can to the minimum of the cost function with some parametrisation and some geometry.
It is plausible that if we had complete model specification of the human mind, it would not really matter so long as some part of its dynamics implemented the steepest gradient descent. But whether and how the process internally optimises with steepest gradient descent is left unconsidered.
This is kinda first world problems at this point, considering it's usually easier to model something first then pick an appropriate estimation procedure, but I'm still a bit skeptical of "model first; then estimate" when both are running simultaneously in the same wetware. On a computer, you input the model and the optimisation constraints (cost function, also space geometry if you're pedantic) to find the parameter estimates; our brains seem to model and estimate at the same time.
This is alleviated in the paper by having parameters sampled from models, rather than deterministically outputted from them (if I've read it right, again) globally through some optimisation algorithm, so I can see an argument that specifying 'the general statistical structure' of our mind 'before' looking at how it estimates itself is a better approach, I'm just suspicious that something of fundamental importance is being missed.
I'm struggling to think of an example where we, as humans, might verbalise a concept which is completely absent in its entirety in other social animals.
Because this is also interesting, @StreetlightX had a thread on this at some point in the past. The gist of it was that relational concepts admit of a degree of abstraction; "analogy (is) the core of cognition" as Hofstadter puts it. Monkeys can learn relationships between tokens quite easily (this is red, that is red), but they find it much harder to learn relationships between generated types (this is coloured, that is coloured) or (this is a pair, that is a pair) (in Street's example); they also seem to need a token based learning exercise for more abstract concepts. I think it would be quite surprising if a monkey could be taught what tuple is in the general case; there probably aren't enough tokens to serve as an external memory bank for an arbitrarily relationally complex abstract object for monkeys to learn it.
But I suppose that depends on the scope of "in its entirety"; abstracting a type from tokens is something monkeys can do, abstracting higher order types into abstract objects to synthesise even higher order types is probably not on the cards arbitrarily. Humans struggle with tuples (until we learn what's in 'em doesn't matter, nor does their length...).
I doubt all of our precursors would struggle though? The boundary between human and human precursor (in terms of cognitive development) seems pretty fuzzy.
StreetlightOctober 29, 2019 at 17:07#3467700 likes
Just quickly - need to sleep - my hunch is that everything turns on negation, and the ability to treat negation as positive: to treat 'not-X' as a positive variable and not simply the absence of X. Only this allows for abstraction proper: abstraction without a ground-level, 'material' token, the double-incidence of token and type birthed at the same time - that which is not itself. Once you can do that, concepts, proper concepts, bloom full bore. No negation, no concepts.
Explaining the unity of consciousness in terms of our body's self modelling processes as realising a single action-sensation-internal state from a space of possible ones is pretty neat. We must act in some specified way, and that specification coincides with a collapse (through sampling) into a unique state.
Yeah, I think the idea goes way back to Geoffrey Hinton in the early 90s. It also explains the self/other divide (which we know to be spurious) because one has to distinguish those actions which arose from the models from those actions which are to be input into the priors, otherwise the model becomes too self referential to be truely adaptive. M3 is 'self'.
As to the issues with parameters...
It's very complicated and I'm somewhat out of my depth with both the maths, and the neurobiology, but I'll do my best to impart my understanding (most of this is from Friston's earlier work).
Neural architecture is built on three major properties - connection strength, connection heirachy (disputed), and connection locality (specialisation and integration between regions).
Memory (which, when it comes down to it, is what we're talking about with regards to priors) is primarily about connection strength in later life, but to do with heirachy and locality immediately post-natally. So parameters are mediated differently depending on when the priming sensory input (forward neural connections) arose. Your priors about cultural effects might be mediated by connection strength, but your priors about facial recognition be mediated by locality and connection architecture.
I think this is why people often struggle with neural correlates of concepts, they try to fit them to a single model of parameter encoding in the hardware (wetware) when there is actually a range of means by which parameters are encoded with quite radically different implications.
our brains seem to model and estimate at the same time.
Yes, unlike computers with fixed architecture, our neural hardware is responsive to use, so you have forward acting connections driving processes, backward acting connections modulating responses, and connection building/pruning in response to both (pruning connections being as important as building them, of course).
I'm just suspicious that something of fundamental importance is being missed.
Have a look at the function of backward acting modulating neural connections, you may find there the missing piece. They modulate the subsequent forward driving connections probabilistically by restriction of signal at an asymmetric pace with the forward connections. I don't want to drown you in reading material, but the idea is explained in this paper. It may answer some of your concerns.
I don't want to drown you in reading material, but the idea is explained in this paper. It may answer some of your concerns.
Eh, I'm still a noob in this, I'll take any free education I can get. The forward/backward propagation steps in Box 3 in the Frisk paper are probably worth me reading more closely too (with the neural implementation of gradient descent through message passing in mind).
The forward/backward propagation steps in Box 3 in the Frisk paper are probably worth me reading more closely too (with the neural implementation of gradient descent through message passing in mind).
Yeah, I think it might be what you're looking for. Now I've got to try and get my head round what you and @StreetlightX are talking about wrt concepts.
I'm afraid I use the term rather loosely and it seems to have caused some not inconsiderable concern. For me, 'concept' rather pragmatically encodes what one can do with the data (neural connections/architecture) which the label is collecting. Its all about doing, so I struggle with concepts divorced from actions. I tend to come at this from an input-response model with, if necessary, post hoc analysis into verbally mediated concept talk. Even something abstract like maths, I consider the 'doing' of maths first and the verbal translation of that behaviour secondary.
In a sense I think I'm agreeing with what you seem to be saying, but I think I would tend to frame it as some behaviour still - the 'talking about' is actually the thing that encodes the concepts behind the words, the 'doing the sum' is the thing that encodes the concepts behind the maths.
...but I'm still not sure if that's quite what you both mean.
Final thought on this matter before I retire for the evening. In a striking coincidence, I remember reading about some experiments with monkeys (or possibly chimpanzees), where they were trying to get them to sum quantities of different types of object (so types of types). The first experiment failed, the second had partial success. Their suggestion of a cause...the first set believed too much in the significance of the colour - their Bayesian priors let them down!
An odd word, n'est-ce pas? I submit for your consideration, that you, immediately upon reading the word here and now, referenced your experience with it. You didn’t look at the composition of the word by letter or order of letters, you related the word itself, as an established member of a particular language, with some referent, with that which the word is intended to represent. In other words, you already understand the word as a representation, you already understand the word relates to something, because antecedently, you understand and infer from that antecedence, that no word serves any informative purpose if it doesn’t refer to something.
But what, exactly, did Gell-Mann do in 1964, as causality for the absolutely very first instantiation of this particular representational indicator “quark”**? Without regard to the inherent silliness of the word, we can reasonably suppose he wanted nothing but a way to identify this theoretically mandated physical reality, even if such reality had never yet been demonstrated, and may never have been in the case Gell-Mann made a mistake in his theorizing.
From this, two significant predications arise:
1.).....the totality of an existence need not be given in order for a representation to be assigned to it; the totality of its possible existence needs merely be thought;
2.).....simply from the silliness of the name, that even if it is merely the framework for a name that is given, the name does not require any symbolic likeness to it, which in turn is sufficient reason to permit that names can be spontaneously generated without regard to representational pertinence**;
3.)....the spontaneously generated name “quark”, and the framework the name is to represent, in order to maintain logical consistency, must be the same thing, and therefore, immediately upon being named, the concept obtains.
4.)....combining 2.) re: spontaneous generation, and 3.) re: simultaneity, we can conclude that the relation to concepts, that is, their purpose in speculative epistemological methodology, does not in any way depend on a relation in concepts with respect to their development. Thought develops concepts relative to something, but thoughts are not the constituency of them.
** I’m aware of “Finnegan’s Wake”, and the historical precedence of the word. Hopefully, no rebuttal to the philosophical point being made, ensues, for it is obvious Joyce’s and Gell-Mann’s use of the word are only related accidentally.
————————-
Try this: concepts do not begin with naming, but end with it. This way, the presupposition of names is eliminated, as well as their constituency, because the concepts are the names.
— Mww
This approach puts all concepts on equal footing as being the names. It would only follow that there are no concepts prior to naming. I could agree actually, but something tells me that you may not? My agreement to that would lead to a denial that that which exists prior to it's namesake is a concept.
YES!!!! Concepts and naming ARE on equal footing, there are no concepts prior to naming, and it SHOULD be denied that that which exists in its entirety prior to its namesake, is a concept. We are not thereby denying existence of namesakes, whatever its entirety, that is, that which lends itself to being nameable, but rather, we are demanding the occasion for it.
And here, I think, lay the altogether more importance of source, which is the same as occasion, as opposed to constituency, of concepts, with respect to the correlations we both acknowledge for, or by, them.
What I meant by "it's not just a matter of which came first", was that that is an gross oversimplification of the methodological approach needed in order to even be able to acquire the knowledge we're seeking to obtain here. I think you'll agree with this?
Yes. Even if there must be a first, here meaning a first in a methodological approach, a first by itself is meaningless.
——————
Knowing which came first requires knowing what all thought, all belief, and all concepts consist of. For when we know what each consists of, it offers us solid ground to be able to deduce which came first, by knowing what each is existentially dependent upon.
This would be true enough, again with respect to a methodological approach, if it were not for the fact that there are firsts in that approach that have nothing to do with it, per se, but serve as means for its inspiration. You are correct for those considerations within the approach, but we still need a reason, an occasion, to use the method to begin with. And rather than knowing what all thoughts, beliefs and concepts consist of, it is better suited for the method, to know what they do. If they do what they do without contradiction or inconsistency, their constituency may not matter. That being said, there are those things the constituency of which is quite relevant, but it remains to be seen whether the constituency is a population given to them by their use. In other words, a faculty certainly has a population of a priori objects of reason for its constituency, but each a priori object of reason that is a constituent, may not consist of anything. We must nip inevitable infinite regress at the root somehow.
What I'm left wondering still, is not only what exactly is it that you're claiming "always comes first", but "first" - as in prior to what else? I want to say that the primary namesake comes first, but I'm hesitant for you may be saying that the phenomenal object comes first. If it's the latter, then I would agree that some conceptions are of phenomenal objects and in those cases the object 'comes first'.
You got it...it is the object, the primary namesake, some thing of perception, to which the methodological approach can be directed. It appears from your terminology, you accept that the namesake has not been named, and no concept yet applies to it. If we wish to go even deeper into the particulars of the methodological approach, the namesake, while it suffices to call it a phenomenal object, because it is an object that will be named a phenomenon, technically it’s a sensation, and stands as the inspiration for the inductively quantitative evolution, which you readily grasped.
——————-
There is deductively qualitative evolution, as the procedural method itself reduces from the compendium of possible named identities for a phenomenal object to a particular named identity judged as belonging to it, which always comes last.
— Mww
This bit I cannot understand. Could you set it out with an example?
Keyword....judged. If it be granted the quantitative, re: numerical, evolution concerns itself with part of the methodological approach, then the deductive qualitative, re: logical authority, should concern itself with another part. In short, when we understand a particular concept belongs to....names....a phenomenon, without contradicting what the concept has previously named (what we already know), we at once deduce what was previously a general unnamed sensation, is indeed cognizable as a certain named object. We are in effect, evolving from the general to the particular. It is how we arrive at experience, the last of the cognitive chain, called empirical knowledge.
I don't see how they can be distinguished. When a chimpanzee rejects a previously gratefully accepted cucumber as reward on the grounds that the other chimp has been given a grape, are they not using a model of justice, or fairness?
What would you even be talking about when you say things like this given that you don't think the world has any properties? Are you just talking about things your own mind creates?
When a chimpanzee rejects a previously gratefully accepted cucumber as reward on the grounds that the other chimp has been given a grape, are they not using a model of justice, or fairness?
This seems to be all in the interpretation: alternatively, it could be down to a feeling of envy or a preference for grape over cucumber.
I would also propose that some of our concepts are capable of describing and/or pointing towards that which existed in it's entirety prior to our reports.
— creativesoul
Of course, no argument here. Their names are in the literature, if one knows where to look. Do you have names for them of your own, or from some other literature?
— Mww
Do I have names for those concepts of my own? (...) To directly answer your question, or at least what I think you're asking me for...
Thought, belief, meaning, and truth all exist in their entirety(on the most basic level/degree of complexity) prior to our conceptualizations/names of/for them... that is... prior to common language use.
OK, I’ll buy that. At the very lowest level, these are concepts, and they can be empty of content. There must be truth, on order for something to be true.
——————-
, if all A's consist of B, then no A exists prior to B. If all A's consist of B, then each and every A is existentially dependent upon B. That which is existentially dependent upon something else cannot exist prior to that something else. These are the sorts of reasoning that come into play here.
There's no difference between our conception of games and games.
Yes. Reflecting back to names and concepts being equal here, in this dialogue, and the point I was making awhile ago in another where it was proposed that the criterion of the possibility of a conception (not of its object) is the definition of it. It is the name of the objects of concepts that are different than the name of the concept.
———————
There's much to be said about our discussion. There are certainly several aspects I'm looking forward to getting into.
However, I think that I just realized that there's a bit of misunderstanding happening with regard to my own notion of elemental constituency and/or constituents(of our concepts). Specifically, it seems that you've taken that to include things like letters and such. Now, to be clear, that's not wrong(per se) but it is an incomplete understanding. By my lights, understanding is imperative to good, productive, and valid discourse. I'm assuming we both seek just that...
Just as I hope to better grasp the position you're arguing for/from, I also hope to be able to clearly state my own so that those who are capable can have a good grasp upon it as well. You seem perfectly capable. I mean anyone who can follow Kant, and particularly those who can use his framework from memory, which you seem to be doing, ought be able to follow the position I'm working from and developing.
In short, I would think that it would help you (or anyone else for that matter) to better understand my position if you kept in mind that I reject several different historical dichotomies. Most of the historical ones actually. This pertains directly to elemental constituency and existential dependency because correlations are neither immaterial nor material, external nor internal, mind nor body, objective nor subjective...
None of these dichotomies are capable of taking proper account of that which consists of both sides of the dichotomy. They are all inherently inadequate for taking proper account of correlations drawn between different things. They(correlations) consist of both... material and immaterial, external and internal, mind and body, objective and subjective.
The consequential scope of this could seem daunting. That feeling passes as things come into clearer view. That clearer view is practically inevitable when one consciously rejects the aforementioned historical inadequate dichotomies and the frameworks surrounding them. Witt's "bewitchment of language(use)" applies here. Rejecting inherently inadequate frameworks and dichotomies is akin to letting the fly out of the bottle, so to speak.
All this will apply to my next reply to you, as well as all the rest, and all previous ones. You may want to re-read some of them in order to sharpen your understanding given the new translation tools. The "quark" episode looks promising. Very timely. Very relevant.
Kudos.
creativesoulOctober 30, 2019 at 04:08#3468910 likes
When a chimpanzee rejects a previously gratefully accepted cucumber as reward on the grounds that the other chimp has been given a grape, are they not using a model of justice, or fairness?
— Isaac
This seems to be all in the interpretation: alternatively, it could be down to a feeling of envy or a preference for grape over cucumber.
Just wanted to mention something here. Do with it what you may. It's just dead on point relevant... on my view anyway.
Interpretation is always of something already meaningful. Our interpretations of what's going on in the chimps mind are nothing more and nothing less than reporting upon the meaningful thought and belief of the chimp at the time. Those are meaningful to the chimp... we can get them wrong if we do not work from an adequate criterion for non linguistic thought and belief.
I cannot make sense of any notion, conception, or model of fairness/justice without rather complex language use that talks in terms about what one wants as compared to what one gets(or has). Without this comparison, there is no notion of fairness or justice.
Can chimps compare what they have actually received with what they want?
Seems to me that that is impossible without the ability to compare one's own thought and belief(what they want) with what's happened and/or is happening(what they received). Thus, on these grounds(the chimp doesn't have what it takes to have a notion of fairness/justice) I can only conclude that the chimp quite simply did not want the cucumber, but rather wanted the grape.
creativesoulOctober 30, 2019 at 04:36#3468990 likes
...rather than knowing what all thoughts, beliefs and concepts consist of, it is better suited for the method, to know what they do. If they do what they do without contradiction or inconsistency, their constituency may not matter. That being said, there are those things the constituency of which is quite relevant, but it remains to be seen whether the constituency is a population given to them by their use. In other words, a faculty certainly has a population of a priori objects of reason for its constituency, but each a priori object of reason that is a constituent, may not consist of anything. We must nip inevitable infinite regress at the root somehow.
Acquiring well-grounded true belief about what all thought, belief, and concepts consist of is a methodological approach. I also do not think that these are mutually exclusive goals. We can do both, acquire knowledge of what our thought, belief, and concepts do alongside acquiring knowledge concerning what they consist of.
A faculty, which I'm taking to be the Kantian notion, could be sensibly said to have 'a population of a priori objects of reason' for it's constituency. I'm a bit confused here though. Which a priori object of reason does not consist of anything?
Infinite regress is the least of my concerns. It's not a problem on my view.
Reply to creativesoul I tend to agree: I actually encountered a report of a study which addressed this very issue, and concluded that it was just a preference, but I haven't made much effort to find it again.
From memory as rewards they gave the chimp cucumber first, then grapes; and found that after having the grapes the chimp rejected the cucumber (not sure of it was grapes and cucumber in the study but I stuck to those as they were the tendered examples).
creativesoulOctober 30, 2019 at 05:04#3469070 likes
Unfortunately many purported experts in the field of the human mind do not work from a framework that is even capable of drawing and maintaining the actual distinction between linguistic and non-linguistic thought and/or belief.
The result is misattributing meaningful content that quite simply is not there. A sense of justice/fairness is a noble aim to identify prior to language. I mean, that would be great step in the right direction for a well-grounded version of universally applicable ethical considerations. However, there's inadequate evidence to suggest that the chimp is either involved in Bayesian reasoning(I know that's currently popular) or working from a modell of justice/fairness.
Those kinds of social situations(not having what one wants, and not receiving what one expects) can most certainly be a part of one's developing such 'senses' as justice and fairness, but that's only after one begins talking about situations where one's expectations had already long since run afoul. Fairness is an assessment of what's happened.
Ah well... you'll have that!
creativesoulOctober 30, 2019 at 05:40#3469090 likes
...there are those things the constituency of which is quite relevant, but it remains to be seen whether the constituency is a population given to them by their use.
Remaining to be seen presupposes the possibility of something or other actually happening. If we are looking to see if we populate the concept and we hold that there are no concepts prior to names, then we cannot admit anything else but...
We populate concepts by virtue of using names.
So...
What gives?
It doesn't remain to be seen. We cannot see such things aside from seeing the consequence of our premisses.
Either all names are concepts, or the elemental constituency of some concepts does not include naming practices and other such language use(descriptive practices) even though our knowledge and/or awareness of them does.
That which exists prior to our naming practices are not concepts if concepts are equal to names. How do you square this with the equivalency between concept and name that you drew earlier?
Sorry... the critical hat was on.
:wink:
I like sushiOctober 30, 2019 at 05:50#3469110 likes
Is anyone interested in talking about the phenomenological approach (Husserlian)?
I just don’t really see where this discussion is going? There appears to be a lot of emphasis on ‘concepts’ and ‘naming concepts’ ... why?
creativesoulOctober 30, 2019 at 06:03#3469130 likes
I just don’t really see where this discussion is going? There appears to be a lot of emphasis on ‘concepts’ and ‘naming concepts’ ... why?
How did Banno say it???
It's just a bunch of esoteric language use that only philosophers care about.
The focus is on non linguistic thought and belief, per the OP. Some experience is had by non linguistic creatures. All experience consists entirely of the thoughts/beliefs of the creature having the experience. Some of us, myself included, are offering argument in support of our earlier remarks regarding "what it's like to experience X" where "X" is something that happened to a thinking and believing subject.
I claim that we cannot even offer an adequate report if we do not know what all thought and belief consists of. Experience is thought and belief based. All of it. That's my synopsis anyway.
I like sushiOctober 30, 2019 at 06:36#3469150 likes
Reply to creativesoul So it is a phenomenological approach then? There was some theory crafting regarding neuroscience. I don’t seem to be able to find a way in here :(
creativesoulOctober 30, 2019 at 06:43#3469160 likes
Say what you're thinking.
The neuroscience is beyond my comprehension. I've been waiting for them(the experts, specialists, and groupies in/of the field) to admit that there is no one to one mapping between brain activity and particular thought. Many different thoughts correspond to virtually the exact same brain state. Admittedly, our technologies are offering more and more knowledge. However, there's no indication that the hard sciences(or soft ones for that matter) have acquired enough knowledge about our own thought and belief to be able to assert much at all. Thought and belief(thinking about stuff) involves firing neurons, and different physiological biological structures and systems, but they most certainly do not consist entirely thereof.
creativesoulOctober 30, 2019 at 06:50#3469170 likes
I believe that Mww is arguing from such a position. I do not. It denies direct perception the actual role it plays in rudimentary level thought, belief, and experience. However, I'm currently considering another's position. Sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised.
:smile:
I like sushiOctober 30, 2019 at 06:59#3469200 likes
I believe that Mww is arguing from such a position. I do not. It denies direct perception the actual role it plays in rudimentary level thought, belief, and experience.
It does no such thing. Anyway, I’ll just keep at eye out and jump in if I can. Probably not though tbh
Thanks
creativesoulOctober 30, 2019 at 07:02#3469210 likes
Phenomenology works from the notion of indirect perception. It presupposes two worlds. The real one(which we can know nothing about aside from it's existence) and that which appears to us(the phenomenal world)...
That's indirect perception of the real world.
creativesoulOctober 30, 2019 at 07:04#3469220 likes
You're welcome. I love sushi, just so ya know! Freshly sliced pickled ginger, freshly ground and prepared wasabi, and some good shoyu...
Mmmm.... Mmmmm... Mmmmmmm....
:smile:
Freshly cut and beautifully arranged sashimi. Dragon rolls... oh to die for!
I like sushiOctober 30, 2019 at 07:12#3469230 likes
Reply to creativesoul I don’t think you understand. It is simply a philosophical position working from subjectivity - that is it is about subjective consciousness only.
creativesoulOctober 30, 2019 at 07:15#3469240 likes
I'm sure there are a plurality of different phenomenological approaches that I'm completely unfamiliar with. The one I've been considering here is Kantian.
What do you have in mind?
creativesoulOctober 30, 2019 at 07:19#3469250 likes
Chimpanzees also favour fair (50:50 split) offers in Ultimatum Game experiments to unfair ones (80:20 split), even when the unfair split is in favour of the proposer.
I'd like to see the abstract and/or the synopsis along with some video footage of the behaviour under consideration. That would be very interesting.
What would you even be talking about when you say things like this given that you don't think the world has any properties? Are you just talking about things your own mind creates?
This seems to be all in the interpretation: alternatively, it could be down to a feeling of envy or a preference for grape over cucumber.
Never ceases to amaze me the lack of respect for scientists we read about here. Not science itself, the people conducting the experiments. Yes, everyone is biased, flawed to some extent, but this is just plain disrespectful. Do you honestly think deWaal didn't think of that and try to control for it in his experiments? Do you think Brosnan Talbot and Ahlgren all missed that possibility when they repeated the experiments? Do you think Brauer and Tomosello just randomly changed the parameters of the game in their experiments? Was Josep Call just taking a wild stab in the dark when he set up the experiment to differentiate between unwilling and unable reward-givers? Jorg Massen's work with Macaques just another sloppy bit of guesswork?
I don't know if you've caught up on this yet, but scientists try to think of alternative explanations and control for them. a whole raft of other scientists try to remove confounding variables, alter contexts...these people are, despite the way they're negatively painted, quite interested in how other animals think. they don't tend to just set up an experiment off the back of fag packet that any casual lay reader can spot a massive flaw in and just say "fuck it, that'll do".
I've been waiting for them(the experts, specialists, and groupies in/of the field) to admit that there is no one to one mapping between brain activity and particular thought. Many different thoughts correspond virtually the exact same brain state. Thought and belief(thinking about stuff) involve firing neurons, and different physiological biological structures and systems, but they most certainly do not consist entirely thereof.
...sure, you know, I don't think they've thought of that, perhaps you better pop up to the neurosciences lab at Sussex and give them a few pointers, sounds like they need a bit of help.
I like sushiOctober 30, 2019 at 07:27#3469280 likes
Everything is phenomenon. I don’t even believe Kant meant there were two worlds? I guess you’re referring to the ‘phenomenal world’ and ‘negative noumenon’ - ‘noumenon’ is merely a limiting factor NOT some dualistic separation.
That said I haven’t read all of Kant’s work and I hear he may well have said something different in his later works. I talking purely from the COPR
I'd like to see the abstract and/or the synopsis along with some video footage of the behaviour under consideration. That would be very interesting.
Here. And just for Janus who seems to be of the impression that scientists just produce experiments, randomly guess some possible answer and then just walk away - here is a meta study with some refutations of the original, some alternative approaches and a summary.
creativesoulOctober 30, 2019 at 07:33#3469300 likes
I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings. I've offered very good solid reasoning for my claims. Perhaps you could dispel me of this mindset. Address the arguments I've provided.
Or...
What counts as non linguistic thought and belief? I mean, that's exactly what you're describing and/or claiming is going on in the minds of chimps. I've tremendous respect for scientists who work from methodological naturalism and employ Occam's razor. The subject matter is no easy task. If it were, we would have had it all figured out long ago. The real world keeps on showing us otherwise, by offering the unexpected.
creativesoulOctober 30, 2019 at 07:33#3469310 likes
I've been waiting for them(the experts, specialists, and groupies in/of the field) to admit that there is no one to one mapping between brain activity and particular thought. Many different thoughts correspond virtually the exact same brain state. Thought and belief(thinking about stuff) involve firing neurons, and different physiological biological structures and systems, but they most certainly do not consist entirely thereof.
— creativesoul
...sure, you know, I don't think they've thought of that, perhaps you better pop up to the neurosciences lab at Sussex and give them a few pointers, sounds like they need a bit of help.
Fair enough. I'm sure that not all experts/specialists are characterized well by what I wrote. The groupies... particularly some who call themselves physicalists... well...
Anyway. Point taken. Keep me in line. Gawd knows it's needed.
:wink:
creativesoulOctober 30, 2019 at 07:39#3469340 likes
If that's the case, then the notion itself can and ought be cast aside for it cannot be used to further discriminate between anything at all. It becomes superfluous, unhelpful, and offers nothing but unnecessarily overcomplicated language use.
So...
creativesoulOctober 30, 2019 at 07:56#3469350 likes
Is the sense of fairness uniquely human? Human reactions to reward division are often studied by means of the ultimatum game, in which both partners need to agree on a distribution for both to receive rewards. Humans typically offer generous portions of the reward to their partner, [b]a tendency our close primate relatives have thus far failed to show in experiments.[b]
In the modified version the necessary precondition for agreement as a precursor to being rewarded was foregone...
The agreement is precisely what establishes the basis from which thought, belief, and feelings of unfairness/fairness arise.
As recent work has shown, nonhuman primates, particularly chimpanzees and capuchin monkeys (Cebus ssp.), resemble humans in their decisions about cooperation (12–15) and their aversion to inequitable reward divisions (16–18). However, it is unclear how these same nonhuman primates respond to situations in which a peer can influence the outcome of a task, such as in the UG. In contrast to the human tendency to split rewards roughly equally (at least in most cultures), two previous studies found apes to be entirely self-interested: Proposers offered the smallest possible amount and respondents accepted virtually all offers...
you know, I don't think they've thought of that, perhaps you better pop up to the neurosciences lab at Sussex and give them a few pointers, sounds like they need a bit of help.
After reading through the abstract, it seems that they've done a pretty job determining certain things. You're invoking them as a means to support that the chimps in question work from some model of fairness/justice is just plain not supported by what you've offered as support.
For me, a belief is a predisposition to act as if some state of affairs were the case in one's model of the external world (external to oneself). In neurobiological terms, that belief is the architecture of the neural network which responds to the sensory inputs relevant to that belief.
You say that similar thoughts engage different brain cortices, and, to some extent this is true, but that's only relevant if you presume the classification of these thoughts as similar (presumably on the basis of your recognising them to be so) has primacy. But that recognition is happening in the very organ we're trying to investigate, so we cannot presume it's representations as fact if we're to carry out an impartial enquiry.
Notwithstanding the above, two things. The brain is both specialised and integrated. Specialised areas are involved in certain activities. We know this because damage in those areas hampers those activities. Yet the integration of the brain results in feedback from those areas to other potentially related sites. Which sites are involved here depends, in part, on your personal history because vast quantities of these connections are made (and un-made) post-natally.
Secondly, the brain works, to some extent, probabilistically. Timings are asymmetric and very rapid (electromagnetic signalling) this essentially makes much of the brain a stochastic system but one which can, nonetheless be understood with statistical methods.
You're invoking them as a means to support that the chimps in question work from some model of fairness/justice is just plain not supported by what you've offered as support.
Really? You're going to quote the part of the report which outlines the reason why the experiments are being studied as if it were the conclusion?
I like sushiOctober 30, 2019 at 08:01#3469380 likes
Reply to creativesoul The point of it is not to get drawn into what is ‘real’ or ‘existent’ - to ‘bracket out’ those questions as it doesn’t matter beyond experience in terms of subjectivity.
There are then ‘modes’/‘intentionality’. I can ‘view’ a box as an object, a tool, a vessel, a metaphor, etc.,. I can also think of a box (mode of ‘thinking about’).
We can then start to ask questions about items of experience. What ‘aspects’ or ‘parts’ of a box can be said to be the ‘essence’ of boxes? How many sides does a box need? Do we have to necessarily observe every side or edge of a box to appreciate it as a box (can we observe a box from every angle - the eidetic givenness of a box regardless of our limited perspective).
The primary mode of human understanding and philosophical thought stems from the phenomenological principle.
I think Husserl thought Kant used the term ‘transcendental’ to mean ‘thing in itself’ yet I’m not convinced Kant meant this dualistically - Husserl had a go at him about that (mistakenly I believe).
From the subjective day-to-day lived life we don’t act as if the world is phenomenal. Our world is materiality for the most part.
creativesoulOctober 30, 2019 at 08:01#3469390 likes
The second paper may be more in line with what you're looking for than the first, but when attending, I should make it clear that I'm not really "invoking them as a means to support that the chimps in question work from some model of fairness/justice "
Firstly, I presented them as an opposition to the idea that the grape/cucumber experiment could be explained simply by the chimp wanting a grape. The idea was to show that many many years of research effort has gone into eliminating such obvious interpretations, so the main thing was simply to show the depth of the research, it has unquestionably gone beyond mere preference.
Secondly, I'm not necessarily arguing that non- human primates have an abstract concept of fairness/justice like ours. For a start I think it more likely we'll find our concept isn't quite so abstract and top-down acting as we think, not that chimpanzees have topgdown acting abstract concepts, more that we don't. Also I wouldn't expect chimpanzee justice to be the same as humans, we're different species with different niches. What I'm arguing is that there's no evidence (occam's razor) to justify a belief that they are in some materially different category of process, not that there's no evidence they're different at all.
We can then start to ask questions about items of experience. What ‘aspects’ or ‘parts’ of a box can be said to be the ‘essence’ of boxes? How many sides does a box need? Do we have to necessarily observe every side or edge of a box to appreciate it as a box (can we observe a box from every angle - the eidetic givenness of a box regardless of our limited perspective).
This is the essence of the problem we started with. You're making one huge assumption here - that our 'experience' delivers us a single, time-consistent, and system-consistent answer to any of those types of question. The evidence from the neuroscience I've been outlining seems to be that it does not. Don't forget one side of all neuroscience is phenomena. We can't compare anything at all with brain states unless we have one side of the equation being the answer to "what have you just experienced?".
I like sushiOctober 30, 2019 at 08:42#3469440 likes
Reply to Isaac Some neuroscientific research favours the phenomenological approach, some doesn’t.
What you say above is mostly irrelevant to the subjective experience because you’re dealing with the naturalistic approach - phenomenology isn’t concerned with that (at least not directly).
I like sushiOctober 30, 2019 at 08:47#3469450 likes
To be clearer, there is no assuming in phenomenological approach and no empirical measurements. A ‘box’ is a ‘box’ because it has sides (in the physical mode of intentionality) yet it can have other meanings (in the metaphorical mode of intentionality).
Time is certainly a huge problem as all phenomenon is unique. The ‘essence’ is getting to what always remains in some said experience - universal terms whose abstract meanings don’t alter within set parameters (the number ‘one’ is such a universal term when it comes to basic arithmetic and adding up a number of items).
What ‘aspects’ or ‘parts’ of a box can be said to be the ‘essence’ of boxes? How many sides does a box need? Do we have to necessarily observe every side or edge of a box to appreciate it as a box
First question, what would constitute a measure of correctness for any answer?
I like sushiOctober 30, 2019 at 08:50#3469470 likes
I don’t see jumping straight in at ‘do Chimps have justice’, and such questioning, as reasonably grounding for a progressive discussion. It is like expecting five year olds to behave like experienced adults. Meaning it’s usually counterproductive to start from a multilayers and complex problem (and assume there is a problem that can be tackled).
I like sushiOctober 30, 2019 at 08:52#3469480 likes
Reply to Isaac Subjective experience. What can you and can’t you imagine? What do you merely believe you can imagine rather than actually imagine? It is really easy to get caught up in ‘thinking words’ to approach this task.
Whether I can imagine a box with no sides or volume depends on what I decide a 'box' is. Since I'm encountering new concepts all the time, I'm quite used to changing (or broadening) my categorical definitions. So I can imagine an object with no sides and no volume (I can't picture it, obviously, but I can imagine it being a container in some hitherto undiscovered dimension whose ability to contain other objects is not mediated by 'sides'). Whether I call that thing a 'box' or not really depends on whether other people would know what I was talking about if I did.
So the answer to your question, I suppose, is yes, I can. Not sure where that gets us as I suspect the answer to every such question will be yes.
I like sushiOctober 30, 2019 at 09:18#3469540 likes
Reply to Isaac That’s a pretty poor stance to take as you can, even if you accepted box in the most obvious way (which I don’t need to point out), then you could then make other suggestions about ‘side’ and ‘volume’ pretending some imagined - yet undefined - principle that doesn’t occupy subjective consciousness.
That is precisely the point of the phenomenological approach. It doesn’t have a dog in the ‘possibility’ race of some extradimensional existence or with semantic word play (or rather they are in and of themselves ‘modes’ of intentionality; one which Heidegger set his fancy too rather than the broader project of subjective experience).
None of this is in denial of accumulated experiences of some said experience (maybe ‘box’ has some personal meaning to you outside of facility of the item ‘box’?). An ant never crawls on a table, it crawls on an object of subjective experience we call ‘table’ - there is a difference, yet there isn’t a difference. It’s the perspective that matters to subjective experience.
This is all just another tired old variation on the same lame arguments we had against the "what it's like" objection. "it's obvious...", "you really do know...", "you're just pretending..."
Consciousness it seems is supposed to be completely unassailable by third parties...except apparently, when someone claims to have an experience of it which doesn't fit with preconceptions, then it's apparently open access as to what's 'obvious', and what's 'pretend'.
I like sushiOctober 30, 2019 at 09:50#3469570 likes
Reply to Isaac You can interpret it that way if you wish. I never said any of that specifically.
Note: the ‘you’ is a universal ‘you’ - inclusive of myself. I wasn’t, and try not to, attack what someone says like that anymore. It just makes the discussion go awry in my experience.
You may very well imagine the letters B-O-X, I’m not telling you what you imagine, I’m asking you to question the validity of the questioning and assumptions not offer up your hermeneutic interpretation of what I’ve said.
Can you imagine a box with no sides? As in create an image in your head of a physical box. The answer is no, as you said. I’m denying that you can speculate about some extradimensional box, but you cannot ‘see’ it.
To take this more in the direction you were steering, we could then ask if I could imagine a day with no hours? On the face of it most people would be inclined to say ‘of course not!’ But with a little thought it doesn’t take long to realise that an ‘hour’ is an empirical measurement and that time passes regardless of how we do or don’t account for it. The ‘mode’ of thought - the intentionality - is how we subjectively align ourselves.
Can you imagine a box with no sides? As in create an image in your head of a physical box.
I'm questioning both the accuracy (in terms of language use) and the usefulness (for our investigation) of that connection. I don't think "can you imagine" is limited to "can you form a mental image of", and even if we did impose such artificial limits, how is our thus shackled investigation of any use to us now?
I’m denying that you can speculate about some extradimensional box, but you cannot ‘see’ it.
Exactly, so where's my role in this phenomenal investigation? You say "let's just investigate what it is we actually experience, let's use that as our measure...", I say "I experience a feeling of being able to imagine such a box", and your immediate response is "no you can't!".
Terrapin StationOctober 30, 2019 at 10:19#3469630 likes
So your wife and kid are just creations of your mind in your view.
Did you tell your wife and kid mind-creations this?
(This is the sort of scenario where I really would love to be able to interact with you folks in person instead. I'd make sure they know this if you haven't told them.)
I like sushiOctober 30, 2019 at 10:28#3469640 likes
Reply to Isaac I didn’t say ‘no you can’t’. You said you can’t and I agree.
The point is noticing the modes of intentionality: speculating, thinking, feeling, saying, suggesting, reasoning, etc.,. And I don’t mean this in a language based hermeneutical sense only; hence my point about Heidegger doing Husserlian phenomenology in part. You may find that approach more to your liking though.
You can ‘feel’ something about a box. That is a mode. I could have said any 3-dimensional object of perception. There are certain - forgive me I get these Husserlian terms backwards sometimes - ‘aspects’ of a given object of experience (‘object’ in a loose sense of the term) and certain ‘parts’. I think it is the aspects that cannot be removed, but parts can, ie. removing the ‘shape’ of a table being impossible if we wish the table to be concrete object of experience, yet we can remove a leg and the table remains a table.
There are numerous ways to weave this. They are the modes of intentionality at work.
I like sushiOctober 30, 2019 at 10:30#3469650 likes
Reply to Terrapin Station It is irrelevant if this is or isn’t a dream. The experience is subjectively present. We do generally act in the natural mode of being rather than pondering every subjective presentation and turning it over continually in our heads in a state of paralysis ... but we can, and do, alter our modes of thought.
I like sushiOctober 30, 2019 at 10:32#3469660 likes
I’m denying that you can speculate about some extradimensional box, but you cannot ‘see’ it.
— I like sushi
Exactly, so where's my role in this phenomenal investigation? You say "let's just investigate what it is we actually experience, let's use that as our measure...", I say "I experience a feeling of being able to imagine such a box", and your immediate response is "no you can't!".
Sorry, typo. I’m NOT denying ...
I like sushiOctober 30, 2019 at 10:37#3469680 likes
The further point being that it can be easy to fall into a pit of blind speculation. Simply seeing what is and isn’t doubtful adjusts our perspective and allows for a more rigid investigation into phenomenon.
It is even more problematic untangling ourselves from linguistic presuppositions - like with the tame example I gave with ‘hour’.
So your wife and kid are just creations of your mind in your view.
Did you tell your wife and kid mind-creations this?
Well not just creations, I never said anything like that. I'm personally quite convinced there's some external reality, but if we're just talking about the division of that reality into this object and that object then - yes, and yes. I'm sure you're aware the we completely alter our actual cellular make up, so I presume you're not associating other people with their material matter. You know we can be primed to think even the table is a part of ourselves, so presumably you're not working on some consistent self-image. People with Capgras syndrome regularly do re-invent who their wife and kids are. So where's this going? What are you trying to say that my wife and kids (there are two, let's not be excluding anyone) are that is there in the external reality?
Terrapin StationOctober 30, 2019 at 10:44#3469700 likes
I'm sure you're aware the we completely alter our actual cellular make up, so I presume you're not associating other people with their material matter.
You don't even think there is an object that's another person. So what are you asking about?
Terrapin StationOctober 30, 2019 at 10:47#3469720 likes
removing the ‘shape’ of a table being impossible if we wish the table to be concrete object of experience, yet we can remove a leg and the table remains a table.
But look at Ramachandran's self-awareness experiments. Does the table have sensory receptors which link to our brains? Typically no. Two minutes of priming perception prior distributions and suddenly it does. There's no essence of table, there's what we currently perceive which is mediated by what we expect to perceive which is mediated by experience of what we have perceived, plus the architecture of the computational system it's put through. Then there's a whole host of other sensory inputs and memory inputs related to the table, none of which necessarily agree with each other. What we actually experience is then the current best guess as to the cause of those inputs. It changes from second to second sometimes, illusions can be created where the interpretation switches rapidly between one option and another.
I think a phenomenal approach can be really helpful. As I said, it's one necessary half of any psychological or neuroscientific analysis, but we have to be aware of the limits it's answers give us. We cannot reduce down the current experience into it's component parts without accepting that the act of such reduction is itself mediated by the very biases and preconceptions we're trying to investigate.
You don't even think there is an object that's another person. So what are you asking about?
I'm asking about the placeholders in my model, the same model I presume you have since were both human beings and I think such basics as object permanence are fairly hard-wired (though work by Eric Corchesne with six-month old babies may call into question whether that's pre- or post-natal). there's a difference between beliefs in different contexts. As I've said before, a belief, for me, is just a predisposition to act as if some state of affairs were the case in one's model of the external world (external to oneself). But we use different models for different circumstances. This is what the whole work with mental inference has tried to demonstrate. so when you say to me, in a philosophy forum "are there real object in the external world?" I have to select which model of the external world to use. Here it's a very loose theoretical one and in it I can't honestly see how objects could be defined objectively, so the answer is no. When speaking to, or dealing with people in my social life, I act as if they were independent real objects, because in that context I'm using a different model. The first model would be next to useless in that context, and I learnt as much in the first few months of life.
Terrapin StationOctober 30, 2019 at 11:05#3469760 likes
You can't presume there's another human being if there's no object that's another person.
There can be no object that's Eric Corchesne, no objects that are six-month old babies, etc. on your view.
As I just tried to explain. One model for one type of behaviour - philosophising - no objects. Another model for another type of behaviour - relating to people, talking about who they are and what they said - objects.
Is there something about this multiple model idea you're not understanding? (and, yes, the very idea of models and multiplicity is itself a model, we can't escape this and look at it from outside)
Terrapin StationOctober 30, 2019 at 11:12#3469800 likes
Is there something about this multiple model idea you're not understanding?
If you were answering from the perspective of models earlier, and you have a model where there are other people as objects, etc., then why did you answer only from the model where there aren't other people as objects?
If you were answering from the perspective of models earlier, and you have a model where there are other people as objects, etc., then why did you answer only from the model where there aren't other people as objects?
You'd have to reference the exact question for me to give you a comprehensive answer, but as to the topic in general, it's obviously one about the nature of our models, so I don't think it would have explained my position accurately at all to simply answer from within the model which I think is the very one in question.
Terrapin StationOctober 30, 2019 at 12:23#3469980 likes
When we were talking about properties. Specifically whether there are any objective properties. When I was talking about that and asking you questions about it I wasn't talking or asking about your "models," but even if so, why would you answer from the perspective of one model rather than another?
Everything I think is some model or other of the reality I'm thinking about, so there is no question that I can answer outside of some model or other. You asked about 'objective' properties, ones that pertain outside of any of my models. Notwithstanding the fact (one that I did try to communicate at the time) that I don't think it's possible to answer such a question from outside of a model, the closest I can possibly get to an answer would be from a model of how models obtain. That's why I chose that one.
Consider if you asked me in the middle of a chess game "can I take this bishop home?", Id' be crazy to answer from the perspective of the game, "no, bishops can only move diagonally and then only within the confines of the board, so there's no way you can move the piece all the way to your house". I'd presume we were talking about pieces outside of the model of 'how chess works' and in a meta model of spatio-temporal positions which the chess board is just a piece in. The rules of chess don't matter in this model, the 'reality' of the edges of the chess board as a constraint on the movement of the pieces no longer applies.
It's like that with questions about objects and properties. In one model I define objects from reality, I define properties from all the processes around them and I determine that those properties belong to that object. Another model then treats these objects as real fixed entities, like the boundaries of the chess board, and my behaviour assumes them to be.
You asked me a question about the first model , the one which defines and assigns properties.
Terrapin StationOctober 30, 2019 at 12:38#3470050 likes
No, I presume I'm observing reality, but observing is a model-mediated process. I don't 'observe' without modelling. I see what I expect to see to a certain extent. That's what the whole load of neuroscience I've been talking about seems to show.
Terrapin StationOctober 30, 2019 at 12:54#3470080 likes
How would we be able to know this without knowing what the world is like sans modeling for comparison?
We determine anything by reference to deeper models, things like consistency and non-contradiction. We know (by reference to these) that observations is model mediated because we can manipulate those models and observe changes. We could, I suppose, theorise that reality actually does change somehow resulting from our manipulation of these experimental conditions, but it seems more parsimonious to assume the variations are internal.
If two people give differing, contradictory accounts of some state of affairs, it seems reasonable to assume neither necessarily has clear access to the state of affairs both are trying to describe. We don't need ourselves to have access to that states of affairs to evidence this, it is sufficient that we assume both cannot be the case and so if one can be wrong (which one must) then so can the other.
Terrapin StationOctober 30, 2019 at 13:13#3470130 likes
If two people give differing, contradictory accounts of some state of affairs, it seems reasonable to assume neither necessarily has clear access to the state of affairs both are trying to describe.
I can't draw anything at the moment, so we'll use this as a drawing instead:
Suppose A and B are persons. They both say something about @. What would be a reason to believe that @ from A's location is identical to @ from B's location, so that A and B's accounts of @ wouldn't contradict?
For that matter, we can just talk about A and B as locations, without people. The same thing would be the case.
Terrapin StationOctober 30, 2019 at 13:25#3470160 likes
From one spatial point of reference, a table has this shape:
From another spatial point of reference, a table has this shape:
We could say those shapes "contradict" each other, but they're both really the shape of the table from different spatial points, and that has nothing to do with models or us our our perception.
1. Obviously we'd be talking about a situation where we're comparing two participants both in A's place, just at different times, experimentsttry to eliminate variables so, place is a really obvious one to start with.
So to follow through you'd have to say that @ at t1, when A is there, was different (had different properties?) from @ at t2, when B is there.
But if this is the case then we cannot say anything at all about @ because all we know about it is what it was like at t1.
2. The jump from the situation of two observers to say "we can just talk about A and B as locations, without people. The same thing would be the case." is unjustified. The table seeming to be some way is an activity of the observer. The best we could speculate is that it would seem that way if someone were to stand there. We still haven't escaped the fact that we do not access light waves (which themselves are just a model of what we observe on other devices, but let's not go there). We are only aware of visual representations after they've been presented from the occipital cortex, they've already been subject to modulation from backward acting neural connections, and filtered through architecture built by prior experience. The light waves bouncing off the table are a barely related trigger.
What are the properties of a Kaniza square? Are its corners 90 degrees, are its sides straight? How so if when you take the marking circles away there's no square there at all?
Terrapin StationOctober 30, 2019 at 14:26#3470330 likes
1. Obviously we'd be talking about a situation where we're comparing two participants both in A's place, just at different times, experimentsttry to eliminate variables so, place is a really obvious one to start with.
So to follow through you'd have to say that at t1, when A is there, was different (had different properties?) from @ at t2, when B is there.
And indeed things are non-identical through time (which shouldn't be so surprising once we realize that what time is in the first place is change or motion).
The jump from the situation of two observers to say "we can just talk about A and B as locations, without people. The same thing would be the case." is unjustified.
We are only aware of visual representations after they've been presented from the occipital cortex, they've already been subject to modulation from backward acting neural connections, and filtered through architecture built by prior experience.
You're wanting to argue for representationalism. You'd need to present the argument for it.
I'm not a representationalist. I think that representationalism is obviously wrong, because the only way to argue for it is to assume that we can know some things non-representationally.
The notion of optical illusions is incoherent if we don't know what's really there contra the illusion.
The idea, when we're talking about people, isn't that their perception is infallible. But to know that it's fallible, we have to know what they're getting wrong, which means getting something right. Otherwise the whole idea of fallibility is incoherent.
Saying what is like at T1 (and L1 (location 1)) is knowing something about (and saying something about) @.
T1 is an infinitesimally small point, so I don't see how it can coherently have any data attached to it. Even so, properties of some object at some past time were not what you were referring to with regards to 'objective properties'. "Here is a coin", you said, not "there was a coin".
So I have to support claims where you get to say "it's what the world is like" without further evidence. The justification that we do not directly observe light waves are the numerous optical illusions where what we are convinced we observe are actually retinal negatives, polarisation, inferred colour in the peripheral region (which can't even detect EM wavelengths) and downright hallucinations.
T1 is an infinitesimally small point, so I don't see how it can coherently have any data attached to it.
That mathematical view of time is just an abstraction. Time is simply motion or change. T1 is the changes or motion that are/is happening from some frame of reference (as opposed to the changes or motion that happened or the changes or motion that's yet to happen). So it's not an "infinitesimally small point" from most reference frames.
Re objective properties, they're the properties of x from some reference frame/reference point, which is a given relative spatiotemporal location. That should be understood, because it's an inescapable ontological fact.
I didn't ask about the notion of optical illusions though did I? I asked what the properties of the square you see there really are.
Yes, you did--that's a well-known optical illusion and you're asking about it. I actually see the "pac man" shapes and can tell it would give the illusion of a square. So yeah, those properties are there. Learn something about seeing things how visual artists see them. It's important for visual artists to learn how to see "what's really there" rather than seeing illusions, rather than filling in information from concepts we might have, etc. That's part of what makes the difference between amateur/"naive" and mature/professional visual art. Kids will draw a table as square or rectangular with 90-degree angles because that's what their concepts of tables are like (well, aside from circular/oval/etc. tables obviously, lol). They need to learn how to see what the table actually looks like from a given spatial location. Part of the trick to that is to learn how to just see shapes (without naming them, applying concepts, etc.), colors, textures, etc.--so you don't even think "table" or whatever.
The justification that we do not directly observe light waves are the numerous optical illusions where what we are convinced we observe are actually retinal negatives, polarisation, inferred colour in the peripheral region (which can't even detect EM wavelengths) and downright hallucinations.
And again here you're talking about optical illusions. Can you address what I just said about optical illusions and fallibility so I don't have to just repeat it here?
T1 is the changes or motion that are/is happening from some frame of reference (as opposed to the changes or motion that happened or the changes or motion that's yet to happen). So it's not an "infinitesimally small point" from most reference frames.
...and this isn't an abstraction?
I'm struggling to see any more depth to your argument than "things are not the way you think they are, they're the way I think they are".
Yes, you did--that's a well-known optical illusion and you're asking about it.
No, I specifically asked you about the square you see, not the optical illusion as a whole. I want to know what the objective properties of that square are and in what they obtain.
Visual artists are not immune from optical illusions. As I've said you are experiencing one right now. There are two small blind spots in front of your eyes through which no light rays pass. I know this because if I put an object there in people who have damaged eye muscles (restricting movements of the pupil) they cannot see it. The image you see there is made up by your brain to fill in the gap. Your peripheral vision has no colour, do artists see all peripheral images in black and white? No, they make the colour up like the rest of us. Does the number 5 emit red light? No, so why do synathetes see it as red, do 'artist' synathetes see it black like it 'really' is?
Terrapin StationOctober 30, 2019 at 15:22#3470510 likes
No, I specifically asked you about the square you see, not the optical illusion as a whole. I want to know what the objective properties of that square are and in what they obtain.
Obviously there isn't a square.
What happened to addressing what I said about optical illusions and fallibility? This is the second time I'm asking you.
But you see a square. People can be genuinely fooled by optical illusions, they really see a square, it has right angles, straight sides, the lot. So where are those properties? What are they properties of?
We cannot reduce down the current experience into it's component parts without accepting that the act of such reduction is itself mediated by the very biases and preconceptions we're trying to investigate.
It seems a tight needle to thread. There's no guarantee that our representation of our environment's structure corresponds to the structure of phenomenal character associated with it, nor that retrospection using those representations allows us even to describe what representational mechanism made that phenomenal character. But nevertheless, we don't need this guarantee as a blank cheque; we don't need non-representational access to our environment to generate representational knowledge of it, precisely because representation is such a relationship between us and our environment.
This undermines the force of necessity accompanying phenomenological description; it's no longer an a-priori conceptual structure imbued with transcendental necessity through immediately discerning its own properties; and turns it into, like any representational mechanism, a machine for making conjectures.
We have to think of introspection and derived conceptual analysis as one experiment among others, as far as our inner workings are concerned.
Do we see properties? Give an account of properties, and we'll check.
Terrapin StationOctober 30, 2019 at 15:45#3470570 likes
"The notion of optical illusions is incoherent if we don't know what's really there contra the illusion."
"The idea, when we're talking about people, isn't that their perception is infallible.But to know that it's fallible, we have to know what they're getting wrong, which means getting something right. Otherwise the whole idea of fallibility is incoherent."
creativesoulOctober 30, 2019 at 15:55#3470590 likes
I'm not 100% sure I get what you're saying here, so I may go off on entirely the wrong tangent, but...
What I was trying to say to Sushi in the comment you quoted was that any phenomenal investigation based on introspection (of the sort being described with the box) cannot even begin without the structures already in place we're supposed to be investigating. We've already decided what a 'box' is prior to our investigation of its essential properties, otherwise we wouldn't know what the parameters are to our imagination.
Can I imagine a box with no sides? Well I can certainly imagine something with no sides, so is that a box? It becomes linguistic, not phenomenological.
I can definitely see how phenomenological investigations can be useful with experience, but objects seem more of a community resource which therefore comes down to a linguistic investigation.
"The notion of optical illusions is incoherent if we don't know what's really there contra the illusion."
We don't need to know anything about what's 'really' there, we seem, just as a species, to be fundamentally interested in variance minimising. There appears to be a white square when the black circles are (what appears to be) behind it. As soon as the black (what now appears to be) pacmen are removed, there no longer appears to be a white square. We want to reduce this variance, we prefer a model which has either a white square or not. Not a model which has a white square one minute but none the next. So we choose one to be 'accepted' and label the other 'illusion'. Rather than doing so randomly, we do so by minimising variance with a whole host of other models too. The white square being the 'illusion' does this best. At no point in the whole process do we need access to reality nor even to care which is which.
We don't need to know anything about what's 'really' there, we seem, just as a species, to be fundamentally interested in variance minimising. There appears to be a white square when the black circles are (what appears to be) behind it. As soon as the black (what now appears to be) pacmen are removed, there no longer appears to be a white square. We want to reduce this variance, we prefer a model which has either a white square or not. Not a model which has a white square one minute but none the next. So we choose one to be 'accepted' and label the other 'illusion'. Rather than doing so randomly, we do so by minimising variance with a whole host of other models too. The white square being the 'illusion' does this best. At no point in the whole process do we need access to reality nor even to care which is which.
There's absolutely no grounds on that for calling something an illusion, though. It's completely arbitrary (and ridiculous, and not something that you at all really believe).
There is the phenomenal character of me lying in the bath with the bubbles of my farts trickling between my thighs.
There was something it was like for me to be lying in the bath with the bubbles of my farts trickling between my thighs.
There is the quale of my lying in the bath with the bubbles of my farts trickling between my thighs.
I'm not keen on 'quale' in any context, and I like 'something it's like' in some contexts. I think 'phenomenal character' is probably better in most examples. Depends on the language of the example.
EDIT: were you asking for examples from philosophical literature?
You could just as well have these:
The experience of me lying in the bath with the bubbles of my farts trickling between my thighs.
The feeling of me lying in the bath with the bubbles of my farts trickling between my thighs.
I take all these to be essentially equivalent.
Terrapin StationOctober 30, 2019 at 18:23#3470870 likes
Also, if you're going to go back to the "everything is a model" lie then again, we'd need to explain why you went with one model over the other. You didn't do that yet.
Specifically, it seems that you've taken that to include things like letters and such.
Nahhhh.....I was just circumventing what we don’t do when reading a word, as opposed to what we do, re: relate the word to experience. I had in mind to juxtaposition “quark” with, say, “ice cube”, or your “dog”, these being much more familiar, hence more easily fathomable, conceptual identities, but having the same naming procedure. I used a weird word to emphasize that all words are invented, have a first instantiation but always bear a relation, which prioritizes the relation over the word that names it. I was fretting over the length of the comment. Nothing to do with letters and such.
—————-
understanding is imperative to good, productive, and valid discourse. I'm assuming we both seek just that...
Absolutely. In keeping with that, please elucidate “report” for me, if you would, please. I realize you’ve probably done that already, sometime ago, but as I said......I’m very much nearer my expiration date than my born-on date, so my retention isn’t what it used to be. Humor me?
Correlations drawn between different things are the building blocks of everything ever thought, believed, spoken, written, and/or otherwise uttered.
Is it that the combination of all three of those has something to do with “report”? I grant that everything ever spoken, written and/or otherwise uttered is the superficial rendition of the concept “report”, but I hesitate whether everything ever thought and/or believed should be deemed a “report”.
I don’t see how all the old-fashioned dichotomies an be eliminated, when the primary dualism intrinsic to correlation, is part of your theory. I mean, correlation just screams dichotomy, however simplistic it may be. It’s part of mine as well, but I’m not trying to get rid of it. Nevertheless, there is the dichotomy of experience and what it’s like that can easily be dismissed.
Little help?
I like sushiOctober 30, 2019 at 19:51#3471070 likes
Reply to Isaac This isn’t quite what phenomenology is about. It’s not merely a matter of words that gives an object.
Subjectivity isn’t a give or take. Without subjectivity there is no phenomenon to initially apply worded thought.
Never ceases to amaze me the lack of respect for scientists we read about here. Not science itself, the people conducting the experiments. Yes, everyone is biased, flawed to some extent, but this is just plain disrespectful.
You're joking I hope! Otherwise you are massively overreacting.
This seems to be all in the interpretation: alternatively, it could be down to a feeling of envy or a preference for grape over cucumber.
As I said before I have read of studies which seem to contradict the idea that chimps have a sense of fairness. So, I have formed the opinion that this is still controversial. But I haven't read the studies myself, and I don't have the degree of interest or the time to do so.
I do think of humans as animals, but I think the proposal that other animals employ "models" of fairness or justice in a similar enough way to us, for them to count as "models" is an anthropomorphic projection. A model is a full-blown conceptualization, and I can't see any way to coherently think that doesn't require symbolic language.
Now, I said at the start that I have read of studies which seem to contradict the idea that chimps have a "senses" of fairness; but I am not claiming that they don't. They may have a sense of fairness (as opposed to a "model" of fairness and justice) but I remain unconvinced that even this has been definitively shown.
If you can point to a study that does definitely show what you are claiming and explain just how it does show that, then I would be interested enough to take a look.
I don't think "can you imagine" is limited to "can you form a mental image of", and even if we did impose such artificial limits, how is our thus shackled investigation of any use to us now?
What else do think imagination is beyond forming images in some sense? Can you describe some further function?
There is the phenomenal character of me lying in the bath with the bubbles of my farts trickling between my thighs.
There was something it was like for me to be lying in the bath with the bubbles of my farts trickling between my thighs.
There is the quale of my lying in the bath with the bubbles of my farts trickling between my thighs.
All of these are nothing more than you lying in the bath and farting, and being aware of it.
We've already decided what a 'box' is prior to our investigation of its essential properties, otherwise we wouldn't know what the parameters are to our imagination.
I guess one way to get at the distinction I'm driving at is through the relationship of a perceptual feature to an environmental stimulus. How an environmental stimulus works is different from how it inspires a perceptual feature in an agent. The first how regards the environment; represented through a procedural description of a process in it; the second how regards the relationship of an agent (or agents) to environments.
Out of the jargon, running on a road, slope steepness (environmental stimulus) is felt in body posture change (perceptual feature).
Gotta have both, surely? Can't collapse represented into representation or modelled into model or signified into signifier.
If that's the case, then the notion itself can and ought be cast aside for it cannot be used to further discriminate between anything at all. It becomes superfluous, unhelpful, and offers nothing but unnecessarily overcomplicated language use.
Eventually.....maybe....we would have arrived here, at this very place. It is not correct to say everything is phenomenon, but rather, every object of sensibility, called appearance, united with an intuition by imagination, is phenomenon. It is the same as an object in general, the form of objects in general. But not as yet a named object. Understanding synthesizes phenomena to some manifold of conceptions, and a logically consistent, non-contradictory named object is cognized. Or not. There are phenomena cognized as possible, there are phenomena cognized as impossible, but no phenomena will ever be cognized that is possible and impossible simultaneously.
Phenomena aren’t used to discriminate, it’s not their job. They are more than helpful; they are necessary, in order for concepts to relate to something given to us by perception. This is also why the source, or occasion, for concepts is vital, because these same faculties are used even if there is nothing presented to sensibility, which means there is nothing that appears....but the rational system maintains its operational capacity. We need to account for how we can think empirical objects when there aren’t any, or they are merely possible objects, and more importantly, how we can cognize that for which no object of experience is at all possible, while using the exact same system that gives us empirical knowledge.
I admit Kantian epistemological metaphysics is historical...to be kind. It is, nonetheless, complete in itself, and incorporates enormous explanatory power. Doesn’t at all make it correct, but what speculative philosophy is, especially one developed long before science got its fingers into the human brain.
If you insist on casting phenomena aside, what would take its place?
creativesoulOctober 31, 2019 at 04:21#3472470 likes
understanding is imperative to good, productive, and valid discourse. I'm assuming we both seek just that...
— creativesoul
Absolutely. In keeping with that, please elucidate “report” for me, if you would, please. I realize you’ve probably done that already, sometime ago, but as I said......I’m very much nearer my expiration date than my born-on date, so my retention isn’t what it used to be. Humor me?
Here’s how it relates to the dialogue:
All experience consists entirely of the thoughts/beliefs of the creature having the experience.
— creativesoul
I claim that we cannot even offer an adequate report if we do not know what all thought and belief consists of.
— creativesoul
Correlations drawn between different things are the building blocks of everything ever thought, believed, spoken, written, and/or otherwise uttered.
— creativesoul
Is it that the combination of all three of those has something to do with “report”? I grant that everything ever spoken, written and/or otherwise uttered is the superficial rendition of the concept “report”, but I hesitate whether everything ever thought and/or believed should be deemed a “report”.
A report is an account of what's happened and/or is happening. They are all meaningfully based in thought and belief formation(drawing correlations between different things). With that in mind, not everything ever thought and/or believed should be deemed a "report" because some thought and belief is prior to language. Reports are existentially dependent upon language. That which exists prior to language is neither existentially dependent upon reports nor consists thereof. Not all thought and belief should be deemed "a report" because some exists prior to language.
creativesoulOctober 31, 2019 at 04:43#3472540 likes
understanding is imperative to good, productive, and valid discourse. I'm assuming we both seek just that...
— creativesoul
Absolutely. In keeping with that, please elucidate “report” for me, if you would, please. I realize you’ve probably done that already, sometime ago, but as I said......I’m very much nearer my expiration date than my born-on date, so my retention isn’t what it used to be. Humor me?
Here’s how it relates to the dialogue:
All experience consists entirely of the thoughts/beliefs of the creature having the experience.
— creativesoul
I claim that we cannot even offer an adequate report if we do not know what all thought and belief consists of.
— creativesoul
Correlations drawn between different things are the building blocks of everything ever thought, believed, spoken, written, and/or otherwise uttered.
— creativesoul
Is it that the combination of all three of those has something to do with “report”?
Those three things are thought and/or belief statements. My offering them is to offer a report of my own thought and belief. The notion of report I'm using is quite simple, 'layman' even. I mean, there is no inherent nuance for you to be overly concerned with aside from the following common sense measure of understanding:That which is being reported upon always exists in it's entirety prior to the report.
The first claim is just plain common sense language use.
The second claim has been arrived at via (a heretofore undisclosed)deductive means. To shed a bit of light on that means, I'll offer this:We first look to what all thought and belief statements have in common that make them what they are. We keep in mind that in addition to being a common denominator of all thought and belief statements, these proposed basic elemental constituents must be able to exist in their entirety prior to language. Otherwise, our notion of human though and belief fails to be amenable to an evolutionary progression from no thought and belief(at the moment of biological conception) to the complex metacognitive endeavor that we're currently an active participant in.
The third claim is the conclusion arrived at from the groundwork 'elucidated' upon above.
Rather than doing so randomly, we do so by minimising variance with a whole host of other models too. The white square being the 'illusion' does this best.
I don't think it's possible to answer such a question from outside of a model, the closest I can possibly get to an answer would be from a model of how models obtain. That's why I chose that one.
If you don't like my answers then fine, but it's pointless keep asking for them as I haven't given you any, we're just going tend up going round in circles that way.
This isn’t quite what phenomenology is about. It’s not merely a matter of words that gives an object.
Yes, but it obviously seems that way to me otherwise I wouldn't have wrote what I wrote. It's not really much a contribution just to say "you got that wrong".
You're joking I hope! Otherwise you are massively overreacting.
Unfortunately not, but I do have an ear infection which is making me more than usually cranky (which is very cranky). I'm a little fed up in general, so adding glib rejections of decades of patient scientific research to my list of antagonists was all too easy. You have my apologies.
A model is a full-blown conceptualization, and I can't see any way to coherently think that doesn't require symbolic language.
Now, I said at the start that I have read of studies which seem to contradict the idea that chimps have a "senses" of fairness; but I am not claiming that they don't. They may have a sense of fairness (as opposed to a "model" of fairness and justice) but I remain unconvinced that even this has been definitively shown.
See this for example.
If you can point to a study that does definitely show what you are claiming and explain just how it does show that, then I would be interested enough to take a look.
I don't see there's much point in pursuing the evidence, If you're not convinced by the two articles I gave CS here, then I have nothing more. I suspect what we really disagree about is not the evidence (though you may be more persuaded one way and I the other), but the definition of 'model', and no amount of evidence is going to solve that.
Your reliance on language to form complex conceptions is, I think, mistaken. there must first be a referent before there is a referring word. The concept has to come first. A very advanced brain, I'll give you as a necessary cause, but language... I think you're subliming certain mechanism of thought into something more esoteric than they really are.
OK, but consider you're walking along the floor in some weird house, your feature detection system is telling you the floor is not level, you check with your level and indeed it is at 30 degrees. You walk into the next room and your feature detection system tells you the floor is steep, you check and it is indeed steep, it's 60 degrees. You walk into the next room and your feature detection tells you the floor is astonishingly steep, you check and it's 90 degrees.
Only this last never happens, because a floor at 90 degrees is a wall. you've decided already that whatever you're experience tells you about the steepness floor, it's only allowed to tell you certain answers because a floor only has certain steepness values before it's not a floor anymore.
And this is not arbitrary definition. It's strongly correlated with the very somatic feedback which modulates our perceptual experience. At what angle does a very steep floor become a wall? The angle at which we can no longer walk on it without falling over. Would spiders distinguish between floors and walls?
Gotta have both, surely? Can't collapse represented into representation or modelled into model or signified into signifier.
I think you can. All I'm saying is that what is 'represented' to our conscious awareness is itself a model. So to take your running example. The experience of running on a road - the steepness alone - is 'represented' to us as an already integrated part of our 3D spatiotemporal model. There is no actual steepness of the road because 'steepness' is a variable within our spatiotemporal model, not a property of the road. When we then, as neuroscientists, or psychologists, or philosophers of mind, try to understand how all this fits together we must form a model of these models, right? But to do so, we have only the same system to use. I cannot imagine 5D space, not because there's no such thing (it's mathematically possible, even physically possible according to some). I can't imagine 5D space because I don't have a system in the device I'm using (the brain) that can do that.
Likewise with discussing the limits to such an investigation as this. Phenomenological or otherwise. Certain answers are ruled out by the parameters of the device we're using to investigate, What I'm referring to as our model of models, but if that term is confusing we could just say the limits of the device, just like a spectrometer can't detect how load something is.
I like sushiOctober 31, 2019 at 08:10#3473020 likes
Reply to Isaac Words are intersubjective. Anyone can experience a box without sharing a common worded representation of box. It is the subjective of a box that matters.
It is a tricky subject because many people go for Heidegger’s Phenomenological Hermeneutics rather than referring back to Husserl’s Transcendental Reduction.
You cannot NOT be subjective. It isn’t a choice. You don’t need worded language to interact in the world of things. Much like an ant doesn’t need to understand it is on a table to be on a table - or us on a planet.
The term horizon is probably of better use. All there is is the horizon of subjective experience. I am certainly not saying we don’t bring past experiences along with us, that’s clear enough.
Anyone can experience a box without sharing a common worded representation of box. It is the subjective of a box that matters.
Yes, maybe, but we're talking to each other here. It's not true to say anyone can experience a box without sharing a common worded representation of box to me, because in saying it to me you're relying on a common use of 'box' to imply some parameters. My private distinction of what a box is never gets a look in, it's never relevant. The moment I even conceive of distinguishing 'box' from 'not box' I'm doing so entirely in a social ecosystem, I'm doing so entirely to get the word 'box' right. "Is this 'box', how about this, or this". My thought is testing what the world of my language users will accept as 'box' in different contexts.
My subjective experience of 'box' is inextricably tied up with the language community.
I like sushiOctober 31, 2019 at 09:37#3473150 likes
Are you suggesting that it is impossible to understand what a box is without the word box?
Yes, pretty much. I think it's possible to understand what things do, how we can interact with them etc without language, but 'a box' is a distinct(ish) category of thing, and that division arose via our language community, my investigations into the apparent features I can use to distinguish 'box' from 'not box' are all tied up. It's how I learnt what a box is and so it's the way my neural connections represent it.
And this is not arbitrary definition. It's strongly correlated with the very somatic feedback which modulates our perceptual experience. At what angle does a very steep floor become a wall? The angle at which we can no longer walk on it without falling over. Would spiders distinguish between floors and walls?
It's also strongly correlated with the floor's physical structure. So there's no necessary connection between the somatic component of our self model and the environmental stimulus, but in usual circumstances our actions and internal states are in strong accord with our environment.
The floor's steepness induces different features in our self model; there's positional adjustments we feel that mirror the floor gradient. We can see the composite of its topography, colour and how it distributes over space. It's definitely there, and we represent facets of it with perceptual features (and derived states of belief). We don't see our visual field, the visual field is a seeing relation between a body (and its history) and its environment.
In the neural model paper you linked me; there are external states with their own dynamics and outputs which are then integrated into ourselves, and modified by our actions. The external states are not phenomenal, nor are the effects of our actions on our environment.
I like sushiOctober 31, 2019 at 12:35#3473430 likes
Reply to Isaac I’m afraid whatever you’re talking about bears no relation to phenomenology then. Semantics and linguistics are no the direct concern of the phenomenological investigation.
For what it’s worth it doesn’t make any sense to me to say we can understand the function of a box yet not know what a box is. If the box is not it’s use then what exactly is the intersubjective naming of ‘box’ giving that wasn’t already present?
Not all thought and belief should be deemed "a report" because some exists prior to language.
Cool. Thanks.
I guess my concern, with respect to understanding each other, was to eliminate “report” as a metaphor, as in the case where, say, the senses “report” their perceptions to their respective receptors. Of course, the metaphoric report from the senses, while such machination certainly “exists in its entirety prior to language use”, isn’t a thought or a belief either, until or unless such machination is taken into account by a thinking subject.
In the neural model paper you linked me; there are external states with their own dynamics and outputs which are then integrated into ourselves, and modified by our actions. The external states are not phenomenal, nor are the effects of our actions on our environment.
Yes absolutely. I fear we might be talking past one another here. I'm not in any sense arguing that there are not external states, nor that our internal states aren't tightly connected to them. What I'm concerned to avoid is an assumption that our phenomenal experience of our sense representations marks any natural or real division of those external states.
The difference is between saying there is a real box, and saying there is some reality part of which we can decide to refer to as a box. Hence my example with the floor/wall. When a floor becomes a wall is intrinsically linked to our form of life, it's not one or the other externally.
So, even though it's harder to imagine, I see the same being the case with 'steepness', or for that matter 'colour', 'spatiotemporal extension'... That defining this measure (as opposed to that) is similarly placing divisions in some general field of 'states of affairs' which are intrinsically linked to our form of life, and in this case, the biology with which we carry it out.
I’m afraid whatever you’re talking about bears no relation to phenomenology then. Semantics and linguistics are no the direct concern of the phenomenological investigation.
I'm not so much asking about the correct categorisation as just talking about what I see as the implications. You can call it what you like. The fact remains that introspection cannot determine anything about 'a box' that is not later necessarily mediated by the use of the term in our common language. I cannot find the defining features of a box in my mind, it is a category of my community of language users.
For what it’s worth it doesn’t make any sense to me to say we can understand the function of a box yet not know what a box is.
The first is specific, the other general. Token and type. I can understand the function of a box, or even every box I encounter or can imagine. None of that gives me the first clue as to what a box is and isn't as a type, for that I must consult my community of language users to see if I'm applying the term efficaciously.
I like sushiOctober 31, 2019 at 14:03#3473640 likes
Reply to Isaac misquote. I still don’t know what you’re talking about. Better to leave it I think.
Thanks
Terrapin StationOctober 31, 2019 at 14:15#3473680 likes
Rather than doing so randomly, we do so by minimising variance
Whether that's the case or not (that it's really minimizing variance with respect to other models), it would be arbitrary that you're going with "minimizing variance" as the metric.
Terrapin StationOctober 31, 2019 at 14:17#3473690 likes
Whether that's the case or not (that it's really minimizing variance with respect to other models), it would be arbitrary that you're going with "minimizing variance" as the metric.
I think you're not understanding the meaning of the word arbitrary. It just means on a whim, without a system or reason. Not without a system or reason that whomever you're speaking to happens to agree with.
Is there a way to know the world without our modeling of it?
— Mww
Yes. Observe it.
Hmmm, yeah, I suppose. Observation tells me that, but use of “modeling” makes explicit I wish to know of. Observation in itself, tells me nothing of the world except it is not nothing.
Token and type. I can understand the function of a box, or even every box I encounter or can imagine. None of that gives me the first clue as to what a box is and isn't as a type
Us old-fashion types would say....nothing in the form of a thing can ever give me the first clue as to the matter of it, but only that the matter of it is conceivable. But I guess that is a first clue, so.....
I'm not in any sense arguing that there are not external states, nor that our internal states aren't tightly connected to them.
Aye! Glad. Sometimes it's hard to distinguish whether someone's making epistemological or ontological claims in cases like this. I was definitely misreading you as some kind of 'external world constructivist' or something. Interpretive bias on my part.
What I'm concerned to avoid is an assumption that our phenomenal experience of our sense representations marks any natural or real division of those external states.
I agree that it we don't track all the time, just most of the time we do as far as environmental stimuli are concerned. Keeping ourselves in touch with our body/mind and our environment is what our active perception does (ontologically), but the conceptual representations active perception generates do not thereby have a basis in reality (no epistemological guarantees from introspection or conception); there's always room for misapprehension, error, and the phenomenal character of our internal states being populated with representational entities that don't track the mechanisms that generate them (like an idea like "the will", which is sort of a conceptual feature analogous to a perceptual feature).
That defining this measure (as opposed to that) is similarly placing divisions in some general field of 'states of affairs' which are intrinsically linked to our form of life, and in this case, the biology with which we carry it out.
The neatest way of placing divisions (incorporating or representing differences) is by using those in our environment. Like, when we see stuff, it's usually because it's there and reflecting light. Environmental stimuli typically have propensities to be perceived in the way they do; they provide the basis for features consistent with and driven by their character.
I was definitely misreading you as some kind of 'external world constructivist' or something. Interpretive bias on my part.
Well yeah, constructivism is pretty much where I'm coming from,im afraid. I mean, there's varieties of constructivist, but in the sense of model-dependent realism and Von Glaserfield in psychology. So epistemological constructivism, yeah, hermeneutic constructivism...bit too far fetched for me.
the phenomenal character of our internal states being populated with representational entities that don't track the mechanisms that generate them (like an idea like "the will", which is sort of a conceptual feature analogous to a perceptual feature).
Like, when we see stuff, it's usually because it's there and reflecting light
OK, so take light as an example. One model it's just the opposite of dark, the stuff that we see, visible light. But that's just a model-dependent division of a wider electromagnetic spectrum no reason (apart from our eyes) why 430-770THz has any external world significance. So we see some arbitrary sub-division of electromagnetism. But then electromagnetism is just a model of energy types based on subdivisions we imposed on the experimental data, different energy bands. Then the division between energy and matter...
We're tracking something, but any and all descriptions of that something are themselves just models, and there's only one player in that game.
Terrapin StationOctober 31, 2019 at 17:00#3473890 likes
Hmmm, yeah, I suppose. Observation tells me that, but use of “modeling” makes explicit I wish to know of. Observation in itself, tells me nothing of the world except it is not nothing.
I don't really understand "makes explicit I wish to know of."
Observation shows you what things are like, properties they have, patterns that occur, etc. It tells you all sorts of things.
As when deciding to go with "minimizing variance" for a metric.
Minimising variance is a well-supported principle of self-organising systems. A large proportion of neuroscience, and significant sectors of biology are now based on the idea that systems aim to minimise variance as a means of maintaining equilibrium steady state, so unless you have anything substantive to counter that theory with contrary empirical data, then just saying it's 'without reason' seems a bit empty.
Reply to Isaac Minimize variance? The sympathetic nervous system dramatically throws the body out of equilibrium. The parasympathetic does also. Some systems resist change, some create it. How does that fit into your perspective?
We're tracking something, but any and all descriptions of that something are themselves just models, and there's only one player in that game.
I think it's very easy to forget that modelling is relational. It's a two term thing. The model might be embedded or represented in some fashion; instantiated somehow; but it being implemented in us distinct from it losing its relational character. It doesn't cease to be a relation because it's instantiated, no more than "X is in a loving relationship with Y" (X R Y) is reducible to "X is (in love with Y)" (P(X)) and "Y is (in love with X)" (Q(Y)).
OK, so take light as an example. One model it's just the opposite of dark, the stuff that we see, visible light. But that's just a model-dependent division of a wider electromagnetic spectrum no reason (apart from our eyes) why 430-770THz has any external world significance
Vision guides action. We do a lot with our eyes, just as much as stuff that reflects in that frequency range is relevant to us now, it was relevant to us in the past. We probably don't need to see in UV or IR because there weren't sufficiently strong ecological or sexual pressures driving selection in our ancestors for that. We have bright/dark in old primate ancestors - which makes sense for mostly nocturnal animals, but when we no longer were mostly active at night; there are simply more active and relevant reflectance profiles in objects around us, more light gets reflected just because there's more ambient light during the day; so if we're active in the day, greater visual environmental modelling capacity makes sense... Going from monochrome to colour? That's a lot of distinctions to act upon. We can distinguish rather a lot in our environment with our vision because it is useful for us as a population to do so.
I think it's easier to see models as relational without concerning ourselves specifically with humans, since we're ludicrously complex. A world without models being inherently relational would not have had the grass stripe the zebra, darken nocturnal predators, or make stick insects sticky!
Observation shows you what things are like, properties they have, patterns that occur, etc. It tells you all sorts of things.
Of course. As a general rule, nonetheless, when I investigate anything at all, “what it’s like” and “all sorts of things” is inversely proportional to the importance I give to the investigation.
But I understand what you mean: I observe a ZR1 and recognize it is like a Yugo.
Terrapin StationOctober 31, 2019 at 18:42#3474200 likes
Minimising variance is a well-supported principle of self-organising systems. A large proportion of neuroscience, and significant sectors of biology are now based on the idea that systems aim to minimise variance as a means of maintaining equilibrium steady state, so unless you have anything substantive to counter that theory with contrary empirical data,
You're not talking about empirical data. You don't believe you have access to empirical data. You're talking about a model that you constructed (just like you're constructing the model of "my reply"). The fact that your personal model makes the "minimizing variance" model common doesn't make it non-arbitrary. Trust me, as this is your model talking to you.
Terrapin StationOctober 31, 2019 at 18:43#3474210 likes
All “likes” as characteristics/properties/qualities are themselves comparisons. An observer of the world’s characteristics compares them to the affect they have on him. As esoteric as that may sound, how else do we learn about them?
Terrapin StationOctober 31, 2019 at 20:31#3474630 likes
Reply to Isaac :cool: I can't think of any way that complex conceptualizations could occur absent symbolic language, but it may be a failure or limitation of my thought.
Can you imagine a really load noise? Can you imagine the set of all sets? Can you imagine if you forgot where your home was?...
Sure, I can "visualize" a really loud noise. I can visualize a set of all sets as a container that contains all other containers. I can visualize myself as being lost.
I suppose one can just look at something and not consider anything about it. But what if it interests him?
What about that? So, say, for example, that one sees a rock that one is really attracted to--say something like a rock of pink granite, so one picks it up to take it home.
If that's the case, then the notion itself can and ought be cast aside for it cannot be used to further discriminate between anything at all. It becomes superfluous, unhelpful, and offers nothing but unnecessarily overcomplicated language use.
— creativesoul
Eventually.....maybe....we would have arrived here, at this very place. It is not correct to say everything is phenomenon, but rather, every object of sensibility, called appearance, united with an intuition by imagination, is phenomenon.
I admit Kantian epistemological metaphysics is historical...to be kind. It is, nonetheless, complete in itself, and incorporates enormous explanatory power.
Kant was my favorite for a very long time. There are serious issues of inherent inadequate explanatory power however. That which exists in it's entirety prior to humans is relegated to Noumena, and as such is grossly neglected. The problem, of course, is that we can most certainly know much about such things, just not when and if we're using Kant's framework.
If you insist on casting phenomena aside, what would take its place?
Nothing. There's no need for phenomena. We can remove it without losing anything. It's removal does not result in something missing. Rather, it results in something gained. Clarity by virtue of removing an unnecessary entity. The simplest, most basic rudimentary level thought and belief all involve that which is directly perceived. However, Kant denies direct perception of reality. Thus, Kant did not and could not draw and maintain a distinction between non linguistic thought and linguistic thought.
He also did not draw a distinction between thought and belief and thinking about thought and belief. That distinction can yield knowledge of existential dependency and elemental constituency.
creativesoulNovember 01, 2019 at 01:53#3475660 likes
I haven't forgotten about the studies. I've been doing a little bit of research into recent studies that are very similar, and a few podcasts which seem to reference the same/very similar studies. I'm particularly interested in the ones where coins are used in exchange for rewards.
They are very intriguing. Sadly though, one researcher in particular(regarding rhesus or macaques) was drawing unwarranted/unjustified/invalid conclusions that amounted to the personification of the the animals(anthropomorphism). However, not all of them did nor do all seem prone to make such mistakes.
Thanks again for drawing my attention to this...
creativesoulNovember 01, 2019 at 02:09#3475730 likes
Not all thought and belief should be deemed "a report" because some exists prior to language.
— creativesoul
Cool. Thanks.
I guess my concern, with respect to understanding each other, was to eliminate “report” as a metaphor, as in the case where, say, the senses “report” their perceptions to their respective receptors. Of course, the metaphoric report from the senses, while such machination certainly “exists in its entirety prior to language use”, isn’t a thought or a belief either, until or unless such machination is taken into account by a thinking subject.
Nada.
A worthy concern...
Nah, metaphor is poor philosophy. To say the senses "report" is to be involved in anthropomorphic thinking(the personification of the senses). I reject such talk/approaches.
I like sushiNovember 01, 2019 at 02:24#3475800 likes
Reply to creativesoul I meant everything is phenomenon ‘of’ subjective consciousness. I was talking about phenomenology - where ‘existence’ of objects isn’t of direct concern (because the aim of phenomenology is specific).
creativesoulNovember 01, 2019 at 02:38#3475880 likes
Different strokes, and all... I find talking in such terms to be very unhelpful.
I see trees, not phenomenal representations thereof.
creativesoulNovember 01, 2019 at 02:39#3475890 likes
What is the aim though, seriously. Does it have a goal in mind?
I like sushiNovember 01, 2019 at 02:53#3475980 likes
Reply to creativesoul Phenomenology isn’t about ‘representations’. The aim was to create a science of subjectivity - science of consciousness. Husserl’s concern was that psychologism would destabilise philosophy and the natural sciences.
I like sushiNovember 01, 2019 at 05:12#3476360 likes
Maybe I should expand on that statement about ‘representation’. The most important term in phenomenology is ‘Intentionality’, which is the mode of ‘seeing’: hence the attempt I made using ‘box’ to show that we ‘act’ in a certain mode of thought - an ‘aboutness’. One mode of thought would be to attend to perception and regard a box as representational. Such a ‘mode’ of thought is outside of the phenomenological field though because the a key point of phenomenology is to ‘bracket’ the transcendental object of perception.
Be VERY clear here that ‘transcendental’, in this sense and the Kantian sense, doesn’t mean ‘spiritual’ or woo woo. We’re talking about the transcendent as the naturalistic and Husserl was trying to draw back to the grounding of rationality/logic/science/consciousness, hence the term ‘Transcendental Reduction’ meaning to take the givenness of the world and strip away naturalistic assumptions. He does throw out some fairly contradictory ideas and over time he shifted his positioning. He once said something akin to ‘concluding is a failure in the phenomenological investigation’ - some (that I’ve come across) took this to mean ‘just imagine what you like’, but that isn’t the point at all. The point is to abscond from everything except the task of, if you forgive my word-smithery, depreciating representations in favour of exploring what lies beneath (which is an infinitely endless task, yet not one that doesn’t offer rewards).
Also, understand that Husserl (“The father of Phenomenology”) was logician. He was very wary of historicism and psychologism. He aimed to bring the ‘subjective’ into the field of play for rational work. He felt quite strongly, so it appears, that the natural sciences we’re set up against subjective consciousness on firm yet not infallible grounding.
For further background on where he was coming from, he was clearly opposed to dualistic thought. He praised Descartes for starting up something yet glossing over the “I” “thinking” part of his philosophical disposition. I think it was Damasio who said it would be better to say “I doubt therefore I am” in his book ‘Descartes’ Error’, but I may be mistaken?
In terms of the contemporary attitudes of today, and even the past century (at least!), I’d say there is something to be said for our political, scientific and cultural regard for ‘subjectivity’ and the polarisatiln of ideologies becoming more prominent due to a lack of grounding for a ‘subjective science’.
Did Husserl have success? No. He did have some success, and I’m pretty sure the point is to find a means to remain constantly on guard against ‘concluding’ and/or ‘success’ as a finality of scientific/philosophical thought.
Personally I see Phenomenology as a bridge between the historical opposition of Idealism and Realism. Phenomenology doesn’t have a dog in either fight, yet it has a dog in both fights too only at a distance so as not to be heard barking let alone felt biting. I should say I don’t actually view ‘idealism’ and ‘realism’ as polar opposites, merely stating the philosophical history of this back and forth, tit-for-tat debate that has rung through the ages - with great discoveries.
creativesoulNovember 01, 2019 at 05:47#3476500 likes
Secondly, I'm not necessarily arguing that non- human primates have an abstract concept of fairness/justice like ours. For a start I think it more likely we'll find our concept isn't quite so abstract and top-down acting as we think, not that chimpanzees have topgdown acting abstract concepts, more that we don't.
I agree with that general sentiment. It's a matter of finding the common denominators between their thought and belief and our own. Consider evolutionary progression and ours must begin simply anyway. Theirs must and does as well. Senses of fairness are rather complex results from rather complex thought and belief.
An important consideration in support of the quote above...
Top down techniques require language use, as do bottom up techniques. Those are two names for two different techniques of reasoning. Both are existentially dependent upon common written language. Non-human primates' thought and belief cannot be. Non-human thought and belief does not - cannot - consist of either.
creativesoulNovember 01, 2019 at 05:48#3476510 likes
I like sushiNovember 01, 2019 at 06:31#3476580 likes
Reply to creativesoul No. The tree you see (with your eyes) is a transcendental object of experience. The point of transcendental reduction is to bracket out your concern for a tree ‘being there’ (as it may be a dream). To do such is to shift your intentionality away from the naturalistic world and move to the ‘mode’ of actively investigating the phenomenon of subjective experience. In terms of visual objects, as mentioned, you can explore what the constituents of ‘subjectivity’ are - ie. some natural transcendent object possesses ‘parts’ and ‘aspects’, you can remove ‘parts’ of tree yet not ‘aspects’. In this sense I can certainly see why many fixate upon the worded exposition; we are trying to commune after all! That aside, you can snap a branch off a tree yet it remains a tree, you can draw a tree, yet it is still a tree, you can touch it, lick it, climb it, etc.,. What is so obvious is that it is a tree, yet what it is that makes it ‘obvious’ is the ‘aim’ of the phenomenological investigation.
With the ‘box’ example I went straight down to the spacial essence. A tree with ‘no height’ is not a tree. A tree with no mass is not a tree (yet phenomenological disposition of tree isn’t concerned with empirical measurements per se, meaning an ‘image’ of a tree - a drawn picture - has naturalistic transcendence as an object of thought.)
This moves us into ‘empty intentions’ and the ‘unrevealed’ aspects/parts of some phenomenon. You never see ‘the front/back of’ or ‘the inside/outside’ as a unified eidetic experience. This is something Husserl calls ‘pregnant’, meaning phenomenon are always revealing/obscuring as they are constituted by our ‘intentionality’. You can look at a mirror as a mirror or look at what is in the mirror. The transcendent object of ‘mirror’ is identical for sensory perception, yet the ‘mode’ of looking is utterly different.
It is very much an expansive problem and one where navigation through the phenomenological approach is quite daunting, confusing and full of dead-ends. My personal interest lies more in what I cannot being into the worded sphere, that place from which new paradigms and concepts tweak human understanding from an unspoken ‘subjectivity’. The common saying of “A picture paints a thousand words” would be the best fit to describe this if we were to then ask ‘what words are yet to be crafted’ and/or ‘what words are redundant’, as well as coining ‘A subjective thought paints a thousand pictures’ showing a clear ‘bracketing’ of Heidegger’s hermeneutical phenomenology so many prefer over Husserl’s initial birth of the field.
Minimize variance? The sympathetic nervous system dramatically throws the body out of equilibrium. The parasympathetic does also. Some systems resist change, some create it. How does that fit into your perspective?
'Minimise variance' is quite specific to variance within modelled statistical distributions, not just any and all variance. One semi-closed system (say a single specialised brain cotex) may be quite at odds with another because they have fewer extrinsic connections than they do internal ones.
Looking at the sympathetic nervous system as a system its clearly trying to maintain homeostasis right? But it's a cybernetic system so it needs to disturb the internal state to respond to a equal and opposite external disturbance.
Yeah, I think we're on the same page as far as the fact that models relate, but that doesn't in itself, lead to external world properties somehow having to inform them at some point. Our models only need to infer the cause of the input from one step outside their Markov blanket. The real state of affairs, whatever they are, may well be further back than that and our own system (to minimise variance) would only ever have to have a good, low variance model of the nodes immediately outside the Markov blanket of our conscious awareness.
When we look at those causes as part of some other system (as a scientist, for example) we have a different Markov blanket to work within, so the models may be different, but there's no reason I can think of why these nodes might be heirachical, like we getting closer to the 'one true source' each step we take. Each step is just a different game with different rules and different model will best satisfy them.
Sadly though, one researcher in particular(regarding rhesus or macaques) was drawing unwarranted/unjustified/invalid conclusions that amounted to the personification of the the animals(anthropomorphism). However, not all of them did nor do all seem prone to make such mistakes.
I'm not so sure personification is unwarranted. We immediately personify humans we meet and it would have been grossly incongruous, for example, for me to refer to my subjects as if they were empty machines when conducting experiments. At no point do we collate a hefty, impervious bank of evidence to back up such assumptions. As long as it isn't overwhelmed by evidence to the contrary, I don't mind a range of interpretations.
Anyway, glad you found something of interest. This thread has initiated a number of really interesting tangents.
Sure, I can "visualize" a really loud noise. I can visualize a set of all sets as a container that contains all other containers. I can visualize myself as being lost.
But can't you, for example, imagine how you'd feel if you won the lottery? Surely there you'd be imagining a feeling, not an image? Even visualising yourself being lost, it's more than just the image isn't it? Doesn't it come along with feelings, thoughts you might have etc?
I really don't understand you. To my reckoning, there are these weird people who picked up a way of describing bizarre altered states of activity from a book, and I never understand what they're talking about. They always say "but what's it like to be you" or "what's it like to be a bat?" and things like that. As if they can literally feel it. I don't think very highly of their self awareness, they seem to be replacing their experiences with a description of their experiences. If they payed more attention, they'd see a flux with some continuity in it, and a persistent history that is accessed through memory, and some aspirations and anticipations, but a feeling of themselves as distinct from their sensory capabilities and self attending bodily processes? Madness! Madness I say. It's a cult, a cult!
I would figure 'what it's like to be X' involves the totality of first person experiences X is aware of, be it unguided thought streams or sensations. Wouldn't you say it's clear you experience a stream of anticipations, aspirations, history different from me? That's enough for a 'what it's like to be?', wouldn't it? It's also what leads me to be so bizarrely confused with individuality, i.e. despite there not being a concrete feeling of 'self' and no ontic boundary between conscious agents, assuming physicalism, there is a stream of unique experiences and a spatiotemporal localization of experiences which is stable over time. What mechanism in the world would result in awareness of my particular stream of experiences and not yours?
Regarding qualia, wouldn't you say experiences involve perceptions that are distinct from whatever causes those perceptions 'out there'. I mean you can stimulate a part of the brain and shut off or induce a color of blue, or the sight of a number etc even when there isn't one. So empirically it looks like what you see is not exactly the same as what's in front of you. Doesn't that provide unambiguous evidence for first person qualia [i.e. percepts]?
Regarding qualia, wouldn't you say experiences involve perceptions that are distinct from whatever causes those perceptions 'out there'. I mean you can stimulate a part of the brain and shut off or induce a color of blue, or the sight of a number etc even when there isn't one. So empirically it looks like what you see is not exactly the same as what's in front of you. Doesn't that provide unambiguous evidence for first person qualia [i.e. percepts]?
I never wanted to deny that there is a phenomenal character of experience. What I picked a bone with, to my reckoning, was the way people split up experiences using the word. If you are quite happy to label facets of phenomenal character "qualia", for some suitable sense of "facet", this is fine with me.
What is not fine with me, say, is an arbitrary division between "colour qualia" and "shape qualia", say, without some account of why the division makes sense. In that example, we do perceive colours and shapes differently; colourblind people can agree with non-colourblind people on the shape of objects perceived differently; but I don't think it is warranted to go from this to thinking of "colour quales" and "shape quales" as distinct facets of phenomenal character; the colourblind person and the non-colourblind people still don't see the object's colours without its shape or its shape without colours.
So, the mechanism that contrasts the two cases is based off of bodily differences in how people process visual information (which is sensible), but why would that distinction immediately propagate into (be relevant for) distinctions in lived experience of each agent between colour experience types and shape experience types?
I'm picking a bone with an inference (style of inference, really) tacitly drawn when using the phrase. It has presumptions that are worth challenging.
I never wanted to deny that there is a phenomenal character of experience. What I picked a bone with, to my reckoning, was the way people split up experiences using the word. If you are quite happy to label facets of phenomenal character "qualia", for some suitable sense of "facet", this is fine with me.
What is not fine with me, say, is an arbitrary division between "colour qualia" and "shape qualia", say, without some account of why the division makes sense. In that example, we do perceive colours and shapes differently; colourblind people can agree with non-colourblind people on the shape of objects perceived differently; but I don't think it is warranted to go from this to thinking of "colour quales" and "shape quales" as distinct facets of phenomenal character; the colourblind person and the non-colourblind people still don't see colours without shapes or shapes without colours.
So, the mechanism that contrasts the two cases is based off of differences in how people process visual information (which is sensible), but why would that distinction propagate into distinctions in lived experience of each agent between colour experience types and shape experience types?
Well so then what do you make of mental modularity? Lesion studies, stroke survivor case studies, document highly specific perceptual defects- inability to perceive motion, inability to globally perceive colors, inability to recognize faces that is correlated with damage to specific regions of the brain. All of these seem to suggest to me there are separable elements of experience that aren't necessarily part of a single phenomenal fabric prior to being weaved into a unified conscious experience. I can imagine making an argument for qualia supported by semi-independent, parallel sensory processing units.
single phenomenal fabric prior to incorporation into a unified conscious experience.
Yeah! I don't think perceptual features (motion detection, colour sensitivity) are generated as a unified whole. What I want is for people to pay more attention to the generating mechanisms for perceptual features, and not to do so a-priori like with "red quale". I care where the distinctions come from because I want the accounts to be right.
Definitely. So my desire is to see accounts which look like: (stimulus information types/distinctions) <=> (perceptual feature types/distinction) <=> (information processing system types/distinctions) <=> (first person experience types/distinctions); systematic inter relations between these phenomena, studied. Not:
(a priori conceptions of experience types) = > (first person experience types/distinctions)
And I certainly wouldn't like (a priori conceptions of experience types) => [ (stimulus information types/distinctions) <=> (perceptual feature types/distinction) <=> (information processing system types/distinctions) <=> (first person experience types/distinctions)]. That's such a lazy waste.
But can't you, for example, imagine how you'd feel if you won the lottery? Surely there you'd be imagining a feeling, not an image? Even visualising yourself being lost, it's more than just the image isn't it? Doesn't it come along with feelings, thoughts you might have etc?
It's an interesting question: how do we imagine feelings without actually feeling them? Winning the lottery, being lost; of course I can imagine feelings associated with those experiences; but if in that act of imagination I am not actually experiencing a full-blown feeling then what am I doing? I would say it is akin to visualization; when I imagine the house of my childhood, it is not as though I am looking at it, or at a photograph of it; it's not as if I can look at my visualization and count the bricks, compare their colours and so on; yet I call it visualization nonetheless.
That's why I earlier referred to imagining a sound as a kind of "visualization". And I think imagined feelings,actions and thoughts are also kinds of visualizations. We experience tactile, auditory and motor, as well as taste and smell and many kinds of somato-sensory visualizations I would say. Well, at least that's my experience. I suppose it's not a given that we are all the same.
Yeah! I don't think perceptual features (motion detection, colour sensitivity) are generated as a unified whole. What I want is for people to pay more attention to the generating mechanisms for perceptual features, and not to do so a-priori like with "red quale". I care where the distinctions come from because I want the accounts to be right.
there are separable elements
— aporiap
Definitely. So my desire is to see accounts which look like: (stimulus information types/distinctions) <=> (perceptual feature types/distinction) <=> (information processing system types/distinctions) <=> (first person experience types/distinctions); systematic inter relations between these phenomena, studied. Not:
(a priori conceptions of experience types) = > (first person experience types/distinctions)
And I certainly wouldn't like (a priori conceptions of experience types) => [ (stimulus information types/distinctions) <=> (perceptual feature types/distinction) <=> (information processing system types/distinctions) <=> (first person experience types/distinctions)]. That's such a lazy waste.
That makes sense, I definitely agree with that. Yea unless there's an acknowledgment of the hypothesized and falliable nature of an a-priori quale division, it's very dangerous to do
Which is part of why it's frustrating that people find it "so obvious". There's a whole theory of perception required just to look at what the "features" of our experience really are, and where they come from.
Edit: so just for an example. There's change blindness, like in the door study. Something that phenomenal character usually has associated with it is that we are aware of the phenomenal character or that it is somehow accessible within the experiential state. Whatever makes the guy giving directions in the door study not notice (not be aware) that the person he's giving directions to changes shows that what perceptual features are accessible; those which partake strongly in the phenomenal character of experience; are strongly context sensitive. The context down-weights the relevance of visual feature changes in the guy giving directions' environmental model because of what he's currently doing and how he's doing it. Even then, the result would not hold (probably) if the people looked sufficiently different.
So, we can't even go from "visual processing" to "phenomenal character of vision" without auxilliary contextual information. With the right context, say classifying images for presence of red, even "red quale" might make sense!
Eventually.....maybe....we would have arrived here, at this very place. It is not correct to say everything is phenomenon, but rather, every object of sensibility, called appearance, united with an intuition by imagination, is phenomenon.
— Mww
Spoken like someone who likes Kant's Noumena.
Sorry, but this has nothing whatsoever to do with Kant’s noumena. I hate noumena. He made it so farging difficult to understand what he means by it, says one thing here, something else there. There is one particular definitive rendering I use for reference, because gives, not what it is, but an unambiguous place for its use, in juxtaposition to what humans usually use. And I’m human, so.......
In short, as we all know, for every this there logically is a that. Humans cognize this way, but there is logically a way to cognize humans don’t use, completely unknowable by us. Phenomena for us, noumena for those other guys that ain’t humans, but are some other kind of rational agency.
———————
That which exists in it's entirety prior to humans is relegated to Noumena, and as such is grossly neglected.
Humans since the dawn of the age of reason have speculated on all sorts of stuff supposed to exist long before us, so I wouldn’t think such was neglected. If you wish to term those things existing in their entirety before human as noumena, I have no problem with it, even if I wouldn’t. Maybe the Greeks did tag such things with that nomenclature....dunno. Pretty sure German Enlightenment epistemologists didn’t.
On the other hand, you may be referring to existences in their entirety that are not physical existences, but instead are existences in thought. I see where the negative kind of noumena would enter the fray, for they are called “intelligible existences”, in opposition to existences of sense, which are phenomena. And they are neglected, because they must always lack intuitions because there are no “intelligible intuitions” to be given from the kind of existences which must give rise to them.
Now, this is the Kantian understanding. If you have a way to give noumena an otherwise respectable life, what process have you developed to accomplish it?
————————
We don't need to know anything about what's 'really' there, we seem, just as a species, to be fundamentally interested in variance minimising. There appears to be a white square when the black circles are (what appears to be) behind it. As soon as the black (what now appears to be) pacmen are removed, there no longer appears to be a white square. We want to reduce this variance, we prefer a model which has either a white square or not. Not a model which has a white square one minute but none the next. So we choose one to be 'accepted' and label the other 'illusion'. Rather than doing so randomly, we do so by minimising variance with a whole host of other models too. The white square being the 'illusion' does this best. At no point in the whole process do we need access to reality nor even to care which is which.
In order to process information most efficiently, we reduce the quantity of information transmitted to the brain by applying concepts as ‘efficient summaries’ of information. So four black circles with a white box in front of them provides the same relevant information to the brain as the four rotated ‘Pac-Man’ shapes, only requiring less neurons to fire.
An artist must learn to process the information both (or perhaps a variety of different) ways, and to apply the ‘model’ or value structure according to the task at hand. It isn’t so much about ‘what’s really there’ as about the value structures we tend to apply in most situations - that is, the relativity of our value structures in relation to the ‘experiencing self’.
From a more objective standpoint, it’s not an ‘illusion’, but an alternative subjective experience of the same reality. Understanding the similarities and differences in value structures applied - without evaluating them - enables a more objective understanding of ‘what’s really there’ than prioritising one value structure over the other. Unfortunately, language (like a form of art) is itself a value structure, so in describing what we then understand, we are necessarily reducing the quantity of information transmitted by applying concepts in a particular formation in an effort to transmit the relevant information - ie. reduce information loss.
When a computer graphic artist produces work for the internet, part of the production process is to determine the most effective format to transmit the highest quality rendition of the artwork in the smallest file size. Information loss is inevitable - the trick is to ensure the relevant information is retained. Having a variety of different algorithms (value structures) to select from is a necessary resource, and only the artist will notice what subtlety of information is lost in each version (although they’d be hard pressed to describe it).
creativesoulNovember 02, 2019 at 06:46#3479720 likes
The tree you see (with your eyes) is a transcendental object of experience. The point of transcendental reduction is to bracket out your concern for a tree ‘being there’ (as it may be a dream).
So, for some reason or other some folk want to intentionally neglect the tree?
Some people were claiming that some of those experiments offered adequate evidence for concluding that very young children and some non human primates are recognizing the existence of other minds...
I did not and do not agree with that conclusion, not based upon the evidence I'm privy to.
The experiment involved the subjects observing two specific objects being placed into a particular container/box. There was more than one container. They showed their own surprise when they looked for themselves into the box and did not find what they were expecting to find.
Then, under similar enough circumstances(I suppose), they observed another looking into the wrong box and showed that that bothered them in some way. The speaker claimed that such displays proved somehow that they recognized that the other had a mind???
I found it rather odd that they chose some experiments/games which are not even capable of showing in humans what they are wanting the same experiment to show in non humans?
I like sushiNovember 02, 2019 at 07:01#3479740 likes
Reply to creativesoul I made a mistake. I thought your question was serious. Next time drop it please.
creativesoulNovember 02, 2019 at 07:02#3479750 likes
That was a serious question and a serious reply thereto.
It makes no sense at all to bracket out the tree, when we're talking about seeing the tree.
creativesoulNovember 02, 2019 at 07:07#3479780 likes
What it's like to experience anything is determined - in large part - by the experiencing creature's thought and belief.
Thus, there is no single correct answer to what it's like to experience something.
We can still know what's common to all thinking and believing creatures' experiences by virtue of knowing what's common to all thought and belief.
I like sushiNovember 02, 2019 at 07:09#3479790 likes
Reply to creativesoul If that’s the case you misunderstood then. The ‘existence’ of the tree isn’t the direct concern of the phenomenological investigation. The concern is subjectivity.
creativesoulNovember 02, 2019 at 07:12#3479800 likes
The subjective/objective dichotomy cannot take proper account of that which consists of both, and is thus... neither.
The subjective/objective dichotomy cannot take proper account of that which consists of both, and is thus... neither.
Experience is one such thing.
In simplistic terms, yeah. It’s something like that. If we splice in Kantian terminology here, what we call ‘objective’ is intersubjectivity, the ‘subjective’ is the phenomenological reduction (epoche), and naturalistic sense of objects of perception is framed by negative noumenon - positive noumenon (the thing in itself) beyond comprehension yet assumed; hence the ‘negative’ being the only term of import to human consciousness.
Like many philosophical ideas it seems so bloody obvious that it’s easy to dismiss it and move on. I’d say phenomenology - in all it’s iterations - it the most ‘obvious’ I’ve come across.
creativesoulNovember 02, 2019 at 07:27#3479860 likes
Personally I see Phenomenology as a bridge between the historical opposition of Idealism and Realism.
Whereas I reject them all on the exact same ground. They all work from grossly inadequate notions of human thought and belief. They all employ some of the same inherently inadequate dichotomies as well.
creativesoulNovember 02, 2019 at 07:43#3479910 likes
There's no need for talking in phenomenological terms. It adds nothing but unnecessary complexity. It cannot account for that which consists of both subjective and objective things. Experience is one such thing.
I like sushiNovember 02, 2019 at 07:44#3479920 likes
Reply to creativesoul Okay. But you I thought you said above that there was no subjective/objective dichotomy? That is essentially the position phenomenology works from, so I’m baffled as to what you’re referring to here.
You don’t have to like it. I’m just telling you what it is.
I'm failing to find sense in experience happening to someone who is not aware the experience is their own. I'd say 'to experience' is the same thing as being conscious, and I also fail to see how consciousness makes sense without self-awareness.
I like sushiNovember 02, 2019 at 07:45#3479940 likes
Reply to creativesoul There’s no need to speak English, yet many people find it useful.
We experience tactile, auditory and motor, as well as taste and smell and many kinds of somato-sensory visualizations I would say. Well, at least that's my experience. I suppose it's not a given that we are all the same.
Yeah, I agree. We can actually see a lot of this happening in the brain. When you imagine a tree, the visual cortex is engaged in a very similar way to when you actually see a tree. What happens next is (I think) quite remarkable. Signals are sent to the eyes to move them in the direction the tree would be if it were there. The brain is assuming a tree is there (because you created an image of one) and 'sending' the eyes to check. What happens then is you get feedback from the part of the cortex which delivers the primary visual input to say "there's no tree here" and you update your model from "there's a tree in front of me" to "I'm imagining a tree in front of me". The whole thing is then rationalised post hoc as 'imagining a tree'.
Interestingly, it seems that this is (at least partly) what is wrong with schizophrenics. They do not have the same primacy mechanisms for visual input. They 'see' a tree with their imagination, their eyes go looking for it, see nothing, but the brain then places primacy on the image in the forward driving part occipital cortex, not the data delivered by the eyes.
Anyway, that aside, all I meant - way back - when I said about being able to imagine a box without sides, is that 'imagine' does not have to be about visual images, it can be about concepts, feelings, thoughts etc. I may not be able to 'see' such a box in my mind's eye, but I can imagine how it might feel to be in a world where such a thing existed. Apparently, time slows down (or is it speeds up?) for atoms accelerated near the speed of light such that they decay faster (or slower) than the same atom type at rest. I can't imagine what's happening there, no picture I can form of it represents what the scientists say is going on, yet I do live in a world where such a thing is the case. If, one day it's made into technology, someone might say "pop your pizza in the slow-down-time machine and it'll keep for years", and I'd say "sure, fine" without having the faintest idea what's going on. It's the same with the box. I can imagine someone saying "going on a long trip, just pop all your stuff in the box-without-sides, it'll store everything", "wow, how does that work?", "It's multi-dimensional", "uhh-huh...just show me where to put the stuff".
creativesoulNovember 02, 2019 at 07:48#3479960 likes
I thought you said above that there was no subjective/objective dichotomy? That is essentially the position phenomenology works from, so I’m baffled as to what you’re referring to here.
You don’t have to like it. I’m just telling you what it is.
Also, understand that Husserl (“The father of Phenomenology”) was logician. He was very wary of historicism and psychologism. He aimed to bring the ‘subjective’ into the field of play
I've nothing further.
creativesoulNovember 02, 2019 at 07:51#3479970 likes
I'm failing to find sense in experience happening to someone who is not aware the experience is their own. I'd say 'to experience' is the same thing as being conscious, and I also fail to see how consciousness makes sense without self-awareness.
Consciousness comes before self consciousness. Self consciousness is being aware that one has thought and belief. Being conscious is having/forming thought and belief.
I like sushiNovember 02, 2019 at 07:53#3479980 likes
Reply to creativesoul The irony here is that you made a point which I assumed was an attempt to sum up phenomenology, but was actually a refutation of phenomenology.
There is no ‘subjective’/‘objective’ dichotomy in phenomenology. If there was I’d reject it too. There reason there is so much jargon is because it is needed for precision. I’m giving you a brief summary here.
What do you propose instead as an approach to discuss ‘experiencing’?
creativesoulNovember 02, 2019 at 07:55#3479990 likes
From a more objective standpoint, it’s not an ‘illusion’, but an alternative subjective experience of the same reality.
No, it's not just an alternative, it's the model which minimises variance. You're making the same unwarranted presumption Terrapin made about artists. The experiments about updating predictions in the light of ambiguous data conforming to Bayesian models was not done exclusively with non-artists. The mathematics behind free-energy limits based on requirements for self-organising systems to reduce entropy against probability gradients do not only apply to non-artists.
I can see how an artist might actively look for some alternative way of seeing something, Terrapin gave the example of the child drawing a table rectangular, whereas an artist would draw a parallelogram, knowing that a parallelogram (or trapezium) on the 2d page represents the table best. But the model of the table isn't more real in the artist's mind nor are these alternative models in the same field, one is how to negotiate the object in our spatiotemporal environment, the other is how to make marks on a page to best invoke such a table. Two different models with two different variance-minimising results.
The experiment involved the subjects observing two specific objects being placed into a particular container/box. There was more than one container. They showed their own surprise when they looked for themselves into the box and did not find what they were expecting to find.
Then, under similar enough circumstances(I suppose), they observed another looking into the wrong box and showed that that bothered them in some way. The speaker claimed that such displays proved somehow that they recognized that the other had a mind???
I found it rather odd that they chose some experiments/games which are not even capable of showing in humans what they are wanting the same experiment to show in non humans?
What experiment would you set up to show that humans had this feature?
I like sushiNovember 02, 2019 at 08:01#3480020 likes
We experience tactile, auditory and motor, as well as taste and smell and many kinds of somato-sensory visualizations I would say. Well, at least that's my experience. I suppose it's not a given that we are all the same.
— Janus
Yeah, I agree. We can actually see a lot of this happening in the brain. When you imagine a tree, the visual cortex is engaged in a very similar way to when you actually see a tree. What happens next is (I think) quite remarkable. Signals are sent to the eyes to move them in the direction the tree would be if it were there.
On what ground does one make this last claim?
What metric does one use to distinguish between eye movements and eye movements in a particular direction for a particular purpose? How can signals be sent to move the eyes to see a tree that is nowhere to be seen? If it is nowhere there is no way to move the eyes in that direction.
The same could be said of any and all eye movement that may happen during the experiment. That's a problem isn't it?
The rest of that post seems to rest upon this notion of "signals sent to the eyes to move them in the direction of a imaginary tree."
Being conscious is having/forming thought and belief.
But if there is a thought without "self" isn't that just the same as philosophical zombie or a computer?
Not on my view...
creativesoulNovember 02, 2019 at 08:09#3480070 likes
Click on my avatar. The site provides a good one. Read through some of my own topics on thought and belief, meaning, and truth... There's a common theme in all of them, if I've been consistent. That is an aim of mine.
I like sushiNovember 02, 2019 at 08:18#3480080 likes
Reply to creativesoul I’ve had a look. Given that it was your posts that made me mention phenomenology I think I’ll stick to thinking you don’t quite understand what phenomenology is. Maybe you simply prefer the hermeneutical version - that was why I brought it up.
I can at least assume you’re not a fan of Heidegger given that you hate jargon? There is certainly a number of peopke who take Wittgenstein to be someone who leaned toward the phenomenological take on language - I agree, it is about as blatant as can be if you read Philosophical Investigations.
I don’t think we’re on the same page though so I’ll leave it.
What metric does one use to distinguish between eye movements and eye movements in a particular direction for a particular purpose? How can signals be sent to move the eyes to see a tree that is nowhere to be seen? If it is nowhere there is no way to move the eyes in that direction.
The same could be said of any and all eye movement that may happen during the experiment. That's a problem isn't it?
The rest of that post seems to rest upon this notion of "signals sent to the eyes to move them in the direction of a imaginary tree."
The experiments were done with appearing and disappearing dots of ambiguous contrast with cameras facing the eyes that track movement. Subjects were first asked to focus on where they thought the dots appeared and followed a predictable pattern. the eyes tracked the expected appearance of the next dot before it appeared, or even when the dot was not in fact at the expected location. The subjects were then asked to imagine a particular layout of dots on the blank page and their eye movements mirrored those seen in analysing and predicting the real dots.
Every experiment is only moving us toward a better model, one better able to make predictions, a more elegant one, or one with fewer assumptions. You can tear anything down using "but how do they really know". If there's some alternative explanation you'd rather believe, then you're welcome to it. Personally, I think you'll run into contradictions with other models in other areas, but at the end of the day, I can't precis the whole of cognitive neuroscience here (though I appear to have tried) such that you'd be satisfied the explanation is a good one one respect to other experimental results, other working theories etc.
You can either accept it into your world-view, if you like it, take it on advisement as "oh that's interesting", if you remain unconvinced, or reject it entirely if it conflicts with views you hold dear. What I don't think is rational is to reject it on the grounds it hasn't removed all doubt. Nothing does.
What experiment would you set up to show that humans had this feature? — Isaac
I've been watching, reading, and listening to quite a bit.
Which feature?
You said "I found it rather odd that they chose some experiments/games which are not even capable of showing in humans what they are wanting the same experiment to show in non humans?", yet you seemed to be saying, in the rest of your posts (maybe I've got this wrong), that humans were unlike non-human primates in their abilities in this regard. So I thought you would have an experiment in mind which showed as much to your satisfaction, but maybe I've misinterpreted what you're saying.
PossibilityNovember 02, 2019 at 09:33#3480170 likes
But the model of the table isn't more real in the artist's mind nor are these alternative models in the same field, one is how to negotiate the object in our spatiotemporal environment, the other is how to make marks on a page to best invoke such a table. Two different models with two different variance-minimising results.
An artist must learn to process the information both (or perhaps a variety of different) ways, and to apply the ‘model’ or value structure according to the task at hand.
I wasn’t disagreeing with you as much as you seem to think I was. They are two different value structures applied to the same reality, and can still both be used to make marks on the page and invoke a table. When you’re talking about two drawings on a page, they ARE alternative models employed in the same field. One is more real on the page than the other - it conveys more relevant information about the table in the same field than the rectangle does. That they are better suited to different fields, I agree with - hence my comment that the artist must learn to process the information both ways.
Ah, I see what you mean now. You mean "the artist must....in order to produce art" . I read it as "the artist must..." in the same sense as the non-artist simply trying to make inferences about the the object in general. My mistake.
I would argue experience necessarily must be subjective experience, and subjective experience I think implies the subject which is "self", i.e. self-awareness. So for example, to make computer consciouss and experience emotions or smells, all we have to do is give it self-awareness and appropriate sensors.
Thus, Kant did not and could not draw and maintain a distinction between non linguistic thought and linguistic thought.
He didn’t want to because he didn’t have to. There is no such thing as linguistic thought, if thought be understood as the human rational system in action. No language is used whatsoever, until or unless that action is to be expressed, either subjectively in which case a subject immediately expresses to himself, or objectively in which case the subject mediately expresses beyond himself. When I ask or tell myself what I’m thinking, I must have already thought it, in order to have something to ask or tell myself about. The split second before I reach down to tie my shoe, is not filled with the words “hey, dumbass....your shoe’s untied”. And I certainly don’t go through the maze of linguistic representations telling me all that possibly happens because of it.
Why do you think the phrases like “it all happens behind the curtain”, or “sub-consciously”, or any of a myriad of expressions typifying the speculation that our system of thinking is all accomplished without our thinking about it. When someone says, “I just don’t have the words for it” all they are meaning is their understanding of such experience does not abide with the language to relate it, even thought the experience itself is fully resident in the subject. Which makes explicit the experience, which is nothing but the rational system in action, cannot be predicated on its expression. This reflects to my assertion the other day, in that all words are invented, which means language is invented, which makes explicit thought is always antecedent to the language it invents. The case is equally well served by the fact that different words used by different thinking subjects express the same thought in each subject respectively.
Thought takes time. Why would Nature require the time necessitated by the manifestations of natural law in our brains, to be heaped upon the time require to transpose each constituent of thought, re: manifestations of natural law, whatever they are theorized to be, into a linguistic representation? When someone says, “it flashed before my eyes!!”, do you think they meant some words flashed, or was it an event that flashed? It was some experience that flashed, without a single linguistic representation attached to it. In that instantaneous, infinitesimal split second before I bend down to tie my shoe......well, you know what really happens, I trust.
QED!!!!!! Dammit!!!!
Is it any wonder philosophy never really solved anything? If it did, what would we have so much fun with?
creativesoulNovember 02, 2019 at 20:30#3481120 likes
You said "I found it rather odd that they chose some experiments/games which are not even capable of showing in humans what they are wanting the same experiment to show in non humans?", yet you seemed to be saying, in the rest of your posts (maybe I've got this wrong), that humans were unlike non-human primates in their abilities in this regard. So I thought you would have an experiment in mind which showed as much to your satisfaction, but maybe I've misinterpreted what you're saying.
It seems that you're asking me which experiment I would prefer, without ever setting out what it is that we're looking to prove. I'm strongly objecting to anthropomorphism; a.k.a. the personification of something other than a person; a.k.a the misattribution of uniquely human attributes to that which is non human.
Bayesian Reasoning is one. A sense of fairness is another. You've recently expressed ambivalence regarding the act of misattributing thought and belief that is unique to complex common language users to creatures without; that's what attributing some human thought and belief to non human primates amounts to. That's the conversation backdrop.
What does the dot experiment prove with regard to whether or not some non human animal can possibly use Bayesian reasoning, or have some sense of fairness/justice?
Are you walking back the earlier claim? You've recently denied offering the experimental results of the grape/cucumber trials as support for also saying that the participants were working from some sense of unfairness/fairness and/or justice/injustice. That denial is false. It contradicts what happened. You did propose such.
In order to have a sense of fairness/unfairness or justice/injustice, the candidate under consideration must have already experienced reality not matching up to expectations. Unexpected results are part of what a sense of fairness requires for it's own emergence. The results are thought to be unfair/unjust solely as a result of not following an earlier agreement. In order to develop a sense of justice/fairness, the candidate must perform a comparative assessment between what they expected to happen and what did happen. To do this requires naming and descriptive practices. That how one begins to become aware that they have a worldview.
What's the difference between a non human primate's clear behavioural signs of discontent because they did not receive what they expected, and discontent as a result of having a sense of justice/fairness?
A clearly understood agreement being broken.
It has been said that the primate felt cheated as if he did the same work as her(his partner) but did not receive the same reward. It is clear that his expectations were left unmet. Clearly, his behaviour put his discontent on display for all to see. There is nothing to further suggest that those unmet expectations were also further thought - by him - to be unfair.
creativesoulNovember 02, 2019 at 21:35#3481360 likes
Here there is a distinction to be made between unspoken thought and belief that is existentially dependent upon prior language use, and thought and belief that can be formed and/or held by a language-less creature.
I can sit on a chair and think about triangles without using language. I cannot if I've never used language. Thus, such thoughts are themselves existentially dependent upon language even if our having them in the chair is done in silence.
the misattribution of uniquely human attributes to that which is non human.
Yes, that is what I'm asking you about. If my null hypothesis were that attributes such as a sense of fairness were not unique to humans, what kind of experimental result would force me to think otherwise. Or are you suggesting that something other than empirical evidence should force me to hold a different null hypothesis?
What does the dot experiment prove with regard to whether or not some non human animal can possibly use Bayesian reasoning, or have some sense of fairness/justice?
The dot experiment has nothing to do with non-humann primate abilities. You asked me about how they measured gaze directions with regards to conscious harvesting of inference-related data, it's a standard scientific technique, nothing controversial.
Are you walking back the earlier claim? You've recently denied offering the experimental results of the grape/cucumber trials as support for also saying that the participants were working from some sense of unfairness/fairness and/or justice/injustice. That denial is false. It contradicts what happened. You did propose such.
The results of those experiments are pretty vague. They rule out a few extreme theories at either end of the spectrum, but they could reasonably support a number of quite different theories. That's why there's still no consensus on the matter.
In order to develop a sense of justice/fairness, the candidate must perform a comparative assessment between what they expected to happen and what did happen. To do this requires naming and descriptive practices. That how one begins to become aware that they have a worldview.
What's the difference between a non human primate's clear behavioural signs of discontent because they did not receive what they expected, and discontent as a result of having a sense of justice/fairness?
Nothing, you just said, discontent related to a sense of fairness would also be a form of response to not receiving what one expected.
I'm not really interested in this "prove it" attitude. Hundreds of intelligent and dedicated people have spent decades trying to iron out these exact differences by creating more subtle and controlled experiments. If you want to just come in without any technical background whatsoever and dismiss the whole enterprise on the basis of having skimmed through one or two papers on a subject you don't even fully understand, you're welcome to. I'm not going to be involved.
creativesoulNovember 02, 2019 at 21:49#3481420 likes
the misattribution of uniquely human attributes to that which is non human.
— creativesoul
Yes, that is what I'm asking you about. If my null hypothesis were that attributes such as a sense of fairness were not unique to humans, what kind of experimental result would force me to think otherwise. Or are you suggesting that something other than empirical evidence should force me to hold a different null hypothesis?
Those are not the only options. I'm saying let's look and see if a sense of fairness/justice is unique to humans.
Is a sense of fairness/justice unique to humans?
That is the question here. In order to know that we must first know what our sense of fairness/justice consists of. What does our sense of fairness/justice require in order for it to begin working? I've been setting this out.
We have to know what it is that we're looking for.
creativesoulNovember 02, 2019 at 21:52#3481440 likes
The results of those experiments are pretty vague. They rule out a few extreme theories at either end of the spectrum, but they could reasonably support a number of quite different theories. That's why there's still no consensus on the matter.
So, those particular experiments produced results that provide equal support for different reports/accounts of those experiments, particularly reports/accounts regarding the content of non human thought and belief.
creativesoulNovember 02, 2019 at 22:09#3481510 likes
In order to develop a sense of justice/fairness, the candidate must perform a comparative assessment between what they expected to happen and what did happen. To do this requires naming and descriptive practices. That how one begins to become aware that they have a worldview.
— creativesoul
And you know this how?
Decades of careful study and accounting practices largely informed by methodological naturalism, use of logical reasoning, and knowing what all thought and belief consist of. The studies you've presented here included a number of assertions from prior studies that were being challenged. I'm guessing I'm more in agreement with the previous conclusions from the previous studies and/or experimental results.
The scientific work that went into the very beginning of that abstract seems to agree with me. One of the necessary prerequisites for humans when testing for a sense of fairness/justice was agreement between parties.
The modified tests could not include the agreement because non human primates cannot make an agreement with you to do certain things and receive certain rewards. They can draw correlations between their own behaviour and receiving the same reward afterwards. They can develop expectations. Those expectations can lead to intense discontent. They can be angry and violent. They can be despondent and no responsive, etc. They cannot be said to be feelings and/or thoughts of unfairness/injustice because there is no prior agreement in the mind of the candidate from which they feel like they've been cheated.
creativesoulNovember 02, 2019 at 22:15#3481520 likes
I would definitely say that all those same experimental results could be used in show a sense of trust developing between the subject and the humans actively involved, if rewards were always hand delivered.
creativesoulNovember 02, 2019 at 22:22#3481540 likes
What's the difference between a non human primate's clear behavioural signs of discontent because they did not receive what they expected, and discontent as a result of having a sense of justice/fairness?
— creativesoul
Nothing...
:worry:
I like sushiNovember 02, 2019 at 23:44#3481700 likes
I can sit on a chair and think about triangles without using language. I cannot if I've never used language. Thus, such thoughts are themselves existentially dependent upon language even if our having them in the chair is done in silence.
Evidence?
Are you suggesting a human without language cannot think? If so you must be using the terms ‘language’ and ‘think’ in a particular way. Explain yourself.
PossibilityNovember 03, 2019 at 00:39#3481790 likes
Ah, I see what you mean now. You mean "the artist must....in order to produce art" . I read it as "the artist must..." in the same sense as the non-artist simply trying to make inferences about the the object in general. My mistake.
It’s more than that, though. The capacity for creative thought and alternative modelling serves us well beyond art, too. Many of our conceptual models are inaccurate or limited, leading to conflict and error in how we interact with the world. The flexibility to present and apply alternative or adjusted conceptual models enables critical thinking that leads to more accurate concepts and more effective and efficient interaction with reality.
So, those particular experiments produced results that provide equal support for different reports/accounts of those experiments, particularly reports/accounts regarding the content of non human thought and belief.
I'm pretty sure none of the experiments made any judgement about the "content of non- human thought/belief. I don't think thought/belief is even the sort of thing that can have content, so don't even know what evidence for such would look like.
Decades of careful study and accounting practices largely informed by methodological naturalism, use of logical reasoning, and knowing what all thought and belief consist of.
I'm pretty sure none of the experiments made any judgement about the "content of non- human thought/belief. I don't think thought/belief is even the sort of thing that can have content, so don't even know what evidence for such would look like.
What is thought and belief then, if it is not the sort of thing that has content? How do you discern between thinking of trees and thinking of dots if there is no difference in the content?
This difference regarding thought and belief, and particularly what it consists of, may be the primary wedge between our viewpoints.
creativesoulNovember 03, 2019 at 22:19#3483720 likes
In order to know that we must first know what our sense of fairness/justice consists of.
— creativesoul
Our sense of fairness/justice consists of anything we want it to consist of. It's not a term that pre-exists humans making it up.
Well, this is certainly at the heart of the matter...
Is our sense of fairness a term?
I would think that if you sincerely believe that non human primates have some sense of fairness/justice, then it would have to be the case that that sense of fairness/justice predates humans and thus does not require terms at all.
Which means that our sense of fairness/justice - if it predates our language use - does not consist of anything we want it to.
I'm assuming that non linguistic animals(non human primates) are capable of having a sense of fairness/justice, and you need to convince me otherwise.
Is that about right?
No - why would I need to convince you otherwise? If I thought your views might cause harm to me or others, then maybe I'd have a crack at convincing you otherwise, but outside of that scenario I can't think of a single reason why I would want to do that.
What is thought and belief then, if it is not the sort of thing that has content?
I think a belief is a disposition to act a certain way, its an inference manifest in the action it sets in motion. I think all living things, and some non-living things, have beliefs.
Thoughts, for me, are any neural activity, only creatures with brains can therefore have thoughts. The two are not the same.
our sense of fairness/justice - if it predates our language use - does not consist of anything we want it to.
We don't have a sense of fairness. I have one, and you have one but there's no reason at all why they should be any more similar than is required to have the most basic conversation on the matter. It never ceases to amaze me the power of this nonsensical conviction that we can somehow 'drill down' into words which never had a detailed meaning in the first place and somehow find some inherent truth that no one ever put there.
Of course the notion fairness did not predate our language use. Creatures had certain beliefs prior to language use. I've no doubt those beliefs varied. Which collection were going to come under the umbrella of 'fairness' was determined by the language community using the word, and at no point in time did they ever sit down to thrash out exactly what it, or any other word really means.
creativesoulNovember 03, 2019 at 23:28#3483910 likes
I'm assuming that non linguistic animals(non human primates) are capable of having a sense of fairness/justice, and you need to convince me otherwise.
Is that about right?
— creativesoul
No - why would I need to convince you otherwise? If I thought your views might cause harm to me or others, then maybe I'd have a crack at convincing you otherwise, but outside of that scenario I can't think of a single reason why I would want to do that.
You've misunderstood. I was asking if that assumption was the one you're holding...
creativesoulNovember 03, 2019 at 23:37#3483950 likes
What is thought and belief then, if it is not the sort of thing that has content?
— creativesoul
I think a belief is a disposition to act a certain way, its an inference manifest in the action it sets in motion. I think all living things, and some non-living things, have beliefs.
Thoughts, for me, are any neural activity, only creatures with brains can therefore have thoughts. The two are not the same.
That notion of belief grants inference and disposition to act to inanimate objects.
Of course thoughts and belief can be different.
creativesoulNovember 04, 2019 at 00:00#3484030 likes
our sense of fairness/justice - if it predates our language use - does not consist of anything we want it to.
— creativesoul
We don't have a sense of fairness. I have one, and you have one but there's no reason at all why they should be any more similar than is required to have the most basic conversation on the matter.
What's the point of all this irrelevant bickering? I have one. You have one. We have one. It doesn't have to be the exact same. We have one.
Does it make any justified sense at all to say that the non human primate has one?
I'm asking you for exactly what counts as a sense of fairness? What is the criterion which - when met by any and all candidates - counts as a case of that candidate having a sense of fairness? You and I meet the criterion.
What is it such that the non human primate meets it too?
Of course the notion fairness did not predate our language use. Creatures had certain beliefs prior to language use. I've no doubt those beliefs varied. Which collection were going to come under the umbrella of 'fairness' was determined by the language community using the word, and at no point in time did they ever sit down to thrash out exactly what it, or any other word really means.
Why do you keep going off on these tangents and arguing about stuff that I've never claimed? I'm not asking about what a word really means. I'm asking you to set out a minimum criterion for having a sense of fairness.
There is some agreement between us here. Perhaps it can be put to good use. We both agree that some language less creatures are capable of having belief. You're also claiming that what counts as a sense of fairness is determined by the community using the word. I do not disagree.
What I'm getting at is that if a sense of fairness exists within language less creatures, then it does not consist of language; it is not existentially dependent upon language. Rather, it exists in it's entirety prior to our naming it. The same holds good of thought and belief.
I was asking if that assumption was the one you're holding..
Yes, I understood that, and the answer was, no, that's not the full assumption I'm holding because it does not contain the assumption that I need to convince you otherwise. To clarify, I think non-linguistic primates have a sense of fairness, I'm working on the presumption that you don't (because you stated that fairness requires a pre-existing agreement and that such agreements are impossible without language), I'm arguing in defence of my position, I've no desire to get you to change yours (at this time). Does that clear things up?
That notion of belief grants inference and disposition to act to inanimate objects.
I have no problem with beliefs being attributed to non-living things, but if you do, then the notion could be limited to such states when expressed in the architecture of a brain. It makes no difference to my defence. The main point is that I don't believe they can be sensibly talked about as having 'content' in the same way a book has 'content', they are not necessarily 'about' other concepts (though they can be).
I'm asking you for exactly what counts as a sense of fairness? What is the criterion which - when met by any and all candidates - counts as a case of that candidate having a sense of fairness? You and I meet the criterion.
What is it such that the non human primate meets it too?
A sense of fairness, for me, is a belief that some restorative action should be initiated if certain resources in certain scenarios are not distributed either equally (by default) or according to some rule which has been previously established between individuals in a group.
Non-human primates can be said to have met that criteria if the take restorative action (complain, show negative emotion etc) in such scenarios. the evidence is stronger where alternative explanations for those restorative behaviours have been ruled out by careful experiment design such as the use of ultimatum games, tokens, eliminating social hierarchies etc. instead of simple resource distribution.
I am not of the opinion that such alternative explanations for apparent restorative behaviour needs to be entirely ruled out before we accept the hypothesis because I think that would imply an unwarranted principle of anthropocentrism. We know we evolved from primates, we should presume, as a default, that they share all of our traits until we demonstrate one to be unique, not presume all of our traits are unique until we prove that they're not.
Terrapin StationNovember 04, 2019 at 14:18#3485490 likes
To clarify, I think non-linguistic primates have a sense of fairness,
You mean that you have a model where there are non-linguistic primates and they have a sense of fairness, but it's strictly something you've constructed. Objectively, you don't believe there are things with properties that make them primates or make them have a sense of fairness or anything like that. You should always be clear that you're simply talking about models that you've constructed, and this reply is part of your model that you've constructed in your view, too.
I like sushiNovember 04, 2019 at 15:31#3485710 likes
Reply to Terrapin Station There are plenty of studies that show ‘reciprocity’ among primates. Fairness is a human extension of this. I wouldn’t suggest that other primates are aware of the concept of ‘fairness’ or ‘justice’ though. That is like saying a dog can understand who wins a football match just because it is present to experience a football match.
Terrapin StationNovember 04, 2019 at 16:38#3485970 likes
I'm getting at the fact that Isaac believes that things like primates and qualities they have are a mental model of his own devising. If he's going to claim to believe that, he can't start talking about primates like he believes there really such things and he can observe them.
You mean that you have a model where there are non-linguistic primates and they have a sense of fairness, but it's strictly something you've constructed. Objectively, you don't believe there are things with properties that make them primates or make them have a sense of fairness or anything like that. You should always be clear that you're simply talking about models that you've constructed, and this reply is part of your model that you've constructed in your view, too.
Yes, that's right. Luckily most of my models are shared with my interlocutors with sufficient congruity for us to dispense with the declarations to that effect. But any time you feel the need to clarify the matter, feel free to do so.
Terrapin StationNovember 04, 2019 at 17:20#3486120 likes
So why would it be noteworthy that people you're making up share the model you're making up? It's more curious that some people you're making up--like me--think that you're a philosophical mess.
I was asking if that assumption was the one you're holding..
— creativesoul
Yes, I understood that, and the answer was, no, that's not the full assumption I'm holding because it does not contain the assumption that I need to convince you otherwise. To clarify, I think non-linguistic primates have a sense of fairness, I'm working on the presumption that you don't (because you stated that fairness requires a pre-existing agreement and that such agreements are impossible without language), I'm arguing in defence of my position, I've no desire to get you to change yours (at this time). Does that clear things up?
Yes. That's quite helpful. One minor note, however, to reciprocate that clarity...
I'm suspending judgment regarding whether or not agreement is necessary. I mentioned that and argued for that as a result of the experiments involving humans that was referenced in the beginning of the abstract you've provided. The author made a point to mention both parties entering into an agreement about what was to be expected when they performed specific tasks.
I do think and would strongly argue that language is necessary. It seems to me, as stated earlier, that fairness/unfairness consists of not only unmet expectations, but further those unmet expectations aren't just unexpected, but they are further thought of as being unfair.
This implies some sort of agreement, but I'm not certain that an earlier agreement is always necessary in order for one to think that what happens unexpectedly is unfair/unjust. That further qualification of not just being unexpected, but also being unfair/unjust most certainly requires rather complex language.
Thinking that something is unfair/unjust happens when we're mistaken about what's going to happen. Being mistaken about what's going to happen doesn't always require language use. Thinking that the unexpected results are unfair/unjust most certainly does, for it requires some measure of morality(what ought happen).
creativesoulNovember 05, 2019 at 02:13#3488420 likes
That notion of belief grants inference and disposition to act to inanimate objects.
— creativesoul
I have no problem with beliefs being attributed to non-living things, but if you do, then the notion could be limited to such states when expressed in the architecture of a brain. It makes no difference to my defence. The main point is that I don't believe they can be sensibly talked about as having 'content' in the same way a book has 'content', they are not necessarily 'about' other concepts (though they can be).
As mentioned before, our views on thought and belief differ in crucial ways. I don't think that that has to be a problem though. We agree on much more than we disagree. That said...
The above could be thought to be an aside, but I think that it's actually the direction that our considerations must go when talking about what it's like to experience X. It seems to me that there is no correct answer to the question, regardless of the value we give to X, because so much of what we're talking about when we talk about experience is the experiencing creature's thought and belief.
When we're claiming that some non human creature has a sense of fairness/justice, we're saying something about that creature's mental ongoings(thought and belief). Thus, it behooves us to know what all thought and belief consist of, lest we have no way to know whether or not some creature or another is capable of forming/holding those kinds of thought and belief.
creativesoulNovember 05, 2019 at 02:38#3488430 likes
I'm asking you for exactly what counts as a sense of fairness? What is the criterion which - when met by any and all candidates - counts as a case of that candidate having a sense of fairness? You and I meet the criterion.
What is it such that the non human primate meets it too?
— creativesoul
A sense of fairness, for me, is a belief that some restorative action should be initiated if certain resources in certain scenarios are not distributed either equally (by default) or according to some rule which has been previously established between individuals in a group.
Non-human primates can be said to have met that criteria if the[y] take restorative action (complain, show negative emotion etc) in such scenarios. The evidence is stronger where alternative explanations for those restorative behaviours have been ruled out by careful experiment design such as the use of ultimatum games, tokens, eliminating social hierarchies etc. instead of simple resource distribution.
I'm having trouble with the equivalence being drawn between clear discontent due to false belief about what's going to happen(accompanied by and exemplified after unexpected events/results), with complaining and taking restorative action. There's no issue with discontent being characterized as showing negative emotion. However, not all discontent and negative emotion are equivalent to complaining and/or taking restorative actions.
I am not of the opinion that such alternative explanations for apparent restorative behaviour needs to be entirely ruled out before we accept the hypothesis because I think that would imply an unwarranted principle of anthropocentrism. We know we evolved from primates, we should presume, as a default, that they share all of our traits until we demonstrate one to be unique, not presume all of our traits are unique until we prove that they're not.
I'm of the opinion that unless and until we know - as precisely as possible - what makes our trait what it is, it is impossible to know whether or not it is unique to humans or not.
One thing I took note of here was that you're attributing a sense of ought to non human primates. Now clearly, if they do indeed have a sense of ought, it cannot be exactly like ours. However, and this is a point that needs made here:All senses of ought must have something in common such that none are existentially dependent upon language - if it is possible for a language less creature to have one. There must be common denominators - on a basic, elemental, rudimentary, language less level - which all senses of ought(all senses of fairness/justice) have in common, including our own. In other words, our account/report(model if you prefer) must be amenable to evolutionary progression. It(a rudimentary language less 'version'(for lack of a better word) must begin simply and accrue in it's complexity. More importantly...
All senses of ought/fairness/justice must follow our model. Our model must not only describe language less senses of ought/fairness/justice, but it must describe the version which is capable of developing in a language less creature's mind(thought and belief), and must also make a good amount of sense while and when doing so.
The minimalist criterion you've offered is restorative behaviours when unequal distribution of resources is experienced, or a breach of agreement where inequality was already agreed upon.
So, whatever these restorative behaviours are existentially dependent upon; whatever they themselves require in order for them to be realized, whatever they consist of cannot include language or language use if we are going to remain coherent when claiming that language less animals are performing them.
creativesoulNovember 05, 2019 at 02:40#3488440 likes
The evidence is stronger where alternative explanations for those restorative behaviours have been ruled out by careful experiment design such as the use of ultimatum games, tokens, eliminating social hierarchies etc. instead of simple resource distribution.
I'd like to talk about these...
Which ones do you find convincing enough to conclude that those subjects are indeed performing restorative behaviours stemming from and/or showing a sense of fairness/justice? Which experiments show conclusively that those animals are acting out of a sense of what ought be done as compared to what was?
What's the difference between behavioural discontent as a result of the cognitive dissonance that takes place when expectations are dashed by what happens and having behavioural discontent as a result of thinking, believing, and/or 'feeling' like what happened is unfair/unjust, or ought be somehow corrected?
Does all sharing count as having a sense of ought/fairness/justice?
Can one share solely as a result of liking what happens afterwards? I think so. This may be something that can be used in an experiment. What would happen if we offer all of the resources to any particular individual who is not under any duress. Well results have varied, and none of them support what you've put forth. However, perhaps the experiment was not up to snuff, so to speak...
Let's say we have two individuals that have conclusively proven to us that they are not prone to exhibiting dominant behaviour. Not only individuals, but of the same litter/brood/etc. These two would need to have a well established documented history of passive behaviour with one another. It would be best if these two had a history of grooming each other, resting together, playing together, etc. Most importantly, there must already be a habit of sharing behaviour between the two. There must already be results showing us conclusively that these two 'siblings' are prone to equally distributing the available resources between themselves. Otherwise, there is no way to show that they think and believe that they ought correct the situation when the resources are not equally distributed. So...
In addition to having the right sorts of individuals mentioned above, for the experiment, these two are to be kept in separate chambers adjoined with some readily accessible pass-through that would allow either to share resources with the other if they so chose to do so, without threat of consequence. It would be best if the shared wall is clear.
The experiment must begin by developing new daily routines; one where each could be shown as expecting something particular as a reward if they performed some simple task. They will always remain in full view of one another, and close enough to see what the other one has received for performing the same task. There need to be a well documented history of equal reward for each specific task.
Then...
We could introduce the new unexpected result of one receiving much more and/or all of the resources as opposed to both receiving equal amounts. It is here - in this very circumstance - that a sense of fairness/justice would be put on display by virtue of one of them voluntarily offering the other an equal amount of the resources.
because there is no it, the whole concept of 'the experience of seeing red' as opposed to just 'seeing red' is incoherent.
This is wrong, because we do have experiences of seeing red without seeing red. Dreams, memory, imagination and optical illusions do not count as seeing red. And as was noted earlier, the part of the brain that creates color experiences can sometimes be stimulated in blind people by other means.
So is experiencing eating cake different from eating cake?
You can imagine or dream it. You can also do an activity while paying attention to something else, thus not experiencing it. An example would be driving down a highway on autopilot where you're thinking about something else or listening to the radio.
What would be the point in asking such a question? What knowledge would we be getting that we couldn't acquire by thinking about it differently?
We're asking if bats have kinds of experiences that we don't because there physiology differs, particularly with the use of sonar. Surely human experience does not encompass all possible experiences in the universe. And a good reason for thinking this isn't so is because sensory organs, brains and body plans differ across animals, and there are tons of things outside of human perception.
A simple one would be seeing in four primary colors, which some animals have the eyes for that and even more.
I think Jackson proves is that there is such a first-person experience that we have, the likes of which philosophical zombies would not have. Which, again, is a complete trivialism because I think everything necessarily has that and it's incoherent to talk about not having it so saying something has it really doesn't communicate anything of greater interest than disagreement with such nonsense.
It's not a trivialism when we try to determine whether machines can be conscious, which is also the case for other animals. Does a pig or a cow experience pain, and if so, is it ethical to eat them? Should we medically test rats if they have subjective experiences of suffering?
Yeah. I would only be careful: we are of reality, and don't stand outside of it looking in. "If no people existed, objects would be...?" is still a strange question. "If there are no clouds, objects would be...?" - one has to wonder: what even is this question? How does the one relate to the other? It's loaded, but badly.
The question is asking what the word is like instead of how we think and perceive the world to be, which has clearly undergone lots of revision over time, as we've discovered that world is not what we naively took it to be, and that we can be wrong. So yeah, we're part of reality. That doesn't mean we understand that reality exactly as it is. Turns out it's a lot of work to figure out and plenty of skeptical questions can be raised in the process.
creativesoulNovember 05, 2019 at 04:07#3488630 likes
because there is no it, the whole concept of 'the experience of seeing red' as opposed to just 'seeing red' is incoherent.
— Isaac
This is wrong, because we do have experiences of seeing red without seeing red. Dreams, memory, imagination and optical illusions do not count as seeing red. And as was noted earlier, the part of the brain that creates color experiences can sometimes be stimulated in blind people by other means.
And yet those people are seeing red.
I like sushiNovember 05, 2019 at 04:33#3488680 likes
Reply to creativesoul I think some folks are possibly conflating ‘imagining’ with ‘feeling’. If so perhaps pointing out that you cannot live out - experientially - an old experience. You can only adumbrate the feeling not feel it as it was.
I can remember/imagine the taste of chocolate, but I cannot taste chocolate now. In certain states - like dreaming - I can taste chocolate (the dream is a direct experience as is a hallucination, being difficult to distinguish between waking, or ‘normal’,states of consciousness).
The question is not complete, it should go like this:
What it's like for Y to Experience X?
And let's get specific:
What it's like for a human(Y) and a dog(Y) to experience taste(X) and desire(X)? Clearly that missing Y may very easily be the determining factor in describing how it is to experience X, and X may very well be the same in all cases.
But what is this Y all of a sudden and how could have conversation about it make sense without it? Don't know about the second part, but as for the first: Y is "experiencer", the "self", it's the "subjective" in the phrase "subjective experience" that defines 'qualia' and what 'sentience' means. Because the only one kind of experience is subjective experience.
Hard problem of consciousness. I say this self-awareness, i.e. qualia, i.e. sentience, i.e. consciousness, is about hardware and interface, rather than software and signal encoding. In any case there is nothing similar in entire human knowledge that could fit here and explain this _subjective_ phenomena, it has no parallel in any of our sciences, except science fiction. Seriously, some kind of "dream" of the type 'Total Recall' or 'The Matrix' are the only kind of mechanics we know of that could, at least in principle, address this problem.
It's not a trivialism when we try to determine whether machines can be conscious, which is also the case for other animals. Does a pig or a cow experience pain, and if so, is it ethical to eat them? Should we medically test rats if they have subjective experiences of suffering?
Those are meaningful questions.
Yes, but the existence of phenomenal consciousness is a trivialism within the worldview (that I have) that of course pigs and cows and rats experience pain and of course machines can be conscious, if they have the right functionality to do so (which pigs and cows and rats and humans clearly do), because to deny that something with all the functionality a human has to experience (e.g.) pain is in some way not really experiencing it is just nonsense on such a view. The existence of phenomenal consciousness meaningfully distinguishes such a nonsense view from mine, sure, but it's not something that's special about humans, not something that distinguishes us from anything else. The functional stuff about access consciousness totally is, though.
Reply to creativesoul To avoid a semantic debate over the word seeing, we can distinguish a red perceptual experience from an internally generated one. This demonstrates that red experiences come from us and not into the eyes riding on light waves, as if the red somehow jumps onto electrons and enters the visual cortex.
Yes, but the existence of phenomenal consciousness is a trivialism within the worldview (that I have) that of course pigs and cows and rats experience pain and of course machines can be conscious, if they have the right functionality to do so (which pigs and cows and rats and humans clearly do).
How can possibly a computer have 'functionality' which could explain 'subjectiveness' of the experience?
Reply to Zelebg The functionality doesn't explain the subjectiveness of the experience; everything just has subjective experience, but what that subjective experience is like varies with the thing's functionality, just like it's behavior varies with it; the function maps experience to behavior. That's why I'm saying the subjectiveness part of it, the phenomenal consciousness, is trivial: everything has it, it doesn't distinguish between anything. What distinguishes between things is their functionality, and thus both their behavior, and what their subjective phenomenal experience is like.
Reply to Pfhorrest so what is the functional account of seeing red when processing a particular wavelength of light. What would the code look look like?
[quote="Janus]Are not properties just among the "things" that appear (if we allow that shapes, colours, textures and so on are even separable from shaped, coloured and textured objects)?[/quote]
If they weren’t separable, then physics would be very much like our naive perception, and the ancient skeptics would have had little material to start with. Bit that’s not the case.
To be explicit - I’m sure some folks here are ignoring this because it’s inconvenient - we don’t ‘see’ a chair. Our immediate field of vision is miniscule. The majority of subjective visual perception is ‘painted in’. There are other instances that show our limited means of focus and attention of how we become primed for certain experiences. If everyone here focuses only some proposed set of ‘input’/‘output’ and ‘processing’ then you’re all missing the point of the subjective experience by pretending what you see with your eyes/occipital lobe/language is the focus of the experiencing ‘act’ ... clearly it isn’t. Don’t confuse the experience with the directedness of subjective experiencing. Don’t ignore the how experience is spacial and temporal simply because you cannot quite reconcile ‘experience’ with these terms in an articulate manner.
In this light we don’t experience an apple or a chair, we experience our intentionality constituted through intersubjective perception.
Expanding language leads to expanding our time consciousness. If you negate terminology from a language you confine conscious understanding. This isn’t something I am making up. There are clear cases that show how language affects time comprehension - to the point where grown adults act like infants being unable to hold and compare two separate concepts (eg. colour and location). These adults were not mentally deficient and some did pick up the ability to hold two concepts at once (because of exposure to a more complex language that took into account connected concepts).
Be wary of those that dodge any possible use of a new concept. Such thinking is essentially dogmatic. That said I do often try and avoid crazy word salads, but not because I don’t find a broader lexicon as useful or insightful, but simply because it’s bloody hard work and once the task is done you’re never sure if you’re going to achieve anything by stepping out of common parse
hat our sensory input does not reflect true reality is separate problem from ontology of the subjectiveness of experience.
Right, but noting this distinction is a rebuttal to the those who want to dissolve the issue by saying that being part of reality means the internal/external distinction is misguided. That our subjective experience of being in the world is different from the world is meaningful and raises an ontological question of subjectivity.
If there was no meaningful subjective/objective distinction to be made, then the problem of perception would have never been an issue, science would mostly back what our senses tell us, and movies like the Matrix and Inception would have never been made. Also, no p-zombies.
But that's not the case, and the issue of subjectivity keeps coming up in its various forms, because it's fundamental to our experience of the world.
Just the very fact that we can dream of interacting with the world without actually doing so is sufficient.
I would say it is akin to visualization; when I imagine the house of my childhood, it is not as though I am looking at it, or at a photograph of it; it's not as if I can look at my visualization and count the bricks, compare their colours and so on; yet I call it visualization nonetheless.
Some people can visualize to that level of detail. I like you, have never been able to do that. But i do hear my thoughts as if they were spoken.
But I am honestly amused - like it makes me smile irl - to think people look out at the world around them and honestly believe in their heart of hearts that what they see are 'properties'.
— StreetlightX
I mean, I'm mostly on board the embodied cognition train that says we see for the most part "affordances", opportunities for action, sites of relief and rest, goals to arrive at, hazards and safety, speed and rest, and so on.
— StreetlightX
it requires some measure of morality(what ought happen)
I'd agree with all of those (with the same caveats as you). But you've not demonstrated any of them are necessarily dependant on language, so I don't see how they're relevant to your argument.
When we're claiming that some non human creature has a sense of fairness/justice, we're saying something about that creature's mental ongoings(thought and belief). Thus, it behooves us to know what all thought and belief consist of, lest we have no way to know whether or not some creature or another is capable of forming/holding those kinds of thought and belief.
Yes, but this just goes over the ground we've already covered with regards to terms. There isn't something which just is what thiugh/belief consists of. There are just the phenomena we observe, how we choose to group them and what we choose to call those groups is arbitrary. I've already defined what I'm referring to by belief and thought. I've not heard (or perhaps not understood) how you're using those terms.
I'm having trouble with the equivalence being drawn between clear discontent due to false belief about what's going to happen(accompanied by and exemplified after unexpected events/results), with complaining and taking restorative action. There's no issue with discontent being characterized as showing negative emotion. However, not all discontent and negative emotion are equivalent to complaining and/or taking restorative actions.
Well, why don't you start with what you would expect to see. If taking restorative action is not sufficient, then what, by your measure, would be sufficient. Say someone says to you "hey that's unfair", but you think they might be lying, what behaviour would you look for to confirm that they did genuinely believe it to be unfair?
Which experiments show conclusively that those animals are acting out of a sense of what ought be done as compared to what was?
As I've said, I don't believe in experiments showing anything 'conclusively'. They might overwhelmingly contradict a theory, in which case it should be rejected, absent of that you're free to continue rationally believing any of the huge range of beliefs the experiments does not actually contradict.
Thst being said, Franz dWaal has placed a large bowl of grapes within reach during the reward experiments, and has given grapes/cucumbers in different combinations in prior exchanges. Together these satisfy me that simple expectation frustration is not the explanation (otherwise prior priming of expectation would have made a difference), nor is it simple greed (otherwise the larger available reward would have made a difference). It does seem to be related to a social peer getting a better reward, so if there's expectation involved, it's an expectation of equal distribution of rewards. I'm happy to call that a belief in fairness.
What's the difference between behavioural discontent as a result of the cognitive dissonance that takes place when expectations are dashed by what happens and having behavioural discontent as a result of thinking, believing, and/or 'feeling' like what happened is unfair/unjust, or ought be somehow corrected?
Nothing. The expectation that rewards be distributed equally is what a belief in fairness is.
I like sushiNovember 05, 2019 at 15:30#3490550 likes
Reply to Zelebg If you thought I was talking about that you completely missed the point. It’s all too common and precisely the exact thing I wasn’t saying.
I am talking about subjective experience. People here seem to be talking about subjective experience by attaching their position to a physical realist position that is only ground in scientific investigation. Be clear, VERY clear, science sets out to reduce the ‘subjective’ in favour of the ‘objective’.
Talk about eyes, occipital lobes and retinas is not an experiential investigation.
creativesoulNovember 05, 2019 at 17:41#3491140 likes
To avoid a semantic debate over the word seeing, we can distinguish a red perceptual experience from an internally generated one. This demonstrates that red experiences come from us and not into the eyes riding on light waves, as if the red somehow jumps onto electrons and enters the visual cortex.
No it doesn't. It demonstrates that red experiences require both, red things and the ability to see them as such. It also demonstrates that the internal/external and objective/subjective dichotomies are inadequate for taking proper account of experience.
creativesoulNovember 05, 2019 at 17:48#3491170 likes
...we don’t experience an apple or a chair, we experience our intentionality constituted through intersubjective perception.
That's probably closer to my view, but still not on par with it. Thought and belief. That is what all experience consists of. Much of it is socially mediated. Some of it is internal. All of it consists of meaningful correlations drawn between different things.
Talk about eyes, occipital lobes and retinas is not an experiential investigation.
By that token no talk can be an experiential investigation. Talk requires referring terms which requires agreement as to the referrent, which, by definition, cannot be subjective in the sense you're using the term. To say anything at all is an engagement in collective agreement about referrents, so the only completely subjective investigation by your standards is entirely silent meditation. A great idea, but doesn't work very well on an Internet forum.
What on earth are 'red experiences'? I've certainly never had one.
You and I are in near complete agreement on that. I was just following suit(so to speak).
Our difference seems to be regarding what counts as warrant for concluding that the animal has a sense of fairness. I've just read your latest reply to our ongoing discussion about the experiments. I think I'm recognizing the sticking point(s).
No it doesn't. It demonstrates that red experiences require both, red things and the ability to see them as such. It also demonstrates that the internal/external and objective/subjective dichotomies are inadequate for taking proper account of experience.
So you think that the colors we experience are out there in the world? Are they attached to photons or molecules? How do they get into our brains?
Does this also apply to sound, taste, feels? Does 2 degrees celsius air molecules feel objectively cold? How do you reconcile different sensations among animals or even humans? Maybe I'm from a cold climate and find that warm.
creativesoulNovember 05, 2019 at 17:58#3491270 likes
I know that there can be no hallucination, dream, and/or illusion of red if there is no red. I do not work from the dichotomies underlying your account. Rather, I reject them as inadequate.
I know that there can be no hallucination, dream, and/or illusion of red if there is no red.
Simple. Take a sensation, call it 'red'. Job done. 'Red' isn't out there waiting for us to find it, we experience things and give some of them names, the names have to be related to some external behaviour otherwise naming fails (no one else knows what we're talking about). So examining this external behaviour is adequate for examining the referent of the name.
So you're a color realist. Alright, fine. But at least with pain we have something clearly subjective.
I like sushiNovember 05, 2019 at 18:04#3491370 likes
Reply to Isaac It might help if you talk about what constitutes specific experiences. Already mentioned this. For example think about what you can imagine and can’t imagine about some ‘object’ of experience (be it a sound, shape, colour etc.,.). You can’t imagine a sound with no frequency, a colour with no shade or a shape with no angles. If you see a chair you don’t hold hold the entirely of the chair in the moment as your scope is limited. Everything is ‘face on’
creativesoulNovember 05, 2019 at 18:05#3491380 likes
Simple. Take a sensation, call it 'red'. Job done. 'Red' isn't out there waiting for us to find it, we experience things and give some of them names, the names have to be related to some external behaviour otherwise naming fails (no one else knows what we're talking about). So examining this external behaviour is adequate for examining the referent of the name.
Reminds me of Quine, Witt, and Kripke all rolled into one - aside perhaps from the use of "sensation".
For example think about what you can imagine and can’t imagine about some ‘object’ of experience (be it a sound, shape, colour etc.,.).
We've been through this, I don't see any reason to presume that the 'object' comes first. What I can and can't imagine comes first, then I divide that up into objects according to how useful I find each division. Whether I can think of a shape with no angles is about the meaning of the word 'shape'. If the word 'shape' means 'things with angles' then no, I can't. But that's just deductive tautology, I haven't learnt anything.
creativesoulNovember 05, 2019 at 18:09#3491410 likes
at least with pain we have something clearly subjective.
No, we don't, otherwise the word wouldn't mean anything. If any subjective experience counted as pain without any objective measures, then how would we ever learn what the word meant?
To denote that our experiences are not mirrors of reality, and thus when we create explanations of reality, we have to take that into account. A physicalist is going to miss out on something if they don't include our experiences, since we are part of the world.
Also, because it raises the possibility of skeptical scenarios we have to deal with in philosophical discussions. And along with that the possibility of some sort of idealism as a response to skepticism. But that can also be motivated by cognitive concerns as well as experiential ones.
No, we don't, otherwise the word wouldn't mean anything. If any subjective experience counted as pain without any objective measures, then how would we ever learn what the word meant?
Turn that around and you have the same problem. If there were no subjective experiences of pain how would we ever learn the word? We wouldn't, because it wouldn't be an experience for us.
Yes, pain and other sensations are accompanied by objective measures, which helps us know when people are in pain. But not always.
I like sushiNovember 05, 2019 at 18:24#3491530 likes
Reply to Isaac I never said object. I said ‘object’, as in intentionality, ‘conscious of’, not some noumena fancy. ‘Object’ in the sense of this discussion isn’t an existent object, ‘existence’ is an ‘object’ of intentional experience.
I find this whole thread kind of strange when the primary questioning is of the phenomenal, of subjective experience, and of consciousness. Phenomenology (Husserlian) is precisely a field of philosophical thought that came into being to deal with these questions.
Instead a see the same old repetition where people get bogged down in arguments about dualism, reality, and naive realism.
Turn that around and you have the same problem. If there were no subjective experiences of pain how would we ever learn the word? We wouldn't, because it wouldn't be an experience for us.
Yes, but why does it have to be a subjective experience for this to be the case? 'Pain' we all learn, is the word we use to indicate whatever it is that motivates us to those particular sorts of actions. There need not be any subjectivity to it (as in inaccessible to physicalism). I could be a robot and still learn to label the tweaking of my diodes which causes me to writhe about and cry 'pain'.
(notwithstanding the fact that we all know robots are prone to pain, especially in all the diodes down their left side)
I like sushiNovember 05, 2019 at 18:27#3491550 likes
Reply to creativesoul What does that mean? ‘Thought and belief’? Go intricate, give me more. I used to say something similar myself, but it’s hardly revealing anything much to anyone.
Yes, but why does it have to be a subjective experience for this to be the case? 'Pain' we all learn, is the word we use to indicate whatever it is that motivates us to those particular sorts of actions.
That's not why I use the word pain, but okay, maybe the rest of you zombies use it that way. I use it to refer to feeling pain, not my resulting actions.
I could be a robot and still learn to label the tweaking of my diodes which causes me to writhe about and cry 'pain'.
But only because humans who do feel pain first coined the word. But okay, let's go with the p-zombie robot world with no humans. They coin a word pain-z which means writhing about and crying when diodes are tweaked. That isn't what we mean by pain.
Why not? Because I can writhe around pretending to be in pain, or maybe for some other reason like a seizure. Or I might be stoical about it. Not all pain manifests in some observable action. Behavior itself is not enough.
creativesoulNovember 05, 2019 at 18:30#3491580 likes
I said ‘object’, as in intentionality, ‘conscious of’, not some noumena fancy. ‘Object’ in the sense of this discussion isn’t an existent object, ‘existence’ is an ‘object’ of intentional experience.
It's existence makes no difference, 'unicorns' don't exist, the idea of 5 dimensional space doesn't exist... None of this makes them immune from the fact that in order to talk about them we must agree on a referent for the term. None of this makes them immune from the requirement to delineate things along the same lines as others in order to talk to them about those things.
Instead a see the same old repetition where people get bogged down in arguments about dualism, reality, and naive realism.
So how does phenomenology help avoid those topics? So we start with our experiences of being in the world. But at some point don't those old questions rear their heads?
So examining this external behaviour is adequate for examining the referent of the name.
Is it though? How can examining our behaviour when describing something that exists in it's entirety prior to our naming it be adequate for examining the referent?
What measure could possibly be used to know whether or not we've gotten it wrong?
Instead a see the same old repetition where people get bogged down in arguments about dualism, reality, and naive realism.
Arguing in favor of direct perception does not equal arguing for naive realism. I readily acknowledge both direct and indirect perception. The former is not mediated in any way shape or form by/with language. The latter is.
How did the people who told you they were pretending find that out?
Ultimately because at some point primate/monkey ancestors developed mirror neurons and were able to formulate some theory of mind to understand other people's actions. And one of those kind of actions would be deception.
Ultimately because at some point primate/monkey ancestors developed mirror neurons and were able to formulate some theory of mind to understand other people's actions.
No, that's not how mirror neurons work, they only indicate intentions related to behaviours, they can't magically distinguish different intentions from identical behaviours.
No, that's not how mirror neurons work, they only mirror intentions related to behaviours, they can't magically distinguish different intentions from identical behaviours.
But some animals, humans in particular, do develop a theory of mind where we can look at the context of someone's identical actions and infer their intentions. But yeah, we do have to learn that, which partly comes from other humans like parents or older kids teaching us, and in part from just interacting.
I'm not really sure where this is going. You're not defending behaviorism, right? You're defending a Wittgenstenian understanding of the term pain.
some animals, humans in particular, do develop a theory of mind where we can look at the context of someone's identical actions and infer their intentions.
You might want to mention that TT(theoy theory) is just one of three main contenders for explaining the relation between empathy and mirror neurons. The other two are simulation theory and interaction theory, or enactivism. Its this third one that borrows heavily from Husserlian and Merleau-Pontian phenomenology, by rejecting the idea that we consult an internal theory of mind to interpret others actions and instead directly perceive the meaning of their intent in the action itself. How we manage this requires delving into the gestalts that give us access to an intersubjective world, explain realist materialist science and at the saem time deprive materialism of its claim to self-grounding.
I like sushiNovember 05, 2019 at 19:21#3491890 likes
It’s like you read what I wrote with the singular intent to disagree. Yet you agreed and didn’t realise. I plainly said it wasn’t about what exists. I then said ‘existence’ as an ‘object’ of consciousness does matter.
I like sushiNovember 05, 2019 at 19:46#3492050 likes
Reply to Marchesk Because phenomenology is concerned with the ‘horizon’ of experience, with ‘intentionality’. By intentionality we’re talking about a ‘mode’ of being. A ‘mode of regard’ toward an ‘object’, yet the ‘object’ is the ‘horizon’ of experience NOT some realised concrete item ‘out there’. That is why you hear phrases like ‘mode of looking’, rather than ‘mode of looking at’, because there is no ‘looking at something’ only a ‘mode of regard’.
The successes snd precision of the natural sciences is due to the utilisation of objective measurement, the holding fast to absconding from subjective noise. The point of phenomenology is to give a means of exploring and making use of the subjective by absconding from objective noise - not to deny it, but to bolster it by establishing the grounding of all human knowledge and experience which necessarily stems from the subjectivity of being not the objectively assembled naturalistic attitude.
I am not pretending to have a full grasp of this. It’s an difficult shift in thinking to make and it’s not one that comes without resistance.
We cannot measure subjectivity by objective means. That is the heart of the issue many either cannot see or refuse to accept. Probably because it’s quite a worrying thought to say that the ‘essence’ of what we regard as most dear (our experience of life) is effectively out of the reach of objective measurement making it seem by the scientific attitude as either trivial, illusional and/or removed of essential ‘value’.
creativesoulNovember 05, 2019 at 19:51#3492060 likes
I do think and would strongly argue that language is necessary.
— creativesoul
Yet all you've given thus far is...
they are further thought of as being unfair.
— creativesoul
This implies some sort of agreement
— creativesoul
it requires some measure of morality(what ought happen)
— creativesoul
I'd agree with all of those (with the same caveats as you). But you've not demonstrated any of them are necessarily dependant on language, so I don't see how they're relevant to your argument.
A sense of ought/fairness/justice is to assess what has happened in light of what ought to have happened. All such assessments are comparisons between one's morality(what ought to have happened) and what happened. This requires thinking about one's own thought and belief(what ought to have happened) while also thinking about what did happen. Language use is necessary for that sort of division of thought content and subsequent comparison. Thus, language use is necessary for having a sense of ought/fairness/justice.
An agreement most certainly requires language, as it is to stipulate one's own acceptance of certain things(conditions).
creativesoulNovember 05, 2019 at 20:00#3492070 likes
When we're claiming that some non human creature has a sense of fairness/justice, we're saying something about that creature's mental ongoings(thought and belief). Thus, it behooves us to know what all thought and belief consist of, lest we have no way to know whether or not some creature or another is capable of forming/holding those kinds of thought and belief.
— creativesoul
Yes, but this just goes over the ground we've already covered with regards to terms. There isn't something which just is what thiugh/belief consists of. There are just the phenomena we observe, how we choose to group them and what we choose to call those groups is arbitrary. I've already defined what I'm referring to by belief and thought. I've not heard (or perhaps not understood) how you're using those terms.
You're not talking about observables. The sense of fairness consists of thought and belief, as I've been setting out heretofore. A sense of fairness is not equal to the behaviours that it may play a role in influencing.
Our difference seems to be regarding what counts as warrant for concluding that the animal has a sense of fairness.
I suppose you don't mean each disposition and emotion has its own sense, like that of touch and smell, but is there anything actually contradicting that notion?
And how about consciousness itself is actually a sense like taste or hearing, sixth sense as they say in Buddhism. Is there anything we know that can prevent this for actually being true?
creativesoulNovember 05, 2019 at 20:07#3492090 likes
Franz dWaal has placed a large bowl of grapes within reach during the reward experiments, and has given grapes/cucumbers in different combinations in prior exchanges. Together these satisfy me that simple expectation frustration is not the explanation (otherwise prior priming of expectation would have made a difference), nor is it simple greed (otherwise the larger available reward would have made a difference). It does seem to be related to a social peer getting a better reward, so if there's expectation involved, it's an expectation of equal distribution of rewards. I'm happy to call that a belief in fairness.
Could you explain the patterns of reward in these experiments? The above is too vague to know what the experiments entailed.
Fairness would require some sort of undeniably altruistic redistributive behavior(hence the earlier suggested experiment). Seeing another receive something that one wants but did not receive themselves could result in discontent, regardless of any prior primings and/or patterns of reward. Wanting what another has does not count as a sense of fairness.
creativesoulNovember 05, 2019 at 20:10#3492100 likes
Our difference seems to be regarding what counts as warrant for concluding that the animal has a sense of fairness.
I suppose you don't mean each disposition and emotion has its own sense, like that of touch and smell, but is there anything actually contradicting that notion?
And how about consciousness itself is actually a sense like taste or hearing, sixth sense as they say in Buddhism. Is there anything we know that can prevent this for actually being true?
Isaac and I understand one another regarding a sense of fairness. No, it's not like physiological sensory perception, although it is existentially dependent upon such.
Consciousness - on my view - is the ability to draw correlations between different things. It begins simply and accrues in it's complexity according to the content of the correlations(and the capabilities of the candidate).
creativesoulNovember 05, 2019 at 20:18#3492160 likes
What's the difference between behavioural discontent as a result of the cognitive dissonance that takes place when expectations are dashed by what happens and having behavioural discontent as a result of thinking, believing, and/or 'feeling' like what happened is unfair/unjust, or ought be somehow corrected?
— creativesoul
Nothing. The expectation that rewards be distributed equally is what a belief in fairness is.
So... All behavioural discontent due to unmet expectations counts as thinking, believing like what has happened is unfair/unjust and/or ought be somehow corrected?
Surely not.
What have you offered here that warrants our conclusion that the candidate has the expectation that rewards are distributed evenly as opposed to the expectation of them (continuing)to be distributed consistently?
Show me an animal not under duress who receives all of the resources and voluntarily distributes them equally, and we'll have an animal that either likes the results of doing that or an animal who has shown a sense of fairness.
Right, so actions in one context=pain, actions in some other context=pretending. This is still all externally identifiable.
But it isn't, or we'd always know whether someone was in pain. There's even medical situations where a patient will complain about a condition their doctor can't see a symptom for, resulting in the suspicion that it's psychological. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it turns out the patient was right.
But in either case, the point is the patient experiences some form of discomfort that isn't objectively identified.
Consciousness - on my view - is the ability to draw correlations between different things. It begins simply and accrues in it's complexity according to the content of the correlations.
"Ability to draw correlations between different things", is that not the same thing as intelligence?
In any case, it's only functional description, not ontological, unless you are suggesting these "relations" somehow exist as actual, causal phenomena, and it just so happens they have this property to be conscious.
creativesoulNovember 05, 2019 at 20:27#3492230 likes
Consciousness - on my view - is the ability to draw correlations between different things. It begins simply and accrues in it's complexity according to the content of the correlations.
"Ability to draw correlations between different things", is that not the same thing as intelligence?
In any case, it's only functional description, not ontological, unless you are suggesting these "relations" somehow exist as actual, causal phenomena, and it just so happens they have this property to be conscious.
All intelligence is existentially dependent upon thought and belief, for it all consists thereof.
The ontological description begins when we start looking into the content of the correlations.
So, after reading through those studies, in addition to relevant links therein as well as other resources regarding the same studies, it seems that studies clearly show some sort of sensitivity regarding inequitable distribution during social circumstances. I'm still not convinced that that equals and/or counts to having a sense of fairness/justice.
However, it most certainly could be the origens thereof!
Thanks for the discourse. If you'd like to talk about something in particular, I'm down. If not, my appreciation in spades!
Could you explain the patterns of reward in these experiments? The above is too vague to know what the experiments entailed.
I'd have to just track down the paper, I'll have a look for a non-paywall version.I don't think this format is an appropriate write out the details of what amounts to a very large field consisting of decades of research. If you're amenable to an idea, I can point you in the direction of some more in depth resources (which I hope I have done), but I think that's the limit of a series of short posts. Certainly if you're largely opposed to it, nothing I can write in a few hundred words is going to be sufficient to convince you. Imagine the entire volumes of work that's been done on this, all that writing was not wasteful padding, so I can't give a thorough account without simply repeating it. Does that make sense?
So... All behavioural discontent due to unmet expectations counts as thinking, believing like what has happened is unfair/unjust and/or ought be somehow corrected?
The main thrust of my view is that all beliefs are identifiable by the behaviours they instantiate and are themselves, literally, the arrangement of brain architecture which gives rise to these behaviours. The details of exactly what they that behaviour consists of is undoubtedly quite complex. That being said I think the above gives a fairly reasonable sketch, yes, but it is undoubtedly more complex.
Show me an animal not under duress who receives all of the resources and voluntarily distributes them equally, and we'll have an animal that either likes the results of doing that or an animal who has shown a sense of fairness.
Again, it's probably best if you just read the literature yourself. Heres a deWaal paper with a considerable number of links to the primary evidence. He talks about sharing and the various models that have been proposed to describe it on page 6.
This requires thinking about one's own thought and belief(what ought to have happened) while also thinking about what did happen. Language use is necessary for that sort of division of thought content and subsequent comparison. Thus, language use is necessary for having a sense of ought/fairness/justice.
An agreement most certainly requires language, as it is to stipulate one's own acceptance of certain things(conditions).
Again, you've simply asserted that language use is required for these things, I'd like to hear your full argument for how you link the two. At the moment, as I see it, you seem to be saying that gestures, facial expressions, arrangements of neurons in any way...none of these are capable of carrying the content you're looking for, but making a particular shape with my mouth and voice box magically carries this other world of content. I just don't see how at all.
But it isn't, or we'd always know whether someone was in pain. There's even medical situations where a patient will complain about a condition their doctor can't see a symptom for, resulting in the suspicion that it's psychological. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it turns out the patient was right.
But in either case, the point is the patient experiences some form of discomfort that isn't objectively identified.
I've certainly never encountered such a situation. You're suggesting that a patient might come to a doctor, telling them that they're in pain, but show absolutely no signs at all of being in pain, no alterations to their movements, no sensitivity to touch, no defence recoil, no adjustment to their daily life, nothing...just the statement "I'm in pain". I think in that situation the doctor would quite rightly say "no you're not", that's not what pain is, you've misidentified your feeling".
Pain always results in some behaviour to the effect of demonstrating the pain, even if it's just a micro-expression, even if it's delayed. Until that point we might 'suspect' pain, but we do not know it's pain.
Again, I'll ask, how would you possibly know what 'pain' is (which of your many feelings is the one correctly called 'pain') if you could not identify it at all times in others? If there was even one circumstance where the correct feeling to call 'pain' was hidden from you completely, how would you know that some other feeling you're having is actually also called 'pain', afterall, it might be the one that's been hidden from you? How would anyone properly use the word 'pain' if no-one knew the basic extent of which feelings were to be grouped under that term?
It’s like you read what I wrote with the singular intent to disagree. Yet you agreed and didn’t realise. I plainly said it wasn’t about what exists. I then said ‘existence’ as an ‘object’ of consciousness does matter.
It doesn't matter one jot what terminology you want to use. Call it 'it'. 'It' cannot be used in a conversation with another person unless that other person has some idea what it is you're referring to by, or expecting to achieve by using, 'it'. The use of 'it' must be bounded by at least some joint understanding of that use, some collective, community venture, it cannot be solely subjective otherwise it is useless as a term of communication.
Again, I'll ask, how would you possibly know what 'pain' is (which of your many feelings is the one correctly called 'pain') if you could not identify it at all times in others?
But we don't and we can't always identify what someone else is experiencing. That's just a fact of our existence. We only have partial access to other people's minds though their behavior and what they choose to tell us. We simply don't always know whether someone else in pain.
Pain always results in some behaviour to the effect of demonstrating the pain,
But it doesn't. People can choose to ignore minor pains. I have a headache, but if it's not severe, I don't have to say anything or hold my head. I can just ignore it and focus on something else. How much pain one can endure without reacting in pain depends on the individual.
If there was even one circumstance where the correct feeling to call 'pain' was hidden from you completely, how would you know that some other feeling you're having is actually also called 'pain', afterall, it might be the one that's been hidden from you?
It's not hidden from me because pain is a subjective experience that can be accompanied by behavior, but not always. And if that fact doesn't square with a certain view of meaning acquisition, the so much the worse for that view.
I like sushiNovember 06, 2019 at 08:57#3493650 likes
Reply to Isaac I’m really not sure what you mean here. I just pointed out that ‘existence’ is a ‘mode’ of regard. You seemed to be accusing me of some ‘objective’/‘subjective’ dichotomy. I tried to explain further.
To explain further the ‘it-ness’ is an ‘existential mode’ of intentionality.
If you wish try and untangle where you see possible conflicts of terminology.
I’m just laying out as best I can as how I understand phenomenology. I’ve done this by drawing on the example of natural science being inclined toward an objective approach that actively seeks to leave out subjective perspectives as much as possible. It is probably helpful to view phenomenology as a mirror of this where leaving out what is objectively determined by the naturalistic attitude is a means to investigating subjectivity.
The existent items are not the direct concern of phenomenology, yet ‘existence’ as a ‘mode’ is as a phenomenal ‘object’ of experience - the ‘horizon’.
As what I hope is a more tangible way of expressing this we don’t tend to consider being on Earth orbiting the Sun. We are, yet now that I’ve drawn attention to this our ‘intentionality’ shifts. As soon as the question of ‘existence’ is brought into play then our ‘intentionality’ shifts to phenomenon as existing ‘objects’.
I’m happy to accept that generally people say ‘real’ to talk about number and word concepts and ‘existent’ to talk about this or that ‘box’, ‘chair’ or ‘table’. For phenomenological investigation the ‘real’ or ‘existent’ are only ‘modes of intentionality’; meaning they are not of direct concern for the itemization of ‘objects’ as ‘real’ or ‘existent’. The phenomenon is the subjective regard.
Maybe that only makes partial sense? I’d appreciate it if you could see a way to build a bridge of understanding here and tell me. We certainly seem to be in roughly the same area here.
But we don't and we can't always identify what someone else is experiencing. That's just a fact of our existence.
It's a fact I dispute, a fact I'm asking for your support of, your empirical evidence for. To say something is 'just a fact' is quite a strong assertion (it implies that any and all theories which assume it isn't are all untenable), so it's one I'd expect a significant amount of evidence for.
People can choose to ignore minor pains. I have a headache, but if it's not severe, I don't have to say anything or hold my head. I can just ignore it and focus on something else.
Then how do you know that feeling is a 'pain'? How do you know it isn't some feeling other people are calling something else entirely?
I'm talking about the time when you claim it is hidden. Again, it is not a 'fact' simply by your declaring it to be one.
I drink too much the night before and wake up with a mild hangover. At the office I talk to coworker and do my work without saying anything. Nobody asks me about my hangover or offers some aspirin.
I don't know what more to say other than it's a basic aspect of our experience that we don't always know what our fellow humans are feeling, including pain, nor can they always tell what we feel. It's part of of our daily interactions, it's in our language, it's all over fiction.
You seem to be arguing that we should always be able to tell whether someone is in pain.
we don’t tend to consider being on Earth orbiting the Sun. We are, yet now that I’ve drawn attention to this our ‘intentionality’ shifts. As soon as the question of ‘existence’ is brought into play then our ‘intentionality’ shifts to phenomenon as existing ‘objects’.
OK, that makes sense. In my terminology, that would be the active variance reduction seeking if the system relating to the model currently in focus. Our models of the world are utility based, they don't necessarily join up, nor even fail to contradict one another, so focus needs to be confined to the model at hand in order to gain more confirming data for it. Maybe that's still too 'sciency', but I can see some common ground there.
This is the bit I hit a wall with. We 'regard' a phenomena, yes? So having regarded it, we presumably then want to say something about it? Otherwise the activity is simply silent meditation. So when it comes to saying something about it, the words we use must have some effect on the community to whom we're speaking, which means they must either already know, or be able to gather by your actions, what to do with the word you've used. (more simply, what the word refers to, but I'm trying to be accurate here and words do not always refer).
So I kind of get how introspection might allow us to recognise a focus on different models (intentionality?), I get how we could conduct thought experiments on such modes to find out more about them. I'm stuck on how we could ever communicate the results to anyone without invoking community-held (objective) definitions for the words we're using, which means the referrents for those words have to be objectively verifiable to some loose extent.
Also, you haven't tried to answer my questions. How would you know that what you're experiencing is called 'pain'? How do you know you're using the word correctly?
Also, you haven't tried to answer my questions. How would you know that what you're experiencing is called 'pain'? How do you know you're using the word correctly?
The sensation correlates with other human behavior enough of the time in situations that are often painful to use that word for it. There's probably edge cases where I wouldn't be sure whether to call it pain.
The sensation correlates with other human behavior enough of the time in situations that are often painful to use that word for it.
But how would you know that? The sensation which allows you to continue without displaying any signs cannot be the same as the one which does not. Or are you claiming that we are voluntarily in control of all our external behaviors, even the micro expressions, galvanic skin responses, recoil defence etc which experts use to detect things like pain?
If we're not in control of all those autosomic responses, then a sensation which does not cause them must be a different sensation to one which causes them, no?
Even if we were to simply assume the two sensations were similar enough, you'd be positing a mental sensation which had absolutely no effect on you whatsoever. Where would the signal go? Or are you perhaps a dualist?
Even if we were to simply assume the two sensations were similar enough, you'd be positing a mental sensation which had absolutely no effect on you whatsoever.
I didn't say there was no effect, just that we can't always know what it is in other people. Of course at minimum there is neural activity. But it's not like we have super accurate brain scanners. We don't have anything that's good enough for court to determine truthfulness. Lie detector tests aren't terribly accurate, and neither are juries, police or even shrinks when it comes to reading people.
Again, how would we know? Without any external signs, how do the judges, jurors, doctors etc know that there is some feeling in the subject which they have misidentified (or missed entirely) for you to form this judgement that they regularly do this? I can see how they might temporarily make this mistake, but later find out they were in error. But this later updating of their assessment would be the result of some behavior. Absent of any behaviour at all, they'd have no way to know they were ever wrong and so you'd have no way to know that they regularly get these things wrong.
Terrapin StationNovember 06, 2019 at 15:43#3494570 likes
Also, you haven't tried to answer my questions. How would you know that what you're experiencing is called 'pain'? How do you know you're using the word correctly?
You can't use words correctly or incorrectly. If you're asking how do you know that you're using the word the "same way" as someone else (where we're ignoring that "someone elses" are only creations of your own mind in your view), you don't, but what does that matter for anything?
People can feel some way that no external behavior gives a clue to, regardless of what anyone calls the feeling in question.
The way you know that the person had the feeling that no external behavior gave a clue to is that they tell you at some later time. This happens frequently.
Could they be using the term they use in a way that's not at all like how you use the term? Sure. But there's no need to worry about that until it becomes apparent that they must be using the term differently, and there's a communication breakdown.
And could they be lying? Sure. But you can't know this better than what they're telling you. So again, until there's something that makes no sense supposing that they're being honest, and in inverse proportion to potential upshots of trusting them (the more significant the upshots, the more skepticism warranted), normally you just don't worry about whether they're being truthful, and we don't assume that someone isn't truthful.
The way you know that the person had the feeling that no external behavior gave a clue to is that they tell you at some later time.
And telling you at some later time isn't a behaviour? Or, if you want to say "well we didn't know at time X", then surely that applies equally to all data. Everything has some delay, even things we observe; we see them move, say, shortly after they actually have moved. We don't start saying that external world movements are mysteriously unknowable to us because there's some period of time where the knowledge was inaccessible. We're just happy to find out when we do.
Terrapin StationNovember 06, 2019 at 17:16#3495100 likes
And telling you at some later time isn't a behaviour? Or, if you want to say "well we didn't know at time X", then surely that applies equally to all data. Everything has some delay, even things we observe; we see them move, say, shortly after they actually have moved. We don't start saying that external world movements are mysteriously unknowable to us because there's some period of time where the knowledge was inaccessible. We're just happy to find out when we do.
What the hell are you talking about?
The idea is clearly about someone feeling some way at an earlier time, where there was no behavioral clue that they felt that way at the time, and it's clearly not saying something about there being a nervous system delay in response time.
You're arguing about this and now it turns out that you don't even understand what the topic was. lol
The idea is clearly about someone feeling some way at an earlier time, where there was no behavioral clue that they felt that way at the time
Right, and I'm obviously not disputing that fact. I'm disputing the implication drawn earlier in the argument that this means we should accept 'experiences vlike pain as being subjective, inaccessible to third parties.
If this were the case purely because there is a time delay between the experience initiating and us, the third party, being aware of it, then we could apply that logic to every single form of knowledge. There is a delay between an object moving and us being aware of it, we don't use that delay to claim that the movement of objects is mysteriously unavailable to third parties. It is unavailable, for the short time it takes for light to reach our eyes, but we find out eventually, and that's satisfactory, we count that as 'knowable' information.
The situation with feelings is the same. They manifest eventually as behaviours and are therefore knowable to third parties.
Terrapin StationNovember 06, 2019 at 17:29#3495230 likes
Right, and I'm obviously not disputing that fact. I'm disputing the implication drawn earlier in the argument that this means we should accept 'experiences vlike pain as being subjective, inaccessible
The reason it's subjective is because it's a mental phenomenon, and the reason it's inaccessible is that the mental phenomenon is not identical to any third-person observable behavior.
Of course, when you don't even really think that there are other people aside from your own model of them, this doesn't pan out so well, because you don't really believe that there are minds other than your own, etc.
the mental phenomenon is not identical to any third-person observable behavior.
No, but the mental phenomenon is a disposition towards some behaviour, so it is accessible in exactly the same way all other phenomena of the world are accessible, by their effects.
Terrapin StationNovember 06, 2019 at 17:39#3495280 likes
No, but the mental phenomenon is a disposition towards some behaviour, so it is accessible in exactly the same way all other phenomena of the world are accessible, by their effects.
So first, the effects are phenomena. If you only access those phenomena by their effects, you'd never access any phenomena.
So first, the effects are phenomena. If you only access those phenomena by their effects, you'd never access any phenomena.
I didn't say that no phenomena weren't directly accessible though. I just said that all phenomena 'of the world' were accessed (in terms of us knowing about them) by other phenomena that they cause. At no point does the phenomena we imagine as being the real object (in your terminology this might be the noumena, the 'real thing'), at no point does that just enter our minds directly, it is some effect it has by which we know of it.
Now for you, the thing we thereby know is some property of reality, for me it's just another phenomena (an imagined object in a speculative model), but this distinction isn't even relevant here. The point here is that whatever 'it' is, we know it by some effect it is having, yet this doesn't cause us to label such knowledge as 'inaccessible to third parties'. The movement of a stone isn't known only to the stone by virtue of the fact that we only see the effect of that movement on our retinas. So why is the disposition of some brain known only to that brain just on the same grounds that we only see the effects of that disposition?
Terrapin StationNovember 06, 2019 at 17:58#3495470 likes
I didn't say that no phenomena weren't directly accessible though. I just said that all phenomena 'of the world' were accessed (in terms of us knowing about them) by other phenomena that they cause. At no point does the phenomena we imagine as being the real object (in your terminology this might be the noumena, the 'real thing'), at no point does that just enter our minds directly, it is some effect it has by which we know of it.
Objects are processes, and we can talk about processes that are not normally thought of as objects just as well, because they're phenomena just as well.
Properties of reality are phenomena. "Phenomena" does not refer to "imagined objects . . "
Representationalism is wrong re philosophy of perception.
You know something like light waves by looking at them. Light waves are phenomena. You don't only know them via effects they have on something else.
Objects are processes, and we can talk about processes that are not normally thought of as objects just as well, because they're phenomena just as well.
I have no clue how this relates to what I said.
As to the rest of your post...
Yeah, I'm aware of the fact that you have a different opinion, so simply restating it is not contributing anything.
I disagree that phenomena does not refer to imagined objects (in the sense I was using in context) because of my beliefs about how the brain works (all apparent phenomena are imagined objects, models created and tested for efficacy against reality which is not directly accessed).
I disagree that representationalism is wrong re the philosophy of perception. You don't make it so simply by declaring it is.
I disagree that you know light waves by looking at them for the masses of neuroscientific reasons I've been outlining in this thread. Again, simply saying something is the case does not make it so.
If we've now come to the usual point where you just declare whatever seems to you to be the case to actually be the case, then I'm done. All that's left is for you to call me a moron (or a child, or uneducated, whatever is your preferred term de jour) and then tell me my reading comprehension is to blame, then we can call it a day.
Terrapin StationNovember 06, 2019 at 18:22#3495850 likes
You wrote, "At no point does the phenomena we imagine as being the real object . . . " I wanted to point out, not just for your sake, but for anyone's sake who might be reading this at any time, that phenomena aren't limited to objects per se.
I disagree that phenomena does not refer to imagined objects
I wasn't saying that it can't refer to that. Just that it isn't limited to that. It's not an exhaustive identity or necessary implication for the term in other words.
It would be like if I said, "You don't make it so that it's not wrong simply by declaring that one doesn't make it wrong simply by declaring it is." Of course, you weren't saying as much. I could write that, anyway, but it would be kind of dumb to, because I know you weren't saying as much.
Thanks for that link. Impressive considerations and precautions taken by the scientists involved to minimize mistaken accounting practices.
Based upon those experiments, I am quite certain that there is some sort of sensitivity to equitable resource distribution(in some non human primates). I am quite certain that there is empathy at work(in some non human primates more-so than others). I am quite certain that there is some sort of expectation at work(in all non human primates). I'm not as certain that there is enough evidence to conclude a sense of fairness at work in the thought and belief of any particular candidate. However, it's quite interesting that some dominant individuals will voluntarily share.
Again, you've simply asserted that language use is required for these things, I'd like to hear your full argument for how you link the two. At the moment, as I see it, you seem to be saying that gestures, facial expressions, arrangements of neurons in any way...none of these are capable of carrying the content you're looking for, but making a particular shape with my mouth and voice box magically carries this other world of content. I just don't see how at all.
It's not so much as making a particular shape with one's mouth and voice box carries content. In fact, on my view, talking about carrying content doesn't make much sense at all. The content of thought and belief is not some monolithic structure capable of being carried.
Right, and I'm obviously not disputing that fact. I'm disputing the implication drawn earlier in the argument that this means we should accept 'experiences like pain as being subjective, inaccessible to third parties.
The experience itself is inaccessible, because you don't have someone else's pain. But you might very well find out someone is or was in pain, and have empathy or recall a similar painful experience. So yes, the mental phenomena has related effects. But we can't always know what they are, or infer the correct mental states.
Luckily we share a similar biology with other humans, so often enough we can understand other people's mental states. But not always. Men can't know exactly what it's like to give birth. And we never know fully what it is to be someone else. Everyone has their own subjective experience of themselves and the world.
This goes back to a dispute over meaning. You seemed to be arguing for a behavioral view that pain is understood as something objective and not the experience of pain itself, because otherwise how could have learned to identify pain? To which I say hogwash, pain without the experience is meaningless.
Therefore, we understood pain to be something experienced that often but not always has observable effects, like hopping around and yelling. And it's something that can be faked.
Terrapin StationNovember 06, 2019 at 19:17#3496140 likes
Keep in mind that he doesn't even think there are any objective properties. And he believes that the world he experiences is simply a model of his own creation. So he doesn't really believe there are other minds per se.
Reply to Terrapin Station If so, I guess he's arguing with himself to sharpen up the model? I didn't get to read through the entire thread so I'm not sure where that part of the arguments took place.
I'm just happy to be part of someone's world.
Terrapin StationNovember 06, 2019 at 19:20#3496170 likes
There are a bunch of other things we could be doing. For one, imagine if folks were interested in others persons' views simply because they find other people and their differences interesting.
I like sushiNovember 07, 2019 at 08:15#3498410 likes
This is the bit I hit a wall with. We 'regard' a phenomena, yes? So having regarded it, we presumably then want to say something about it? Otherwise the activity is simply silent meditation. So when it comes to saying something about it, the words we use must have some effect on the community to whom we're speaking, which means they must either already know, or be able to gather by your actions, what to do with the word you've used. (more simply, what the word refers to, but I'm trying to be accurate here and words do not always refer).
So I kind of get how introspection might allow us to recognise a focus on different models (intentionality?), I get how we could conduct thought experiments on such modes to find out more about them. I'm stuck on how we could ever communicate the results to anyone without invoking community-held (objective) definitions for the words we're using, which means the referrents for those words have to be objectively verifiable to some loose extent.
I admit that the use of ‘regard’ has to be taken in a broad and abstract manner here. I am not talking about my ‘regard’ for an object anymore than I mean my ‘intention’ when talking about ‘Intentionality’. The ‘regard’ is the ‘mode’ in the sense I meant it.
Phenomenon is what is ‘apparent’ and Phenomenology is the investigation into the ‘modes’ (intentionality) that ‘give aboutness’.
That sentence was more of an afterthought. Probably better to put a line through it as an attempt to explain my understanding of Phenomenology rather than as a certified exemplar of what phenomenology is about.
I am puzzled by how so many people see Heidegger and/or Gadamer as doing something different than what Husserl set out. From my reading they have helped elucidate certain aspects of phenomenology, but that is exactly the problem as well - meaning they appear, to me at least, to have taken a part as the whole (note: please ignore this paragraph if you want. Just voicing a point that has bothered me for a while.)
Based upon those experiments, I am quite certain that there is some sort of sensitivity to equitable resource distribution(in some non human primates). I am quite certain that there is empathy at work(in some non human primates more-so than others). I am quite certain that there is some sort of expectation at work(in all non human primates). I'm not as certain that there is enough evidence to conclude a sense of fairness at work in the thought and belief of any particular candidate. However, it's quite interesting that some dominant individuals will voluntarily share.
Yes. I think that's a pretty good summary of where the current evidence is at, in terms of what we can be fairly sure of and what there remains some considerable doubt over. I'm basically at the same place as you, only I'm presuming they do have a sense of fairness and waiting to see if I'm proven wrong by further experiments, you're presuming they don't and waiting to see if you're proven wrong by further experiments. Possibly this is because of other philosophical commitments we both have about the nature of mental phenomena.
What would "someone else's pain" mean here? I don't have you're chair either but it doesn't prevent me from both understanding what a chair is and talking coherently about chairs.
we can't always know what they are, or infer the correct mental states.
But we've been through this without you answering my questions, but you're just circling back to the same assertion. If there are times when we can't know what they are ('can't', not just 'don't happen to on that particular occasion'), then how would we ever know what word to use to describe it?
Men can't know exactly what it's like to give birth.
This just presumes there's 'something it's like' to give birth, which is the whole matter under contention here. If you're talking about that exact set of feelings, then no one can know what it's like to give birth, not even the person who's just given birth. Our memories absolutely demonstrably do not provide us with an accurate account of the feelings we experienced even seconds ago. In order for anyone to know what anything 'is like' by that token we have to generalise. In which case a detailed verbal description gives a perfectly good account of 'what it's like'.
Everyone has their own subjective experience of themselves and the world.
How would you know this? There are 7 billion people on the planet right now, about 10 billion ever. Are there 10 billion combinations of feelings anyone can have at any moment? What if there were 100 billion people, would there still be enough variety for everyone to have a unique set? Will we run out at some time? What is the mechanism which prevents two people from having the same set?
To which I say hogwash, pain without the experience is meaningless.
What is 'the experience' if not the behaviours? Quoting Marchesk
And it's something that can be faked.
Again, how would you know this unless you found out they were faking by some eventual difference between their behaviour and the behaviour of someone who is genuinely in pain?
This doesn't follow. A belief that the distinction of another mind is just a model is not the same as saying that only I exist. I'm quite convinced the external world exists (I actually think it is impossible to genuinely doubt that), I just don't agree that the distinctions we draw are real outside of our minds. It's like star signs, all there really are is just stars, we drew lines between some of them to make lions, bears, hunters etc, but those aren't real properties of those stars, we just looked at them that way.
(note - an reasonable alternative, to my mind, would be to say that the similarity to a bear was a property of that cluster of stars, but everything else it could possibly be is also a property, leaving everything with a potentially infinite set of properties. I think this makes sense, but is far less elegant)
The ‘regard’ is the ‘mode’ in the sense I meant it.
Replacing one idiosyncratic technical term with another is hardly an explanation. A system which can only be explained in terms of its own technical language is just waffle. You need to bridge what you think Husserl means by his technical terms by reference to ordinary language. No one ordinarily use 'mode' to mean anything like what you're using it to mean.
This doesn't follow. A belief that the distinction of another mind is just a model is not the same as saying that only I exist. I'm quite convinced the external world exists (I actually think it is impossible to genuinely doubt that), I just don't agree that the distinctions we draw are real outside of our minds.
So what you're saying is that other people exist, it's just that our talk of other minds is itself a model, and the model can be disputed. You're disputing the model that the experiences of other minds is inaccessible. That subjectivity is fundamentally different from objectivity. And thus you disagree with the hard problem of consciousness, that it's a "hard" problem.
Alright, fair enough. I think there's some room there for debate over exactly how "hard" the distinction is between subjective and objective. It could be that the distinction is only a human one due to a limitation of how we think, or based on how philosophy and language has developed into the current debate, or just that science hasn't quite caught up yet.
What I'm noting is that this distinction goes all the way back to the beginning of philosophical inquiry, so there's something fundamental at least in terms of human knowledge. The distinction being one between the appearance of the world to us, and how the world actually is. The current consciousness debate is just the most recent development of the long argued problem of perception and skepticism that arose a long time ago when people started asking questions about sticks looking bent in water and people having different experiences of sensation (perceptual relativity), and how animal sensory capabilities can differ from our own.
So what you're saying is that other people exist, it's just that our talk of other minds is itself a model, and the model can be disputed. You're disputing the model that the experiences of other minds is inaccessible. That subjectivity is fundamentally different from objectivity. And thus you disagree with the hard problem of consciousness, that it's a "hard" problem.
So close, it's hardly worth quibbling, but I don't think other people exist either. I think the real world, all that is the case, exists. Any division of that into separate objects, forces, etc are just models, just one way of subdiving things, among other options.
The distinction being one between the appearance of the world to us, and how the world actually is.
Yes, only I don't see how there can possibly be a way the world really is. Any 'ways' it could be require distinction (shape and form, even if only figurative) and I cannot see any convincing way in which distinction can be the case without anyone doing the distinguishing.
So close, it's hardly worth quibbling, but I don't think other people exist either. I think the real world, all that is the case, exists. Any division of that into separate objects, forces, etc are just models, just one way of subdiving things, among other options.
Yeah, that is definitely worth quibbling over! So, do you exist?
Yes, only I don't see how there can possibly be a way the world really is. Any 'ways' it could be require distinction (shape and form, even if only figurative) and I cannot see any convincing way in which distinction can be the case without anyone doing the distinguishing.
But then how does the subdividing happen? What's making the distinctions? Is it "your" mind? Based on what?
Parmenides started this whole business by arguing that despite appearances, change was impossible and the world was really a sphere. My biggest issue upon hearing that is what makes the world appear like it does change, and it's much more than a sphere?
We can ask the same sort of think of a Kantian. What gives the mind the ability to categorize the noumena into the phenomena we experience? Doesn't that imply a pre-existing order?
And if there is a pre-existing order, then we have some basis for inferring it.
Quibble away. Give me a reason to think that the boundary between 'I' and 'not I' is one which would continue to exist (differently to the boundary between two other molecules of 'me') without some model determining that these molecules belong together as one thing, whilst these others belong together as another.
When I say people don't exist, I'm not suggesting there's nothing there, it's the grouping, the distinguishing, I'm disputing, not the existence of anything at all.
Depends on what model I'm using. I don't believe it's possible to refer without models, so I can't answer a 'what' question outside of some model dividing the world into individual referrents.
I went through this earlier in the thread. Just because I don't believe in any objective division of the world into parts, doesn't mean I think it's homogeneous.
And if there is a pre-existing order, then we have some basis for inferring it.
No, I don't see any logical reason for it to imply anything more than heterogeneity. We can identify a pattern in a random sequence of dots, does that mean the pattern was really there all along? Yes, I think so. But does that mean the pattern is the way the random sequence is? No. It's just one pattern that can be determined out of many.
went through this earlier in the thread. Just because I don't believe in any objective division of the world into parts, doesn't mean I think it's homogeneous.
So the world is a heterogenous flux allowing for seeing different kinds of patterns. And this flux on occasion produces pattern matchers?
I'm asking how the pattern matching occurs in the flux of things. In any case, that sets up a dichotomy between the flux and the pattern matching, because we can ask how our patterns match up with the flux of the world.
I'm asking how the pattern matching occurs in the flux of things.
There is no pattern matching, there's just the flux of thing. The only way we can talk about pattern matching going on is by agreeing to a model in which there are such things as patterns and matching.
In any case, that sets up a dichotomy between the flux and the pattern matching, because we can ask how our patterns match up with the flux of the world.
Just because we can ask something, doesn't mean the world is the way the question assumes.
Patterns will always match up some way with the world, and will always be in error some way (because they are not the actual world).
Reply to Isaac I'm confused as to how patterns can be recognized or in error if there is no pattern matcher or mind or self or whatever we want to call the organizing principle that makes sense of the flux (finds patterns).
We cannot measure subjectivity by objective means.
If all is just electro-magnetic chemistry, that is 'material' in a sense it is measurable, then all we need is true definition. Right? For example, if definition of 'subjectivity' turns out to be "measure of self-reflection" then we would look for some kind of dynamics which is symmetric in some way, and compare one side with the other to see how closely they match, or "self-reflect". For example.
creativesoulNovember 09, 2019 at 04:19#3505310 likes
The experience itself is inaccessible, because you don't have someone else's pain.
I cannot have your pain. I can most certainly have my own. If we know what having pain consists of... then it doesn't make much sense to say that having pain is inaccessible, does it?
:worry:
creativesoulNovember 09, 2019 at 04:22#3505320 likes
What on earth could be wrong with saying "other people exist"?
creativesoulNovember 09, 2019 at 04:25#3505340 likes
What on earth does "measuring subjectivity" have to do with knowing what it's like to experience X?
I like sushiNovember 09, 2019 at 04:32#3505360 likes
Reply to Isaac I already have explained in normal language. I have explained what ‘intentionality’ means by using ‘mode’. I was just saying that in the same manner we talk of a ‘distant’ past we don’t mean distant in the usual context.
People do use ‘mode’ to mean ... well, mode. It is the manner/regard/approach used. It does take a certain mental leap to appreciate what Husserl is talking about because there is no concern for a physical agent.
I like sushiNovember 09, 2019 at 04:37#3505370 likes
Reply to Zelebg Phenomenology isn’t directly concerned with empirical sciences or the naturalistic attitude.
Reply to creativesoul Experience is subjective. You ‘know’ subjectively yet you don’t know how you know. We can objectively measure physical phenomenon and find out a lot, but the scientific approach has no means of dealing with subjective phenomenon other than by way of resorting back to empirical means.
creativesoulNovember 09, 2019 at 04:51#3505380 likes
You ‘know’ subjectively yet you don’t know how you know.
Sometimes. Not all.
One can know that their holding an ice cream cone and not know how to say it. This would satisfy your criterion.
One can know that when her mother utters "ice cream" that they are about to eat ice cream. They cannot say anything about the correlations that they are drawing, but they can be shown to clearly have already drawn correlations between their own mother's naming and descriptive practices and ice cream. This would satisfy your criterion.
They get quite happy when they entertain having it again. When mother starts asking again in the same way she always does they draw correlations between the language use and eating ice cream. They know what it's like to believe that they are about to eat ice cream, but they do not know how they believe that. They draw correlations between the language use and ice cream. This would satisfy your criterion.
The use of the terms directly involves her mother speaking endearingly with a certain tone accompanied with a certain loving facial expression. She can know that she's about to get ice cream because she's drawn correlations between her mother's language use and eating ice cream, and yet not know how she knows that much. This too satisfies your criterion.
That's only to say that sometimes we know yet do not know how we know...
Sometimes we know X as well as knowing how we do.
We know how to use this site to interact. We also know how we know. We learned how to use the site by learning to follow the procedure needed in order to do so. We learned how to talk about that learning experience as well. We know and we know how we know.
This does not satisfy your criterion. Rather it offers an example to the contrary. Thus, at a minimum, we must further qualify your claim captured in the quote directly above. Hence, my reasoning for the opening statement.
Phenomenology isn't directly concerned with empirical sciences or the naturalistic attitude.
It's like you are saying you'd rather keep imagining than look through a telescope. Is it not the ultimate goal to actually move, if possible, any and all "phenomena" from philosophy to one of natural sciences?
I'm confused as to how patterns can be recognized or in error if there is no pattern matcher or mind or self or whatever we want to call the organizing principle that makes sense of the flux (finds patterns).
There isn't no pattern matching. I'm not saying that nothing exists and that things don't happen. Pattern matching is happening in some part of reality, part of that pattern matching is identifying the thing doing the matching, in the same way as if I count the number of people on my bus the person doing the counting is one of those people part of the pattern [number of people} is the thing recognising the pattern. I'm disputing that there is an edge to that pattern making goings on that objectively defines it as one thing and the rest of the universe as other things(s).
I (and others) haven't arrived at this belief because it's the way the world seems to us to be, We've arrived at it becasue of a failure to feel satisfied with any objective criteria for distinguishing objects. So If you've got such a criteria, then we can ditch the whole idea of model dependent realism. Say an alien comes to earth, they don't even see in colour like we do, they detect some other part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and maybe the Weak Nuclear Force directly, maybe they have completely different model of how evolution and DNA works (afterall, we had a completely different model 200years ago). Give me an reason why they would still recognise you as one thing and me as another. Or even you as one thing and the chair you're sitting on as another.
What on earth could be wrong with saying "other people exist"?
Depends what you mean by 'wrong'. As a model, it's a brilliant one - useful, elegant, highly accurate predictions. But as some objective measure of the way reality 'really' is...I'll ask the same as I asked Marchesk above - what would the criteria for such a distinction be?
Phenomenology is the investigation into the ‘modes’ (intentionality) that ‘give aboutness’.
No 'mode' in the ordinary language sense (approach used) can 'give aboutness' in the same ordinary language sense because 'aboutness' is not a term in ordinary language either. A particular approach to thinking gives aboutness? Is that what you mean?
And none of this seems to at all address the concern I've been raising all along which is how we then proceed to speak about the results of these investigations without being able to use terms which both parties recognise the referents of, and if both parties recognise the referents, then the matter is not subjective, is it?
creativesoulNovember 09, 2019 at 08:11#3505610 likes
If it is the case that you don't think other people exist, then there must be something wrong with you saying "other people exist".
Yes, that's what I thought you meant. Which is why my answer was "it depends what you mean by 'wrong'".
If you mean objectively 'wrong' in a normative sense - 'one ought not to say "other people exist"', then you'd be suggesting that my believing something to be the case somehow creates a normative imperative for other people to agree, and speak that way. I wouldn't agree with you here.
If by 'wrong' you mean ineffective, not conducive to the task, then again, I disagree because we use different models for different tasks and most of the time, the model in which people don't exist is not very useful. That doesn't in any way prevent me from believing it to be the case.
I'm not going to continue to list all the other senses of 'wrong' you could have meant and their implications, you get the picture. I need to know what you mean by 'wrong' before I can answer your question.
Give me an reason why they would still recognise you as one thing and me as another. Or even you as one thing and the chair you're sitting on as another.
Because you occupy different location in space, and especially because you seem to move infependently from the forces of nature. I guess I could say then, because you seem unnatural.
Because you occupy different location in space, and especially because you seem to move infependently from the forces of nature. I guess I could say then, because you seem unnatural.
Every atom occupies a different location in space from every other, so that alone doesn't provide any grounds, not to mention the fact that 3d space seems to be a model which itself is open to question.
Which are 'the forces of nature' and which are my movements, prior to identifying me as an entity?
Every atom, occupies a different location in space from every other, so that alone doesn't provide any grounds, nit to mention the fact that 3d space seems to be a model which itself is open to question.
That's not the context where you exist as a collective entity. You need to look several levels of abstraction above... atom - molecule - cell - organ - organism. Surely at this level there should be no confusion what is and how much it is different and separated from everything else at the same level.
Which are 'the forces of nature' and which are my movements, prior to identifying me as an entity?
Can you state the problem directly, with some example if possible?
creativesoulNovember 09, 2019 at 09:15#3505780 likes
That's not the context where you exist as a collective entity.
I'm talking about objective existence, the 'context' in which we determine existence is subjective, it's a decision we make, there's no reason why we should determine objects on any given level of heirachy. We're we justifiably uncertain of our existence prior to having a model of molecules, cells etc? How would our alien, who only senses weak nuclear forces, have any concept of a boundary at a cellular level?
Which are 'the forces of nature' and which are my movements, prior to identifying me as an entity?
Can you state the problem directly, with some example if possible?
You said that 'I' act against the forces of nature, but that would involve distinguishing between 'my' actions and those originating from the forces of nature. Without begging the question as to my separate existence, I'm asking what features of 'my' actions allow you to distinguish them from actions caused by 'the forces of nature'.
becasue of a failure to feel satisfied with any objective criteria for distinguishing objects
Objective criteria, granted. But the human species in general, as observer, does distinguish objects, from himself and from each other, which implies there is some criteria for doing so.
Would the subjective criteria of space and time be sufficient for distinguishing objects?
I don't hold single beliefs about the subject. As I've said already, for me, a belief is simply a disposition to act as if. It is therefore contextual. In the context of thinking about reality, in the widest sense I can, I'm disposed to act (in this case actions are all talking/typing) as if people do not exist, as separate objects. In the context of my day to day life, I'm disposed to act as if other people do exist.
Neither of these dispositions tells me anything about what actually does exist.
Would the subjective criteria of space and time be sufficient for distinguishing objects?
Yes, absolutely. What I'm arguing for here is model dependent realism. Not that nothing really exists, not any form of idealism, just that the only way we know reality is through our models of it and so (this is, for me, the important bit) no model can ever be shown to be more 'true' (where that means corresponds to reality) than any other, and no objects distinguished by those models really exist in preference to any other conceivable way of determining objects.
I can't remember why we got talking about model dependent realism in a thread about the expression 'what it's like'.
I'm talking about objective existence, the 'context' in which we determine existence is subjective, it's a decision we make, there's no reason why we should determine objects on any given level of heirachy.
The reason for separation are new emergent entities, properties, and meanings. So we can talk about things like wetness and acidity, or letters and words, or ball and wheel, or osmosis and chirality... Subjective, perhaps, so what? Decision is not arbitrary.
We're we justifiably uncertain of our existence prior to having a model of molecules, cells etc?
I don't see how that question relates to what I said. What problem you are talking about - who has that problem, when, why?
How would our alien, who only senses weak nuclear forces, have any concept of a boundary at a cellular level?
In that case it wouldn't.
OK, so describe to me where 'you' end, and why there. Maybe some more detail will help me see where you're coming from.
Individual organisms are distinguished from the environment by connections and relations between entities that make up that organism, like shared circulatory system, synchronized motion of all the parts, shape constraints that make up the body...
I'm asking what features of 'my' actions allow you to distinguish them from actions caused by 'the forces of nature'.
Autonomy & independence, like you can climb a mountain and raindrop can not. Is there some point to all these questions?
I'm asking what features of 'my' actions allow you to distinguish them from actions caused by 'the forces of nature'.
No member of Nature can act contrary to the forces of the Nature of which he is a member. None of my actions can be distinguished from forces found naturally, even if I am permitted to modify them to my advantage or interrupt their natural progression. Even the act of pure spontaneity, which we formerly considered the ground of pure thought, has its natural exhibition in random....a form of spontaneity.....nuclear decay, and theoretical quantum physics.
Individual organisms are distinguished from the environment by connections and relations between entities that make up that organism, like shared circulatory system, synchronized motion of all the parts, shape constraints that make up the body...
So you're not 'connected' to the environment? How's that work?
No member of Nature can act contrary to the forces of the Nature of which he is a member. None of my actions can be distinguished from forces found naturally, even if I am permitted to modify them to my advantage or interrupt their natural progression. Even the act of pure spontaneity, which we formerly considered the ground of pure thought, has its natural exhibition in random....a form of spontaneity.....nuclear decay, and theoretical quantum physics.
Yes, exactly. So I'm asking Zelebg how that distinction he set up can help him objectively identify a separate object. I can't see any distinction at all myself.
What I'm arguing for here is model dependent realism
The human cognitive system is predicated on models it constructs of its own accord. Whether or not the models so constructed correspond one-to-one with reality is only governed by logical law.....which we also invented. On a smaller scale, if Nature informs us of an error in our models, we just start over. On a large enough scale, if our models are in error, Nature will treat us as any other non-evolutionarily viable entity, and rid itself of us.
Yes, I'm trying to clarify what your objection is.
My objection? To what point of yours when you made no point, but keep asking questions?
Do you have any point to make, what is it?
I like sushiNovember 09, 2019 at 13:47#3506360 likes
Reply to creativesoul We appear to be talking past each other probably due to a difference in terminology/view of the question of knowing ‘the-thing-in-itself’. We cannot know the thing in itself. This is the idea of ‘pure objectivity’ - for me not refutable completely, but clearly unknowable. This harks back to the differentiation made by Kant in The Critique of Pure Reason. The ‘noumenon’ is only true for us in a ‘negative’ sense, as a limitation.
The objective stance I am guarded against is naive realism. There is no ‘knowing’ ice cream only subjective experience, an ‘object’ of experience. I don’t see how ‘knowing’ can possess unbounded universality. What is known truly is only known within set limits - been through exhaustively elsewhere I believe.
You don’t know by way of someone else’s knowing. You know only through you - which is subjectivity. The further issue is understanding that ‘objective knowing’ is ‘intersubjectivity’: the interplay of subjects not some item know as ‘the-thing-in-itself’.
Two subjects owning the same existence/reality are not ‘two’, that is maybe another point that causes confusion in this kind of topic?
How does nature inform us of an error in our models when we have no direct access to nature against which to check them, only other models?
Good point, and pardon my speaking too loosely. I claim dialectic license.
We do have direct access, but that doesn’t mean we are given Nature as it is in itself, but only as we perceive it. It follows that Nature doesn’t inform us so much as we inform ourselves, of errors in our models, when some model of ours isn’t consistent with another of ours, or isn’t consistent with subsequent observations of ours from which all models with empirical predicates are constructed, Nature merely giving the occasion for such possible disparities to be cognized.
Still, models are useless without something to which they relate, wouldn’t you agree?
I can't remember why we got talking about model dependent realism in a thread about the expression 'what it's like'.
Nor I, but there is precedent galore for these types of discussions wandering off into the subjectively-driven hinterlands.
Ehhhhhh...from where I sit, what it’s like to experience something, when push comes to shove, is none other than the experience itself. In other words, it’s a pretty dumb question to begin with. I mean, what it’s like to experience stubbing your toe is a lot like the experience of hitting your thumb with a hammer, which isn’t saying much, but what the experience of stubbing your toe is exactly like is .......well.....stubbing your toe, which isn’t saying anything at all, because we already knew that.
I think people ask what it’s like because “what does it mean” is just too hard.
Absolutely. A claim which should be allowed with much generosity, I think. We're only writing pithy responses, often (in my case) on a phone whilst travelling, we cannot be expected to write full technical explanations in parentheses to every term. So yes, licence granted...trouble is there are many posts where a charitable reading turns out to be the wrong one, and the term one thought a brief placemarker for a much more nuanced position was, in actual fact, meant as the full brazen assertion it superficially seemed to be... So it was worth a check.
Nature doesn’t inform us so much as we inform ourselves, of errors in our models, when some model of ours isn’t consistent with another of ours
True, but we mustn't sublime consistency. It is only what it is, no holy grail, nor marker of truth. A whole set of consistent models might still be miles away from reality, or consistent and close to reality but utterly useless to us.
Still, models are useless without something to which they relate, wouldn’t you agree?
No, I don't think I would, but I get what you're saying. I don't think proximity to reality measures the usefulness of the model. As such, I think it's theoretically possible that a model might be useful without relating to anything at all, but I haven't thought about that much, so my intuition may well be wrong. Interesting question.
what it’s like to experience stubbing your toe is a lot like the experience of hitting your thumb with a hammer, which isn’t saying much, but what the experience of stubbing your toe is exactly like is .......well.....stubbing your toe, which isn’t saying anything at all, because we already knew that
Yes. Which makes it muchtthe same as what a 'game of tennis' is like. Its a bit like a game of badminton, but not quite, the only thing it's exactly like is a game of tennis, which doesn’t get us anywhere when talking about it. Nothing special about consciousness in that respect, as far as I can see.
creativesoulNovember 09, 2019 at 17:45#3506900 likes
I don't hold single beliefs about the subject. As I've said already, for me, a belief is simply a disposition to act as if. It is therefore contextual. In the context of thinking about reality, in the widest sense I can, I'm disposed to act (in this case actions are all talking/typing) as if people do not exist, as separate objects. In the context of my day to day life, I'm disposed to act as if other people do exist.
Neither of these dispositions tells me anything about what actually does exist.
I find all of that odd as well.
A rubber ball is disposed to bounce when dropped onto a hard surface. According to your definition, rubber balls have belief.
creativesoulNovember 09, 2019 at 18:06#3506960 likes
We appear to be talking past each other probably due to a difference in terminology/view of the question of knowing ‘the-thing-in-itself’. We cannot know the thing in itself. This is the idea of ‘pure objectivity’ - for me not refutable completely, but clearly unknowable. This harks back to the differentiation made by Kant in The Critique of Pure Reason. The ‘noumenon’ is only true for us in a ‘negative’ sense, as a limitation.
That last comment does not make sense.
Earlier you denied/rejecting my comparison between Kant and phenomenology, instead opting for Husserl(???). Weird now to revert back to Kant. I've already briefly spoken about Kant's shortcomings. Some folk hereabouts think I've gotten him wrong. So, to avoid any and all disagreements about whether or not Kant meant and/or said what I reported him to have, I'll say this...
In order to be able to know what one is talking about when drawing and maintaining a distinction between the way things are and the way things appear to be one must have direct access to and knowledge of both.
As you note above, Kant posits the way things are(Noumena) as a negative limit to our thought. That is a purely(pun intended) self-imposed limitation borne of inadequate language use and/or linguistic framework.
The objective stance I am guarded against is naive realism. There is no ‘knowing’ ice cream only subjective experience, an ‘object’ of experience. I don’t see how ‘knowing’ can possess unbounded universality. What is known truly is only known within set limits - been through exhaustively elsewhere I believe.
You don’t know by way of someone else’s knowing. You know only through you - which is subjectivity. The further issue is understanding that ‘objective knowing’ is ‘intersubjectivity’: the interplay of subjects not some item know as ‘the-thing-in-itself’.
Two subjects owning the same existence/reality are not ‘two’, that is maybe another point that causes confusion in this kind of topic?
What confuses me, at this point, is how/why you think that that has anything at all to do with what I wrote about knowing???
As I've stated many many times in past, and no doubt here in this thread as well, I reject the objective/subjective dichotomy.
creativesoulNovember 09, 2019 at 18:18#3507020 likes
What I'm arguing for here is model dependent realism. Not that nothing really exists, not any form of idealism, just that the only way we know reality is through our models of it and so (this is, for me, the important bit) no model can ever be shown to be more 'true' (where that means corresponds to reality) than any other, and no objects distinguished by those models really exist in preference to any other conceivable way of determining objects.
I can't remember why we got talking about model dependent realism in a thread about the expression 'what it's like'.
Perhaps because what it's like to experience X consists - in very large part - of the candidate/subject's own thought and belief about and/or during that experience.
What is it like to experience having a sense of fairness/justice?
:wink:
Of course, it seems to me that the answer to that question requires knowing what a sense of fairness/justice consists of.
As I explained, I don't think I 'believe' a single thing, I believe a range of different (possibly even contradictory things) in different contexts. So I simply can't answer your question.
What claim and/or assertion are you asking me to argue for?
Implied (but I could be wrong). You're saying that you find it odd, but you're not saying that you'll cast out your old thinking and accept this new 'odd' way of looking at things. Yet you've not presented any justification for finding it 'odd', just the bare declaration. So what I get from that is that you find it odd, and that the mere fact that you find it odd is sufficient for you to reject the idea. So the assertion is that what I've said is not a good way of looking at things, yet the backing for this seems to be just that you find it odd.
Of course, it's possible you're just declaring you find it odd as nothing more than a point of interest. In which case, noted, but do you have an opinion on how useful the idea might, odd or not?
A rubber ball is disposed to bounce when dropped onto a hard surface. According to your definition, rubber balls have belief.
Yes, I don't see any functional distinction in this context, but I'm equally happy to say that 'beliefs' are just such dispositions that occur in brains.
but we mustn't sublime consistency. It is only what it is, no holy grail, nor marker of truth
Agreed, sublime here I understand to mean exalt to higher worth, so we mustn’t attribute to consistency more than it avows on its own. It isn’t a marker of truth, but merely an example of the form of its possibility. Nevertheless, we in our human endeavors naturally seek to lessen our own confusion, the means to which we demand of logic, which in turn absolutely requires consistency. Of course, logic itself is nothing if not a model of consistency.
——————-
I don't think proximity to reality measures the usefulness of the model.
Perhaps not, but it remains for a model’s usefulness to relate to something, just from the fact it is a model. I’d say an empirical model, or, a model constructed on empirical principles, should proximate reality as much as the principles admit. A purely rational model, built on a priori principles, those of which no proper object belongs, do not get us any closer to reality, but rather, prevent us from straying too far from it.
———————-
Nothing special about consciousness in that respect, as far as I can see.
I’m not sure how consciousness got into this. Did someone lay the whole “what it’s like” thing on human consciousness? If one employs reductionism far enough, and under certain conditions, he should arrive at consciousness as the ground of all human a posteriori experience, thus diametrically opposed to a priori suppositions of “what it’s like”.
———————
As I've said already, for me, a belief is simply a disposition to act.
On another note: I rather think belief is a judgement of relative truth. One’s disposition to act is every bit as much a judgement he makes relative to some truth he has already considered. Close enough?
we in our human endeavors naturally seek to lessen our own confusion, the means to which we demand of logic, which in turn absolutely requires consistency.
Yes, absolutely. We seem to dislike inconsistency - sometimes, I think, to our detriment... But then, I'm a psychologist, we get to play fast and loose with trivial things like logic, if it makes people feel better.
I’d say an empirical model, or, a model constructed on empirical principles, should proximate reality as much as the principles admit.
I'm not sure what "as much as the principles admit" refers to here, so I might be raising an issue you've already covered, but on the face of it, this seems wrong. Take the weather for example, the way it 'really' is (and here by 'really' I just mean according to our most intricate models) is really complex. At the moment, some of the world's most powerful supercomputers are used to process our models of the weather. Now suppose we made that model even closer to reality, that wouldn't make it better would it. It would become too complex for even our fastest computer and so next to useless.
Sometimes reality might be fiendishly complex and so what we really need is a model which isn't as close as we can get, because otherwise it would be too complex to use.
I rather think belief is a judgement of relative truth. One’s disposition to act is every bit as much a judgement he makes relative to some truth he has already considered. Close enough?
I'm trying to ground things like belief in the physical. A disposition to act can be represented (theoretically) in neural architecture, response to stimuli stuff. Calling it a judgement makes perfect sense, but just kicks the can further down the road insofar as what that judgement actually is physically.
creativesoulNovember 09, 2019 at 19:01#3507220 likes
What claim and/or assertion are you asking me to argue for?
— creativesoul
Implied (but I could be wrong). You're saying that you find it odd, but you're not saying that you'll cast out your old thinking and accept this new 'odd' way of looking at things. Yet you've not presented any justification for finding it 'odd', just the bare declaration. So what I get from that is that you find it odd, and that the mere fact that you find it odd is sufficient for you to reject the idea. So the assertion is that what I've said is not a good way of looking at things, yet the backing for this seems to be just that you find it odd.
The assertion is that I find it odd. Whether or not it is a good way of looking at things has yet to have been determined. I'm not certain that I understand it enough to render such a judgment at this time. I do think that the notion of belief that you're working from is inadequate.
Of course, it's possible you're just declaring you find it odd as nothing more than a point of interest. In which case, noted, but do you have an opinion on how useful the idea might, odd or not?
It could be used as a 'structural member' of a notion/conception/idea of mind that - quite simply - consists of a number of false conclusions, assuming consistency/coherency.
creativesoulNovember 09, 2019 at 19:04#3507240 likes
I'm trying to ground things like belief in the physical.
Acquiring knowledge of belief includes knowing how it is formed and held, which in turn allows one to know that all belief requires the physical and the non physical, for it consists of both and is existentially dependent upon both.
creativesoulNovember 09, 2019 at 19:15#3507290 likes
What I'm arguing for here is model dependent realism. Not that nothing really exists, not any form of idealism, just that the only way we know reality is through our models of it and so (this is, for me, the important bit) no model can ever be shown to be more 'true' (where that means corresponds to reality) than any other, and no objects distinguished by those models really exist in preference to any other conceivable way of determining objects.
I'm puzzled here as well. You're claiming that no model can ever be shown to be true more-so than another competing/contradictory model...
Again, that's quite an odd claim.
Do you believe that we can be mistaken about that which exists in it's entirety prior to common language use?
creativesoulNovember 09, 2019 at 19:33#3507340 likes
I'm asking what you believe to be the case.
— creativesoul
As I explained, I don't think I 'believe' a single thing, I believe a range of different (possibly even contradictory things) in different contexts. So I simply can't answer your question.
You claimed that you do not believe other people exist. You're now speaking about believing a range of things in different contexts, and not believing a single thing...
Are you familiar with the notion of performative contradictions?
Say you measure the perimeter of a bit of coral's by taking a photograph at it and drawing a line around its border. You can draw lots of lines, and it's a really irregular object, and you don't get the same line each time.
If your measurement of the coral's perimeter is [math]L[/math], and the true perimeter of the coral is [math]T[/math], you can write (assume a model):
[math]T = L + e[/math]
where [math]e[/math] is some error. If we knew the true measurement [math]T[/math] there'd be no need to form [math]L[/math] in the first place. But this is also true for [math]e[/math], if we knew what the error was exactly, we'd be able to add it to [math]L[/math] and recover [math]T[/math] exactly.
But what we can do is take a bunch of measurements, draw a bunch of lines, straighten them out to get a length. Say we've taken [math]n[/math] measurements. Then you can add all the length measurements [math]L_i[/math] together and divide by [math]n[/math] to get the mean length:
The virtue this has is that when you take their mean , the mean is known more precisely than any of the individual estimates (under some assumptions about [math]e[/math]).
So, we end up with a more precise estimate of [math]T[/math], but only if the assumptions are satisfied. Can we check if the assumptions are satisfied? Yeah, to some degree anyway. Is there always some doubt that the assumptions are correct? Yeah, since how you check the assumptions also has assumptions.
Does the fact that we're always working under assumptions entail that the coral does not have a true perimeter? I don't think it does. The error we make depends upon there being a true coral size as well as there being a fallible modelling process applied to it.
A disposition to act can be represented (theoretically) in neural architecture
It would seem to be buried in there somewhere, somehow, inasmuch as if not, we are left with (personal subjective) absurdities as universal consciousness, and such even less empirically obtainable possibilities. I am drawn up short by the fact we do not think in the same terms we use to model the mechanisms we think with, and as things stand in the current state of our knowledge, belief is still something we think. So I hesitate to grant belief can be.....or soon will be.....attributed to neural architecture, but I don’t have a problem with the idea that disposition to act can be.
Perhaps you’re drawing off the fact science can monitor the stimulus/reaction complex, and thereby affirming the antecedent, by re-naming the stimuli as disposition to act, hence, belief. (?)
And yes, invoking the faculty of judgement does indeed kick the can down the same speculative road.
Terrapin StationNovember 09, 2019 at 20:06#3507420 likes
The perimeter is always from some (set of) spatiotemporal location(s), per some concept of what it is to "measure the perimeter" (since especially for something like coral a number of decisions are going to have to be made about what counts as measuring it versus what details can be ignored).
The spatiotemporal location of the surface of the coral isn't an objectively preferred spatiotemporal location. There are no objectively preferred spatiotemporal locations (or objectively preferred anythings for that matter).
I like sushiNovember 09, 2019 at 20:18#3507430 likes
Reply to creativesoul I was feeling around (guessing) what you were talking about with the while ice cream business. Clearly I got what you were trying to convey wrong if what I posted made no sense and/or seemed irrelevant.
It happens.
creativesoulNovember 09, 2019 at 20:40#3507440 likes
I was feeling around (guessing) what you were talking about with the while ice cream business. Clearly I got what you were trying to convey wrong if what I posted made no sense and/or seemed irrelevant.
I offered actual examples that supported your claim, and actual examples that clearly did not. This gives us sound reason to conclude that that claim is inadequate, and was/is in need of additional qualification/quantification. Some. Not all.
If we hold that it is only the case that we can 'subjectively' know and yet not know how we know, then we are neglecting the situations where we not only know, but we also know how we know. Note also, that there was and is no need to invoke subjectivity here. It adds nothing but unnecessary confusion caused by an inadequate framework. Not to mention, the claim is false when taken at face value, as the examples to the contrary confirm.
I like sushiNovember 09, 2019 at 21:01#3507470 likes
Reply to creativesoul I have almost no idea what you were or are talking about. We don’t possess knowledge from an objective position - meaning like some omnipotent being - we possess knowledge as a subject of a world. The ‘world’ is the means of objectivity (aka intersubjectivity).
We’re talking right past each other here.
creativesoulNovember 09, 2019 at 21:03#3507480 likes
Does the fact that we're always working under assumptions entail that the coral does not have a true perimeter? I don't think it does. The error we make depends upon there being a true coral size as well as there being a fallible modelling process applied to it.
Nice example, particularly given the ecological relevance of coral studies.
I would agree that the coral has some unknown definite length according to our own arbitrary increments, whatever they may be. I'm ignoring the constant change, of course. For practical purposes(tracking the increase/decrease in the size of coral reefs), we can get close enough to the actual coral size by virtue of the modeling techniques you've put forth for determining the average. The goal is to determine if coral reefs are in decline or not.
However, we cannot know what the actual(true as you've put it) size of the coral is at any given time as a result of it's constant change and the limits of our own measurement capability. That does not stop us from being able to know that there is an actual size. It also does not stop us from knowing whether or not our coral reefs are in decline.
Modeling thought and belief is not nearly as straightforward though.
creativesoulNovember 09, 2019 at 21:09#3507500 likes
I have almost no idea what you were or are talking about. We don’t possess knowledge from an objective position - meaning like some omnipotent being - we possess knowledge as a subject of a world. The ‘world’ is the means of objectivity (aka intersubjectivity).
We’re talking right past each other here.
Perhaps we are. Perhaps one of us is.
Perhaps you'd gain a better idea of what I am taking about if you would pay closer attention to the words I'm using. You've been saying all this stuff about what we don't do that I've never said we did.
To be blunt, I reject the very dichotomy upon which much of your worldview and/or position hinges upon. I've offered ground for that rejection throughout this thread. They've been sorely neglected in lieu of all sorts of other stuff that I've not mentioned.
creativesoulNovember 09, 2019 at 21:23#3507560 likes
Say you measure the perimeter of a bit of coral's by taking a photograph at it and drawing a line around its border. You can draw lots of lines, and it's a really irregular object, and you don't get the same line each time.
If your measurement of the coral's perimeter is LL, and the true perimeter of the coral is TT, you can write (assume a model):
T=L+eT=L+e
where ee is some error. If we knew the true measurement TT there'd be no need to form LL in the first place. But this is also true for ee, if we knew what the error was exactly, we'd be able to add it to LL and recover TT exactly.
But what we can do is take a bunch of measurements, draw a bunch of lines, straighten them out to get a length. Say we've taken nn measurements. Then you can add all the length measurements LiLi together and divide by nn to get the mean length:
L¯=1n?ni=1LiL¯=1n?i=1nLi
The virtue this has is that when you take their mean , the mean is known more precisely than any of the individual estimates (under some assumptions about ee).
Could we imitate this technique with the different models of thought and belief(mind)?
Naturally, the only thing we have to go on, in order to compare/contrast our models of mind with minds is the behaviour of candidates that have one. Another problem is that our models of mind are not comparable to the standard of measurement. With the coral, our mean is the average based upon everyone using the same standard and/or standards that are amenable/translatable/convertible to one another. This also seems to be a sticking point between the different models of mind.
On second thought, there are also brain imaging and neuroscience that could help us with comparing/contrasting our models of mind with mind. That stuff is aside from behaviour of creatures with minds.
The perimeter is always from some (set of) spatiotemporal location(s), per some concept of what it is to "measure the perimeter" (since especially for something like coral a number of decisions are going to have to be made about what counts as measuring it versus what details can be ignored).
There are lots of ways coral size could be measured. We fixed a concept for what it means to measure the perimeter of the coral; a photograph of it from above has a line drawn around its outmost extent within the photo. The line is then measured. Broadly considered, this type of thinking crops up in model uncertainty and the design of a measurement procedure.
In my book, we can aggregate all that into modelling concepts; what notion of size we use for the coral is another assumption. We can make another one, a better one might be taking the coral and immersing it in water and measuring the volume displaced, but that destroys the coral.
Fix the background assumptions; there's still a true perimeter of the coral in the photo, the one of the photo. If there weren't, the equation [math]T = L + e[/math] probably would not work?
I did write a little bit about what assuming the boundary of the coral is a fractal would entail, but decided it wasn't relevant. The fractal dimension isn't a particularly good measure of anything like volume or length or area. If you put two Sierpinski triangles next to each other, one two times the height of the other, they have the same fractal dimension, but different convex hulls (the smallest triangle which contains all points of the fractal is bigger for the one which is scaled up).
You’d have to ask fdrake for his broader point, but for me, it was his highlighting assumption and fallible modeling processes, with respect to them.
The curse and the beauty of human cognitive power.
I like sushiNovember 09, 2019 at 22:19#3507820 likes
Reply to fdrake And the phenomenological approach would be to investigate the subjective requirements we hold to in order to talk about this ‘thing’ called ‘size’.
This probably touches close to what Mww and Isaac hit on with prefer not to ask ‘what does it mean?’, and instead opting for ‘what is it like?’. So what is it like to experience ‘size’?
creativesoulNovember 09, 2019 at 22:20#3507830 likes
Ah. Gotcha. That much, assumptions and fallibility, are inevitable. Thus, the aim to reduce the likelihood of error built into methodological naturalism.
Which is part of why it's frustrating that people find it "so obvious". There's a whole theory of perception required just to look at what the "features" of our experience really are, and where they come from.
Edit: so just for an example. There's change blindness, like in the door study. Something that phenomenal character usually has associated with it is that we are aware of the phenomenal character or that it is somehow accessible within the experiential state. Whatever makes the guy giving directions in the door study not notice (not be aware) that the person he's giving directions to changes shows that what perceptual features are accessible; those which partake strongly in the phenomenal character of experience; are strongly context sensitive. The context down-weights the relevance of visual feature changes in the guy giving directions' environmental model because of what he's currently doing and how he's doing it. Even then, the result would not hold (probably) if the people looked sufficiently different.
So, we can't even go from "visual processing" to "phenomenal character of vision" without auxilliary contextual information. With the right context, say classifying images for presence of red, even "red quale" might make sense!
Reminds me of the rabbit-duck.. Despite the geometric identicality, it presents differently depending on what's perceived as anterior vs posterior. I think it's surprising that in spite of knowing this, you can't really perceive it otherwise, or at the very least it's incredibly difficult to see it simply as squiggles.
Indeed. But often is the case, that assumptions involve an unrecognized categorical error, in that this theory/model/logical conclusion doesn’t necessarily follow from that assumption.
I was under the impression methodological naturalism was created to circumvent the likelihood of error, by restraining investigations to measurable domains? What error do you consider built in to it? The fact it is humans doing it?
creativesoulNovember 09, 2019 at 23:24#3508150 likes
...often is the case, that assumptions involve an unrecognized categorical error.
Are such errors determined by categories of our own choosing, or categories that exist in their entirety prior to our naming and descriptive practices?
Kant can't help here my friend, as much as I'd like to believe otherwise.
And the phenomenological approach would be to investigate the subjective requirements we hold to in order to talk about this ‘thing’ called ‘size’. (...) So what is it like to experience ‘size’?
Does phenomenology hold with “categories”, have them in its doctrine? I understand subjective requirements we hold in order to talk about things, just wondering what your name for those requirements would be.
I like sushiNovember 09, 2019 at 23:39#3508230 likes
Reply to fdrake May I ask what it really means to ‘model experience’ - in terms of a subjective experience rather than some extended intersubjective experience. Also, what is there to gain by such ‘models of experience’? Of course I understand the use for broadening knowledge especially in the area of cognitive neurosciences.
As a means to cut to the quick of subjective experience what can ‘modeling’ do for us? Are we necessarily bound to ‘models’ based on accuracy of naturalistic experimentation? To be clear I am thinking more along the lines of pure mathematics and how that ‘science’ operates ‘beyond’ (fro want of a better term) natural sciences, yet also contributes a great deal of relation to the natural sciences and actually works in tandem with them to a large degree.
Many people have commented that ‘mathematics’ and ‘theoretical physics’ are pretty much feeding one another constantly to the point of being attributes of a singular pursuit. It seems to me that the key difference is one is directed more toward a predictive function whilst the other has no real direct concern for causality preferring to explore atemporal consequences, relations and patterning in a wholly abstract sense - a rather ostentive sense (pointing out obviousnesses within a set parameter of play). The point being here is that in an abstract sense the ‘accuracy’ is non-existent. The application to some given ‘existent’ - predictively - is necessarily always one set up in unknown bounds (the accuracy is always an estimate of the abstract certainty set up against the presupposed existing world of the natural sciences).
Note: I am not concluding anything here just digging into the depth of the problem for the grounding of natural sciences. I do have a vested interest here by what I’ve been trying to outline in regards to the direction of the ‘sciences’ (in the broadest sense) and our assumptions.
I like sushiNovember 10, 2019 at 00:07#3508330 likes
Reply to Mww I cannot speak with any universal authority on the matter. I am trying to express my understanding from the perspective of Husserlian phenomenology (Transcendental Reduction).
There is a pretty strong inclination among most people concerned about items like consciousness in understanding and accepting the underpinning principle of ‘intentionality’ - that is why I am a little taken aback by the misrepresentation of the term that is so commonplace.
In simple terms (incase the term is unfamiliar) ‘intentionality’ is not about intent in the everyday sense of the word. It means that we are ‘conscious of an object’ not that there is an ‘object’. We experience, all experience, is ‘of something’ not of nothing.
In this sense the ‘category’ would be the ‘aboutness’ of experience. Meaning if I hear a sound I don’t hear a sound, which I realise sounds needlessly obtuse as the means of communicating this is by words so charity is necessary and it is a damn strong reason Husserl used ‘adumbrate’ to get this across. I hear ‘a sound of something’ not a disembodied sound floating in some ether. That hopefully expresses better what is meant by ‘intentionality’ if you weren’t quite familiar enough with the term already.
So, you tell me in this light what ‘category’ means for phenomenology? I don’t really know. In terms of the different threads of investigation (especially in terms of hermeneutics) the investigation necessarily narrows in whatever direction people take it - it’s seems fairly clear to me that post-modernism is a further extension if this too, but I wish to stay on track.
This may or may not be helpful. The idea of a doctrine is perhaps a little misapplied here. Generally speaking I’d have to say the interest is in the pursuit of ‘pure subjectivity’ much in the same light as the natural sciences are in pursuit of ‘pure objectivity’. That said I am not suggesting either believe there is such a ‘pure x’ in either case it is merely that Husserl saw the lack of grounding to logic that essentially underpins the natural sciences. It’s sometimes tricky to know what he means as he developed his ideas and amended them over his lifetime and he sometimes means ‘science’ as we think of it and sometimes ‘science’ in reference to pure maths and logic.
I guess you could say ‘word concepts’ are the necessary categories that we have to apply. Depending upon our ‘mode’ of thought each word concept contracts and expands, in one field of perspective it seems ‘universal’ and in another it may seem ‘chaotic’. The more applicable the terms across fields (albeit in differing guises) is something hermeneutic phenomenology prioritises - but I’m personally not convinced by that route although, as with every route, there is use.
Sorry if that is too longwinded and/or unhelpful/confusing. I doing my best :)
often is the case, that assumptions involve an unrecognized categorical error.
— Mww
Are such errors determined by categories of our own choosing...
The categories don’t determine errors, and we don’t choose them. Errors arise from irrational or illogical associations the subject thinks, and categories are merely the theoretical conditions which make cognition possible, so they exist in their entirely long before we give them names. Obviously, because we always cognize first, speak later, and never the reverse, about any one thing.
The idea of categories solves a problem, If you think it just causes another one, that would be on you, wouldn’t it?
I’m ok with intentionality, subjective requirements, pure subjectivity/objectivity. Not too keen on categories being similar to, or synonymous with, “aboutness” of experience; I see them rather as that which makes experience possible.
Different strokes, same game.
I like sushiNovember 10, 2019 at 04:44#3508850 likes
Reply to Mww Me neither. The problem I find repeatedly is ‘pointing out’ something without literally having a concept to reference.
By that I am clawing at saying something like ‘categories’ are investigated. This comes in the sense I‘vepreviously mentioned regard ‘pieces’ and ‘moments’ - pieces can be removed from an item, but ‘moments. cannot be removed (as with the examples of a shape without form, a triangle that has no angles, or a sound that has no tone). Just checked the terminology, he actually says there are two ‘parts’, ‘moments’ and ‘pieces’ (I previously referred to these as ‘parts’ and ‘aspects’ instead of ‘pieces’ and ‘moments’).
There is also a distinction he uses called noesis and noema, the ‘light’ and the ‘lit’ is the best analogy I’ve seen used to convey the basic meaning here. There is certainly more than a hint at the distinction between ‘act’ and ‘object’ yet they are more like different sides of the same ‘object of intentionality’. I kind of step away when it comes to the strange idea of ‘poles’ he uses, but I do find it interesting even though I don’t grasp what he meant/means exactly.
Basically it interests me because before I came across this I lacked the terminology to express my own thoughts and since reading more I’ve found some useful ways of getting a step or two closer to articulating my thoughts - I’m probably not bright enough to make the kind of conceptual leap I’d like to though (maybe I’m just looking down the wrong street, but I don’t think so just yet).
There is, once extended, a while mirage of ideas that can lead nowhere, but often enough they offer (at least for me) a peek into the possible beginnings of a fresh perspective.
Do you believe that we can be mistaken about that which exists in it's entirety prior to common language use?
Depends what you mean by mistaken. Do you mean have the wrong model, or do you mean have a model which is not identical to reality? If the former, yes, some models seem better for us than others, if the latter then definitely yes, the model is not reality and therefore cannot be accurate to it. But to be honest I'm flailing because I have no idea what you mean by "that which exists in it's entirety prior to common language use".
You claimed that you do not believe other people exist. You're now speaking about believing a range of things in different contexts, and not believing a single thing...
Are you familiar with the notion of performative contradictions?
Yes, but I don't see how it applies here, you'd have to flesh the argument out. Are you suggesting that, in order for me to be arguing that there are no objective distinctions in reality I must believe in objective distinctions? I'm not sure how that works. I can have subjective distinctions and act on those whilst still believing there are no objective ones. I can still choose vanilla ice cream whilst maintaining a belief that choosing vanilla is not the thing everyone must do in this situation. I an say that I believe each man should do his duty and yet when some duty arises change my belief to 'each man for himself'. I can at a psychological level believe we are prone to cognitive biases yet fall for cognitive biases. I don't understand why you'd be suggesting that I cannot forward some model of how we think without preformative contradiction, just because I must think to do so. That would disable all philosophy, one could not forward a knowledge claim about what sort of thing knowledge claims are, one could not use language to discuss how language works, one cannot discuss a way one ought to think because one must already have thought hat one ought to discuss that...
We are capable of rationalising in theoretical models despite the fact that we are caught within them, the whole of clinical psychology is predicated on the idea.
The error we make depends upon there being a true coral size as well as there being a fallible modelling process applied to it.
Not necessarily. Could we not do the same thing with some complex function and our predictions of what it's solution might be prior to calculating it? Our T would be the calculated value of the function but it could be some function no-one has ever written before, so no-one knows what T is that data is nowhere in the world, our L would be distributed around our priors about the parameter for function a bit like that (maybe we'd look at the constants and the presence of any factorial functions etc), and our e would be distributed around the extent to which we're prone to miss key elements of a function which determine it's range of solutions. (there's more, but that's a sketch)
The mean of estimates L, would still be a more accurate estimate of T (under the same assumptions about e), but T is not true (in a correspondence sense), it's a mathematical fiction, a consequence of the function it is expressed by only if you follow the rules of mathematics, which, since no-one has yet calculated that function, does not yet exist as T, it only exists as potential T after following some rules.
Could this not be the case the with the true coral perimeter?
Perhaps you’re drawing off the fact science can monitor the stimulus/reaction complex, and thereby affirming the antecedent, by re-naming the stimuli as disposition to act, hence, belief. (?)
In a sense, yes, but any problem with doing so would only arise from a position that some previous definition existed whose only flaw was its inability to be thus monitored, and I'm not at all convinced that such a definition existed.
I cannot have your pain. I can most certainly have my own. If we know what having pain consists of... then it doesn't make much sense to say that having pain is inaccessible, does it?
It's accessible in the sense that we do have similar experiences as human beings, but not entirely. What's inaccessible is each of our own personal experience. We're walking along the street. You realize I'm deep in thought. What am I thinking? You can't read my thoughts, so the best you can do is guess. And you didn't realize I had a headache, or that I'm color blind and see the world a bit differently than you.
I can share all that with you to an extent. But it's not something you can access yourself. We can't just peer into someone else's minds and watch their experiences like some kind of haptic VR setup.
This becomes even more the case with animals, since we're not dogs or bats, and don't interact with the world quite the same. Imagine having the body of a cephalopod and being able to activate thousands of light emitting cells on your skin to signal other animals. What would that be like?
I (and others) haven't arrived at this belief because it's the way the world seems to us to be, We've arrived at it becasue of a failure to feel satisfied with any objective criteria for distinguishing objects. So If you've got such a criteria, then we can ditch the whole idea of model dependent realism. Say an alien comes to earth, they don't even see in colour like we do, they detect some other part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and maybe the Weak Nuclear Force directly, maybe they have completely different model of how evolution and DNA works (afterall, we had a completely different model 200years ago). Give me an reason why they would still recognise you as one thing and me as another. Or even you as one thing and the chair you're sitting on as another.
Ahhh, so you're a meriological nihilist. That still leaves the fundamental stuff. Our alien visitors agree on the electromagnetic spectrum it seems. That's a starting point. And if they agree on EM, then they probably agree on chemistry.
Here's my point. The fact that pattern matching occurs means there's some sort of objective organization that results in pattern matching. Model Dependent Realism doesn't exist as a philosophy if nature doesn't produce creatures who do philosophy.
It's easy enough to imagine the universe without any philosophy taking place. Just have the physics be a little different.
The fact that pattern matching occurs means there's some sort of objective organization that results in pattern matching. Model Dependent Realism doesn't exist as a philosophy if nature doesn't produce creatures who do philosophy.
Yep, this seems to be a line many are taking, but it's always expressed in this manner, or similar. I agree it would be a boon to model dependent realism to have an intuitive sounding answer, but I honestly don't get the problem, so it's unlikely one is going to come from me.
I mean, why have you put the word 'objective' in there? It seems to be entirely without warrant. If there is (something we model as) pattern matching going on, then there's (something we model as) a pattern to match. Where's objective come in?
Likewise, if there's (something we model as) modelling going on, then there's (something we model as) a modeller doing that. Still not seeing how 'objective' belongs there.
Reply to Isaac I'll put it another way. Someone could come along and argue that all we have our words and not reality. So proper philosophy would be to recognize that our words aren't describing reality. They're just words, after-all! There is no reality independent of the words. Or the words make the reality. And yes, we did have at least one person who did argue along those lines, and they were quite good with words.
The problem is that the existence of words entails creatures who speak. And speaking is based in a biological reality. So it can't just be words, since the words depend on the biology of mouths and vocal cords and what not to be spoken.
Same with philosophizing. In order to do philosophy, there has to be something real that makes the philosophizing a possibility. Philosophy doesn't just exist. It exists in response to a world by creatures who are puzzled by their place in the world. Probably because their models never quite fit.
Philosophy doesn't just exist. It exists in response to a world by creatures who are puzzled by their place in the world.
I don't buy this because essentially it leads to dualism (or idealism) and I think either create more problems than they solve. I'm a physicalist simply because it seems a default for me, and I need a good reason to discard it.
I'm a physicalist simply because it seems a default for me, and I need a good reason to discard it.
Simple: the colors, sounds, smells, tastes and feels aren't properties of the physical environment you interact with. Or at least not when it comes to our physical models.
Or to say it a better way, nobody has succeeded in explaining how they are.
Simple: the colors, sounds, smells, tastes and feels aren't properties of the physical environment you interact with. Or at least not when it comes to our physical models.
But they're properties of my brain. I mean, when brains are interfered with those things respond differently, so I don't see that as a reason to discard physicalism.
But they're properties of my brain. I mean, when brains are interfered with those things respond differently, so I don't see that as a reason to discard physicalism.
They may be in reality, but brain models of neurons and neurotransmitters don't include sensation. That's just a correlation or outcome that we know exists from having brains.
TheMadFoolNovember 10, 2019 at 14:05#3509760 likes
The problem according to the esteemed Nagel is that subjective experiences (what it is to be a conscious being) are unique - "single point of view" in his words. Thus, since objectivity, a necessity for any physicalist theory, would be forced to ignore subjective experiences this will, in effect, make such theories incapable of explaining consciousness - the phenomenon they were built to explain.
What I don't understand is how and why "single points of view" (subjective experiences) precludes objectivity?
Is Nagel relying on the definitions of "objectivity" and "subjectivity" when he says any objective theory would be forced to exclude subjective experiences? This seems wrong since we may objectively study subjectivity or subjectively study objectivity without running into problems.
Is Nagel saying something more powerful in terms of relevance to his argument that it's impossible to view subjectivity under an objective lens? How did he come to have this belief?
Could this not be the case the with the true coral perimeter?
I mean it might be? To my mind there are two types of comparisons. Model output comparisons, like predictions or parameter estimates to other predictions or parameter estimates (how similar are these two models?), and comparison of model output to data (how similar are the predictions or parameter estimates to those in the data?). We only know "the true values" of the parameters in the data if we've simulated the data ourselves.
Regardless, I think that, like in Friston's approach, the model errors don't behave like predictions or parameter estimates, they're modelled as coming from some distribution, and when we take input data or perturb an external state as the result of an outputted prediction, there is some error which comes from a comparison of an observable whose value is not an output of some model. That's [math]T[/math] or [math]e[/math] "when exactly specified" in the coral measurement error model, the 'input data' in the coral model would be [math]L[/math].
Edit: a good rule of thumb in my book is that error terms crop up in models whenever they have a dependence on something external to it. If any model, even the human body-brain system has an 'error', there's an external source (a process which does not output model internal predictions or parameter estimates, but instead outputs observables/data that relate to the modelling process) associated with it.
Reply to TheMadFool I believe Nagel was saying that science uses an objective view from nowhere (perspective-less or lacking subjectivity) to create explanations. But the subjective doesn't fit into these explanations. And yet subjectivity is part of the world.
If the universe went bang, and stars formed fusing heavier elements leading to life evolving, then somehow subjectivity emerged.
but I do find it interesting even though I don’t grasp what he meant/means exactly.
There doesn’t seem to be any general consensus in the literature for either Brentano’s or Husserl’s intended meaning for noesis and noema either, so you’re not alone. Seems to me they’re trying to give the mind some character, instead of treating it as an abstract apex placeholder.
————————
There is certainly more than a hint at the distinction between ‘act’ and ‘object’ yet they are more like different sides of the same ‘object of intentionality’.
Again, for me this reduces to the distinction between intuition and appearance. As Brentano claims, “...Every mental phenomenon is characterized by (...) the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object, and what we might call (...) reference to a content, direction towards an object (which is not to be understood here as meaning a thing), or immanent objectivity...”.
Everybody says the same thing, just in different ways.
They may be in reality, but brain models of neurons and neurotransmitters don't include sensation. That's just a correlation or outcome that we know exists from having brains.
This is another thing that keeps cropping up in discussions involving neuroscience that baffles me. What isn't just a correlation? If I throw a ball in the air on the moon, compared to the earth its relative falling speed is 'just a correlation' with the gravitational mass of the respective planets. Switching my light on is 'just a correlation' with illuminating my room. What is it that's marking out the correlation between neural activity and mental phenomena that singles it out for such unique inductive doubt?
Perhaps you’re drawing off the fact science can monitor the stimulus/reaction complex, and thereby affirming the antecedent, by re-naming the stimuli as disposition to act, hence, belief. (?)
— Mww
In a sense, yes, but any problem with doing so would only arise from a position that some previous definition existed whose only flaw was its inability to be thus monitored, and I'm not at all convinced that such a definition existed.
Here, I suppose such a problem would arise, because if belief is held to be a subjective institution, re: judgement, and thereby defined with a priori predicates alone, it certainly cannot lend itself to empirical monitoring.
there is some error which comes from a comparison of an observable whose value is not an output of some model.
OK, I'm quite taken by the factor that errors are modelled as coming from some distribution, that's definitely an important thing for model dependent realism to account for, but... (you knew there'd be a but, right?)
there is some error which comes from a comparison of an observable whose value is not an output of some model.
...how? How do we get access to an observable that's not an output of some model? We can't take in any sensory data without it being merely confirmatory of some model.
We could filter data back out again, possibly?
We don't accept raw data, any raw data, so all raw data is both selected and filtered through some model. If we knew what the model did, could we recreate the raw data by extrapolating backwards? Is that what you're getting at by pointing out the equivalent position of e to L in forming T?
I don't know of any neuroscientific support for the idea, I mean we could theoretically 'see' such recal happening because it'd need forward driving connections from the sensory processing cortices, but it sounds possible.
Here, I suppose such a problem would arise, because if belief is held to be a subjective institution, re: judgement, and thereby defined with a priori predicates alone, it certainly cannot lend itself to empirical monitoring.
Yes, in a sense that's the reason I think it better to 'black box' the whole thing and look at the behaviour as indicative of what the whatever-it-is does to the inputs. I just can't see the need for descriptions of static mental states, they're not something I experience.
...how? How do we get access to an observable that's not an output of some model? We can't take in any sensory data without it being merely confirmatory of some model.
It's like [math]y = mx + c + e[/math], the independent variable [math]x[/math] doesn't have a model. It's playing the part of data in the model. Like when an error is observed in Friston's hierarchy and passed down. A prediction is compared to some input data, the error propagates down the hierarchy of models, producing adjustments.
TheMadFoolNovember 10, 2019 at 17:04#3510290 likes
I believe Nagel was saying that science uses an objective view from nowhere (perspective-less or lacking subjectivity) to create explanations. But the subjective doesn't fit into these explanations. And yet subjectivity is part of the world.
If the universe went bang, and stars formed fusing heavier elements leading to life evolving, then somehow subjectivity emerged.
Aah! Thanks for the explanation.
I wonder if that's entirely true. Scientific objectivity doesn't mean you ignore essential and defining aspects, here subjective experiences, of the object of study. Rather scientific objectivity is specifically designed to eliminate observer bias and in no way does it/should it overlook, in this case, subjective experiences.
I may be completely wrong here but the claim here seems to be, if you take the argument to its logical conclusion, nothing that is ever subjective can be scientifically studied due to objectivity being necessary in science. While this may somehow shield consciousness from attack it also makes consciousness a woo-woo pseudoscience. I don't know which is more preferable here - following Nagel into pseudoscience or give up one of my favorite beliefs that there is something about consciousness that defies the physical.
It’s given that everything human, happens because of the brain. I reject out of hand that what it means to be human, can be discovered on an o’scope. And I reject it because I just don’t like it; it’s anathema to my ego. Pretty piss-poor reason for rejecting a form of relative proof, I know, but tell you what.....even if you get your Quoting Isaac
look at the behaviour as indicative of what the whatever-it-is does to the inputs
, you haven’t really learned what you set out to discover, insofar as you’ve got the “how” but not necessarily the “how come”, because your subject himself may not even know.
creativesoulNovember 10, 2019 at 20:27#3510880 likes
I wonder if that's entirely true. Scientific objectivity doesn't mean you ignore essential and defining aspects, here subjective experiences, of the object of study. Rather scientific objectivity is specifically designed to eliminate observer bias and in no way does it/should it overlook, in this case, subjective experiences.
Well, it's because certain properties of experience are perceiver-dependent and not in the objects themselves. The air feels cold, but that doesn't mean it is cold in an objective sense (the feeling of cold varies between individuals and time). It just feels cold to you now.
creativesoulNovember 10, 2019 at 20:37#3510910 likes
The categories don’t determine errors, and we don’t choose them. Errors arise from irrational or illogical associations the subject thinks, and categories are merely the theoretical conditions which make cognition possible, so they exist in their entirely long before we give them names. Obviously, because we always cognize first, speak later, and never the reverse, about any one thing.
The idea of categories solves a problem, If you think it just causes another one, that would be on you, wouldn’t it?
This bit began with my pointing out that identifying the premisses is key. You agreed, then remarked that it is often the case that there is an unrecognized categorical error at work, such that the conclusions/model does not necessarily follow from those premisses.
I'm wondering about the grounds for charging another's position/argument/reasoning with such an error. If it is a categorical error, then I presume that is one kind of error. Specifically an error in categorization.
Is that much right?
creativesoulNovember 10, 2019 at 20:47#3510940 likes
Having pain is the experience. I have direct access to having pain of my own, and I have indirect access to another's. There are two kinds of accessibility here, yet you've claimed we have none.
Having pain is the experience. I have direct access to having pain of my own, and I have indirect access to another's. There are two kinds of accessibility here, yet you've claimed we have none.
Yeah, I should have said indirect. But it's also the case that we don't always have that indirect knowledge. It might exist in really subtle physiological cues, but we can't read brain activity that accurately, and we haven't put chips in everyone's heads yet. But sure, often enough we have some evidence to what people are experiencing.
creativesoulNovember 10, 2019 at 21:40#3511090 likes
...categories are merely the theoretical conditions which make cognition possible, so they exist in their entirely long before we give them names.
So, we must surely abandon Kantian language here. For anything that exists in it's entirety prior to our naming and descriptive practices qualifies for that which exists in and of itself(Noumena). Furthermore, we must have knowledge of both our premisses and that which exists in it's entirety prior to our premisses in order to perform a comparative assessment between the two. That comparison is required in order to know that one has indeed committed the error called "categorical".
You claimed that you do not believe other people exist. You're now speaking about believing a range of things in different contexts, and not believing a single thing...
Are you familiar with the notion of performative contradictions?
— creativesoul
Yes, but I don't see how it applies here, you'd have to flesh the argument out.
Simply put, you've claimed to think X but not believe X. In addition, you've claimed to not think that others exist, and yet here you are...
creativesoulNovember 10, 2019 at 21:48#3511160 likes
So, we agree that fleshing out the premisses supporting one's conclusions is key. Based upon the latest exchanges, I'm curious about what you're referring to when you wrote "unrecognized categorical error such that the conclusions do not necessarily follow from the premisses"...
Pretty much, with the caveat that “categorization” might not carry the proper inflection. One shouldn’t confuse speculative categories such as Aristotle’s or Kant’s, with Ryle’s semantic categorical mistakes. Rush’s song “Time Stands Still” is a categorical mistake of semantics; space is a property of objects is a categorical error of reason.
creativesoulNovember 11, 2019 at 01:09#3511630 likes
Pretty much, with the caveat that “categorization” might not carry the proper inflection. One shouldn’t confuse speculative categories such as Aristotle’s or Kant’s, with Ryle’s semantic categorical mistakes. Rush’s song “Time Stands Still” is a categorical mistake of semantics; space is a property of objects is a categorical error of reason.
We have before us now, a listing of categorical errors...
Which ones will be used to render judgment upon whether or not a premiss of our choosing qualifies as being guilty of categorical error as compared/contrasted to other kinds of errors?
Like when an error is observed in Friston's hierarchy and passed down. A prediction is compared to some input data, the error propagates down the hierarchy of models, producing adjustments.
Yes, but in Friston's model the sensory input is from perception, not the world, and that's vitally important for the free-energy principle to work. There only any variance minimising incentive between the perception and the cortices which model the causes of that perception. As Friston himself says "There's no reason at all why the Bayes optimal model would be true, truth is not important here". The error that's propagating is one between the perception (low level hierarchy model) and the beliefs (higher level hierarchy model). There's nothing to cause the lowest level hierarchy model to minimise variance, not are there any mechanisms by which it could.
I reject it because I just don’t like it; it’s anathema to my ego. Pretty piss-poor reason for rejecting a form of relative proof, I know
On the contrary, I'd go as far as to say it's the only justifiable reason to reject anything that isn't overwhelmingly contradicted by the evidence to the contrary. Pick your model and defend it until it's indefensible. I don't think we can handle any other way of approaching uncertainty.
, you haven’t really learned what you set out to discover, insofar as you’ve got the “how” but not necessarily the “how come”, because your subject himself may not even know.
I don't think the 'how come' is a measurable thing by any metric, so it's not a relevant investigation. Pick your reason.
Simply put, you've claimed to think X but not believe X. In addition, you've claimed to not think that others exist, and yet here you are...
Did you not read what I wrote, or not understand it, or not agree with it. If you're not going to actually respond in any way to what I write there's little point in continuing is there?
"There's no reason at all why the Bayes optimal model would be true, truth is not important here"
This comment is discussing box 1 and 2 in the linked paper.
Aye, I agree with this! It even looks like something of a category error in terms of the internal state; when watching a bike move, is it represented as having wheels as a unity moving in tandem or two wheels linked through the bike? But there's still questions of accuracy and adaptation which are relevant. If you have a goal of opening a door, your hand position needs to adapt to where the handle is and how it works; there's an accuracy constraint involved with the door's location, functionality and so on; irrelevant of how it's split up into perceptual features.
There's an interface of perceptual features that are associated with external states. If I've read it right there's some function [math]f[/math] that "specifies the dynamics of external causes" dependent upon specific external causes [math]\gamma[/math], our processual model of them [math]f[/math], our proposed actions [math]\alpha[/math] and with some error [math]w[/math]. Our actions promote certain external causes; which actions are chosen depends on previous internal states/sensations/actions/external causes, our sensations/perceptions process external causes; how they are processed depends on previous internal states/sensations/actions/external causes.
Focus for a moment on the [math]\gamma[/math], if I've read things right these are "hidden causal states" which are later associated with environmental parameters [math]\theta[/math] rather than available sufficient statistics [math]x[/math], again if I've read it right. They are hidden, but inferred upon by the whole active-modelling process under some representation ("recognition dynamics"?).
Our ability to act well in an environment depends upon having a good model of it; to update our model through some error minimising in response to our current goals and current environment; the model doesn't just take input from previous modelling steps, it takes input from external states with their own dynamics under some processual representation*. It would be unable to guide action if it did not have a satisfactory (sufficiently accurate) representation* of the external states as they are relevant to our goals and bodily constraints.
I think you're emphasising that the starred representation* ([math]f[/math], I think in the paper) is another flavour of model; which it is; but it's also an observation process of relevant structures for us in the environment (we sample in accordance with it). What would be the point of all this modelling without its ability to promote accurate, relevant action - pulling causal levers whose structures we partially represent in the world? Like a codification of the world into what's relevant and available to us, and accuracy-prone (evaluable) perception and action within that codification.
I like sushiNovember 11, 2019 at 08:03#3512330 likes
What would be the point of all this modelling without its ability to promote accurate, relevant action - pulling causal levers whose structures we partially represented in the world?
Assumption that there is ‘a point’. Pointless question as far as I can tell. What does i mean to ‘have a point’ or ‘be pointless’? We can ask what the ‘theoretic’ attitude is doing, how it is structured and how theories change.
You could just settle on the hidden answer to your question and say ‘accuracy’ is the point - that was essentially what you implied. I ask what else could a ‘model’ do other than refine itself in order to increase accuracy? If increasing ‘accuracy’ is the be all and end all then some ‘error’ is an optimal means of exploring beyond the immediate bounds ‘known’. We don’t purposefully make mistakes, yet we certainly can, and do, learn from mistakes brought about by ‘inaccuracies’.
All of this needn’t be led under the assumption of some abstract ‘input’/‘output’ system. That is merely an expression of the ‘theoretic’ attitude - a necessary means for distinction among the ‘white noise’. For further more ‘substantial’ evidence for this neural priming is an expression of this in the ‘natural sciences’.
If you have a goal of opening a door, your hand position needs to adapt to where the handle is and how it works; there's an accuracy constraint involved with the door's location, functionality and so on; irrelevant of how it's split up into perceptual features.
Yes, absolutely, so we definitely have to have a real world otherwise our models are modelling nothing, our entropy resisting organisation has to have some entropy to resist - we agree so far.
Focus for a moment on the ?, if I've read things right these are "hidden causal states" which are later associated with environmental parameters ? rather than available sufficient statistics x, again if I've read it right. They are hidden, but inferred upon by the whole active-modelling process under some representation ("recognition dynamics"?).
Yes, that's my reading of it too - which is good because I'm trusting you to understand the maths better than I do.
Our ability to act well in an environment depends upon having a good model of it; to update our model through some error minimising in response to our current goals and current environment; the model doesn't just take input from previous modelling steps, it takes input from external states with their own dynamics under some processual representation. It would be unable to guide action if it did not have a satisfactory (sufficiently accurate) representation* of the external states as they are relevant to our goals and bodily constraints.
I think you're emphasising that the starred representation* is another flavour of model; which it is; but it's also observation process of relevant structures for us in the environment. What would be the point of all this modelling without its ability to promote accurate, relevant action - pulling causal levers whose structures we partially represented in the world?
OK so this is where we part, but it's quite nuanced, so I'm going to be as specific as possible.
1. I don't see anything in the maths (and this, I think is what you've been looking at, but I'm not convinced) that requires there to be distinguishable 'structures' in the environment. Only for there to be heterogeneity in the environment (otherwise it would be impossible to model, plus with no randomness, there'd be no probability gradient to work against). All I'm arguing here is that all 'structures' are models of some sort.
2. You're right about 'pulling causal levers', but the upshot of the free-energy principle and it's application to systems is that there is no higher goal. Even evolution is just acting on us as a higher order free-energy minimising system (Friston talks about evolutionary free-energy minimising in one of his lectures, but I can't find any writing on it I'm afraid). So we don't have a primary goal of survival in the environment, say. We have a primary goal of surprise reduction, as does evolution (as a system) and that imposes the goal of survival on us. so...
3. It leads us back to the comment that Bayes optimal solutions have no need for accuracy in the environment, only for variance minimising within the system.
I've used this example before, possibly, but Gravity is a really good one. Gravity (it seems) is totally wrong, completely not how things actually might be according to some very coherent alternative models. But it's a really effective model for how to get about on Earth. Completely inaccurate - very effective. It's quite possible, if not probable, to have completely inaccurate models which serve us very well in terms of variance minimising, and they will remain in place, even in favour of more accurate models (which might be too energy-hungry to actually use)
Assumption that there is ‘a point’. Pointless question as far as I can tell. What does i mean to ‘have a point’ or ‘be pointless’? We can ask what the ‘theoretic’ attitude is doing, how it is structured and how theories change.
OK, rephrase it:
"How do we account for the presence of a modelling process that samples our environment and our actions based on causal stuff that's relevant to us (part of our model) in a manner that maximises our accuracy of representation of modelled content without requiring that the modelled content itself is informative of the structure of an external (unmodelled!) world?"
1. I don't see anything in the maths (and this, I think is what you've been looking at, but I'm not convinced) that requires there to be distinguishable 'structures' in the environment. Only for there to be heterogeneity in the environment (otherwise it would be impossible to model, plus with no randomness, there'd be no probability gradient to work against). All I'm arguing here is that all 'structures' are models of some sort.
Mmmm... I don't think there's any specified structure in the paper. But there's ghosts of it, suggestions. The external dynamics model [math]f[/math] and the sensation model [math]g[/math] are "continuous nonlinear functions of (hidden and causal) states, parameterised by [math]\theta_i[/math]" (where [math]i[/math] is the hierarchy level), they have a specific functional form. So there's some structure there, it's not "some arbitrary function", it's "some definite capacity of a human relating to a world" (albeit a very involved one). I'm thinking of [math]f[/math] and [math]g[/math] as "world->self" interfaces in terms of perceptual/sensation content and "self->world" interfaces in terms of actions taken. [hide="complication"]Since the whole thing's historically dependent it's all mixed up and reciprocally interdependent, but at any given instance of environmental data, it'll be an action result or a sensation/perception. [/hide]
Only for there to be heterogeneity in the environment (otherwise it would be impossible to model, plus with no randomness, there'd be no probability gradient to work against). All I'm arguing here is that all 'structures' are models of some sort.
This gets mopped up by the error terms, no? There's a signal/noise distinction operative; the signal is encoded in the [math]f[/math], [math]g[/math] (in terms of external state "recognition dynamics" and sensations), the errors from these are current environmental or bodily heterogeneity.
I think you're interpreting the only site of interface between the agent and the "unmodelled" external world as the error terms (unstructured heterogeneity)? Whereas we might be able to representatively sample its dynamics using only our [math]f[/math] and [math]g[/math] models. I'm kinda reading this whole process as a machine for representatively sampling actions/sensations/perceptions from a dynamical causal model of relevant causal factors using available information (sufficient statistics).
Again, if I've read it right, [math]f[/math] and [math]g[/math] are not time varying functional forms: they embed one pattern which is evaluated at different arguments (like evaluating f(x) = x at x=2 and x=3); so they're individual level relational styles of individual to world. They're "the way our bodies weigh the causal structure of our bodies and our environment". I'm inclined to believe (1) that there's room for discovering real structure in the external world so long as [math]f[/math] and [math]g[/math] are representative (within our narrow window of concern/narrow scope of perceptual features) (2) that it makes sense to consider [math]f[/math], [math]g[/math] as embedded in an evolutionary process that would be surprising if "an organism's ability to evaluate relevant causal structure to it accurately" was not selected for (in some circumstances) - going back to my camouflage example from earlier.
Prosaically: sometimes the relationship between two quantities (and their represented phenomena) really isindistinguishable from a straight line. And this is exploitable.
TheMadFoolNovember 11, 2019 at 08:48#3512430 likes
Well, it's because certain properties of experience are perceiver-dependent and not in the objects themselves. The air feels cold, but that doesn't mean it is cold in an objective sense (the feeling of cold varies between individuals and time). It just feels cold to you now.
So subjective experiences are simply beyond objective understanding. Something like non-overlapping magesteria that Stephen Jay Gould proposed to keep religion and science from each other's territories.
I guess we could proceed along those lines and say consciousness is literally incomprehensible because just like we can't separate the subjective from consciousness we can't take away objectivity from understanding/comprehension. After all comprehension has to be unbiased which is another name for objectivity.
Do you agree then that as per Nagel's argument, consciousness is, by its nature, incomprehensible? Or is there the better option of a type of comprehension that is non-objective which can access knowledge that objectivity can't handle?
All of this needn’t be led under the assumption of some abstract ‘input’/‘output’ system. That is merely an expression of the ‘theoretic’ attitude - a necessary means for distinction among the ‘white noise’. For further more ‘substantial’ evidence for this neural priming is an expression of this in the ‘natural sciences’.
This would probably derail us, but I can't help but indulge.
As if any approach to conceptualising anything was not a 'theoretic attitude'. Assuming you're coming at this from a phenomenological angle, the epoche only becomes relevant within an interpretive framework; its own flavour theoretical attitude. Spiralling out into its own mode of inquiry. No reason for primacy here.
I like sushiNovember 11, 2019 at 09:10#3512500 likes
Reply to fdrake I’ll stop banging my head against this wall I think
I guess I should simply start my own thread and see if I get any traction there instead.
I don't think so, because the error terms are related to the primary sensory input (box2 in Friston's paper) which are themselves non-updatable models (the model here being determined by the architecture - signal x being built from input y), the function only takes x (and errors related to priors as to the causes of x), not y.
we might be able to representatively sample its dynamics using only our f and g models.
We might, agreed. But could we then feedback errors? The sensory inputs are one way, the first internal feedback loops are in the perception cortices. We can correct errors to say "that's not a grey square, it's just a shadow", but we can't update the retina with "that number of photons didn't hit you", or whatever 'real' feature we're tracking. So it comes back to the mechanism by which this update, reduction of errors, could take place. And without updates, we're unable make any claims to variance reduction towards any 'structures' which might be there.
We might, agreed. But could we then feedback errors?
I think so?
I'm imagining [math]f[/math] as causal indicators under some model. Let's say that we have, like in one of Friston's talks (the one you linked me?), a task where we invite subjects (in his case simulated) to classify images of faces based on their orientation; are they upside down or right-side up? We can imagine the environmental stimulus [math]\gamma[/math] here as the light reflecting off the images or the light emitted from a computer screen, consistent with/strongly suggestive of face patterns of course. The [math]\alpha[/math] actions would be the saccades, fixations and other eye movements employed in visual search for features that indicate the orientation of the face. But what's the [math]f[/math]?
Human subjects clearly have a sufficiently broad and tailored [math]f[/math] that allows us to do this task quickly and reliably. If you record eye movements of human subjects looking at faces, we look at eyes, nose, mouth preferentially. I think this has something to do with [math]f[/math] as it relates to this task.
A feature extraction/detection algorithm was used to make simulated agents learn a good [math]f[/math] for this task; IE, they learned what parts of the face to look at to quickly determine its orientation. IIRC the simulated agents were eye movement patterns, and the [math]f[/math] they learned were the representative features of the face for the orientation determining task. These turned out to be noses, eyes, mouths. You don't need to sample (eye fixation points + saccades) much from this feature space (eye related pixels, nose related pixels, mouth related pixels, or their associated characterisation in light frequency and apparent source) to determine the orientation of the face. These points of high information density relative to the task become causal indicators for the face orientation. If (eyes + nose + mouth look like this) then (face should be that).
You can always make an error in perception, or in a sub-perceptual task like allocating a part of a face to a facial perceptual feature. In terms of "what's not in the trend (the error) assuming [math]f[/math], the stimulus [math]\gamma[/math] and the action [math]\alpha[/math]?", we might be in a state of momentarily misperceiving that the face has one eye due to only sampling from one half of it, say, (these things seem to execute prior to there being a phenomenal character associated with the face), or we might judge a shadow on one side of the nose as a discolouration of it, and this error promotes another saccade [math]\alpha\prime[/math] to check for the other eye or other bits of the nose. We often saccade from eye to eye when first viewing a face (used to work with eye movement data, dunno how heavily weighted eye-eye saccades really are in facial recognition tasks). This is just conjecture, of course!
At any given "step" in these simulated agents' classification algorithm, they'll have an error associated with the probability of the face being upside down or not (a conditional expectation of the face being upside down given what's been seen, the internal state, the sensations and the actions). You can minimise energy expenditure and maximise accuracy by focussing on information rich features; if the algorithms, and we, tried to guess the orientation of a face solely by sampling from bits of bare skin on the nasal septum, we'd do a much worse job probably, as a small section of bare skin in the middle of the face that's not part of a facial feature is probably sufficiently reflection invariant that it won't inform either way.
So for the classification task, we can split the face up into the causal features of nose, eyes, mouth, and minimise the errors from there. Edit2: [math]f[/math] is probably really really broad but gets channelled into distinct behaviours by the history of the system. I don't think [math]f[/math] is updating for us, it's more that how we evaluate it changes over time, relative to what we've learned, what we're doing, and what our environment is (all the history embedded in our current action).
Edit: if eyes + nose + mouth seem arbitrary as causal indicators for facial orientation, their relative positions encode a lot. The nose is a roughly central point irrespective of the orientation of the image, and if you look up on the image and see a mouth, the face is upside down, if you look up on the image and see an eye, the face is right side up. And vice versa. The whole orientation of a human face is determined by the relative positioning of the eyes and nose and mouth; so it is not surprising that these features are learned for the task. If you wanted to represent this as (pixel colours) [math]\gamma[/math] with a feature model [math]f[/math] explored with eye movements [math]\alpha[/math] and current perceptual ambiguity [math]w[/math], I think that works too?
Edit3: pretty sure I'm confusing salience and information density here, though the two are related (I'm guessing, there's some reference to the distinction in the Friston paper, only worked with something related to saliency maps before).
creativesoulNovember 11, 2019 at 16:03#3513000 likes
Did you not read what I wrote, or not understand it, or not agree with it. If you're not going to actually respond in any way to what I write there's little point in continuing is there?
I re-read the exchange. I understood it. I didn't so much disagree with you. Rather, I found that it was rather incomplete, in that you offered choices for me to agree with, but not one that was close enough to what I hold. You're the one asking me for clarification... I gave it.
We have before us now, a listing of categorical errors...Which ones will be used to render judgment upon whether or not a premiss of our choosing qualifies as being guilty of categorical error as compared/contrasted to other kinds of errors?
Categorical errors can only be demonstrated by showing the falsity of the proposition from which they were originally given. I suppose one could list them, but recognizing them would seem to be sufficient.
As already mentioned, c.e. is a mistake in logical form, wherein a subject of a logical statement and its predicate do not relate, or, the subject isn’t given a predicate to which it can be related. In the case of human thought, the subject is always a phenomenal object, and the predicate is always at least one of twelve possible pure conceptions. For instance, when I perceive an object, a category of “quantity” must relate to it in the logical form “all x are y”, I must think of that x as having y belonging to it. Because I already know all dogs are canines, if I perceive an object, and I judge the concepts fur, missing frontal lobe, dew claw, chewing teeth as predicates of it, but do not judge it to be predicated by canine, I commit a categorical error by cognizing the object as a dog. It may very well have been a wolverine.
But that’s not very hard to grasp. Where the system becomes relevant is when the object perceived is unknown to me. I must follow the logical forms in order to call the resulting cognition of it, experience and thereby, knowledge. If every rose of my experience is red, upon perceiving an object with some measure of the predicates of the red rose of my experience (flower, scent, petal shape, thorns, etc.) but is not red, I am justified in denying it is a rose at all. The dog example is a judgement of category “quantity” using the subset “universal” in the logical form “all x are y”. When it is proven to me the object I perceived is a rose, but not a red rose, then the category “quantity” invokes the subset “singular” in the logical form “this x is y”, and from that, I am justified in thinking the third subset of “quantity” with the “particular”, in the logical form “some x are y”. Henceforth, I should have no logical inconsistencies in cognizing roses of different color.
In 1904, trains, tracks, terminals, lightning, tape measures, pencil, paper, and a myriad of other real objects were already well-known. When ol’ Uncle Albert was whiling away the hours at his ramshackle desk in his ramshackle office, he put two and two together and came up with a four nobody had ever noticed. It would have been absolutely impossible for him to think any of what eventually came to be SR without the “existence” of those listed objects, without the “possibility” of the objective validity of his thinking, without the “relation” of cause and effect, and without the “reality” of the end result, which in this case was merely mathematical. The “existence” of SR’s objective reality, over and above its objective validity, had to wait for technology to play catch-up, but that does nothing to diminish the fact the whole thing was the product of sheer imagination, that is to say, predicated on empirical means but having no empirical ends whatsoever.
The categories of understanding (SR) are the logical conditions for pure thought, or, a priori cognition, and thus possible experience. The categories of judgement (roses) are the logical conditions for empirical cognition, or, experience. Both are themselves pure a priori rational faculties, therefore their respective products are far and away antecedent to linguistic conditionals. It follows that categorical error is simply the non-employment of the proper category with respect to an object, such that the thought of it is contradictory, or the cognition of it is false.
As an aside, these categories are my rendition of those things which we had previously agreed must exist in their entirety before we are permitted to make our correlations in what you call thought/belief.
, you haven’t really learned what you set out to discover, insofar as you’ve got the “how” but not necessarily the “how come”, because your subject himself may not even know.
— Mww
I don't think the 'how come' is a measurable thing by any metric, so it's not a relevant investigation. Pick your reason.
I submit there is at least one metric for measuring at least one “how come”, and that measurable metric is behavior, with respect to the “how come” called morality. The former is directly proportional to, and directly dependent on, the latter. While behavior may only be observational, and hardly scientific, it can still be measurable by relation to some other behavior. And it would certainly seem to be relevant, considering the general proclivity for humans to piss each other off.
So, we must surely abandon Kantian language here. For anything that exists in it's entirety prior to our naming and descriptive practices qualifies for that which exists in and of itself(Noumena).
The categories are not phenomena, there is no object that can be thought for them. That which is not phenomena is not thereby automatically noumena. Noumena, if they be given at all, are only given from an intuition different than ours. Dolphins may think with noumena rather than phenomena....we don’t know, and unless we communicate with mutual intelligibility, we won’t.
——————-
Furthermore, we must have knowledge of both our premisses and that which exists in it's entirety prior to our premisses in order to perform a comparative assessment between the two. That comparison is required in order to know that one has indeed committed the error called "categorical".
Premises in syllogisms or propositional logic in language form, yes, but the categories enter the cognitive stream way before knowledge, which makes explicit categories are not knowledge-apt. Categories are conditions, and we know them only as conditions, only as part of non-linguistic logical relations alone.
creativesoulNovember 12, 2019 at 03:42#3514610 likes
We have before us now, a listing of categorical errors...Which ones will be used to render judgment upon whether or not a premiss of our choosing qualifies as being guilty of categorical error as compared/contrasted to other kinds of errors?
— creativesoul
Categorical errors can only be demonstrated by showing the falsity of the proposition from which they were originally given. I suppose one could list them, but recognizing them would seem to be sufficient.
There is more than one acceptable sensible conventional sense of the term "categorical error". It is a name with more than one referent. The one will we choose as a standard to render subsequent judgment concerning a candidate of our choosing will directly determine, establish, and influence the judgment call. The sense sets the parameters. Not all senses of "categorical error" are commensurate.
So...
Why are we talking about categorical errors, when what counts as a category is completely and utterly determined by us?
I seek to discover that which exists in it's entirety prior to our discovery process, therefore prior to the naming and descriptive practices commonly called common language use...
I'm not actually sure we mightn't just completely agree, so far as your actual line of thought on this extends, but I feel like I'm missing some connection, I may be just slow to join the dots, and if so I'd appreciate some clarification, but apologise if it just goes over old ground. To that effect, I want to re-phrase what I think we're trying to speculate on (just in case that's got lost along the way, and that's why I feel like I'm missing something). We're looking at whether, and how, actual structure (real existent patterns in the hidden states) from outside the Markov blanket of an organism are reflected in the models of those hidden states caused by the variance minimisation of the Bayesian functions inside the Markov blanket? If they are, then we can say there's likely to be structure in the hidden states, and, crucially, by structure I mean that they are some way, and not any other (as opposed to simply that they could be 'seen' as some way, but also could be 'seen' as another - which would be model dependant realism).
I know it's not the most complete of replies to your thorough exposition, but I feel like I might be going off on the wrong tangent entirely if I'm wrong about the above.
The reason I'm asking is because you've given pretty much the same understanding as I have in my mind of the process, yet I've drawn one conclusion from it, and you another. The salience modelling you describe is, as we've discussed, definitely a strong indicator that the underlying hidden states outside the Markov blanket must be heterogeneous (here in terms of light reflected), and I think you're right that information density and salience are linked (although see the discussion of edge detection later in the paper, for the difference. Edit - it's not in that paper is it, I've just looked, must be another one). But still that's all we're getting, heterogeneity, not fixed structure (the hidden states being this way not that way).
Let's say our hidden state is h (I can't do that fancy mathjax stuff - you'll have to guide me to some instructions sometime), and we give it some structure represented by a fixed value set, so h={6,10,19,108,4,9}, and this set fully describes the structure of h. Our f is modelling h by sampling. It's doing so efficiently, based on prior densities, updated by inputs from latest samples benefiting from some error recognition. If this were happening purely mathematically, we should fairly quickly end up with the sample set. But...
Firstly - If our priors for the input mechanisms are not expecting numbers above 100, there's nothing coming in to the higher level models (working on what caused the lower level ones) to feedback to get the input mechanism to update its priors to allow for the possible recognition of numbers over 100. We cannot get at the primary input to update it because they're hardware, not software. Their priors are the equivalent of drivers, or firmware, and so don't have the flexibility to be updated to account for any and all potential structures of hidden states outside of those they were created to detect, and, to meet your point about evolution, the physical constraints of the stuff they're made from.
(complete aside here, but this touches on the work Iain Stewart did many years back about morphological constraints vs. natural selection as being far more determinant of final organisms - but that's only tangentially linked)
Secondly - If we were to 'hone in' on h being {6,10,19,4,9}, that's not a wrong pattern, it's an incomplete one. Any interface with h won't be in error presuming that pattern, it simply won't exhaust the possible patterns. Like pointing to the constellation Orion and describing the pattern of the hunter with his belt and bow. It's not an error because the pattern is there, it just doesn't exhaust the possible number of patterns which no less error value.
I understood it. I didn't so much disagree with you. Rather, I found that it was rather incomplete, in that you offered choices for me to agree with, but not one that was close enough to what I hold. You're the one asking me for clarification... I gave it.
I understand that, but I gave you what seemed to me to be the only options (perhaps I should have made that more clear), so any response which simply re-iterates your original position without explaining how you circumvent the issues I raised seems to contribute nothing to our mutual understanding of the issue.
I understand that, but I gave you what seemed to me to be the only options (perhaps I should have made that more clear), so any response which simply re-iterates your original position without explaining how you circumvent the issues I raised seems to contribute nothing to our mutual understanding of the issue.
As if I'm obligated to answer for issues you've raised that have nothing to do with my position...
As already mentioned, c.e. is a mistake in logical form..
Logical forms are existentially dependent upon common language use. Common language use... rudimentary thought and belief. Logical forms... rudimentary thought and belief...
I like sushiNovember 12, 2019 at 09:31#3515320 likes
If a square can only fit through a square hole and it passes over a circular hole, it may as well have passed over no hole at all. Or you could say where there is no square hole there is no hole. Further why say ‘square’ as ‘hole’ would suffice. Otherwise we could end up saying there are circular holes everywhere that we cannot comprehend which for the square is no different to saying there are only square holes.
Even our speculative capacity is limited. Language does have a habit of throwing up sentences that possess little to meaning.
TheMadFoolNovember 12, 2019 at 10:57#3515470 likes
Reply to MarcheskIf you don't mind I'd like to request a clarification.
What exactly does one mean by subjective experience.
I read Nagel's paper and he doesn't define subjective experience (SE) anywhere in paper. If I understood correcty Nagel's "single point of view"/SE is critical to his argument but what exactly does SE mean?
It can't be self-awareness because that's something every consciousness has so, according to Nagel's rules, can be objectively evaluated.
Is SE dependent on the milieu of our minds - mental objects like concepts and its derivatives and our physical surroundings insofar as they affect SE? If yes then we can be objective about them. We can, after all, be objective about concepts and whatever follows from them. Also the physical world too is amenable to objectivity.
If all what I said is correct then SE is an instance of our consciousness interacting with its environment, both of which it's possible to be objective about. Ergo, we can be objective about subjective experience.
Not all senses of "categorical error" are commensurate.
Correct, which is why I mentioned Gilbert Ryle. I figure error in semantics or error in reason are the only two worth talking about. And because language philosophy is (insert pejorative terminology here), the only error worth a damn in philosophical discourse is grounded in pure reason.
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what counts as a category is completely and utterly determined by us
I suppose that’s right enough, although I would offer that we determine whatthey are, but not that they are; the former presupposes the latter. Nonetheless, all philosophy is theoretical, and if it should be the case that a foundational tenet of a particular theory is given as merely a condition for that which follows from it necessarily, and disqualifies such condition from any empirical determinant for it, it must be considered as existing in its entirety prior to being named as such, by the rational agencies that employ it in the normal course of its mental events, in accordance with the theory. The onus then falls on the opponent of the theory, to falsify the tenet by arguing successfully in the negative. He does his dialectical opposition no justice by merely claiming fallacious rationality used in the construction of the theory, but rather, is required to give qualifying justifications for it. It may be interesting to note that, at least since Aristotle, no one has been able to promote sufficient reason to nullify the need for, and function of, the categories. Doesn’t make the theory or its tenets fact, or even irrefutably the case, but standing the test of two millennia of argument is still pretty damn good.
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I seek to discover that which exists in it's entirety prior to our discovery process, therefore prior to the naming and descriptive practices commonly called common language use...
Cool. Let me know what you find? We can compare it to what has already been found. Or found acceptable, at any rate.
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Noumena is untenable. I've already offered adequate argument for that conclusion. It's been left sorely neglected.
In the first, the parenthetical suggest a “for instance”, as in, “that which exists in its entirety exists in and of itself, like for instance, noumena”.
In the second, noumena are claimed to be untenable, which of course, they are, for us.
By association, it follows that because categories exist in and of themselves, they are untenable noumena. This is false. Or, “That’s not only not right, it’s not even wrong!!” (Thanks, Herr Pauli!!!) Categories are neither untenable, nor noumena. In addition, I haven’t seen on these pages any adequate argument for noumena being untenable except from yours truly. Actually, him truly, me being the poor messenger. And because I probably would have agreed, and so remembered, if you’d presented adequate argument, I’m going to go ahead and say you haven’t. But surreptitiously with my fingers crossed.
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Logical forms are existentially dependent upon common language use.
No, I think not. Logical content is dependent on language use; logical form, re: the Greek laws of comprehensible, rational thought, are not:
“....Pure intuition consequently contains merely the form under which something is intuited, and pure conception only the form of thought in general. Only pure intuitions and pure conceptions are possible a priori...”
A = A, e.g., is the pure form the content must take when language fills out the form, to accomplish comprehensible, rational thought, and thereafter, comprehensible, rational communication. You can fill out the job application with any ol’ information you want, but your paycheck might end up in Alaska, just as you can fill in the logical forms any way you want, but your cognition “bird” might be everybody else’s cognition “bathtub”.
What exactly does one mean by subjective experience.
There are several things to the definition. One is any experience which varies between individuals. The room feels hot to you, cold to me, and fine for a third person. The experience of temperature is subjective. If we wanted to measure the room's temperature, we use a thermometer which gives us an objective value which does not vary.
Another is private. I have a dream, and although I can tell you about my dream, you cannot experience the dream yourself. The experience is private to me. So although dreams can be studied objectively, the experience itself is only available to the individual who has that dream.
A third is perceiver-dependence. This is based on the kind of perceiver, and their sensory capabilities. So humans experience the world through five senses of an upright walking ape, with differences among individuals due to color blindness, being able to taste a certain chemical, incapacity, etc.
The perceiver-dependent qualities of human subjective expereince would be those sensations we have good reason to believe are generated by our nervous system, instead of being properties of the world around us. So shape, size and location are objective properties of things in the world, while color, sound, taste are properties we experience because of the kind of creatures we are. Going back to the room temperature, our experience of heat or cold is a perceiver-dependant quality. The temperature is objectively the kinetic motion of particles moving about, and not a feeling of coldness or heat.
Nagel makes the argument that science creates a view from nowhere that has no perceiver-dependent, private, perceptually-relative sensations. There is nothing it's like to be a wavefunction or a supernova or evolution. It doesn't feel like anything, it doesn't look like any color, it doesn't sound like anything. The particles moving about in a room don't feel cold or hot. Ultimately, it's mathematized models of some reality divorced from our experience of it.
No, I don't think I would, but I get what you're saying. I don't think proximity to reality measures the usefulness of the model. As such, I think it's theoretically possible that a model might be useful without relating to anything at all, but I haven't thought about that much, so my intuition may well be wrong. Interesting question.
I’m sorry if I’m taking your point out of context but I target it because it reminds me of the Hoffman argument, outlined in his TED talk. I don’t understand how the model can completely be unrelated to reality at all. Of course it is made for organism-relevant features, but surely you’d agree wavelengths picked up by the retina are coming from reality, and surely, at least the structural regularities in experience, are ‘real’, even if they’re not fundamental or reference frame independent. There’s a broader question of whether we are epistemically restricted to the point that we can’t intuit fundamental features of reality. I am still unsure if we can but I think there’s is evidence maybe we can. The fact, for example there is experimentally robust evidence for indeterminacy at smallest scales. indeterminacy implies no underlying mechanism or principle that results in the phenomenon. It would be hard to imagine or define what something more fundamental could be once you’ve reached a level where there are no deterministic principles. So maybe we have enough access to identify fundamental features or principles of the parts of reality we can interact with. What are your thoughts?
creativesoulNovember 13, 2019 at 01:35#3518320 likes
There are several things to the definition. One is any experience which varies between individuals. The room feels hot to you, cold to me, and fine for a third person. The experience of temperature is subjective. If we wanted to measure the room's temperature, we use a thermometer which gives us an objective value which does not vary.
Another is private. I have a dream, and although I can tell you about my dream, you cannot experience the dream yourself. The experience is private to me. So although dreams can be studied objectively, the experience itself is only available to the individual who has that dream.
A third is perceiver-dependence. This is based on the kind of perceiver, and their sensory capabilities. So humans experience the world through five senses of an upright walking ape, with differences among individuals due to color blindness, being able to taste a certain chemical, incapacity, etc.
The perceiver-dependent qualities of human subjective expereince would be those sensations we have good reason to believe are generated by our nervous system, instead of being properties of the world around us. So shape, size and location are objective properties of things in the world, while color, sound, taste are properties we experience because of the kind of creatures we are. Going back to the room temperature, our experience of heat or cold is a perceiver-dependant quality. The temperature is objectively the kinetic motion of particles moving about, and not a feeling of coldness or heat.
Nagel makes the argument that science creates a view from nowhere that has no perceiver-dependent, private, perceptually-relative sensations. There is nothing it's like to be a wavefunction or a supernova or evolution. It doesn't feel like anything, it doesn't look like any color, it doesn't sound like anything. The particles moving about in a room don't feel cold or hot. Ultimately, it's mathematized models of some reality divorced from our experience of it.
I agree that subjective experiences are unique and no two are alike. What I'm suggesting though is that subjective experiences are constructed out of material that can be objectively analyzed.
1. Consciousness is universal in form. (There's no difference in the nature of consciousness between two conscious beings)
2. Subjective experience is necessarily unique and can't be something that is shared
Ergo,
3. Subjective experience is not consciousness
Ergo.
4. Subjective experience is the interaction of consciousness with its environment
5. The environment of consciousness consists of ideas and the physical world insofar as it affects consciousness
6. Ideas and the physical world can be objectively analyzed
7. Consciousness can b e objectively analyzed
Ergo.
8. The interaction between consciousness and its environment can be analyzed objectively
Ergo,
9. Subjective experiences can be objectively analyzed
creativesoulNovember 13, 2019 at 03:27#3518680 likes
If one wants to know what it's like to experience X, one must know what all experience has in common. It is only knowledge of that sort that allows one to offer a subsequent sensible answer to each and every example thereof.
Experience is subjective in that it is perceiver dependent and influenced by individual particular circumstances. Experience is objective in that it consists - in very large part - of the experiencing creature's own thought and belief about what's happening at the moment, and part of what's happening exists in it's entirety prior to becoming a part of an individual's experience.
So...
The objective/subjective distinction is rendered inherently inadequate in that it's use cannot take proper account of what all experience consists of.
Discard it.
creativesoulNovember 13, 2019 at 03:30#3518700 likes
I'm just trying to delineate. I'm not feeling objectionable at the moment.
Well, in the context of subjective experience, humans, since we know that for ourselves. Most likely other animals, given similar enough biology and behavior. But we don't have a means of being sure. Thus "what it's like" to be a bat.
But we can stick with humans as perceivers.
creativesoulNovember 13, 2019 at 03:52#3518880 likes
Well, in the context of subjective experience, humans, since we know that for ourselves. Most likely other animals, given similar enough biology and behavior. But we don't have a means of being sure. Thus "what it's like" to be a bat.
But we can stick with humans as perceivers
That's the only starting point.
I've expressed my own well considered opinion regarding the purported lack of means. We have a means. Language use. Not just any language use, mind you. Rather, language use that picks out the right kinds of things to further consider.
It's a crying shame that - given our remarkable extraordinary advances - convention has still not gotten our own thought and belief right...
I like sushiNovember 13, 2019 at 07:35#3519380 likes
What is there to say about ancient people’s assuming that our vision ‘shone outward’ rather than light ‘shining inward’? Now we know different and to suggest to think otherwise is counter intuitive goes against what we know historically. From this can we rightly assume that the natural human instinct is to view our ‘seeing this tree or that table’ as projected outward rather than as given by external illumination?
What I am getting at here is that when we ask “What is it like to experience X?” how can we possible start talking about how light comes into the eye when we don’t actually experience sight as ‘light coming into my eye and sending signals to my occipital lobe’. The scientific evidence for this does nothing to alter the initial experience of ‘seeing’ prior to this scientific attitude.
Also, in terms of language, if I talk about the sunrise do you experience the sunrise. Of course you don’t, yet language almost convinces you that you’ve just experienced this said ‘sunrise’. Talking about something is the experience of talking about something not the experience of said ‘thing’.
Along these lines if we talk about ‘what it is like’ what does that sentence mean? The ‘like’ is a redundant word because we’re not really asking about ‘likeness’ at all. To be a bat is to be a bat, and to be human is to be a human. Start by asking what it is to be human as you’ve got a little more insight into this yet no doubt you’ll find yourself equally as stumped when it comes to articulating what it is to be a human assuming the question is redundant because you are one.
There's a distinction which I either keep failing to explain properly, or people don't generally seem to think useful, but it's crucially important to model-dependant realism, that is between reality having structures and reality being composed of the structures we divide it into.
I've used this example before, so apologies for the repetition if you've been following the whole thread, but it's like the constellation Orion. It definitely is in the shape (vaguely) of a hunter with his bow, belt and dagger, it's not that such structure isn't there, but it's also on the shape of just about anything else you could draw between those points, maybe not an infinite number of things (I'm not myself sure on this point), but certainly more than the one structure we impose on it out of that range of possibilities.
So to your point about reality having structural regularities which are 'real', yes, I think such regularities are not only only real, but necessarily so. If reality were homogeneous there would be no random direction to entropic forces and so no probability gradient against which the free-energy reduction would work. What I don't see is any reason why those structures must exist uniquely defined. So when you say "wavelengths picked up by the retina are coming from reality" I don't think there's any reasonable way we could disagree, but 'wavelengths' are themselves a concept, they're just one way of dividing energy among others. We can't even determine if wavelengths are a wave in a field or a particle, not that we've 'seen' either because both are just models interpreting numbers on a computer (which are the only thing we actually have 'seen').
Another metaphor might be to think of reality as a multi-dimensional contour map, it definitely has hills and valleys (ie it definitely exists and had variable structures), but which dimension should take precedent in determining what features are 'hills' is an arbitrary decision, or in our case, probably a pragmatic one limited by the biological hardware we've managed to evolve.
Really interesting point about reaching indeterminism in our models and what that means for how fundamental they are. I'm tempted to agree with you that indeterminacy cannot be further reduced, and so if we had it right this would not be one-pattern-among-many but would truly be the entity out of which patterns are made (like finding the actual stars in my Orion example). I'm wary to commit to it though because we'd have to remember that all this is within one huge Ramsey sentence about quantum physics, the first 'If' of which may well be wildly off mark.
What's fascinating about indeterminacy at the heart of the whole thing is that it might make our estimates of noise truly Gaussian (rather than just the assumption of Gaussian in our models) by the , at a fundamental scale, which is a point I think @fdrake made about central limit theory.
Reply to I like sushi There is something significant in the phrase 'what it is like', but this significance isn't picked up on by thinkers like Nagel and Searle. Nagel means to highlight the supposed self-enclosed subjectivity accompanying a creature's perception of the objective world, and so he uses 'like' to point to this unbridgeable privacy of subjectivity as that we can only use metaphors to get at in someone or something else's private experience. But the deeper significance of 'like', lost on realists and idealists alike, doesnt involve comparing one being's subjectivity to another's , as if they are two objects, but rather the very structure of subjective experience as metaphorical in and to itself. To experience anything at all is to see that experience in terms of the particular way in which it is both alike and different from our previous experience. The 'intrinsic' meaning of a perception is nothing outside of or other than this always new and unique way in which it is alike and differs from what came before in it in our immediate experience.
So a bat wouldn't know what it is like to be a bat except in terms of what it is like to experience each new moment, and it only know what each moment is like by moving from that moment to the next. This phenomenological structure defines consciousness as intrinsically built of 'likeness', of the experience of the now as a comparison and a transtiion, a familiarity and a novelty. The now of consciousness is mediate rather than immediate. This radical mediacy at the heart of the supposed pure self-aware subjectivity of consciousness destroys the realist's dream of the purely empirical at the same time that it deprives the subject of its independence from the objects it perceives. Subject and object become only subjective and objective poles of an indissociable interaction in which there is no longer a subject that it is someting like to BE, nor an objective world independent of that subject which it engages with fro out of its solipsism.
No, that’s just plain ol’ run-of-the-mill thinking, or, practical reason. No one consciously thinks in terms of merely theoretical pure reason, armchair-bound or otherwise. That’s why pure reason is the ground, the antecedent rather than the consequent.
The objective/subjective distinction is rendered inherently inadequate in that it's use cannot take proper account of what all experience consists of.
Discard it.
Fine. Go ahead. Try discarding it. You’re going to have to replace it with something, because it seems to be the case that the human rational system is entirely predicated on it. Besides, something can be inherently inadequate without being a complete failure.
So......shall we discard the physical state of affairs that represents the coolness of the room, or shall we discard the sensation of too cool that represents the physical state of affairs? Can’t discard both, because it is the distinction between them claimed to cause the problem, so elimination of the distinction should solve it.
Still, if you’ve got an alternative.....(once again) lay it on me.
From this can we rightly assume that the natural human instinct is to view our ‘seeing this tree or that table’ as projected outward rather than as given by external illumination?
Yes, that's how we experience vision.Which is why naive realism doesn't work without a sophisticated philosophical defense. It can't just be asserted or assumed as the premise, since it's been challenged since pretty much day one once people started reflecting.
Along these lines if we talk about ‘what it is like’ what does that sentence mean? The ‘like’ is a redundant word because we’re not really asking about ‘likeness’ at all. To be a bat is to be a bat, and to be human is to be a human.
The "what it is like" is just a way of saying that a bat may have a kind of sensory experience that we don't because bats make use of sonar. If not bats, there are plenty of other examples in the animal kingdom. And anyway, why should we expect human experience to be exhaustive of all possible experience?
From this can we rightly assume that the natural human instinct is to view our ‘seeing this tree or that table’ as projected outward rather than as given by external illumination?
Perhaps, but if that were the case, how would we account for knowledge with respect to that which we don’t project, or, which is the same thing, has nothing to do with sense? If we deny non-empirical knowledge, the science of mathematics would be impossible.
If we deny non-empirical knowledge, the science of mathematics would be impossible.
True, but we use our experiences to draw the inferences that make most sense of all the empirical data, and form explanations around that. Thus we come to know that vision works differently than how we experience it, which resolves a lot of problems that were noticed a long time ago, such as sticks bent in water.
I like sushiNovember 13, 2019 at 14:35#3520320 likes
Reply to Mww I wasn’t suggesting we should deny it, just that it isn’t our natural/instinctual appreciation of ‘the world’ thus more telling of our subjective faculties prior to scientific knowledge being laid on top of them.
I like sushiNovember 13, 2019 at 14:46#3520340 likes
Reply to Marchesk It seems very much like asking what it is like to be dead or what it was like before you were born. The evidence is secondhand and/or purely speculative.
I’d also say it’s a little like what someone means when they talk about ‘computer consciousness’ without a body - I wouldn’t call that ‘consciousness’ because I have no real means of comparison.
If we can in some way communicate with a bat then we’ll get some insight. Without a means of communication the bat may as well be a rock (note: we can have some form of minimalistic ‘communication’ with a bat).
we use our experiences to draw the inferences that make most sense of all the empirical data,
We do use our experience to draw inferences about something possibly derivable from it, yes. But not always. Sometimes the inference comes first, and experience is then called upon to verify them. Or falsify them.
isn’t our natural/instinctual appreciation of ‘the world’ thus more telling of our subjective faculties prior to scientific knowledge being laid on top of them.
Telling, but maybe not more telling. But I was responding to empirical conditions, like seeing a table or a tree. Appreciation is not an empirical condition. Our natural/instinctual appreciation of the world gives rise to and sustains the other half of our subjective faculties........feelings.
So a bat wouldn't know what it is like to be a bat except in terms of what it is like to experience each new moment, and it only know what each moment is like by moving from that moment to the next.
Correct. But anthropomorphic. All that allows us to characterize a bat, is ourselves.
how can we possible start talking about how light comes into the eye when we don’t actually experience sight as ‘light coming into my eye and sending signals to my occipital lobe’.
We do though, to some extent. If a car is racing toward me at great speed, my whole experience of the event might be a blur, and my body moving, little else. But if the car approaches more slowly, some part of that experience will be "that's a car", I might even recognise the make, bring to mind some facts about it, feel some repulsion to its colour etc.
Similarly, I don't see why some neuroscientific model of perception could not now form part of my experience of perceiving. To do so would require access to memory and higher cortex functions, so it's unlikely in fleeting stimuli, but no less a part of my experience when the stimuli is more drawn out.
Also, in terms of language, if I talk about the sunrise do you experience the sunrise. Of course you don’t, yet language almost convinces you that you’ve just experienced this said ‘sunrise’. Talking about something is the experience of talking about something not the experience of said ‘thing’.
Actually, they're mentally very similar. The same parts of the brain are involved in both, we're really just pasting on top of that an additional piece of information that tells us we're just imagining it. Obviously you're right, that additional factor makes it a different experience, but it says something about the idea of knowing "what it's like", there's not something so radically different going on in the 'experiencer', to that in the 'imaginer'
Reply to Mww Its idealist in a particlar way, but not anthropomorphic if we have reduced the anthropos to a process of temporalization in which the human disappears along with animals and 'natural' constituted world as a whole. Husserl made this move with what he called epoche, abstracting away all empirically relative facts to arrive at minimal conditions for any experiencing whatsoever. Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger and Derrida followed him in this direction to various extents, recognizing a prmordial gestalt temporal relationalty as fundamental in talk about any experieincing of a world, prior to constitutied empirical beings.
Its idealist in a particlar way, but not anthropomorphic if we have reduced the anthropos to a process of temporalization in which the human disappears along with animals and 'natural' constituted world as a whole.
Yes, but you haven’t reduced the anthropos, insofar as you’ve included the movement of bodies and changes in time into a system, re: “a bat would have to know....”, that we have no reason to suppose incorporates them. It’s not your fault, it’s the fault of the human system; we as humans simply can’t think in any way other than the way humans think. It’s absolutely impossible.
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Husserl made this move with what he called epoche, abstracting away all empirically relative facts to arrive at minimal conditions for any experiencing whatsoever.
Understood. I would offer that Kant did the same thing in 1787.
“...For example, if we take away by degrees from our conceptions of a body all that can be referred to mere sensuous experience—colour, hardness or softness, weight, even impenetrability—the body will then vanish; but the space which it occupied still remains...”
“...With regard to phenomena in general, we cannot think away time from them...”
“...That space and time are only forms of sensible intuition, and hence are the only conditions of the existence of things (of experience)....”
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recognizing a prmordial gestalt temporal relationalty as fundamental in talk about any experieincing of a world, prior to constitutied empirical beings.
Dunno about all those modern guys, but I think I can dig enough significance out of that to agree with it.
Reply to Mww Kant's subjectivization of the empirical world didn't go far enough. It left intact the notion of objectively causal world in universal space time, rather than reducing notions like objective causality and universal geometric space to the relative products of embodied correlations in experience.
Kant's subjectivization of the empirical world didn't go far enough.
Perhaps not. But that wasn’t the intent of the Critiques, nor the Metaphysics of Natural Science. It didn’t matter to him, because even if he entertained the idea of an objectively causal world, it would still have to relate to the human capacity to understand it. If he had entertained the idea, would the substance of the Critiques evolved? Maybe, but it’s moot, because what we have of them is all there’s ever going to be.
I can’t imagine what he would do if he even knew about such notions as universal geometric space. Can’t blame him for failing to reduce them to something, if he didn’t know what they were.
Reply to Mww Phenomenologically oriented writers like Husserl and Heidegger insist that none of the advances in modern physics(and for Heidegger that included theoeretical contributions up till 1976) depart in any significant way from presuppositions traceable back to Kant.
Husserl wrote: Physics, whether represented by a Newton or a Planck or an Einstein, or whomever
else in the future, was always and remains exact science. It remains such even if, as some think, an absolutely final form of total theory-construction is never to be expected or striven for.:"
What he meant by exact science is a science based on pure geometry of space. The innovative mathematics of space-time in recent physics is still dependent on geometric idealities. Husserl wrote copously about how geometry's origin in pragmatic activities in the world, and how it morphed into a 'ready-made' set of axioms by the time of Galileo.
Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger and Derrida followed him in this direction to various extents, recognizing a prmordial gestalt temporal relationalty as fundamental in talk about any experieincing of a world, prior to constitutied empirical beings.
I know you meant ‘came after him’ but ‘digressed from his aim’ would be more to the point.
creativesoulNovember 14, 2019 at 02:37#3522270 likes
Pure reason? As in reasoning from an armchair?
— creativesoul
No, that’s just plain ol’ run-of-the-mill thinking, or, practical reason. No one consciously thinks in terms of merely theoretical pure reason, armchair-bound or otherwise....
The question(implied) was about the referent of the name "pure reason". To what are you referring? What is the criterion/definition of "pure reason" that you're working from here?
creativesoulNovember 14, 2019 at 02:55#3522340 likes
You're going to have to replace it with something...
Nah. I reject it based upon my own knowledge of all human thought and belief. I 'replaced it' with a much better understanding of all the things which are existentially dependent upon and/or consist of both the objective and the subjective. Such things cannot be taken proper account of in terms of one or the other. All experience counts as such things. As does all thought and belief...
a much better understanding of all the things which are existentially dependent upon and/or consist of both the objective and the subjective.
You don't seem to have discarded the distinction between the objective and the subjective. Can you rephrase the above sentence without using the terms "subjective" and "objective"? If not, and you need to use the terms, then they will be of no use unless you maintain the distinction between them.
The now of consciousness is mediate rather than immediate. This radical mediacy at the heart of the supposed pure self-aware subjectivity of consciousness destroys the realist's dream of the purely empirical at the same time that it deprives the subject of its independence from the objects it perceives. Subject and object become only subjective and objective poles of an indissociable interaction in which there is no longer a subject that it is someting like to BE, nor an objective world independent of that subject which it engages with from out of its solipsism.
I mostly agree, but what of this speech act itself?
[quote=Feuerbach]
The person demonstrating says and points out to me: “This is rational, this is true, and this is what is meant by law; this is how you must think when you think truly.” To be sure, he wants me to grasp and acknowledge his ideas, but not as his ideas; he wants me to grasp them as generally rational; i.e., also as mine. He only expresses what is my own understanding.
...
All presentation, all demonstration – and the presentation of thought is demonstration – has, according to its original determination – and that is all that matters to us – the cognitive activity of the other person as its ultimate aim.
[/quote]
The subject and object are vital concepts, despite their imperfections in certain contexts.
creativesoulNovember 14, 2019 at 03:45#3522590 likes
a much better understanding of all the things which are existentially dependent upon and/or consist of both the objective and the subjective.
— creativesoul
You don't seem to have discarded the distinction between the objective and the subjective. Can you rephrase the above sentence without using the terms "subjective" and "objective"? If not, and you need to use the terms, then they will be of no use unless you maintain the distinction between them.
Using to refer is mention.
creativesoulNovember 14, 2019 at 03:47#3522610 likes
Reply to creativesoul I recall reading that was the Greeks conception of how vision worked. But maybe it varied across cultures and philosophical schools. We do experience vision as if we're looking out through our eyes at the world. It's just that the scientific understanding is also there to correct us. Similar to watching "sunsets" and "sunrises" or not feeling Earth's movement.
creativesoulNovember 14, 2019 at 04:03#3522650 likes
My point was how we layer on accumulated knowledge and regard it as if it is our natural intuitive attitude.
Yeah, like how we all know ordinary matter is mostly empty space with electromagnetic bonds holding molecules together tightly enough so that we can't see or put our hands through it without smashing it.
But that wasn't the conception of solidity before atomic theory developed, excepting those from the atomist school of philosophy.
I like sushiNovember 14, 2019 at 06:34#3523430 likes
Reply to Joshs I don’t think this is the case. That said, people have been arguing over what Kant meant for a very long time.
There is certainly a similar aim with Husserl in that they both looked for a ‘firmer’ grounding. I don’t believe either assumed the task as one that could be complete - this is made explicit by Husserl at least.
You're going to have to replace it (the subjective/objective distinction) with something...
— Mww
Nah. I reject it based upon my own knowledge of all human thought and belief. I 'replaced it' with a much better understanding of all the things which are existentially dependent upon and/or consist of both the objective and the subjective.
Ok, fine. Your own knowledge is sufficient for you to reject something. No problem. Nevertheless, claiming the ends (I replace it) justifies the means (better understanding) says nothing whatsoever about the means. You could fall back on sufficiency here as well, re: your better understanding is sufficient to replace, but that says nothing about whether the replacement is necessary because of the better understanding. To be necessary requires adherence to a law or a principle, the enouncement of which seems to be missing.
You’re always saying that a thing is possible, or that a thing can be done, but never how it is possible or how it is done. Without a how, it is reasonable that I maintain my own knowledge for the standing and authority of the subjective/objective distinction, rather than entertain yours in rejecting it.
Hell, you haven’t even shown how the subjective/objective distinction actually is inadequate.
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As if it's impossible to discard. Read my threads.
Threads. You have threads, separate from your entries in our dialogues? So you’ve already given a how, someplace else? In the chance you meant comments in our dialogues, I haven’t seen any how’s. And when I mentioned this before, you didn’t come back with the suggestion to read your threads. You’ve never suggested other threads to me for anything.
What are you referring to if there is no coherent distinction? Now, don't get me wrong, I think human experience, primordially speaking, is prior to any such distinction, but we cannot get any conscious handle on that primordial experience; it is rightly thought as transcendental.
Reply to Mww Think experience in the sense of undergoes. Like the mountain experiences erosion. Conscious experience emerges out of a matrix of primordial process or undergoing which is beneath, I.e. transcendental to, conscious experience.
Emerges out of, of course. That’s the opposite of prior to.
On the other hand, if I take mountain/erosion as metaphor for change, then I must say experience doesn’t change; each is as it is in itself. Experience is singular and successive, not a unity and changing, the technical definition of consciousness.
Don’t want to take you off on a tangent, but......just wonderin’.
creativesoulNovember 15, 2019 at 01:17#3525530 likes
What are you referring to if there is no coherent distinction? Now, don't get me wrong, I think human experience, primordially speaking, is prior to any such distinction, but we cannot get any conscious handle on that primordial experience; it is rightly thought as transcendental.
First of all, I've never said that the objective/subjective dichotomy was incoherent. Secondly, I am referring to the typical use of that distinction. I can refer to another linguistic framework without assenting to it and/or accepting it. Thus, I'm not even sure what you're trying to get at in that regard. It's as if you seem to think that one must somehow assent/accept that which one claims to deny simply because one talks about it.
I'm suddenly being reminded of NOS in the racism thread...
The last bit, of course, I reject. Not only can we, I have gotten quite a good 'conscious handle' on primordial experience, if by that we mean experience prior to language acquisition and/or language less creatures' experience. One cannot get a good handle on primordial experience, if one doesn't have the basics of complex experience right.
Thought and belief.
Same story brutha! That's where it's at! Get that right, and much is gleaned...
creativesoulNovember 15, 2019 at 01:31#3525570 likes
Reply to creativesoul This is perfectly normal parlance. Beyond what is consciously experienced we experience processes and forces just as the mountain experiences erosion. If you thought I was implying the mountain is conscious, then you didn't read carefully enough.
creativesoulNovember 15, 2019 at 01:47#3525610 likes
Coming from someone who has demonstrated a habit of ignoring all the tough questions leading up to a refutation of their own claims... well... that's a bit rich...
One cannot get a good handle on primordial experience, if one doesn't have the basics of complex experience right.
If primordial experience, as distinct from conscious experience, is pre-conceptual then no discursive handle can be gotten on it, despite your promissory notes.
creativesoulNovember 15, 2019 at 01:51#3525640 likes
Perhaps it would be easier for me to understand what "mountains experience erosion" is taking about on your view if I knew what criterion you employ as a means to determine whether or not it makes sense to attribute experience to some thing or another.
I'm all ears...
I like sushiNovember 15, 2019 at 01:52#3525650 likes
Reply to Janus I understood. It is, like everything, something that could be refined to the point where things get a little hazy though.
creativesoulNovember 15, 2019 at 01:53#3525660 likes
If primordial experience, as distinct from conscious experience, is pre-conceptual then no discursive handle can be gotten on it, despite your promissory notes.
Surely you're not really going to forward such an argument?
On the other hand, if I take mountain/erosion as metaphor for change, then I must say experience doesn’t change; each is as it is in itself. Experience is singular and successive, not a unity and changing, the technical definition of consciousness.
I'm not sure what you are aiming at here...isn't erosion a process of change?
Reply to I like sushi True, but I think the two senses of 'experience' are related in ways which may be helpful to understanding the nature of the transcendental. I understand the transcendental to be not "above", but "below", our conscious experience, and thus not "transcendent" but immanent, and not ideal but real.
I like sushiNovember 15, 2019 at 02:30#3525750 likes
Reply to Janus And that it the point where Husserl took Kant’s work as faulty - but I think he misread - and broke out of the dichotomy of ‘subject’ and ‘object’.
creativesoulNovember 15, 2019 at 02:33#3525770 likes
Beyond what is consciously experienced we experience processes and forces just as the mountain experiences erosion
How do you know this? That is... how do you know what experience is beyond conscious experience?
I think you may be conflating causality with experience. The latter is existentially dependent upon the former, but the former is not equivalent to the latter. Experience takes quite a bit more than causality.
creativesoulNovember 15, 2019 at 02:44#3525810 likes
It is inherently inadequate for taking proper account of that which consists of both. Experience is one such thing.
I agree; we could say that experience is subjective insofar it is conscious, and it is objective insofar as it is not. But since what cannot be consciously apprehended cannot be an objective for us, then in that sense pre/sub/un-conscious experience is neither subjective nor objective, and in yet another sense is, or at least encompasses, both.
I think you'd change your mind if you carefully considered the logical consequences of that argument. It leads to a reductio.
I don't see how it does. That our capacities for conceptualization emerge out of a pre-conceptual 'matrix' or 'context' does not entail that we can get a discursive handle on its pre-conceptual nature. That our conceptualizations are "influenced" or "structured" or "conditioned" by a pre-conceptual 'Real' does not entail that we can examine the nature of that influence, structuring or conditioning.
Think experience in the sense of undergoes. Like the mountain experiences erosion. Conscious experience emerges out of a matrix of primordial process or undergoing which is beneath, I.e. transcendental to, conscious experience.
We see emergent layers of existence emerging directly from previous ones: atom - molecule - cell - organ - organism... Why then say conscious experience emerges from way down below instead from the previous size scale like everything else?
Mind emerges from the dynamics of overlapping densities of the magnetic and electric fields in the wrinkly cortex. Only now emergent layers reverse direction and new complexity of collective entities emerge inwards into the smaller and smaller size. We might be talking about the same size scale at the end, but I think I'm talking about a completely different realm, mental realm, quite real, testable and measurable, if we only manage to get sufficient resolution and recognize those emergent elements or "mental atoms".
We see emergent layers of existence emerging directly from previous ones: atom - molecule - cell - organ - organism...
All of those are items, in one way or another, of human experience; they are always already in conceptual form, so they are not what I have been talking about.
We could say, as for example McDowell and Brandom (and Hegel) do, in their various ways, that the Real itself is, exhaustively, in conceptual shape; but that would be a different argument.
creativesoulNovember 15, 2019 at 03:14#3525970 likes
Comments (1035)
I was referencing the 'what it's like to be a bat.'
Yes, first person.
I've read the essay, I just don't experience things like that. I've never felt like there's something which it is like to be me. How the hell am I supposed to tell? It's all so damn fleeting.
Put your feet on the floor and just sit and feel your feet.
Not when the amygdala and prefrontal cortex are influenced by socialisation, childhood environment... I think, anyway.
That's my feet. That's not me.
Did you do it?
Right, this really bugs me (sorry to pick on you Frank, it could have been anyone). Is it just a failure of my imagination, but I can't think what an answer to this could possibly be.
If I ask "what is that lemon cake like?", I might get one of a number of possible interpretations of 'like'.
1. Similar to - "it's 'like' an ordinary sponge but more lemony"
2. Metaphorical - "it's like jumping into a bath of lemons"
3. Emotional/judgemental - "it's lovely"
4. Sensate - "it's lemon-flavoured"
I can't think which of these could possibly answer questions like "what is it like to be... ". Yet the phrase is pretty much standard in discussions about consciousness.
If you think either science or philosophy could investigate such a question, what could the answer possibly consist of?
Yes. Well, no. What I actually did was I figured that if there was a what it's like to be me, it would be the same if I focussed on my ass where I'm sitting, and the sensations in my feet wouldn't matter for demonstrating the specificity of the phenomenon to me, but no, there wasn't a what it's like to be me.
I can't, impossible.
Chalmers suggested that a way to start would be to add the concept of first person experience to the scientific tool box (in the same way gravity was added, as something we know about but haven't explained yet.)
Ok.
I really don't understand you. To my reckoning, there are these weird people who picked up a way of describing bizarre altered states of activity from a book, and I never understand what they're talking about. They always say "but what's it like to be you" or "what's it like to be a bat?" and things like that. As if they can literally feel it. I don't think very highly of their self awareness, they seem to be replacing their experiences with a description of their experiences. If they payed more attention, they'd see a flux with some continuity in it, and a persistent history that is accessed through memory, and some aspirations and anticipations, but a feeling of themselves as distinct from their sensory capabilities and self attending bodily processes? Madness! Madness I say. It's a cult, a cult!
Have a look back at @fdrake's earlier posts here. Science already does include the concept of first person experience, the whole of cognitive science is based on it.
Quoting Isaac
Neuroscientists confirm that their research doesn't go beyond functions of consciousness.
No u! How dare you doubt the arbitrary conceptual structure imposed upon my first person experiences which is then retroactively equated with them!
Do it and then tell me what's retroactive.
Oh I had no idea "what is it like to be X?" was a concept! :yum:
I'm done trolling now.
Anyway, the notion that we're all p-zombies isn't scientific. It's an odd philosophical view. It's not a cult. It's doesnt have enough adherents for that.
What would be "beyond" the function of consciousness?
But that just goes back to the first person accounts neuroscience uses to correlate its mechanically detected data with. How is that not 'experience'? Science is obviously not going to merely describe experience, it's not journalism. But it definitely takes experience into account, otherwise it would have nothing to correlate brain states with would it?
It's awesome that we can correlate conscious states to neuronal activity. That's a first step is developing a theory of consciousness.
The notion that experience does somehow reduce to functions of consciousness is an interesting speculation, but that's all it is presently.
Are you familiar with Chalmers' Hard Problem?
No, it's a fairly robust theory. Virtually no one reports experience when in an unconscious state. Levels of reported experience even correlate with levels of consciousness. For example dream reports during lite wave cycle sleep (which is quite deep) are always less vivid that dream reports from REM sleep, which is more conscious.
People put into various states of coma with anaesthetics report levels of experience which correlate well with the dose of anaesthetic.
As far as theories go, the idea that experience is related to consciousness is pretty sound.
Quoting frank
Yes. I don't agree it's remotely hard.
Or every physical system at all, as in my physicalist panpsychism described earlier. There is a first person what-its-like experience for everything, and because of that it’s trivial; the “hard problem” is only hard because there is no real problem, so there’s no real answer. The differences between the first-person phenomenal consciousness of different things is the real problem, and that’s philosophically “easy”, it’s just functionalism as an explanation of access consciousness, but the details are a much harder scientific problem.
Oh and for fdrake and all wondering what this “what it’s like” thing is all about: no amount of studying human sexuality in the third person can tell you what it’s like to have sex. You have to experience it in the first person to know that. Maybe that book learning can help you recreate an accurate first person experience of it, but you still have to then undergo that experience to know what it’s like. That’s all there is to “what it’s like”; nothing deeply ontological about it, but it’s something.
You see, this is the bit I just don't get the support for. It's just like the Colourblind Scientist. If she really did learn all there was to know about Red/sex/whatever, then what grounds have we got for denying that she would then know "what it's like" that aren't themselves question begging.
We can't simply say "she wouldn't" and expect that to demonstrate anything inductive.
Yeah, I'm quite happy to agree with that. The Colourblind Scientist experiment though is supposed to demonstrate Mary could not, even in theory, know what seeing Red is like, no matter how much information she had about it. I think that just confuses something we can't conceive with something which isn't the case. You can't really conceive a billion people (this has been demonstrated) it just doesn't seem to be something the human brain can do. Doesn't mean a billion is an impossible number of people.
Robustness of a theory is subjective. It's robust enough for me.
Quoting frank
No (apart from the good-looking bit, which is true). We don't do science that way. And we don't for a bunch of very good reasons. We start with principles of parsimony and falsifiability. I'm more a Kuhnian than a Popperian, but as general guides when choosing theories to investigate, those are as good as any. Consciousness does not yet need any mystical forces, there's no reason to believe it isn't just something brains do.
There are a number of speculations about how phenomenal consciousness works. Which one is your favorite? There used to be one about a central drawing board. Is that one still in play?
Quoting Isaac
I dropped the word "gravity" earlier. Newton was accused of dragging spirituality into science with the notion of gravity. He protested that he didn't have an explanation for it. He was just pointing to it.
Insisting that we wait for a decent theory of consciousness is a vote for de-mystification.
How do you know this? Surely it's not a given. In fact experiments with psychotic hallucination seems to at least vaguely point in the direction of the fact that experiencing something through the senses and experiencing it through empathy, or imagination are actually the same.
At the moment I'm keen on the expanding connectivity theory. The work's currently being done at Sussex (one of my old haunts). If you stimulate an unconscious brain with electromagnetic waves, they echo only very locally. If you do the same to a conscious brain, they echo all over the place. The same extention of connectivity has been recorded when waking up from sleep.
I think conscious experience is just the association of multiple parts of the brain with senate inputs. What it's like to see Red (not that I agree with the terminology of the question) is to have multiple areas of the brain interact in response to the stimuli.
This is why I like using sex as a better example. There was a time long ago when I had never had sex, but nevertheless propositionally knew a lot about it. After the first time I had sex, I hadn’t gained any propositional knowledge; there were no new facts I could report that I couldn’t report before. But I nevertheless felt like I had gained experiential knowledge: I now knew what it was like to have sex, and none of that propositional knowledge I had already had before had been enough to substitute for that experiential knowledge.
Yes, but Mary knows everything about the colour Red. Literally everything there is to know about it, every connection anyone ever made with it, every emotion it ever generated, every memory it triggered. When you imagine yourself running, for example, the parts of your brain involved in running actually start working. When you se someone in pain, the parts of your brain involved with pain start working. There's an additional part which says "this is all made up". That seems to be the bit that's missing in some schizophrenics.
So Mary imagining all those thins is the same as seeing red, she'd just additionally know it wasn't real.
Cool. The central board idea was an attempt to explain how multiple responses take on the character of a unified experience.
:up:
I think part of the setup of Mary’s Room that is needlessly confusing if the stipulation that she knowns “everything”, just to then point out something she doesn’t know. The point is to highlight something that you can’t know just from observing other people. If Mary really knew “everything”, then if you showed her a collection of different colored balls and asked her which was the red one, she shouldn’t say “I don’t know”, but in stipulating that she’s colorblind we’re saying exactly that she would do that; we’re saying there’s something she doesn’t know. That thing that’s different between her and an otherwise identical person who isn’t colorblind is what it’s like to see color.
Nah. Don't understand this at all. I won't have the experiences associated with doing the sex act, but I can absolutely know what it's like to have sex. I don't think "what it's like to experience X" really makes sense as a thing; I have difficulty articulating why I'm so suspicious of it. I suppose part of it is that once people start talking like that, you end up with stuff like this:
Quoting Pfhorrest
Is there a sexness? Do I somehow have access to sexness because I've had sex? "What is it like" is an analogy disguised as an event.
It's a problem created by the framework itself.
No, you're not taking on board what I'm saying. That is not how the brain works. You might like it to, but the evidence contradicts it. Colour-blind synaesthetes have experiences of colour in response to other senses, colours they've never seen. Lifelong amputees have experiences of the lost limb that (if it happened before 5) they have no recoverable memory of ever having. Parts of the brain are wired to play the part delivering particular experiences. They usually do so in response to stimuli but not always. It is not necessary to have seen red to experience the same brain stimuli associated with seeing red.
Quoting Pfhorrest
No, the point was to refute physicalism by proving there were non-physical facts. To do this, Mary has to theoretically have access to all physical facts. Otherwise all Jackson proved was that if you lock someone away in a room they know less than they would had you not.
Quoting fdrake
Exactly, there's no thing it is to have sex, it's a slightly different experience every time, the experience is, as you say, just an event, a period of coinciding mental activities which you arbitrarily label 'having sex'. To say one can't know what it is like until one experiences it is nonsensical, because one still doesn't know what it is like after experiencing it, one only knows what that exact event was, no other.
Seems to me the "what it's like" is redundant here. Mary simply cannot see red if she is red colour blind.
Descriptions of what it's like are analogies. Could Mary understand any analogy with seeing red if she can't even see red?
And those are still experiences of color, and if they had not had them, they would not know what it’s like to experience color.
As I said before you keep bringing up examples of unusual ways to experience things as though they were counterpoints to the complete trivialism that you need to experience something to know what it’s like to experience it. A simulated brain in a simulated vat being virtually stimulated can have an experience of color without any actual photons striking any actual eyes or even any biological brains being involved, and that is still an experience of color, without the likes of which that virtual brain would not know what it’s like to experience color.
I know Jackson set out to disprove physicalism. I think he failed at that but proved something else much more trivial instead. Just like Searle’s Chinese Room, which I think soundly shows that syntax is not semantics, but does not thereby show that artificial semantics is impossible or that there is anything magical about consciousness, just that much more trivial point.
Also, none is this is meant to essentialize anything. Not every red is the same, but we have that name for a similar range of experiences. Not every act of sex is the same either. Not every moment of being you is the same. “What it’s like to be you” isn’t anything above or beyond whatever you’re experiencing right now, it’s not an experience of some essential self in addition to your ongoing experience of the world, it’s just the having of any experience at all, in the way that you are capable of experiencing (in contrast to ways that otherly-constituted beings might experience the same phenomena impinging upon you now). It’s completely trivial and not worth the words we’ve all spent talking about it.
Isaac, what was it you thought we agreed on earlier?
That is the entire point. What something is like to experience cannot be described, other than comparatively with other experiences. You fundamentally have to undergo the experience yourself to have experiential knowledge.
I dunno. What we think is trivial is usually fundamental to our worldview, and should usually be examined - special emphasis when others who we otherwise find sensible do not find it so. Especially if we're going to go from "you literally just saw a Red delicious apple" to "redness"; if it's literally just how we talk about our experiences or that we've experienced something, why the need to invoke stuff that resembles types/essences? If this wasn't so contentious a style of expression (smuggling in presumptions somewhere, or missing obvious facts), there wouldn't be such bitter argument around it when everyone thinks everyone else is missing trivial points.
It's like some arguments that we can have with the partners we live with; "this thing you do which you do not know you do, or this thing you do not do which you do not notice you do not do? Terrible. That cup you leave by the kettle in the morning? That feels like "fuck you" to me!".
I'm extremely suspicious that what goes on when we think about "what is it like to X" is that we aggregate over X experiences and form commonalities and analogies; and then we retroject the commonalities and analogies into the experience without giving a simultaneous account of how commonalities and analogies are always already embedded in first person experiences in the first place.
What's the difference between experiencing color and seeing/sensing/detecting/perceiving it?
Seems to me that we all see it by virtue of having what it takes to do so. However, there is no single correct answer to what it's like to experience it, because each person's experiences are different according to the content of their own thought. All experiences of red include drawing correlations between red and other things...
That's it as far as what it's like to experience red. To add detail fill in the variable blanks. Set out those other things. What you'll end up with does not even come close to being a standard of what it's like...
That holds good for all "what it's like" notions, which renders it useless as a measure of anything.
I’m emphasizing the triviality to distance myself from what Jackson and his followers think. I concede that his argument makes A point, but I want to be clear that I don’t think it makes THE point that he wants it to be, but something much less significant.
As far as terms like “redness”, I don’t know why that has to evoke any kind of essentialism. Does “color” evoke that same essentialism to you, or “appearance”? To my ear, the redness of an apple is a narrower description of the color of an apple which is in turn a narrower description of the appearance of the apple, and I don’t mean “the appearance of the apple” to be some separate entity from the apple itself of course, just a name for a particular feature of it I’m talking about, the way it looks. Likewise it’s color, and its redness. I don’t know what other words I could possibly use to refer to the feature of the apple that consists of it being red other than its redness.
It doesn’t sound like we disagree.
Maybe we agree. Not sure. "Redness" is rejected on my view.
On the contrary! .. medicine has no power to solve the mental problems you have expressed, and philosophical errors are the only cause of them.
Quoting Pfhorrest
See, I can pick the first thing you say and show you, the problem is a philosophical bind of non-sense, rooted in an unrealistic idealism. Medicine can't solve that problem. The solution only comes by understanding that the true reason that your "first-person experience" is not like a rock's "first-person experience", is not because of function, but life. That is why only philosophy can fix mental illness, and medication, as a pacifier and substitution, can be useful in buying valuable time for Him who does the healing work.
Yes, I don't know why people keep bringing up these tangential remarks in a thread about Frank Jackson's Thought experiment! Seriously, I'm only continuing this current derailment because it's your OP. If you want to reign in discussion about qualia because it's off topic, just say, we can discuss elsewhere.
Notwithstanding...
Quoting Pfhorrest
This comes back to the issues I first raised about what an answer to the question "what is it like" would consist of with regards to qualia. The colour-blind scientist could not see red, and the claim is that without the experience of seeing red she would never know what 'it is like'. But the data from truly colour-blind synaesthetes is that they could know 'what it is like' to see red without actually seeing red, because 'what it is like' is to have the mental states associated with the activity and they seem to do that, simply because the part of the brain responsible for initiating the experience of 'seeing red' is stimulated in these people, by other senses.
So your assertion that one cannot know what a first person experience 'is like' from a third party account rests entirely of what sort of data 'is like' consists of. The various experiments with synaesthetes, phantom limb patients, split hemisphere patients etc give compelling evidence that Jackson own assertion that qualia are non-physical data is not right. So qualia must be physical data (data which can be altered by injury/problems with the structure of the brain. So if it's physical data we'd need a convincing reason why that physical data cannot be imparted verbally like any other data.
Say you've never had lemon cake before and I'm trying to tell you 'what it's like' to eat lemon cake. I could describe the taste in terms of things you have experienced "like a sponge cake but more tangy", I could describe the various ways it makes me feel "satiated, but moreish", I could describe the memories it generates "sitting at my Grandma's table when I was nine". You'd have a pretty good picture, no? But not a complete one, you'd argue. there's something missing. But what is missing these are the exact same set of things that happen when I actually do taste lemon for the first time - "Oh, it's like a sponge cake but more tangy", "gosh that's filled me up but I still want more", "I think my Grandma used to serve this cake when I went to visit". Nothing more is happening than these thought (I mean a vast quantity more of them, but not of any different type). I could, in theory at least, impart them all to a third party.
Essentially my disagreement is not about the quality fo third party accounts - they're massively flawed, gappy and biased. My issue is with the sublimation of first party experience - which is massively flawed, gappy and biased. Next time you think your first person experience is delivering you something so full of good data that a third party account could not possibly generate it accurately, just remember that you're blind for 2 hours in every day (your occipital cortex switches off signals every time your eyes move), you're completely making up the colours in your peripheral vision (which is actually black and white) and the two blind spots which your eyes have, and then the very second all of this data is recorded into the short-term memory, it is recalled and altered by the cerebral cortex to better fit the what it expects to see. These processes produce different results each time depending on mood and life experiences thus far. There's every possibility the third party description is more accurate than the one your brain is now delivering to you as your own memory of 'what it was like'.
That's pretty much how I see it too. Interestingly, since we were talking about Ramachandran earlier, he has my personal favourite solution to the Mary's Room problem. He thinks Mary (on seeing a Red apple for the first time) will respond in one of two ways.
1. She will see the apple as grey. Having had no experience of colour, the sections of her brain that deal with colour will have simply atrophied (we can see evidence of this happening in real brains) and so she simply won't have a mechanism to deal with the different light waves hitting the retina. She might slowly develop one in later life, but it's possible she'll just always see grey. Note this is different to blind people who have their sight restored (another fascinating and again unexpected set of results) because the idea behind Mary is that she would have all the requirements of visual processing, so all the wiring would be attached already to shades of grey. Difficult (if not impossible in adulthood) to re-wire them.
2. She would simply say "Oh a red apple". In her colour isolation, the centres of her brain which deal with colour may simply send out their signals anyway in response to other stimuli (again we have examples of this happening in real brains), and so she would feel as if she'd always know what some colour was like. A bit like if you've never seen an exact shade of blue before, you still know what it is, even though the exact experience is completely new.
He errs on 2, but 1 is my personal favourite.
Chalmers speculated at one point that Dennett might truly represent a different kind of consciousness, that he might be a sign that we're not all alike. I notice the way you pull the words apart trying to find the meaning in them and my instinct is that Chalmers was right.
It would be extremely surprising that there were two different flavours of consciousness, that agree with each other almost all the time, but differ solely in whether they agree or disagree with (the framing of) a philosophical point.
When Nagel wrote about 'what it is like to be a bat', he said that while it is possible to imagine what it would be like to fly, navigate by sonar, hang upside down and eat insects ''like a bat’, that would not constitute 'being a bat'. Nagel claims that even if humans were able to metamorphose into bats, their brains would not have been configured as a bat's from birth; therefore, they would only be able to experience the life and behaviors of a bat, rather than literally being a bat.
The reason 'being' is such a difficult subject to discuss, is that it's something we're never outside or, or apart from. It's never an object of perception, but rather that in which perception and thought inhere. The proper response to this realisation is something similar to Husserl's epoche or suspension of judgement, rather than attempting to articulate a theory about it. Which is why it’s an outrage to Dennett: if you can’t articulate a theory about it, well, then, it doesn’t exist. ;-)
?
"What it's like" in this sense/context isn't supposed to refer to analogies. It's a way of saying that there's an experiential quality, or a quale, with respect to something.
Yes, but the point is that it doesn't really say anything at all without either analogy or attitudinal report, as every other question beginning "what is it like..." is seeking.
As Wittgenstein said...
Put down the pretense of confusion.
You can understand a stipulation without believing in it.
I think everyone agrees that there are first person experiences. I don't think everyone agrees with every conclusion people draw from that under every interpretation of how they work (it's so contentious some people might go blargh at even using "how" there, "it's not functionally reductive to anything!:)
So you understand it too? I'm not sure what the previous grief was about, but good.
Quoting fdrake
My point from the beginning was that we dont know how it works. Isaac's view is that science does explain it in the light of reduction.
Well, I don't understand how people find it so obvious, but I do understand what people mean when they say qualia or "what is it like". This is why I am so suspicious of it. What people go on to say as soon as they start talking in terms of "what is it like" and how bloomin' obvious it seems to them? And then suddenly there's "redness"... inverted spectra, weird shit with metaphysical possibilities and types and it's all so obvious apparently! And people begin imagining that the mere metaphysical possibility of something tells us stuff about the actual world... And there's so much appeal to intuition... All of this is often portrayed as falling naturally out of something we all feel.
Quoting frank
I don't think he ever said that.
Really? Didnt mean to be.
Aight. Rather than hearing you being supportive and critical at the same time. I heard "I agree with you, by the way what I perceive as your worldview is wrong - here are some flaws I will not gesture to here", it seemed like a very mixed message.
I said we dont know. You heard "you're wrong."
?
I don't know if you meant that, I thought you were being snide.
See? Contextual.
Not at all. I know in what context it was mentioned, what it was trying to say. I certainly wouldn't say I fully understood what one is. I'm fairly sure the concept is either incoherent (something exactly like us in every way but with only consciousness missing), or trivial (something partly like us but with all the constituent mental processes of consciousness missing, whatever they turn out to be).
Quoting frank
Why do discussions about consciousness always end up this way? With increasingly importunate claims that we really do know what you're talking about. We really don't.
It's a simple error of people reading "like" to refer to analogies, but in this context, it doesn't refer to an analogy.
Attitudinal reports are analogous also, just not directly so. I felt happy, only works as an analogy to the times the person you're speaking to experienced happiness, otherwise it communicates nothing. It's saying "I felt a bit like you did those times when you reported being happy".
Ok.
I don't read what Wittgenstein was saying that way, maybe taking it out of the context of the piece wasn't helpful of me. He's saying that the expression "what it is like" always refers to some this or thus, that it is incoherent otherwise. To say something is 'like' the thing it is doesn't make any sense as a proposition. So I don't think he's pointing out quite what you're arguing, but more along the lines of saying there is nothing 'it is like' to have some experience. It just is the experience, it's an event, it's not like anything, you couldn't communicate it to another person, even if you could somehow make them experience it themselves, because there is no it, the whole concept of 'the experience of seeing red' as opposed to just 'seeing red' is incoherent.
Yes, but I was talking there about " descriptions of what it's like". I am familiar with the philosophical idea of quale, but I am not convinced it is useful or even coherent; it seems to be more of a reification.
In other words I am suspicious of the notion that there is a quality of experience which somehow is different or more than the things and sensations that are apprehended.
Seeing red is an experience. The experience of seeing red isn’t something separate from the seeing of some red, it’s just the specific experience that is the seeing of some red. Like how Los Angeles is a city, and the city of Los Angeles isn’t something different from Los Angeles, it’s just the specific city that is Los Angeles. Saying “the city of Los Angeles” doesn’t abstract some separate “city” entity apart from Los Angeles; Los Angeles IS the city.
You and fdrake seem to really want to take this really basic way of talking about things to imply a lot more than I mean by it. As for your interpretation of the Wittgenstein quote, that still agrees with what I’m trying to say in every substantive way. There isn’t anything you can say to communicate an experience to someone, they just have to have it. You can’t tell someone what seeing red is like, in a non-analogical sense of that phrase that just means to describe it to them; they just have to see it themselves.
Yep. Or: the experience of having an orgasm isn't distinct from having an orgasm, just to put a megaphone on it.
No, the point is there is no such thing as the experience of seeing red. There is only an experience which may from time to time, involve seeing red. So...
Quoting Pfhorrest
...doesn't make sense. They will never experience for themselves what you just experienced, only things like it. Things which can as easily be described with no less error.
If I have experience X and I want to get another person to understand what it was for me to go through experience X, I have only two imperfect methods. Put them through experience Y which I think is similar enough to experience X to invoke the same feelings, or describe experience X in terms of experiences A, B and C which they've already had and recall. Neither are really any better than the other, they each have their merits in different situations, neither actually communicate what experience X was, for me.
So the sticking point is still an epistemological one because you're still suggesting that something about the experience can be learnt by having the experience, but this is not true if you accept that the two things are different. That's like saying you can learn something about Marx by reading Smith. The two books are different. You're not going to learn anything about seeing red (the family of experiences) by seeing red yourself. It might be that your experience is similar to others and so teaches you something about the family, or it might be that your experience is dissimilar to other (as for example with synaesthetes), in which case it tells you nothing about the family (as in the very next second a new synaesthete is born who changes the definition), and you'll never know which by your standards of knowledge here.
Furthermore, if you want to use some kind of Wittgensteinian family resemblance idea to say 'seeing red' is an experience you can learn about by having it, then the only way you'd be able to do that was by communicating with others. The very thing you're saying cannot be done.
Is there an experience of Tabby? And what does that mean? An experience of the weave of colors that is Tabby? The textures of her fur and the glossiness of her eyes? Or is there an experience of Tabby's movement as she knocks over the vase? What about her warmth? Do I experience Tabby-the-animal? Tabby-my-loved-cat? Do I 'experience' something named Tabby at all (does one experience a 'named' thing? - what difference does a name make?). Is my 'experience of Tabby' an aggregate of all these? Some but not others? In some situations but not others?
So I tend to find questions about 'what it is like to experience red?' to be a kind of cheat: it doesn't ask an interesting question. It takes for granted a certain 'how' of experience, it 'fixes' - in the sense of nailing down - the 'object' of experinece in a completely artificial way. It's a bad question. Everything interesting about 'what it is like to experience X' happens outside, beyond this question.
---
Merleau-Ponty has some beautiful passages trying to get at this:
"We must first understand that this red under my eyes is not, as is always said, a quale, a pellicle of being without thickness, a message at the same time indecipherable and evident, which one has or has not received, but of which, if one has received it, one knows all there is to know, and of which in the end there is nothing to say. ...
[Instead], Its precise form is bound up with a certain wooly, metallic, or porous configuration or texture, and the quale itself counts for very little compared with these participations. ... The color is yet a variant in another dimension of variation, that of its relations with the surroundings: this red is what it is only by connecting up from its place with other reds about it, with which it forms a constellation, or with other colors it dominates or that dominate it, that it attracts or that attract it, that it repels or that repel it. In short, it is a certain node in the woof of the simultaneous and the successive. It is a concretion of visibility, it is not an atom.
If we took all these participations into account, we would recognize that a naked color, and in general a visible, is not a chunk of absolutely hard, indivisible being, offered all naked to a vision which could be only total or null, but is rather a sort of straits between exterior horizons and interior horizons ever gaping open, something that comes to touch lightly and makes diverse regions of the colored or visible world resound at the distances, a certain differentiation, an ephemeral modulation of this world— less a color or a thing, therefore, than a difference between things and colors, a momentary crystallization of colored being or of visibility." (The Visible and the Invisible)
My answer?
“It is like experiencing y yet unlike experiencing y.”
This falls readily into the old Kantian question of what do we, or can we, know a priori? In more legible words, what is innate that provides us with experience?
Personally I’m more intrigued by the nature of the ‘question’ itself (as in the ability to question). My general, and poorly clad approach, leads me to the concept of ‘becoming’, or the ‘nascent’. It is clear enough that we quickly take up existence as an ‘exploration’ of experience. We ‘possess’ a memory bank, and then data it placed in it - the memory bank changes as more data comes in and the avail of a certain set of data comes packaged in multi-varied forms. Meaning an ‘experience’ is neither a singular unit nor a complex of singular units. This leaves us open to a degree of free association by way of which differences accumulate according to the flow of incoming information.
Our primary function is pretty much what Kant said it was. Our experience is ‘grounded’ in our ‘intuitions’ (which Kant meant as ‘grounded in our faculties of ‘knowing’ something only if grounded in both a sense of time and space - yet we are able after this matter of fact to abstract items that have no apparent ‘existence’ in time and space, but rather having reality as forms of distinction).
Before conscious sense experience (I mean awareness) there is a means of processing sensory input. Instantly the means of input becomes part of the ‘input’ - that is generally the conflation of dualism in action. We categorise items to understand, yet as we categorise items the categories themselves become items, and so on. A rather perplexing thought and one intricated by Kant’s CoPR, yet understandably he quickly finds he cannot ‘answer’ his own initial question but manages to glean a great deal of insightful thoughts and ideas from exploring the implications of the posed question of - excuse my clumsy attempt a paraphrasing his question in a more accessible parse - “What is there prior to sense experience in terms of something akin to ‘knowledge’?”
X has first person experiences = there is something it is like to be X
There is something it is like for John to see red = John experiences red
There is nothing it is like for Roger the Robot to see red = Roger the robot does not experience red
In some contexts it's clumsy and unhelpful. I think the most helpful use of the phrase is to use it as another way to refer to things that have experiences. Human beings have experiences, but rocks don't. There is something it is like to be a human being, but there is nothing it is like to be a rock. (This is of course wrong, panpsychism is true. You know that now because I've told you.) We don't have to use this language if it is isn't helpful. Anyone who likes to use "what it's like" language could just replace it with something else involving words like 'experience', 'feeling', 'sentience', 'consciousness'.
Street's title is unhelpful as it mixes the two. "What it's like to experience X" invites the reader to think there is something over and above experiencing X that is what it's like to experience X. That's not how the turn of phrase is supposed to work, as far as I understand. And if it is used in such a way that it seems to imply that, then I suggest finding another expression.
So is experiencing eating cake different from eating cake?
Yes, although in a human the two would nearly always occur together. I mean, it is theoretically possible to separate them. You could somehow feed cake to a person who is asleep and dreaming about eating sausages. Then you would have the action without the experience. Conversely, you could fiddle with a brain in a vat to have the experience of eating cake without the action (although I don't know if this is actually possible or not).
EDIT: Also, depending on what you think about robots, it might be possible for Roger the Robot to eat cake without experiencing anything at all.
Wouldn't that just be what it is like for Roger to eat cake?
Only in the sense that there would be nothing it is like for Roger the Robot to eat the cake.
We see what it is like from our point of view: presumably a messy and pointless exercise. The point of using 'something it is like' is to try to focus attention on Roger's point of view, and if it has a point of view at all in the same sense that humans do. If the language of 'what it's like' doesn't conjure that for you, then yes, it is unhelpful and should be ditched, as it's not doing what it is supposed to be doing.
...as we see from our point of view.
"...what it is like..." looks no more than an odd reification, creating an it where there is none.
That is exactly how it is supposed to work, which is why I disagree with it so strongly. It is the basis for a whole load of mystical woo around consciousness. The phrase is used in discussions around whether there are non-physical facts. To make this claim it is necessary for there to be some thing it is to experience red, which is itself a fact, but which is not derivable from the physical facts of seeing red.
Quoting bert1
This is the very issue at stake. How can you demonstrate that this is the case? Of course there is something it is like for the robot to see red. It is like having some sensation register and some action occur in response.
And why are we saying "what it's like" rather than "what it is" to be a bat?
Because they are different questions. The first is about consciousness, the second is about the definition of 'bat'.
Should we stop saying 'it's raining'?
But you can make the same metaphysical point without 'what it's like' language. For example: one might assert that "It is impossible to derive experiential knowledge of seeing red from the physical facts of seeing red." No 'what it's like' language is necessary if you don't like it.
Yeah, I wasn't making a metaphysical claim, these were just examples of language use. It was a statement about language. I was pointing out an equation between 'what it's like' language, and the language of experience.
OK, then yeah, I think sometimes 'what it's like' language is trying to capture experience. But part of the problem is that it acts as a technical referring term in other cases.
Jon Farrell has written an excellent paper on this. The key point being that in order to avoid the critiques of people like Peter Hacker about the use of 'what it's like' in ordinary language, one has to treat the term as a technical one. Yet, as Farrell goes on to argue, the term is not properly technical either in that it was not introduced, it is never defined, and it is not used consistently.
So I think the linguistic issue is actually central. Something unjustified is being 'snuck in' by alternatating between saying it is a technical term not at all like other uses of the word 'like', but then when pressed for a definition, resorting to "oh, you all know what I'm talking about" as if, again, it were an ordinary use term.
It's just the qualitative properties of your experiences. You must have qualitative properties to your experiences.
The qualitative properties of the bat's experiences, from the bat's perspective.
Jack: I wonder what it would be like to be a seagull?
Jill: Fantastic, I would imagine. The feeling of swooping through the air, the effortless traversing of long distances. Pecking people, nicking chips. I'd love it.
Jack: I dunno, it might not feel like how you imagine at all. We're very different from seagulls. It's like trying to imagine what it's like to be a snail, we're just too different.
Jill: Maybe, but even though I can't imagine what it is like to be a snail, I reckon there is still something it is like to be a snail, even though I'm not sure what. I think they have nerves don't they?
Jack: Sure. Not like rocks though, there's nothing it's like to be a rock. No nerves or even cells, so they couldn't possibly have experiences.
Jill: Agreed, there's nothing it's like to be a rock. Although some philosophers think there is according to my friend bert1.
Does anyone not understand what these two people are saying?
It's not though. Not in Jackson, not in Chalmers, not in Lewis, Byrne, Janzen. In all of these uses, and the use it is put to here, it constitutes more than just the qualitative properties of your experiences (where qualitative is meant as in subjective judgement, feeling). The feeling one has when experiencing something is entirely measurable and comminicable "it made me feel happy". The argument of Jackson is that the facts there are non-physical. The argument of Chalmers is that they cannot be reduced to physical mental states, even in theory...
Having been so often accused by you of reading comprehension issues, the first thing I did before responding was to look up 'qualitative' in my dictionary, to check that there wasn't some odd way it's sometimes used that you might mean. The first definition was "relating to what something or someone is like". It's like a disease people have, some compulsion maybe to write anything difficult to explain off as 'what it's like'
Your reading comprehension problem here: somehow you read me as implying something about "physical" versus "nonphysical." I didn't imply anything about that, and my comment has nothing to do with that.
Seriously, you've got to be one of the most annoying posters I've ever encountered because all you want to do is argue, but I don't think I've ever seen you respond to a single thing where you're not instead just exhibiting reading comprehension problems.
Usually I'd try to be more gentle and more or less ignore the reading comprehension problems, but you just won't stop trying to argue.
And by the way, no, "qualitative" does not denote a subjective judgment. Qualitative refers to properties (just not quantitative properties).
Anyway, how about intentionally trying to not argue with everything? That might work better.
Thanks for the quote! I think there are multiple differences.
1. The difference between the color and the thing
2. The difference between red and other colors
3. The difference between orange-red, true-red, and purplish red
4. The difference between saturated and unsaturated red
And maybe more.
Yes, obviously. As I've just cited, whole papers have been written by eminent philosophers, cognitive scientists and psychologists entirely on the subject of the fact that 'what it's like' does not make sense in terms of conscious experience.
Quoting bert1
All the answers Jill gives here are measurable brain states. She's answering the question with an attitudinal judgement. "I'd like it" essentially. She's using her past experience to literally image what it would be like (as in most similar to) in her experience and reporting what her feelings were related to those things. If this were the case then we do know what it is like to be a bat.
Quoting bert1
Now they are both changing the meaning. It was previously answered as "what in your experience is it most similar to and how did you feel about that?" but now, such an interpretation would not make sense "what (in the seagull's/snail's experience) is it most like to have the seagull's/snail's experience?" it's become nonsense.
Quoting bert1
Now jack does know again this previously ineffable fact. Where before some barrier prevented him from knowing what it was like to be a snail, that barrier has now confidently been removed simply because rocks don't have nerve endings. But is 'what it's like' simply the having of nerve endings, the signals coming therefrom? Apparently not.
Did you give an example of a paper that you believe is claiming that "'What it's like' does not make sense in terms of conscious experience"?
What It's Like to Freakin' Hate the Phrase: "What It's Like"
Chapter 1:
:lol:
Concur.
Qualia: what gets invented when “representation” isn’t good enough.
Yes.
I don't think that's right. That we 'have experiences with content' in a pre-technical sense is uncontroversial. What's controversial about it is that as soon as we start describing it in a philosophical context, there's always lots of conceptual baggage. When "the content of our experiences" is transposed into this kind of discussion, rather than the usual stuff we do when we ask "how was your day?" or "how was that for you?" and answer it, we bring an interpretive style to it; a framing of the 'facts of first person experience'; what gets rejected or strongly questioned is the framing, rather than the facts.
Say I perform some mindfulness exercise (an instance of active attentive meditation @Wayfarer) and my current experiential state is attended to, I'll always have some focus (some things are attended with more intensity than others), colours are on objects; I recognise, say, the colour of my walls as white, but I perform such a cognitive act during the perception. I'm currently listening to a podcast, and my awareness keeps switching between what I hear, what I see, and what I think about while writing. Much of this is transparent, when I'm typing the thing I notice is the tactile feedback of the keyboard, but other than that I'm in some reflective flow state (interrupted by misphrasings, imprecisions, cool stuff on the podcast).
Even that description contextualises the "first person facts" of experience as occurring over time and leveraging historical understandings (why do I see the wall as white? Why do I automatically understand the words coming into my ears? Or write the next sentence as is?) an experiential context that I am currently in. Focussing on "what is it like" for me is an extremely artificial cognitive state, requiring effort to maintain. It removes most of the texture of the world as I experience it.
So, rather than doubting "what is it like" makes sense as a framing device because I'm being insufficiently attendant to first person phenomenology, I'm doubting that it makes as a framing device partly because how people talk about it just doesn't accurately describe how I experience the world. So I suspect that what people think of when they think of a quale is actually a rather structured concept; generalisations of experience, instances of memory, analogies; much different from the sort of stuff 'simply attending to your first person experience" is supposed to reveal.
And when you take all this texture as a given, inherent in a first person experience, all the hows fall away due to the framing of the intellectual exercise... so it's no longer surprising that it appears to be a "brute fact" or a "given" of experience, because the priming for interpreting experience induced by "what is it like" hides that it's ultimately a philosophical-intellectual exercise, rather than derived from a state of "pure self awareness".
lol - you're not going to say which paper that was supposed to be?
It makes sense! We always come to an understanding instantaneously of what we experience (experience-of is always experience-as). Something with no patterns in probably calls higher-order sensory processing architecture without lower-order sensorimotor information constraining it much; yielding hallucinations and loss of the sense.
I'm reminded of an exercise of when you simulate a response variable and millions of predictor variables independently (no links), eventually the response variable is perfectly modelled by what is really noise, and occasionally you get a near perfect fit by coincidence. If we always have to 'fit' even when it's 'noise', the only sensible 'fits' would be extremely abstracted patterns of relationship from the noise (coinciding by chance rather than through genuine relation); probably leveraging memory and imagination more than sensory information. They're also probably going to be aleatory and episodic; since the sensory information's patternlessness would 'refute' any pattern imposed upon it through the high order sensory processing.
From brief Googling that's consistent with the first person reports of Ganzfeld subjects.
I didn't realize anyone looked at it this way. With Chalmers, the focus is heavily on what we don't know, the approaches that are out there, and the challenge it all poses to science. He uses "first person data" pretty frequently. It's a pretty quiet, cautious, analytical approach.
I agree that some people can suspend an ontological approach and some can't. I'm fairly anti-realist about ontology, so I forget that others feel pretty strong commitments.
Having global suspicion about a domain is a pretty strong commitment! Chalmers himself gets a lot of mileage out of (what he sees as) conceptual consequences of his posits.
Quoting frank
And yet he ends up in a qualified panpsychism and argues that all (or a strong most) hitherto existing science has not dealt with the problem he's posing?
Edit: What I'm trying to highlight is that the framing of this stuff is very much not theory neutral.
Why would you be reading the idea that way?
Qualia aren't supposed to have hows, they're just there.
That we have experiences is (probably) theory neutral.
If you label those experiences "qualia" as an independent(?) act of judgement, that's probably also theory neutral, though I would be suspicious that anyone would do that without exposure to the literature on qualia.
If you talk about those experiences in terms of qualia, that's usually not theory neutral.
This already makes me suspicious - an ontology populated by "mental states" which may or not be "accessible" in a (specified way) by "introspection" (so I have to introspect to "access" qualia? I thought they were immediate parts of experience...). I'm sure that there are coherent ways of fleshing all this out; but yeah, it's something in need of fleshing out, rather than immediate (in the Cartesian sense) understanding suggested in the phrase.
So, guide me through the process you would use to attend to a quale?
I don't have suspicion. I don't understand how projects like idealism and physicalism are supposed to be saying anything informative. The philosophy football game that accompanies those ideas is fruitful. I think it's likely that the fumes of that game are fueling this very discussion.
So let me ask you: when you say that it's inevitable that baggage is drawn into the discussion, what baggage are you dragging in? What theory?
Quoting fdrake
Did he? Do you know in which writings he settles down into the view of panpsychism (as opposed to just considering it)?
There's a fair amount of scientific speculation about how phenomenal consciousness works. Chalmers writes about those efforts. It's a science in its infancy.
So take that one part at a time.
One, we could say that qualia are either accessible or not. The standard idea of supporters is that they're accessible.
But we can't just say that they're accessible and leave it at that. Because my qualia are not accessible to you. So we have to qualify just how they're accessible. "Introspection" refers to observing one's own mental state. That's how they're accessible. By observation or awareness of one's own mental state. So they're introspectively accessible.
"Phenomenal" refers to appearance, and could be contrasted with "noumenal." When we're talking about qualia, we're talking about appearances to our own mind.
You could say that "mental" is "inner" (re your question about this). Our minds are not directly observable to other people.
"Inside the head"--that's referring to your mind, on the view that minds are brains in particular states.
I don't think he's ever assented to it; or been totally convinced of it; but he has defended it as sensible. I think "worthy of consideration" is about as close to "I definitively believe this" as you get in analytic philosophy papers (hashtag snark).
Quoting frank
A specific theory? Nah. Don't have one. The conceptual baggage I'm dragging into any discussion of first person experience (which I'm aware of and want to write up):
(1) Distrust of the usual mechanisms of introspection to yield knowledge; they're just part of it and don't suffice by themselves. I have higher requirements for conceptual constructions than I do of the thinking I need to do in the street or interpersonally.
(2) Suspicion about thinking of people (including myself) as individuals with intrinsic character of experience; I see us as much more diffuse. It doesn't even make too much sense to me for me to "have" a quale. Pre-theoretically I'll own the experience (that the experience is happening to me is often part of phenomenal character); but theoretically to me it looks a lot more like my body and environment are in a certain configuration with a certain history (of which only parts "have" phenomenal character, and of which only parts are "mine") rather than all of that being present "in me" and "accessible by" introspection (introspection is a practice we have to do, not something that happens all the time; it's a lot more cognitive effort than we usually put in in most things to introspect).
(3) The underlying intuition I have about (2) is that even something like my "body" or "soul" are distributed over bodily and socio-cultural processes, and I'm an "output" that can interact with the parameters of my situation and (some of my) self. I see my experiences as something like "questions" my body is asking itself and its environment (they talk back); self modelling built on top of pre-individual processes that emerge as phenomenal characters (and are conditioned by my history). But I would also like to say that my body and mind are something that can play parts as unities in other processes; giving someone a hug is something done as a whole body (and as a person), not something my limbic system does or the recipient's does.
Deleuze and Guattari's body without organs ontological metaphor is a good mission statement for my intuitions there.
(4) In terms of the "translation" of our bodily processes into phenomenal characters, I have no idea. Not all bodily processes are capable of them (our nerves have to be involved somehow, areas with little nervous connection don't seem to have distinctive feelings). Our mental states look to me to be high order interactions of bodily processes with an accompanying bodily process of self modelling (which looks to occur in the brain, as mirror neurons and high-order processing occur there, and we develop self consciousness after neural-cognitive development). How (phenomenal character) I experience seems intimately tied up with how other people have treated me developmentally; pre-self conscious anticipations and memories developing into self conscious ones (this ties into the self as a socio-cultural process, a self is a learned self constrained by individual level bodily variation). Edit: I'm pretty convinced that we see ourselves as "in our heads" just because our eyes are there, though.
(5) Tentatively I think questions about "why is this physical state conscious?" should be translated into "how is this physical state conscious?"; and there I think I broadly agree with Chalmers - at least his intention of providing a vocabulary for linking phenomenal states with physical ones - but I'm suspicious of "the explanatory gap" in general and the metaphysical consequences arising from it. To me it seems like a similar question to "why does money turn into food?". Of course, it doesn't literally, but we turn money into food through purchasing things. I think our bodies turn bodily processes into phenomenal states through (partial) self modelling (though not necessarily algorithmically!); and that self modelling is in part a social process (embedded in social practices).
That all seems way more complex than would be warranted by not understanding what you quoted from SEP. :razz:
Are you sure? It seems simple to me, I think you're sitting on stuff just as crazy, you just don't problematise it. And that's a problem.
Introspection's a lot different from awareness. And are they accessible in the same way? Are sex quales like food quales? If you say "qualia come from self awareness", that's consistent with lots of radically different accounts, and there being many different (partially overlapping) forms of self awareness. Moreover, "observing one's own mental state" is not something we do all the time; we're simply not attending to our own thoughts and experiences in our usual mode of functioning, they impress upon us when we're doing stuff in a context (and the context includes our current state of mind). If you start presenting things like this, you can gloss over the details; but every opportunity to gloss over the details is an opportunity to frame things as obvious.
When they're not, they're really really not.
Quoting Terrapin Station
What is accessible by what? Accessibility is a 2 place relation, what kind of thing goes on "one side" of the relation and what kind of thing goes on "the other"? X accesses Y, what does that mean in the context of a quale? Is the "access" to the quale introspective, or is it self aware?
Quoting Terrapin Station
I had no idea we needed to inherit the intellectual tradition of Kant in order to process our own experiences.
Quoting Terrapin Station
And now you have a whole epistemology of direct vs indirect access to give.
Quoting Terrapin Station
And now you're a physicalist.
Seriously Terrapin, what you think is just common sense and shared by everyone is batshit theory-ladened. And then you snark at me for being aware of (some of) my own bat-shit theory ladenedness?
I think about this from time to time (sometimes when I'm looking in the mirror). I don't have the issues you do about selfhood, though. Look back at SLX's post about how qualia can't be independent items. The same is true of the self.
Quoting fdrake
It may be that a satisfactory theory of consciousness will develop in the context of neutral monism. Who knows?
Eh, reducing questions about what a self is to what our intuitions tell us it is? That's not my jam.
Quoting frank
I shrug. Don't like substance ontologies (except Spinoza's).
Did you look back at SLX's post as I suggested?
Not sure what that has to do with anything.
Yes.
Quoting frank
Monism's usually understood as a substance ontology. There's only 'one type of thing', and neutral monism says that the 'one type of thing' is both mental and physical or either (as modes which possibly interact). Right?
Why do you accept MP's thoughts about the dependent character of qualia, but balk at applying the same insight to the self?
Brain and/or bodily states.
Quoting frank
I had no idea I balked at it!
I thought you were on board with the "extended mind" angle.
Yes. That doesn't mean I think rocks are capable of producing their own phenomenal states?
No, you're reading that into it. A common definition of "introspection" is "the examination or observation of one's own mental and emotional processes." Observation can obtain via simple awareness.
Introspection can be more than that. But it isn't necessarily. In the context of qualia, we're simply talking about properties from a subjective perspective, as you experience them. Awareness is sufficient for that.
Quoting fdrake
The properties in question. Accessible by individuals.
Quoting fdrake
You don't. But it's something you should be familiar with when trying to read and understand a philosophy encyclopedia.
I'm not being snarky about anything in the post in question. You said that you didn't understand the passage you quoted. I'm trying to help you understand it. You can't expect an entry in a philosophy encyclopedia to be divorced of any theoretical commitments or background. It would be impossible to write an article for an encyclopedia that way.
You experience properties? Weird. Do phenomenal states consist of properties? What does that look like? How do you access them? A whole individual accesses a quale which is somehow a part of their phenomenal state through a posited process of "self awareness" which coincidentally links properties to individuals?
This looks to me like a stipulated characterisation of experience, rather than an experience (the internality/externality dichotomy cuts both ways). It seems just as plausible to me that self awareness is part of everything we could recollect as an experience, and that stipulated properties within those experiences are actually conceptual (not affective/sensory) understandings derived from them. Rather than a quale being the experience (or quales composing experience, depending on how they're individuated), it's a representation of the experience, filtered through our interpretations into words like "property" or "redness" or "red". Too pedantic a distinction? I don't think it is, it's really important to try and track how the experience of the walls in my room "counts as" an experience of white(ness), say, and whether that "counting as" is a retrospective act of conception/synthesis over experiences or "just" an instance of "self awareness".
Since we're self aware, we bring interpretive baggage (theory-ladened ness) to everything we think and perceive; so I'm suspicious of the (stipulated) neutrality of qualia at al.
What makes you so sure you experience properties? Does the thing you're calling a "property" there work like a concept or a percept? Is it both?
Quoting Terrapin Station
Aye. I don't expect an encyclopaedia article on qualia which goes through the positions to be completely theory neutral. What I do expect is that a stipulative definition of something which is supposed to characterise our experiences to be mostly theory neutral (ideally it only contains inherent thought biases and tricky to eliminate ideological biases). But the ways it is conveyed (and the way you're conveying it) always have some conceptual baggage. For previously stated reasons, it isn't surprising that the conceptual baggage is there, but I want to call a spade a spade.
That is very much like the point I'm trying to make to distance myself from what Jackson thinks he's proved. The first-person experience of phenomenal consciousness, the so-called hard problem of consciousness, is really a complete trivialism; yet still not something to be denied. Like how, to a naturalist like me, calling something "natural" is a completely trivial descriptor that adds nothing of note; but at the same time, that doesn't mean we say that the thing is not natural. Just that it being natural doesn't really mean much. And there being a first-person experience of phenomenal consciousness doesn't really mean much. It's functionalist access consciousness that's important and differentiates things meaningfully from each other, and that can be studied in the third person because a thing's function is also observable in the thing's behavior, not just in its experience. But there is still that first person experience. There's just nothing more interesting to say about it.
There isn't anything that is absent properties. So yes you experience properties, and yes, your phenomenal states have properties . . . and that's all that qualia are--those qualities or qualitative properties of phenomenal states.
Quoting fdrake
How could there be something you "could recollect" as an experience that wouldn't have properties?
The point is less that 'qualia can't be independent items', than 'stop thinking in terms of qualia entirely'.
"This is a way Terrapin thinks about properties"
Quoting Terrapin Station
"Therefore we experience the way Terrapin thinks we do"
Quoting Terrapin Station
What state of mind do you have to be in to notice properties (as you think of them) in what you're recollecting or experiencing?
Another thing that bugged me; observation or awareness of one's own mental state. If I'm observing a quale, the observation of that quale is part of my mental state, surely (in some sense anyway; my walls are not in my mind). So we have this criterion where "qualia only accompany self aware experiences"; or maybe "a quale only accompanies experiences that are aware of the quale"; but why would "an experience which is aware of a quale" be a typical experience?
When I look at the walls, they're white, they're textured; I guess they're also yellow due to the light, but when I look at them for a bit they seem kinda pink or purple. If I force the wall to be in my peripheral vision, turning my head, and focus my attention on the wall, I'm not really seeing it as white in the same way; the larger topographical features of the skirting board and the undulations of the wooden brace that skirts my room are by far the most notable features. The whiteness off the wall diminishes in felt intensity towards the edge of my field of view (presumably because the limits of my visual field are less sensitive).
When I was describing the experience of the wall, I was reaching for words that seemed appropriate during the cognitive act, "white" came to mind first. When I actually focussed on the suitability of "white" in describing the walls; it's not quite right, they're illuminated, little patches of shadow form revealing the raised parts of the wallpaper patterns... There's so much more detail there.
If I wanted to pull apart that experience (which was extended in time... not "instantaneous" if such a thing is even possible) in terms of felt properties, I'd be doing some intellectual (and writing) exercise. I'd focus my attention on certain parts of the walls, and certain distinctive property types that seem to apply ;topography, colour; and I'd used these properties to indicate the general features of my experience for public consumption.
But notice, I've had to pull apart my experience with a certain conceptual grammar; topography, colour. When I started describing things in terms of colour, the walls provided the same visual impression to me (well, not quite the same, the increased attention on writing dulled the intensity of things in my visual field outside of the screen), but my intellectual attention shifted, and I was processing memories with language; reflecting; at the same time as looking at the walls; experiencing.
This "pulling apart of experience with a certain conceptual grammar" is a cognitive act; intellectual post-processing of experience; for the purposes of describing it. It shifts attention to generalities which can be communicated, rather than singularities which are experienced. Where did the conceptual grammar come from? Does the wall have "topography quales" and "colour quales"? I don't think I see either in isolation, the partition of the wall into topography quales and colour quales is something I do using my sensory information with some interpretive heuristic... I really just see this wall.
It's an ontological fact. If something obtains in some way, it has some characteristics, some qualities, some ways that it is, etc.
Tell me the story of how these properties inhere in a quale?
Again, what qualia are in the first place are the properties of the experience, as the experience.
Quoting bert1I still don't see the need for the term, "like".
Then we should be saying "what it is to be a bat's consciousness" and "what it is to be a bat's body" which consciousness is just part of? Seems like an incoherent distinction to make.
What would be the point in asking such a question? What knowledge would we be getting that we couldn't acquire by thinking about it differently?
The purpose is to underscore that if bats have conscious experiences--and presumably they do have some sorts of conscious experiences, then (a) those experiences are probably quite different from human conscious experiences (if for no other reason than they have some very different faculties than we do, such as an ability to employ echolocation with high precision during high-speed flight), and (b) it's not possible from a third-person perspective, a perspective which is the only one from which we can talk about bat consciousness (and bat brains if we're physicalists or "reductionists" as Nagel puts it in his paper), to know the properties of the conscious experiences of bats, from the bat's perspective, as the bat knows the same.
I guess what I'm trying to emphasise is that maybe associating qualia with facets of experience; like redness or whatever; is rather artificial. There's got to be some principle by which you attend or demarcate the facets; it's not like I can separate the "shape quale" from the "colour quale" in my perception of this table, shape and colour are conceptual demarcations that use perceptual information, rather than perceptual information itself. Concepts rather than percepts.
I'm not going to deny that I see this table as browny-beigy with a wavering wood pattern; but I'm very careful to attend to the processing of experience this requires. The experiential state I have doesn't "have" browny-beigy with a wavering wood pattern - that's there in the table. The table doesn't effect me browny-beigy-wood-patterny-wise; there's a table here, and it looks like this and it suggests interpretation as browny-beige wavey-wood-patterny table.
How this "as" works looks really important to me. I'm not too happy to think of it as a "property of" the experience; that sets up some relational problem of the experiential property and the table properties; which is precisely what that as seems to address. So to put it "in the experiential property"? That looks like it might miss how experience works from the beginning; by asking questions whose framing precludes relevant information.
Might be garbled, might help.
I see the table. (an event)
[math]x R y[/math] (x = me, R = sees, y = table)
I see the table as brown.
Is this: [math]x R y[/math] ? [math]x R (B(y))[/math] ? [math]x R y \cap x R B(y)[/math]? (x = me, R = sees, B(y) is the brown of the table, y is the table) [math]\cap[/math] is logical and.
What's the quale here? I have a quale? Is this:
[math]x R y[/math] or [math]x R B(y) [/math] or is this [math]x S (xRB(y))[/math] where S is some "access" relation, for self-awareness of the relationship I have with the table. Is this the right parsing? Or is it a property of the person... [math]P(x) \leftrightarrow xS(xRB(y))[/math] (in that case, where does the y go, does its existence become irrelevant under an epoche? Is usual perception "functioning like it's under an epoche"?)
Let's say there's some entailment relation:
[math]x R y \rightarrow (x R B(y) \cap xS(xRB(y)) \cup P(x)[/math]
[math]\cup[/math] is logical disjunction. What's the status of that entailment with respect to perception? Is it something our perception "does"? Is it really a biconditional (this is what perception is)? How do we get from one to the other?
I don't think that trying to parse it in terms of formal logic is going to be helpful at this point.
First, most people would say that the shape of the table (let's use shape for a minute so we don't get sidetracked with the usual discussions regarding colors and whether they're secondary properties, etc.), as a property of the table, isn't identical (as in literally the same thing) to the shape of the table in your experience (or we could say in your perception of the table).
Do you agree with that?
No? There's an underside of the table.
What I asked about has nothing to do with the underside of the table.
Disagreeing with what I said would amount to you believing that the shape of the table in your experience IS identical with the shape of the table as a property of the table.
Ok. The table has lots of properties. How do these consist in the perception?
For Christ's sake, stop answering everything by telling me what you didn't mean, it's not a fucking guessing game. If you didn't mean the thing I interpreted you as saying, why can't you just say what you did mean in response? What on earth is prompting you to give half a response all the time?
The comment I was responding to was simply...
Quoting Terrapin Station
Where in that does it make clear that 'it's' refers to your personal opinion and not, the standard treatment of the matter in philosophy (which I'm almost certain was what fdrake was asking about). If the latter then my response is entirely appropriate, it is not treated as you claim by most of the philosophers who use the concept.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Why would I do that when the citation is barely a page back and the philosophers I've additionally mentioned are hardly obscure? The main paper on the subject is by PMS Hacker, as I have already mentioned twice, if you can't even be bothered to look it up I can't see why I should.
Again, I'm asking if you agree that the shape of the table, as a property of the table, is different than the shape of the table in your experience or as part of your perception of the table.
If you disagree, you're saying that the two are identical.
Sigh, you don't discuss with someone who refuses to answer return questions and defines your options. I don't want a rhetorical pissing match, I want a discussion.
I wrote what I meant initially. I didn't write anything about physicalism in that post. No matter what I write, you read it with weird reading comprehension, so it's not as if it's a simple matter to clear that up. Any clearing-up attempt is going to be read with reading comprehension problems.(Based on a lot of experience.)
I'm not referring to qualia in any unusual manner.
Okay, so I'm guessing that you mean Hacker's "Is There Anything It Is Like to Be a Bat"? I'll have to read through that again, but I don't recall him saying anything that amounts to "What it's like' does not make sense in terms of conscious experience"
@Isaac also linked this one.
Sure, and in a discussion, you'd answer a simple question like "Do you agree that the shape of the table, as a property of the table, is different than the shape of the table in your experience or as part of your perception of the table"?
Especially when the aim is explaining something to you that you apparently do not understand/apparently are not familiar with.
If you respond without answering that, as if you didn't even understand what you were being asked, then I'd clarify with respect to your response and ask again.
In a discussion, you'd not just ignore it and ask your own question and then get pissy about not moving on until you've answered the first question. That's rude behavior, not a discussion.
"Is not technical talk" in no way amounts to "does not make sense in terms of conscious experience"
And I did. No. The shape of the table isn't experienced as a totality. If you like; there are table properties that are not experiential properties. Since there are table properties which are not experiential properties, the set of table properties is not identical with the set of experiential properties. Some subset of table properties might be identical to experiential properties of the table, but I don't know how to match the two. How do you match the two? How do you ensure the identity?
Quoting Terrapin Station
Dude. I'm familiar with qualia (though I do not claim to be an expert). I quoted the SEP article's summary for the purposes of pointing out ambiguities I see in it. If I blur my eyes and drink the kool aid it makes perfect sense.
Quoting Terrapin Station
... Wow. That's how you behave all the time!
Quoting Terrapin Station
Did you even read past the abstract? Or did you substitute a lazy assumption about the whole argument and what's at stake in it with what they say? It's not just about "it's not technical talk" => "does not make sense". It's about how "it's not precise" allows assumptions to creep in.
Which is largely what we've been discussing, in another form.
Again, this is a problem, because it suggests that you do not understand what I'm asking. I'm not asking anything about a "totality." That's completely irrelevant to what I'm asking you.
More words then please.
A common view is that there's some shape to the table, as a property of the table (whether we're talking about a "totality" of the shape of the table or not--that doesn't matter), AND that that shape of the table, as a property of the table, is different than the shape of the table as you experience it, or via your perception.
Or in other words, there's a common view that there is a table, but you don't literally have a table in your perception--that is, your perception is not made out of wood, you can't set a coffee cup on your perception etc. as you can with the literal table.
So on this view, the shape of the table, and the wood texture of the table, and so on, are not literally the same properties as your perception of the table.
Do you agree with that?
I agree with this. How could I not? What I don't agree with is that it says the same thing as this:
Quoting Terrapin Station
"There's some shape to the table, as a property of the table" - when you experience the table, are you saying you experience the shape of the table as a distinct part of the experience? When you experience and attend to your experience is the shape of the table distinct from the table?
To my reading, you've living in a world where there are table properties and experiential properties, and experiential properties are distinct from table properties. My question, and my site of criticism is regarding the phenomenal character of the experience; within the quale. You may say "I am describing what the phenomenal character of the quale is", but I still want to know what account you have of the shape of the table within the quale?
FWIW I'm pretty sure we all actually agree on the actual substance of this matter and this discussion is entirely about people thinking things other people are saying mean other than what they mean by them.
It's funny. Qualia discussions on here usually go like this in my experience. Everyone gets baffled because "the other side just doesn't understand". I don't think I'm baffled by this, because qualia talk has a set of base assumptions which are rarely examined; you have to "buy in" to grok them.
Edit: it's also very hard to not "buy in".
You thinking we are implying those unexamined assumptions that we explicitly deny implying is exactly what I mean about people thinking things other people are saying mean other than what they mean by them.
What assumptions are you explicitly denying? What's a quale to you?
Edit: run me through an encounter you have with a quale?
It's like we're each trying to look past what the other is saying in order to grasp how the train went off the track.
Like psychoanalysts we say "You arent aware that you're assuming this, but you're just in denial, or just a poor self-historian. More self reflection will show you... something.
I think for the qualia-team, p-zombies are a marker, where the whole raft of existentialism that zeroes in on that "quality of being that comes to rest in the sanctuary of the form" is not working.
The marker for the anti-qualia side is what? That I just really have no idea what you're talking about? I've never had the experience of seeing red?
But it's not that, is it? It's that: your theories make me nervous. Even the theories you dont realize you're employing.
Maybe! I see the cup as blue. The (my) phenomenal character (in terms of colour) of the cup has a blue quale. "What it is like to see the cup? Partly, its colour is blue."
Does this pass your "I can talk in terms of qualia" test?
No. I'm not saying that. The distinction is between the shape of the table as a property of the table, and the shape of the table as you experience it.
The only way for you to have the shape of the table as a property of the table in your experience is for your experience to be identical to the table--so that your experience is made of wood, can hold a cup of coffee, etc.
Right! And in the quale is there some corresponding shape property of the table?
The shape as you experience it is a property of your experience. Whether there's a corresponding shape of the table, as a property of the table, is kind of irrelevant to the qualia question.
Ok! I don't think we're talking cross purposes, then. At least, I think I understand you. I assume there will be an analogous colour quale.
Is the shape quale distinct from the colour quale? Are they distinct properties?
Yep.
Yes, obviously shape and color are distinct. You can have the same shape table where it's a different color or vice versa.
I agree. Shape and colour are distinct concepts. Are they distinct in the phenomenal character? Are they distinct in the percept?
I don't really talk in terms of qualia, but if I had to define them I'd say they're just facets or aspects of subjective, first-person, phenomenal experiences. I don't think they (either experiences or qualia) are "things", separate ontological objects apart from the objects that those experiences are of. That kind of separate-ontological-stuff talk is the sort of assumption I've been explicitly denying.
[I think there are only physical things, and that physical things consist only of their empirical properties, which are actually just functional dispositions to interact with observers (who are just other physical things) in particular ways. A subject's phenomenal experience of an object is the same event as that object's behavior upon the subject, and the web of such events is what reality is made out of, with the nodes in that web being the objects of reality, each defined by its function in that web of interactions, how it observably behaves in response to what it experiences, in other words what it does in response to what is done to it.
In an extremely trivial and useless sense everything thus "has a mind" inasmuch as everything is subject to the behavior of other things and so has an experience of them ("phenomenal consciousness", the topic of the "hard problem"), but "minds" in a more useful and robust sense are particular types of complex self-interacting objects, and therefore as subjects have an experience that is heavily of themselves as much as it is of the rest of the world ("access consciousness", the topic of the "easy problem").]
My trivial point of agreement with philosophers like Jackson that I've been trying to explain without implying any kind of ontological baggage could basically be summed up as "we are not philosophical zombies". I don't think philosophical zombies are possible or even coherent, but I also don't think supernatural things are possible or even coherent, so while I don't think "is natural" or "is not a philosophical zombie" really communicate much of interest, they are complete trivialisms when properly understood, I nevertheless confidently assert that everything is natural and there are no philosophical zombies to be clear that I disagree with that nonsense.
By definition philosophical zombies could not be discerned from non-zombies from the third person, only in the first person can one know that oneself is not a philosophical zombie, and the only trivial thing I think Jackson proves is that there is such a first-person experience that we have, the likes of which philosophical zombies would not have. Which, again, is a complete trivialism because I think everything necessarily has that and it's incoherent to talk about not having it so saying something has it really doesn't communicate anything of greater interest than disagreement with such nonsense.
Yes, otherwise there would be no way to make a distinction between them experientially. You'd not be able to experience the same shape with a different color or the same color with a different shape. That makes them necessarily distinct in phenomenal character/properties/qualia.
(1) I see the table, it presents as a certain shape and a certain colour.
(2) The shape and the colour present together. There is a shape-colour quale.
(3) There is no shape quale (in this experience of the table) independently of the colour quale. There is no colour quale (in this experience of the table) independently of the shape quale.
(4) There is a conceptual distinction between shape and colour.
(5) The distinction between "the shape quale of this table" and "the colour quale of this table" is conceptual, it is not based on the percept of this table.
(agree/disagree to list or items?)
You seem to want to say that "the shape quale of this table" and "the colour quale of the table" are distinct within the percept. That they are based on the phenomenal character of this experience. If this is true, what in this experience furnishes the distinction between the shape and the colour of the table?
If they are not distinct in the percept (2), then they can only be distinct in the concept.
Quoting myself to add: it occurs to me that supernatural things are not just a useful analogy for my take on philosophical zombies, they're actually ontologically very similar if not identical things on my account of ontology. For something to be supernatural would be for it to have no observable behavior; for something to be a philosophical zombie would be for it to have no phenomenal experience. Both of those are just different ways of saying that the thing is completely cut off from the web of interactions that is reality, and is therefore unreal.
To my way of thinking this is an unhelpful, misleading way of talking. The shape of the table is not different than the way the shape of the table is perceived from different vantage points. The appearances of the table from different vantage points reveal the shape of the table as such; we could say they are functions. as it were, of the actual shape, they are not different shapes.
So, what is the actual (in itself) shape of the table, anyway? Is it as it would be seen, as it were, from no vantage point? Or is it some imagined totality of how it would be seen from every possible vantage point? I would say the actual shape of the table is just an idealized or formal abstraction derived from the information accumulated from different views of the table.
Would you say it is ever possible for the shape of the table as it appears to be the same as the actual shape? If not, then what, for you, is the actual shape of the table?
Not that any of this matters for whether there are qualia, by the way, but one is extensional relations and the other is an electromagnetic frequency. Those aren't the same thing experientially.
You said "It's just the qualitative properties of your experiences. You must have qualitative properties to your experiences."
In Nagel, Jackson and Chalmers (three of the major users of the term you were trying to define) it does not simply mean the qualitative properties of your experience without you using 'qualitative' in some specific or technical way (which is why I specified the definition I was using). 'Qualitative' properties, by my definition, are attitudinal responses - like/dislike, positive/negative. These are things which could - in theory - be measured and determined by a third party. The position of Nagel, Jackson and Chalmers is that qualia cannot - even in theory - be reduced to facts which are accessible by a third party, As you later specified with regards to the question of what it's like to be a bat.
Chalmer's P-Zombie, for example, is predicated entirely on the fact that all brain functions (including feeling - happiness, sadness etc) could go in and yet still some aspect of qualia be missing - this elusive 'what it's like' that we're trying to get you to define.
But as Hacker points out, if attitudinal feeling is what they meant then "Such questions can be answered, and one need not be an X or similar to an X in order to answer them. One merely has to be well informed about the lives of Xs"
A lot of what you call my 'reading comprehension' issues are me trying to charitably interpret something you've said that is superficially trite and uninteresting as if it were a meaningful contribution to the debate. To do that I have to do an awful lot of reading in to what little you write. As @fdrake said "More words please".
This is a case in point. My first reaction to that single sentence you felt like gave an definition of qualia was that by 'qualitative', you meant the second definition I quoted - 'what it's like', the 'quality' of the experience. I charitably dismissed that option because to define it that way would be pointlessly circular. Perhaps I was wrong and you did in fact mean to be pointlessly circular?
Quoting Terrapin Station
To put it a bit simpler:There is experience prior to words. What that experience amounts to and/or consists of is what matters here, it seems to me.
If all stipulated characterization(what it's like) is a report, and that which is being reported upon is something that exists in it's entirety prior to words(to be a bat), then that report can most certainly be mistaken. Some experience(bat experience) is prior to words. When something is prior to words, it can be neither existentially dependent upon them nor consist of them. Any and all reports that stipulate otherwise are mistaken.
When it comes to what we say about the experience of a non linguistic creature, we can be mistaken, in exactly the same way that we can be wrong in what we say about that anything and everything that exists in it's entirety prior to our report of it.
We can be wrong about the elemental constituency thereof.
There is most certainly experience prior to words. There is most certainly experience that does not consist of words. There is most certainly experience that is not existentially dependent upon words.
What does all experience have in common such that having it is exactly what makes it an experience?
Not words, so not Quale.
Bats do not experience the brownness or smoothness or roundness of the table they are hanging beneath. Those terms are used - they are the means - for us to draw distinctions between kinds of colors, textures, and shapes. As such, they are an aspect of a comparison/contrast. Those are all existentially dependent upon language use. A recently awakened/disturbed bat hanging beneath a brown round table is having some sort of experience, no doubt, but brownness, smoothness, and roundness are not a part of that experience.
This is not an attempt to set out 'what it's like' to be a bat. There is no universally applicable minimalist criterion for "what it's like" to be anything. Rather, there's most certainly something that all experience has in common such that the combination thereof is adequate for rudimentary level experience. When we realize that the same 'set' of basic elemental constituents are present in each and every undeniable/obvious case of experience, we will have made progress setting out what all experience consists of.
???
I even addressed this before. "Qualities" are properties. But qualitative properties are different than quantitative properties. In other words there are properties that are qualities and properties that are quantities. Hence why I'm specifying qualitative properties, because usually when we're talking about qualia we're not talking about quantities.
It's not saying anything at all about attitudes, preferences, valuations, etc.
It's not using the word "quality" in the colloquial, evaluative sense as in when you'd ask, "Is this a quality computer?" (Just as "like" in "what's it's like" isn't using that term to refer to analogies or similes, which papers that you linked to, such as the Hacker paper, emphasize--that "like" isn't being used in the sense of or to refer to comparisons.)
Unfortunately I'm not trying to establish what it's not saying, otherwise that response would have been very helpful. Call me crazy, but that seems like a rather long-winded way of going about establishing what you mean. What I'd prefer to know is what it is saying.
So,if not attitudinal, then what kind of property are qualitative properties, how does the term qualitative help us understand what 'what it's like' language is trying to capture?
All properties that are not quantities (that are not simply numerical).
In other words, all properties are exhausted by the qualitative/quantitative dichotomy.
So far, after having got over the knee-jerk "...but you know what it means", we've had suggestions that it is referring to something consequent to experience, but which is somehow unique and ineffable (but we haven't established how it has either property). We've had that it refers to qualia, but defining 'qualia' seems no less mired, and we've had that it refers to 'qualitative' properties of experience, but 'qualitative' here seems to just mean 'what it's like', so that doesn't get us anywhere useful either.
It's referring to the properties of experience, or we could say "the things in experience," from the perspective of that experience.
(a) "The properties of the table"
are different than
(b) "The properties of the table as you experience it"
If for no other reason simply because your experience doesn't literally have a table in it.
(b) are qualia
So when you said...
Quoting Terrapin Station
And...
Quoting Terrapin Station
You were referring to any property of experience that isn't a numerical?
So the property of judgement (attitudinal properties) which you said you weren't talking about, are they numerical, or excluded for some other reason?
Are you fixated, for some reason on defining things by what they're not? You seem to only want to clarify what you're saying by talking about what it's not. Why is it proving so difficult to say what it is? Are you suggesting that there's such a near-infinite number of properties that would count as qualitative that simply listing them is impossible, leaving you only with the option to say what they're not?
This whole issue grew out of attempting to devise scientific theories of mind/mentality, as well as functional theories, and practically, out of working on AI, etc.
Yes.
Quoting Isaac
Qualia talk is typically focused on experiencing things-in-the-world, not our own mental content per se. So in other words, experiencing sights and sounds and tactile sensations and so on, and not our judgments and desires and emotions and so on.
Could we talk about our own mental content in terms of qualia? Sure, but that's kind of redundant, because the whole issue is focused on properties per experience being non-identical to objective properties.
So if one were an ontological idealist or a solipsist, the whole issue would be moot, because you'd think that there's no difference between a table and the table in your experience. You'd think that everything IS your experience, or at least is experience without necessarily being yours. (Although possibly in the latter case this would still be an issue, since there would be no way to know that different experiences were similar).
What does "from the perspective of the experience" mean here? The properties of the experience might well be the brain states it instantiates, but that's accessible via third parties, so that's not it. The difference is something to do with this "from the perspective of the experience", but I cannot fathom what that might mean. I don't understand how an experience can have a perspective.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Again, (b), by this definition, might well be brain states completely accessible to a third party. The 'properties' of the table as you experience it might well be the effects it has on the brain, in the same way as the 'properties' of the table in reality could be the effects it has on passing photons, gravity etc..
Quoting Terrapin Station
I don't see how this helps, we could equally say that some people need to cling to qualia to preserve human-uniqueness, or pet theories about consciousness and free-will. As @fdrake pointed out, there's all sorts of baggage going along with these concepts. Neither party can play the innocent.
Quoting StreetlightX
I think that's true, but I don't think it precludes any value in such an anthropological approach, nor does it preclude an attempt to unravel what is meant by it in their own terms. Unless I've misunderstood what you're saying?
Quoting Terrapin Station
But part of the experience of sights and sounds is our judgement about them. It's inextricably linked.
As opposed to talking about the table as the table. Or from the perspective of the table, using "perspective" in the sense it's used in the visual arts.
(In other words, what I just explained above re the post with (a) and (b) where I explained that (b) are qualia.)
It almost seems like you're intentionally trying to not understand this, because you don't want to, or because you want to be difficult or something like that, because it's difficult to believe that it would be this difficult for you to grasp these relatively simple ideas.
Nah for sure, it's interesting to understand why 'properties' tend to be our 'go-to' when thinking about this kind of stuff. But I am honestly amused - like it makes me smile irl - to think people look out at the world around them and honestly believe in their heart of hearts that what they see are 'properties'. Like, the amount of cultural conditioning it takes to get someone to think that this is their 'spontaneous' self-report is incredible. The degree of abstraction from perception is actually thoroughly impressive, when you really stop to think about it.
What you'd think we see other than properties, who knows?
Yeah, agreed. I come at this stuff from a very different angle to you, I think, but I feel the same way about this idea that objects (physical or otherwise) have 'properties' somehow attached to them which can later be dissected for analysis - this 'property' is its colour, this 'property' is its shape...and so forth.
But I reach that point out of nominalism, I sense you're getting there some other way?
I'm a nominalist, so you're going wrong somewhere.
You believe that objects wouldn't have various ways they are, various characteristics, etc.? How would that make any sense?
That's not helping I'm afraid, I've no idea what perspective might mean in the visual arts either. It seems you just want to say that some 'properties' are attached to the table where others are attached to our experience of it, but I can't see how properties attach to a table.
(I'm going to stop putting properties in inverted commas, I don't really hold to the concept but it's a phaff to make that clear by my punctuation every time I type it).
What do you think that properties are? I'm asking because apparently you think they're something separate from other things that somehow can "attach" to them.
I love this. You see things some way, so anyone else simply must be going wrong! Classic.
I don't think there is such a thing as a 'table' outside of our experience of it, so there's nothing to attach these properties to other than the ones in our experience. Otherwise you seem to be making a universal out of 'table', 'brown', 'wooden'...etc.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I think it's a term used to sub-divide the experience of a thing into arbitrary chunks. It's convenient sometimes, but it's not something that 'tables' can have.
So you're an idealist?
"Property" doesn't imply "universal" or "type," by the way.
I hope that this isn't a matter of once again confusing our concepts qua concepts and what the concepts are in response to or of.
I don't think there's any one 'kind of thing' we see. I mean, I'm mostly on board the embodied cognition train that says we see for the most part "affordances", opportunities for action, sites of relief and rest, goals to arrive at, hazards and safety, speed and rest, and so on. Perception understood in a bodily sense, according to categories that matter to living, moving, metabolizing beings. We perceive significance far more than we perceive things and stuff (phenomenology teaches us this: perception is normative). We're animals before we're anything else.
But even then I don't think this exhausts perception: I don't doubt that we see things and stuff and properties too. But we have to learn how to see this stuff (a bodily learning, and no less than we have to learn how to see what is significant), and sometimes we 'see' some kinds of things and not others, and sometimes there's a mix of things we 'see', different schemas of perception, as it were, that we engage depending on the particular circumstances of the time (if you're looking for a 'property', you'll likely find it). There's a plasticity to perception, and the important thing is to relate it to the kinds of beings we are and what we do with it.
Call it a Wittgensteinian theory of perception: perception is use. And attempting to come up with an a priori theory of it is neither helpful nor interesting.
No, although I could easily be. I think there is external matter. It's the division of some of it into 'table' I think is arbitrary.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I think it does. I don't think one can discuss a 'property' of a thing without engaging in reifying universals. Even to say 'shape' is one type of property and colour another.
Beat me to it (and expressed it better).
So in other words, you're conflating how we think about things, how we evaluate and value them, etc., with what we're perceiving.
In order to refer to the external matter, we have to use a type term, since that's how language works. So you're again getting confused here because you're conflating concepts and what they're in response to/about/of.
No one is saying that the external matter is a table a la the concept of a table. But we have to refer to it some way to talk about it in a setting like this. So we have to use terms like "table."
Quoting StreetlightX
!
It takes a particular kind of abstraction to think that we perceive things in their neutrality first, and then evaluate them, as if a two-step process. It's valued all the way down (although not all the way up!)
What about higher/lower... more/less... same/different ?
Btw, less words is more :up: :up: :up:
You can't perceive how we think about something, how we value it, etc.
"Perception" has a connotation of "sensing information from outside of us." How we think about things, value them, etc. isn't something that exists outside of us for us to perceive.
This is not to suggest that we don't think about things however we do, value them however we do, etc. at whatever stage in the process, but it's not perceiving those things.
?
Those are quantitative. "Quantitative" doesn't have to refer to an exact/known quantity.
"Same/different" is qualitative.
Yes but a linguistic affectation can't possess properties can it?
And you're seeing properties of it. Again, if anyone is thinking that this is saying that you're seeing types/universals, "property" doesn't imply that. If one buys nominalism (as I do), every property is actually unique, That doesn't imply that it's not a property. Properties are simply ways that things are, characteristics they have.
Ah but you're wrong. Valuation is built-in to perception. It's why we are susceptible to visual illusions, it's why people have visual disorders where they can't recognize faces even though they can 'see' them perfectly well and so on. There's a bodily thinking that is irreducible to a rational process of abstraction. Go read about the science of perception, it's interesting.
Again, properties are simply ways that things are, characteristics they have.
So how could there be anything that isn't some way or other?
Again, "perception" has a connotation of taking in information external to us, through our senses.
So if valuation is perceived, you're saying that valuations exist external to us, and we see or hear or smell or feel or taste them.
And we construct quantities from qualities, a la Goodman in Structure of Appearance?
That's fine, and it's perfectly consistent with saying that we don't perceive that great deal of ourselves that we bring to what we perceive.
If you're talking about quantity in terms of conceptions of it, sure.
Cool. Goodman was agnostic as to what we construct from what, though. Are you siding with what he would have called a phenomenalist basis, as against e.g. a physicalist one?
If you bring your own booze to a restaurant, the restaurant doesn't supply the booze (that you bring, at least).
No. And I'm a physicalist, by the way.
Oh yes, I knew that. So you assume a physicalist basis, but properties are part of it, not something you would (like Goodman) expect to construct?
Yes, for maybe the fifth time now, properties are simply ways that things are, characteristics they have.
We create abstractions/construct concepts about properties, of course, but that's not all that they are. It's important to not conflate concepts and what the concepts are in response to (again, for about the fifth time in this thread, and maybe the 500th time on this board in general).
Ok, and "yellowness" might be a property of my experience while perceiving an object reflecting a certain wavelength?
Easily, every "way or other" is a judgement we make sufguced with our habits, moods etc. So nothing is some way or other outside of that we perceive it to be, and as @StreetlightX has pointed out, the evidence from the neuroscience of perception is very much that we do not perceive anything absent of local and variable influences from our mental state and environment.
So you believe that if no people existed, objects would be in what--some quantum, indeterminate state?
Right, it's a property of that object reflect that wavelength of EMR, and it's also a property of your experience per se (which is what qualia are).
Possibly, yes. But at the moment I'm more inclined to think of reality as a heterogeneous sea of stuff (where maybe that stuff is not matter but whatever fundamental thing physics might find beneath matter). Certainly no 'tables'.
Why do you say 'browness' is a property of the table? Surely by your own terms, with nominalist, at best it's a property of 'the bit of the table I happen to be looking at'. Why impart it to the rest of the table, unless you're treating 'the table' as a platonic object?
Why?
No, no. If there are no people (or perceivers, rather) then there is no perception. It's a bad question ('how would one perceive it if one were not around to perceive it?'. It's very silly, don't fall for it).
Ok. One more thing, for now. This property... is it meaningful to ask: what is it? E.g., I want to ask: is it a disposition or ability to reflect the certain wavelength?
Because that's the only way I can see objects being now, and I don't think the absence of people will make any difference.
Quoting StreetlightX
OK, I see what you're saying. I didn't really answer the question as "what difference do people make" so much as "what model do you personally have of reality" (a model which, for me is obviously unaffected by people because I took him to be asking about what it is I think people's perception acts on). Does that make any sense at all?
lol it's not a question about perception. You know, you're yet another person here in the "horrible reading comprehension" crowd.
???
Why would that be the only way you can see objects being? How would you even see that?
True. But you want to say something about perception by asking it. Still silly.
Quoting Isaac
Yeah. I would only be careful: we are of reality, and don't stand outside of it looking in. "If no people existed, objects would be...?" is still a strange question. "If there are no clouds, objects would be...?" - one has to wonder: what even is this question? How does the one relate to the other? It's loaded, but badly.
'See' as in conceive of, bad choice of words in the circumstances. I can't conceive how matter could not exist at all (what would we base our perception on), but I can't conceive of it divided up into objects in any sense at all when it's clear that such object division (and existence) can be so readily altered by our mental processes.
No. It's not anything about perception.
Yeah, so I guess my 'model' is inevitably flawed by being one without me in it, yet without me there'd be no place to put the model. I still find some need to have one though, flawed as it may be. Do you manage to do without?
Not flawed! It tells us something about the world that it must be 'modelled' in this way (in any way): it is 'objectively the case' that you must include yourself in your model - this is an opening, not a limit. Anyway, sorry to be obscure. We're far away from perception now, and I don't want to derail.
So let's consider something like a comet orbiting the sun. We've got a chunk of rock--water, carbon dioxide, ammonia and methane ices, mixed with dust. Then we've got interstellar space where there's very sparse amounts of hydrogen and helium gas, etc. Then we've got the sun, a very dense aggregation of hydrogen and helium gases in a plasma state, etc.
How would our mental processes alter that?
It's not irrelevant to what properties are.
Yes, that's what interests me in the models people have, it's basically how I became (peripherally) interested in philosophy.
Quoting StreetlightX
Yeah, fair enough, it was an interesting departure.
Oh and by the way, apparently I gather that...
Quoting Terrapin Station
So, welcome to the club, honoured to have you with us.
They already have. "comet", "space", "sun". None of these separate things are really separate. We've decided that spatio-temporal patterns are going to be the thing which separates one object from another, as opposed to, say, ecology, information, systems etc.
We're not saying something about whether they're really "separate."
But you're saying that they're not really a lump of water, carbon dioxide, etc. ices and then a far less dense patch of hydrogen and helium gases, etc., right?
"Water" and "carbon dioxide" are still separations we've imposed, why stop one type and begin another based on the arbitrary shape of its molecules. Even some pretty basic chemistry (isotopes etc) shows how this distinction breaks down on analysis.
You don't think that there's really a shape of molecules, do you? Or molecules for that matter, shapeless or not.
No, I'm aware it's just a model. I'm trying to get at the arbitrariness of making the distinction on that basis, not present a scientifically accurate account of it.
I'm asking you about something with scientific accuracy though.
So how do you think we get to creatures that impose structure on anything via their consciousness?
We have a completely uniform sea of whatever, with no properties, and then what? How would a creature appear amidst that, much less one with consciousness?
Maybe you're religious after all?
The fact that a "creature" has appeared is again, just a human artefact, as is 'conciousness'. All that has happened is that stuff has interacted with stuff (even 'stuff' is difficult to get out of). No 'creatures' have appeared outside of us, to whom would they 'appear'?
Let me ask you this, if a 'creature' has appeared with consciousness, where do we stop, and some other creature with some other conscious start?
But at least we're here, right? How?
Quoting Isaac
How? According to you it's a completely uniform sea of property-free stuff. How would it "interact," especially without having/exhibiting any properties?
Do you think that humans just appeared whole cloth out of nothing, as the first thing that existed?
Quoting Isaac
Our bodies are us. That's our boundary, fuzzy though it may be on the edges on a microscopic level.
No, there's no 'we'. That too is just something inside our minds.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I quite specifically said I imagine a heterogeneous sea of stuff, not a uniform one. I imagine variations in many possible fields, some of which we arbitrarily select to distinguish objects over, others we ignore, others still we probably can't even detect.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I can convince your mind that the table is a part of your body in less than two minutes.
There's no "we," but there's an "our"?Quoting Isaac
Ah, sorry, I was thinking you said homogeneous. So the "lumpiness" is a way it is, no?
I'd definitely make a wager on that.
By the way:
Not sure what you mean here.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Yes, I think I'd grant that. I can see where you might be going - to say that at least something has at least one property. I think I might well agree with that (with the proviso that such would only constitute a description of my model in your terminology, accepting that my model is definitely flawed by pretending to exclude me from it).
Not sure what that post is trying to say (although he sounds pretty damn convinced he's the table!)
Oh, and I'm just referencing here Ramachandran's (slightly) famous experiments with rubber hands, and tables. I have to go out now so can't explain the whole thing. Will do so when I get back, presuming you don't already know.
How can there be an "our" if there's no "we"?
Quoting Isaac
Yeah, that's a property. In fact, even a homogeneous soup that's indeterminate would be properties. Since properties are simply ways that things are.
The table thing--that was just a perfect opportunity for that. That's from the album that Lou Reed and Metallica did together a handful of years ago, Lulu. In one of the tunes, "The View", James Hetfield periodically sings "I am the table." The album was largely castigated, and people saw lines like that as indicative of its many problems. So someone made a video looping all of the "I am the tables" from that tune.
I actually like the album quite a bit, but it's still conventionally considered a bomb/a big mistake, especially by Metallica fans.
Right, but what is useful in knowing what form the bat's consciousness takes? Are we trying to get at what the bat knows, or the form its knowledge takes, or what, and why?
It's underscoring a problem with developing a scientific account of mind.
Science is asking what the problem is. Again, what is what is useful in knowing what form the bat's consciousness takes? Are we trying to get at what the bat knows, or the form its knowledge takes, or what, and why?
Presumably an important part of consciousness is what things are like experientially to the bearer of the consciousness in question. So if we can't tackle that scientifically, we have a problem with devising scientific accounts of consciousness. We can just ignore it and not care about it, but then we're ignoring a big part of what we we're supposedly addressing. An alternate track--one that many have taken--is to try to deny that there is such a thing in the first place, or at least deny that it's any different than what things are like outside of consciousness.
Ok. One more thing, for now. This property... is it meaningful to ask: what is it? E.g., I want to ask: is it a disposition or ability to reflect the certain wavelength?
With respect to the object (the objective stuff), it's the fact that it reflects that wavelength of EMR, sure. That's not what it is with respect to our experience, though--our mental phenomena don't reflect that wavelength of EMR. In terms of our experience, it's a particular dynamic state of synapses, neurons, etc.
Quoting Terrapin Station
So the colour quales and shape quales are distinguished in our experience by something which is not reflected in our experience.
I have no idea what you're saying there in context (particularly re "by something which is not reflected in our experience" )
There's a difference, which is really difficult to maintain, between talk that identifies objects we're all used to distinguishing and talk about the non-constructed basis for those things. When I say "inside our minds" I mean to refer to what we culturally (probably even biologically) distinguish as "our minds". When I say "there is no 'we'", I'm trying to talk about what there is that is not thus constructed, that's 'out there' as the stuff we construct objects from.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Yes, but my caveat is important. We couldn't say, that anything was a property of 'it' because even the idea variation, 'lumpiness' as you put it, is suffused with our way of life.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Periodically? Thanks to you I spent the entire afternoon with "I am the table" on a loop in my head!
So - the actual 'I am the table'. If I place your hand behind a screen on a table, I stroke both the table in front of you and your hand with the same pattern, I then approach the table in front of you threatening to hit it with a hammer, you have a galvanic skin response exactly as you would if I threatened your real hand. The same parts of the brain fire, and most people report a genuine fear.
Two minutes of deception and your brain is happy to think of the table as part of your body.
Particular in the sense of general but awaiting a clear physical definition (which would decide if a particular brain state was an instance of it)?
Right, but this now starts to sound physicalist about properties of experience. "Particular dynamic state of synapses, neurons, etc" is definitely something accessible to a third party (at least in theory). I thought you were saying it's something more than that.
Again, properties don't depend on us, our ideas, etc. Whatever the world is like sans us is a matter of the world having whatever properties it has. There's no way for there to be something without properties. That claim would be incoherent.
Say what?
No, particular as in particular. And it has nothing to do with definitions, etc.
Very much this. Though I take a pretty cynical view of it. The kind of description of experience going on here is reflection upon it with a certain priming; we're in a philosophical discussion, people will necessarily bring their philosophical background to bear upon how the experience is parsed.
@Terrapin Station is having difficulty imagining that our experience isn't parsed into properties (with properties of those properties distinguishing things like colour properties and shape properties), and that it's either a philosophical or folk-theoretic means of interpretation to parse it that way. "This is just how my experience is".
What I've been attacking with @Terrapin Station is where the distinctions between these properties come from, whether it's a conceptual distinction imposed reflectively (and thus retrospectively) upon experience (between colour quales and shape quales), or our (visual) experience really is (or must be) parsed into distinctive property types. Where do these distinctions come from? is the central question I've been asking here.
When people use qualia language, they perform precisely these conceptual distinctions and then impute those conceptual distinctions into their experience; as if there are grounds for distinguishing colour qualia and shape qualia (of a table) within the phenomenal character of experience. The perception isn't furnishing the distinction, the conception of experience is.
A lot of philosophical framing devices have to be unproblematically assumed to even parse experience in that way, to have it 'read off the world (phenomenal character)' misses an extremely crucial point; when we reflect on our experiences, we apprehend them with a loose knit interpretive framework that was not necessarily present during the experience reflected upon. That presumptions are read into the phenomena is the sort of stuff faith is made of, not analysis (even though we all have 'faith' in this sense).
It is difficult to highlight an intellectual commitment which is enacted rather than articulated; a performative presumption, rather than a declared one. Exposing these presumptions is the goal.
Well this is where we differ. I don't think it's incoherent at all. I think quite the opposite in fact. I can't think of what a 'property' might be without someone to define it.
Yeah, I'm a physicalist and I was giving my personal explanation there.
Quoting Isaac
Not from the perspective of being those states.
Properties are how something happens to be, characteristics it has, even if that amounts to being indefinite.
Right, but if "Particular dynamic state of synapses, neurons, etc" is what 'properties' of experience are - in their entirety, then what is missing from the third party account? More importantly for a physicalist, where is that missing thing expressed physically?
I'm not saying something about concepts in that. I'm saying that your experience has to be some way or other, has to have some characteristics or other, etc.
But what be would the answer to "what properties does this object have" without anyone to identify them as such?
That you think you're providing a theory neutral description of phenomenal character is part of the problem.
I just answered this: the perspective of being those states.
Everything is different from different perspectives or frames/points of reference.
Quoting Isaac
At various reference points, including the reference point of being the thing in question.
What? I'm not saying anything about language. What the answer to a question would be is irrelevant.
You were hinting at concepts. I'm not talking about concepts. I'm not saying something about it being theory-neutral. I'm just saying that I'm not talking about concepts.
But where is that perspective if not in "Particular dynamic state of synapses, neurons, etc"? I'm afraid "At various reference points, including the reference point of being the thing in question." isn't really a coherent location for me.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I'm trying to explain why I can't make sense of there being an answer to that question, and as such can't make sense of there being such properties.
I know you are not talking about concepts, you are being influenced by ones which you have that you are not articulating.
Quoting Terrapin Station
This is concept talk.
So forget about talking about mind for a moment.
Take a coin for example. There's a frame of reference that is the coin itself, and there's a frame of reference that's not the coin itself, but that's relative to the the coin from some other position, right?
That's fine. Nevetheless, I'm not talking about concepts.
If I tell you that the cat ran outside when you opened the door, I have to employ concepts, as you do in order to understand what I'm saying, but what I'm saying isn't about concepts.
No. I don't see how there can be a frame of reference that is the coin itself. Just identifying it as a coin requires a person. With no one to identify it, it is just stuff, nothing more. (by stuff here I'm referring to whatever it is our perception arise from, noumena, if you like).
There's a coin, and it has a location, right? I have to use the word to refer to it on a message board. I'm not talking about the concept, or identifying it, or anything like that. Just "that lump there" or whatever. (Again, I need to refer to it here so you know what I'm talking about)
Nope. There's no coin without a person to decide 'this bit of matter ends here and I shall call it a coin'. There's no location without a person to construct a 3d model of a reality which might well have 20 dimensions or none at all (dimensions just being some model we made to help us live).
I'm not saying anything about where it begins or ends or whether it's separated from anything else. Again, I'm not talking about the concept as such.
But 'coin' and 'location' are both concepts. Physical matter is a concept.
Apparently you are incapable of understanding language usage without thinking that we're necessarily talking about concepts as such. Re the use/mention distinction, you must think it's incoherent. We can only do mention.
There are concepts, but the concepts are not about themselves.
Again, it's hard to believe that you'd not just be trolling in not being able to disentangle concepts from what the concepts are about or in response to.
This seems agreeable to me. I'm still curious over exactly what kind of stuff counts as a 'facet of experience'; where are the boundaries? How did the boundaries get there? But given a suitable (pragmatic or conceptual) reason to demarcate between different facets, we probably agree.
No, but the stuff they're about doesn't actually have the properties we phenomenological conceive them having, all 'properties' are concepts related to the stuff (again, presuming there is even 'stuff' at all). I can't see how stuff could have properties. Any time I think about those properties (shape, location, colour..) they're all concepts, some of which I even know to be shaky at least because modern physics can't seem to fit them together.
How in the world would you know this?
Presumably you wouldn't say that other people exist outside of your concept of rhem, right?
1. That conception is done in our minds and I can't think of a single reason why we would, by chance, construct the exact properties that somehow reality has (if maybe you take a Berkelean view that God conceives of properties).
2. Physics has demonstrated to my satisfaction that many of the properties I think objects have cannot be reconciled with each other.
3. Different people seem to have different phenomenological conceptions and so it seems impossible that the 'real stuff' is some way or other, that someone is just right about some of it.
4. I think it's impossible to even think without foundational model, concepts on which to base thought. So I can't conceive of anything without those models.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Yes, that's right. The idea of 'a person' is something I've constructed.
Why would you think it's by chance? We seem to have access to the world, right? Via our senses. So you'd need a reason to believe that that's not in fact the case.
Quoting Isaac
Physics can't demonstrate anything if you think we can't tell at all what the world is like. Besides, you have to conclude that you made all of physics up.
Quoting Isaac
You'd need a reason to believe that (a) the world can't be different from different perspectives, and (b) that some people can't be wrong while others are right
Quoting Isaac
If you need to construct a foundational model in order to think, then how would you even get started? Don't you need to think in order to construct a foundational model? Otherwise it would be the case that you could think without a foundational model.
Quoting Isaac
Right. So essentially you're a solipsist--at least an epistemological solipsist. So why would something like hate speech ever be a problem? You're just constructing the other people anyway, and can't you construct them however you'd like to construct them?
In short, your ontology is a complete mess, and I'm guessing there are psychological reasons behind it. It probably stems from needing a way to cope with things that you otherwise feel you can't cope with. Keep in mind that apparently this is your concepts telling you this.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Quoting Terrapin Station
Ok, but I thought you were happy to at least class all the particular cases of yellow-wavelength-reflection together as cases (albeit different particular cases) of possession of "yellowness" (in the objective sense) by an object?
So I thought you would be happy to form a corresponding class of cases (each of them particular and different of course) of possession of "yellowness" (in the mental sense) by a brain state?
So the trouble with this line of argument is an absence of these properties also amounts to concepts.
How can we say there are an absence of these properties when we aren't even taking in the part of the world in question?
There is nothing wrong with supposing an absence of certain properties of course, the unobserved world might exist without them. The trouble is this commits to as much of a postion of what is there, nothing with these properties, as claiming everything we see was there when no-one was looking.
Either way, our concepts are not just our own, they are of what the world is doing.
"Classing all the cases together" is a way of talking about the concepts we formulate as such--those are abstractions that range over a number of unique instances. And sure, insofar as we're talking about concepts, that's fine.
What those concepts are in response to, though, what any occurrence of yellow is in an object, or in experience is a particular state, a particular brain state (on my view) in the case of experience, or a particular object (reflecting EMR) state in the case of the external thing we're perceiving.
. . . or in other words, I'm a nominalist, so the only "reality" of types is as concepts (and even there, every instance of the concept in someone's mind is unique). But types make sense as a particular occurrence of a construction that abstracts certain features from particulars to range over a number of them.
See 2-4.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I said "to my satisfaction". I prefer consistency, I can't really conceive of a reality that can be two ways at once, so two apparently conflicting models are sufficient to convince me that they can't both be right.
Quoting Terrapin Station
For (a) we're talking about some way the world really is, so perspectives don't enter into it. The fact that they do is the very reason I don't trust 'there is a coin' type foundations. For (b) if it is possible for someone to be wrong, then our brains are not inevitably arranged to reflect reality accurately. Therefore it seems to me to follow from that that anyone doing so would do so by chance. That seems prima facae unlikely.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I think genetics wires models into our brains. We're born with a basic model.
Quoting Terrapin Station
The fact that I'm constructing people does not lead to the fact that I can construct them however I'd like to construct them.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Yes. I think everyone's ontology is a mess.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Yeah, we can all play that game. You like to cling to strong libertarianism (probably fear of being constrained), the only way you can maintain strong libertarianism without becoming a sociopath is to convince yourself that you do not have a direct effect on others. This requires a strong sense of disconnected 'other' and a model where other people are in full control of their mental events. We can all play pop-psychologist.
I didn't say the absence of properties wasn't a concept. There's a difference though between positing the absence (or skepticism) of properties and the positing of some particular property (light, location, shape etc) as being real.
One is simply agnosticism, the other dogmatism.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Quoting Isaac
My point was rejecting these properties is to suppose a world of a certain form (absence of these properties) exists. It's actually proposing the world is things which do not have these properies.
As such, the rejection of properties is not an agnostism, but an alternative emprical account. It is a claim that, when no-one is around, things exist without these properties.
Yes, but a default position that no thing exists that we do not require as a necessary contingent fact is not the same as saying some thing exists which just happens to seem to me as if it does.
I'm not even favouring one over the other here, but a model with the absence of all features is not of the same dogma as a model with some given feature, despite the fact that both are conceptual commitments, they are not both of the same class.
Subjects are points in spacetime?
I'm pointing out this is mistaken.
Claiming some properties are absent when we aren't looking is commiting oneself to a presence of contingent states without these properties. It functioning on the same level as any claim for a state with those properties. Both arguments are claiming contingent states of certain properties. My point is they are of the same class.
The claim is that properties are incoherent without a person to define them thus. Not that they aren't there. You're looking at this as if it were an unknown sheet of paper, I'm saying there's no words on it, you're saying that's no less a commitment than saying there are words - we're both committing to what the paper looks like.
But this is not what I'm trying to say.. . Firstly, the right analogy would be between assuming the paper is blank and assuming it has the soliloquy from Hamlet written on it. The soliloquy from Hamlet is just as good a guess as 'blank', but a different type of commitment, it has baggage. Secondly, to continue the metaphor, we're talking about what the paper is without people. The soliloquy from Hamlet is not the soliloquy from Hamlet without people. It is not even marks on paper (marks are only distinct to people who can distinguish black from white).
Sounds about right.
In my view everything has a spatial and temporal location, at least defined relationally with respect to other things. (I don't buy the idea of "spacetime" as a thing in itself.)
I don't think there's a way to straighten it out for you without you sorting through the more general ontological mess you've gotten yourself into.
Given your ontology, there's no way to make sense of "this model is right." You don't even believe that there are any objective properties.
Quoting Isaac
The way the world really is is perspectival. "Perspective" there isn't referring to persons or their consciousness. It's referring to frames or points of reference (not strictly in the physics sense, so don't be misled to think that I'm strictly talking about Special Relativity) or situatedness--relative spatiotemporal locations. Frames/points of reference can be "of" a person, but they need not be. There's no frame-of-reference-free frame of reference, so to speak, or there's no "view from nowhere." Properties are unique from every point of reference, and there's no preferred point of reference.
Quoting Isaac
They're not infallibly fixed to get things right. That doesn't imply that we can't get things right. To even say that we can't things right would require knowing that things are different than we suppose, but we can't know that unless we know how things are.
Quoting Isaac
Why not? What would constrain it? Especially what property-free thing?
You weren't being skeptical. You claimed that there are no objective properties.
Quoting Isaac
Wait so now there are objective properties, it's just that the objective properties are incoherent?
What have 'properties' got to do with measures of the degree to which I find a model to be right?
Quoting Terrapin Station
Right. Which is exactly what I'm saying. There is no 'way things are' there's only the 'way things seem from here' or the 'way things seem from there' (where 'here' and 'there' are not here limited to spatial specifications), so where does this leave your "there is a coin"? Only from a certain perspective.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I didn't say we can't get things right. I said that if we did so it would have to be by chance as there doesn't seem to be a mechanism to ensure it.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Biology.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Yes. Like there is no god is skeptical of all God claims. I've not yet been convinced by any so I'm an atheist. I've not yet been convinced by any noumenal properties.
Quoting Terrapin Station
No, something that is incoherent cannot exist in the models I have.
How is that an important part of consciousness? Important for what? What do we even mean by, "what things are like experientially to the bearer of the consciousness"? What is a bearer of consciousness and how can something be experientially to it? What does that even mean? I think we take many of these ideas and patterns of speaking for granted without really understanding what it is that we are saying.
Quoting Terrapin Station
The latter is what I would propose because if it's not the same, then how does consciousness and the world interact? What would the experience be about, and then how can things that aren't consciousness be about other things that aren't consciousness?
I'm currently in a room, with a mood, and doing some stuff.
I can stratify that into some distinct experiences.
I am in my room, I am curious, reflecting, I am typing on my laptop.
I can stratify those experiences in various ways. One way would be by sensory modality:
Vision: I'm looking at this page on TPF.
Hearing: Ringing in my ears, keyboard clicks.
Bodily position: sitting down.
Touch: fingers on keys, bum sitting down, pressure from headphones.
Thought: state of attention, introspective.
Smell: nothing of note.
Temperature: not of much note, a bit cold maybe.
I can stratify the vision experience into objects with positional relations between them, each object has shapes and colours.
I can stratify the hearing experience into distinct sound sources; ringing in my ears, keyboard clicks, occasional noise from the road outside.
I don't seem to be able to stratify the bodily position experience very well; it is a general sense of attended parts and where I am in the room, different parts are highlighted more or less at different points; my felt bodily position also seems to involve my vision somehow - where is my body? involves vision (but need not...).
I can stratify the fingers on keys into individual keystrokes; decomposing into pressure and... but this relies upon the positional awareness and visual information (where the keys are, the words on the page provide feedback, typo correction etc)
The thought experiences; I dunno, I'm catching thoughts and expressing them, the thoughts come as the words appear on the page; the thought formation and the keystroke experiences intermingle.
Smell: nothing of note, not really part of the experiential state.
Temperature: tied up with position feelings and bodily awareness, different parts are different temperatures, felt temperature variation occurs over my body, the intensities of temperature are not discrete, more a general sense over my body.
Which parts do we attach the label "quale" to?
I can very easily do that with my vision in a limited way; shape qualia and colour qualia - but are there distance qualia (how far something away is)? Brightness qualia? Opacity qualia?
Hearing: well I guess there's a 'what's it like' to have this ringing in my ears, but there are tonal variations, different intensities, the 'position' the sound appears to be emitted from in my ears changes with its pitch. Does each tone have a quale? Each pressure? Each felt location of origination?
Bodily position: interesting really, I'm not aware of most of my body during most of this state of awareness; my state of awareness does not chart every piece of leg, say, just bits of contact with the chair that are deemed relevant (those that are in contact). The "qualia" I'd associate with my leg positions seem to go away when I focus close to my bum, there's just a.. 'leg-bum' location, the contact area is treated as a single experiential unity with differences of intensity over it.
Touch: well, when I'm typing, not every keystroke I type actually has the same quale - is there a G key quale? When I'm hitting the space bar, I don't always notice it. I do always notice the end of the sentence, though. Maybe there are full stop quales. Or are these 'sentence ending" quales?
But I'm not really experiencing the end of the sentence through my sense of touch; there is a pause for thought. The touch quale there is really a thought quale and a bodily position quale (of stopping motion).
I could go on, but this is already long enough. It seems to me that that 'chopping up' of experience that we do prior to applying the label "quale" to it isn't particularly reflective of what it's like at all. What it's like to be in any experiential state is a colossal feedback and intermingling of my senses and thoughts.
And qualia aren't supposed to label "experiential states", they're supposed to label "components" of them. Where do the components come from? What principle distinguishes them? Are these distinctions retroactive or part of the phenomenal character?
It seems to me the types of qualia people usually talk about just aren't so independent or distinctive after all; the principle that individuates the components of phenomenal character is not tracked by the principle of individuation that generates phrases like "red quale".
Carry on..........
I don't know if this is where you were going anyway, but I wanted to raise this angle now just in case it wasn't.
What you've said here speaks to the distrust I, and I think you, have about qualia talk (what it's like talk) not being a genuine reflection of experience but a post hoc modelling.
Regular in the literature about qualia (certainly Jackson and Chalmers) is mention of the "experience of redness" or something similar. That there is something it is like to experience red.
But there's obviously no such thing as the experience of red. It simply never happens. So whilst the 'what it's like' talk can be theoretically linked to some experience or other (though I still think there's no referent), talk of it being linked to something like the experience of 'redness' is clearly bogus. No one in the world has ever had an experience of redness, its always been an entire lived event involving a red thing.
I think this is about right. I would emphasise, though I don't know if this is relevant to colour specifically, that when we perceive; language and conditioning plays a role, as do innate features of our sensory capacities (like the perception of motion when we step off a boat onto the land, say). The "the table is part of your arm" thing from Ramachandran plays with fundamental bodily processes, but there's also social mediation of perception.
Whatever we experience, we experience in an evaluated context to the task at hand, and what we experience in something can very much be informed by what we've learned. A doctor might be able to (non-figuratively) see abnormal lung structure in a lung x-ray. Where that 'abnormal' came from isn't something innate to any sense, it's a complex convolution of norms being embedded in our perception, and perception informing norms.
I suspect "norms informing perception" is why it seems so natural to some to describe their experiences as containing "red quales" or "seeing redness". "Perception informing norms" may be why colour words are cultural universals and roughly map onto each other (most of the time). This is more than just a change in vocabulary, experience has an ontology to it, what the 'beings' of experience are (facets of phenomenal character) isn't something we can ignore when studying it.
There's no "brute" sensory information or experiences, there are only relatively autonomous sensory processes that are still context sensitive (illusions, Ramachandran's stuff, lesions); or full blown socially mediated perceptions.
What about insofar as we're using concepts to talk about (e.g. compare and sort) the unique instances? Not fine? E.g.,
Is that fine?
I'm not sure I understand what you're asking.
The first question seems to be about concepts where they aren't abstractions ranging over a number of particular instances. I wouldn't say that would qualify as a concept. It would just be a name and/or description of the particular. ("Description of" isn't really possible without concepts ranging over a number of particulars, though.)
But the paragraph that you're quoting after that question doesn't seem to be what the first question is about. Re the content of that paragraph, I don't think there's any way to experience someone else's consciousness--I think that in principle that is impossible.
Not sure about this. I think 'redness' as a concept, enters much later than actually informing perception. I seriously wonder how much people do describe their experiences in these terms outside of philosophical qualia talk. I've never heard anyone answer "how was your train journey?" with anything like "well, it was pure 'redness'". 'Red' seems primarily used as a description of external states of affairs, never internal ones. I think there's still some sleight of hand being done here to define a post hoc division of the memory of experience into the 'qualia' of actual experience.
If one were to look at, say, a red wall (about the most purely red but still real thing I can think of). I still think that their 'experience' of seeing that wall would be undivided. The red, the sounds, the texture, the accompanying sounds, the feel of their clothes, the reason why they're staring at a red wall, the curisoty about why the wall is red...
The brain certainly divides things up, different cortices deal with different aspects of the experience, but evidence from synathetes, phantom limb, paraprenalia, psychosis...all indicate very strongly that the consciousness does not have any direct isolated access to those cortices. If it did, then synathetes, for example, would be able to divide up their number identification experience from their colour identification experience prior to the hyper-connection between the two which causes the mixed sensation.
Other than that, your point is well taken, we should include the social environment as well when understanding the extent to which 'experience' is constructed. All of which put together makes a 'redness' quale nothing but a philosophical conceit.
Agree that red is a concept. Stuff is also red. There's an interplay between language use and perception; the language we are used to invites us to parse our self reports in accordance with its rules. There are probably effects in the inverse direction; playing with associations of signifiers for dramatic effect. Maybe sometimes we can expect red and see green? Movies, green blooded human = replicant or something, the basis of surprise there.
Unsure the internal/external distinction makes sense for most things like this. When your phenomenal self model (Metzinger) can assimilate to include a table, or when your apartment becomes a living memory bank (alzheimers patients); the boundaries break down due to what is involved with what. It seems more productive to think of these structures as ones of involvement that span the distinction between mind and body, rather than retroactively imposing more categorical distinctions which don't seem to be there. To my mind:
"internal/external = ideal/material = subject/object= phenomenal/noumenal = mind/body = reason/affect"
is a chain of associations that acts to straitjacket thought; a madness purporting to be its own cure. Thinking in these terms generates access and interaction problems everywhere that the manifest relations between each pole have already undermined; why ask how can when we can already ask how? I hope we can eat just the best bits of these concepts' already dead bodies.
Quoting Isaac
Yes! Components seem to call other components, there's both specialisation and plasticity, relative independence and specificity; seemingly contextually (sensorimotor process, social cue etc) dependent too. Reflection seems to be a high effort process that reorganises (stratifies/contextualises/conjectures) pre-reflective (and evolutionarily older) bodily processes; it takes time. What this doesn't preclude, however, is that someone's ideas can change cultural norms which change... You see what I mean.
Quoting Isaac
I certainly think it's a retrojection to put it back into experience without heavy qualifications. I'm quite happy with "red" though.
Aside: a friend of mine is a synesthete. He had numbers and letters with colours. He let me experiment on him for a bit, drew him a few pictures and made a powerpoint slide - studying, say, how far away would two 0's need to be on a page before they got seen as an 8. He could tell that from what colour association he saw from the image. I made him something like this abomination:
so it would be like a Necker Cube for his synesthetic sight. Apparently very disorienting. The different colours shifted to reflect the gestalt form of the image (whether overall it's an 8, or focussing on the 1 interconnections, or the individual 9s...). The most interesting thing there seemed to be that his attention coincided with the synesthetic impression; even though he didn't seem aware of or able to tell which gestalt shifts would occur when just looking at the image. I guess that's not surprising if it's neurological-architecture-of-sensorimotor-systems deep; he may as well have been trying to exert the vaunted force of his will over the micromovements of his eyes.
He could also smell the letter U, it was palma violets (lavendery-violety-lilacy sweeties), from the previous stuff with the 0's and 8's we found out that continuous transformation (translation on a powerpoint slide) eventually produced a gestalt shift and changed the synesthetic impression. The letter C was just gold for him.
So I picked a font where C and U were rotated copies of each other, and slowly rotated C to U. The gestalt shift caused him considerable feelings of panic, which is perhaps not so surprising.
We are not used to a colour rotating into a smell.
Yeah, I get what you mean now. The expectation of red informs the perception in some way unique to 'red'. 'Red' I can definitely do. 'Redness' I think should be consigned to use only by printers and paint manufacturers!
Quoting fdrake
You're absolutely right. One of the biggest problems with my writing here is laziness. I generally write on the phone whilst supposedly doing other things, and mostly when I write my thoughts race ahead of my writing. They seem to impatiently call back to my actual written words "come on, that'll do, we've got more stuff for you to translate". I often end up writing stuff even I don't believe just to get the ideas that surround it down before the next ones take over.
So my apologies to anyone having to pick up the slack of my sloppy writing. I agree internal/external is an unhelpful distinction. I suppose what I was trying to say was more something like 'red' being used primarily in a technical sense, to communicate some fact about an object, rather than in an experiential sense.
Wonderful stuff with your synasthete friend. My daughter has synaesthesia, but we learnt early on that most experiments of that kind made her extremely panicky (having a two psychologists for parents is not always a good thing, but we did stop experimenting eventually, promise). As I'm sure you know, the panic is the brain's response to contradictory information, just like travel sickness (motion feedback from the eyes, no motion feedback from the body). The interesting thing, for me, is the strong extent to which most of what we think of as our model of reality is the brain's kind of buffer against this panic. Most sensations, including memory-based ones, are actually contradictory to some extent. The stories our brain tells us, the illusion of self, is all about minimising the confusion. I think that's why we love stories so much.
I figured you were all about the extended mind stuff, I wasn't just writing for you there, I wanted to highlight that it's easy to use a vocabulary that we're used to that nevertheless contradicts the nature of the topic. Sort of like trying to draw on white paper with white chalk.
Quoting Isaac
Shame the flames we'd like to burn these ideas in are red.
Quoting Isaac
I can't imagine not being academically interested in your kid if you're academically inclined. I'm more surprised that you stopped experimenting than that you started!
Quoting Isaac
This is very cool. Do you have a citation for this type of account? I'm a bit skeptical that "panic" is one sort of thing; my understanding of it neurologically, which is probably wrong, is that it's a neural/endocrine response to some threat that sets off a bunch of bodily cascades (including behavioural), the "threat" can be really abstract; nowadays a work meeting can be a tiger in the bush. It seems to me the underlying threat (threat in general, like kidney the organ) is unanticipated but now sufficiently negatively valued differences rather than contradictory information sources (not talking about people who get the panic response due to anticipation or memory here I guess too?). Anyway, these are causal types rather than causal instances; "excessive caloric intake causes weight gain" vs "if I keep eating 1 kg of carrot cake every day I'm going to be obese very soon".
Yes, I've lost count of the number of times in this topic I've wanted to actually use the expression "what it's like" despite disagreeing that it means anything at all! Academic technicalities can end up creating their own referrents, castles in the air, and they leach into topics where they do not belong.
Quoting fdrake
Indeed, but if I don't look...
Quoting fdrake
Oh, you wouldn't believe the number of experiments we've surreptitiously carried out, it's a wonder they're sane!
Quoting fdrake
Yes, I'll dig some out when I'm back at home.
Quoting fdrake
Yes, that's quite right, but the brain seems to perceive an inconsistent environment as one of the bigger threats. It's possibly an attached consequence of our reliance on 3d integrated modelling of our environment (catching hold of a tree branch swinging towards you is actually really hard and takes up the vast majority of our brains). So, the idea of panic (and I should stress this is all highly speculative) is that it shuts down certain systems, particularly automotive ones, so that we don't go jumping from branch to branch when we're not sure where the next branch is.
Ever wondered what the evolutionary advantage could possibly be of legs turning to jelly at the exact moment you need to run away from said tiger in the bush?
That makes sense. Sudden noises, people going apeshit on shrooms, forgetting your keys, leaving the oven on while you're out... I wonder what the scope of environment is there? I guess as abstract as can be habituated within. (germaphobe panic response? "your disease only makes sense in the light of our understanding of infection and contamination..")
Quoting Isaac
I thought it was so you could politely ask the girl to go on top.
Good question, I hope not so wide as to end up saying nothing useful at all. I'd agree that it has to be first habituated, but it does seem to be strongly linked to sensory inputs too, so habituated conceptual environments don't seem to have the same effect. Faced with conceptually contradictory knowledge, people tend to become more entrenched in the original concept, so there's still some strong incentive in the brain towards predictability, but real panic (failing limbs, sweating, fainting etc..) seems to need sensory initiates, even if hallucinatory ones.
So, one interesting study here (I'll try to find it) was to do with panic attacks among hyperchodriacs. Here, what they thought they'd found, which would apply to the public speaker, the exam, the first date etc, was that a normal preparation (raised heart rate etc) was being picked up on and the brain was kind of going "hey, why's my heart beating faster, there's no tiger I can see" and panicking about the difference between the autosomal information and the perceptual information and completely ignoring the conceptual information that would have made sense of it all.
Quoting fdrake
Ahh, the days when one only had to ask politely...
My (broadly Humean) guess is that concepts typically are learned associations; iterated relations of relations of neural patterns (patterns of patterns..., patterns articulating previous patterns partially articulating previous patterns partially articulating...) that interface less strongly with the neural architecture for sensation. There's something about energy expenditure in thought and parts of the brain which are involved too (prefrontal cortex shit, an imagined - my fanfiction - neural basis for Kahnnemann's 2 system approach).
So my take is: concepts mediate and inspire bodily processes and comportments rather than being strongly (probabilistically) tied to the neural architecture involved with executing (most types) of them. Concepts; and the contexts they are articulated in; are reflective, usually calm, memory and imagination focussed (most of the time), so any strong feelings are likely to be felt as through a memory or an anticipation; if strong feeling happens it's probably leveraging some architectural shortcut (limbic shit, "that's unnatural" = "I am disgusted") or (non exclusively) intermediary strong association between cogitation and the other association schemes of neural patterns ("If I'm wrong on the internet my identity is a lie"). No one runs away from a keyboard in panic while typing, but guys do sometimes smash their computer in nerd rage.
Quoting Isaac
That's really cool. Do you think there's any correspondence with model averaging in stats, if you're familiar? If we imagine anticipation and memory as models of input states based on previous patterns of association; there might be more than one anticipation (model) running at once; a multithreading of thought-action chains (neural+sensorimotor impetus for the body's comportment, including thoughts) that originate in multiple places; these will amplify and die out in accordance with continual feedback (models learning different weights); but the feedback mechanism might 'get stuck' in a certain pattern of valuation. Edit: perhaps when, say, two patterns (which are models in this analogy) generate predictions (anticipations) that are "valued" very highly by each other? (edit: analogy breaks down a lot here, models and loss functions... stupid loss functions).
Edit: oooh, random thought, if there are lots of models permeating the brain at once, any proposed model could be evaluated relative to any other one in terms of difference in predictions, and we'd get a domination effect if the models modulated eachothers' behaviour to be more in accord with what the 'most typical' model was proposing - so we model until we have annihilated differences in expectations/anticipations (sources of panic) coming from aberrantly proposed models. The hypochondriac's situation model down weights any mere conceptual mediation; it differs too strongly from the anticipations generated through the autosomal and perceptual decoupling), so 'forcing oneself to think' contrary to the situation doesn't do much (maybe the multithreadeded bits don't always implicate themselves in the bits that generate our phenomenal awareness... uncountable subselves appearing and dying to the routine of our personality).
Quoting Terrapin Station
Oh, I get it. I'm right to interpret your "concepts" as mental events analogous to general terms like adjectives. (No?) But when I blithely speak of using them to sort particulars you are alarmed because you see a general term as naming (or pointing at or designating or referring to) a whole class of or abstraction from the instances, as an entity in its own right. You can't see it referring to a particular and still being general? (Correct me.)
But can't a nominalist deny the class or abstraction, and reconstrue a general statement (e.g. a predication or attribution or description) quite simply as shared naming, i.e. as ascribing the property to, or simply pointing out and thereby sorting under the term, all of the instances, severally? I'm not saying that approach doesn't throw up problems. But it's what I was about in the second paragraph.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Fair enough. Inconceivable, even? If my ability to compare my successive mental events (dynamic brain states) is afforded by continuous neural connection between them, couldn't I in principle get a similar bridge between mine and yours? I mean I can quite believe it might be inconceivable on your view. Just trying to see the view.
I'm still confused about what you're getting at here. Concepts are a means of calling/considering phenomenon a and phenomenon b the "same thing"--namely whatever the concept term is. So I think we used "yellow" as an example. That way you can see the color of, say, a car and the color of a guitar and use the term "yellow" for both. (Which is using a general term--that's what concepts are, and referring to particulars--the particular yellow of that particular car--for example, if that answers that question).
I don't know how someone could deny that we do this--that we utilize concepts this way, because if we don't utilize concepts that way, then language is impossible. It would just be a string of proper names (effectively) with never-ending variety . . . and even then, writing would be difficult, because the whole idea of writing "g" and having a particular repeatable set of sounds indicated by it is a concept per what I describe above.
There's no way to check anything about any model if there are no objective properties. What would you be checking?
Quoting Isaac
That wasn't at all what I was saying though. I'm not talking about seeming first off (or not just about that--again this is not about consciousness). There is a way that things are, but the way that things are is always from some point of reference. Things aren't identical from every point of reference. That's not a seeming. That's a reality.
Quoting Isaac
How if biology is a concept you created and it has no properties independent of that?
Because the whole gist of it is (subjective) experience.
Quoting Harry Hindu
A particular person who is conscious/who has experiences. We're talking about their consciousness/their experiences.
Quoting Harry Hindu
They have experiences. Those experiences have properties.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Through our senses (for input) and our motor skills (for output).
How is it subjective when your experience is part of the world and is an effect and a cause of other things? What does that even mean to insert, "subjective" into this?
We don't have direct access to apples either. We are stuck in our own heads.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Both of which aren't conscious-like, so how does consciousness get input from the senses and produce output in our behavior?
Is there a reason to believe that I'd say that "subjective" implies "not a part of the world"? No. It's subjective because we're talking about a brain functioning in a mental way, and that can only be experienced/observed by the brain in question. It's a phenomenon, in the world, that only occurs from the perspective of being a particular material in particular states.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Your eyes, for example, send information (electrochemical signals) to your brain. Your consciousness is your brain functioning in particular ways. Likewise your brain sends signals to muscles and so on so that you can speak, move your limbs, etc. Why in the world would I need to explain this to you? Are we in kindergarten or something?
Cool. So why do you say,
Quoting Terrapin Station
and not see the point of,
Quoting bongo fury
?
And earlier, why react in alarm to my response here,
Quoting bongo fury
?
After all, you volunteered the comparison between, on the one hand,
Quoting Terrapin Station
... where "yellow" is applying wherever the physical definition is satisfied, and by the way we clearly are "classing all the cases together" yet talking about instances as much as concepts... and then on the other hand,
Quoting Terrapin Station
... where I just thought it made sense to point out that we would likewise be distinguishing cases of mentally-yellow from mentally-non-yellow (and again using the concept to sort the instances but not thereby be talking about concepts), despite having no corresponding physical definition of when a (unique) brain state or brain state property counts under someone's general concept of mentally-yellow.
Do you not intend your example of the car and the guitar to play out on both levels, objectual and mental, in roughly this way?
Shouldn't it make sense to discuss the extensions of our phenomenal colour concepts as well as, and perhaps in relation to, the more easily defined extensions of physical colour concepts?
You say it that way.
What if I said: Things appear (where 'thing' is taken in the broadest sense as objects, processes, colours, basically anything you can think of). What is it then that "has" properties? Are not properties just among the "things" that appear (if we allow that shapes, colours, textures and so on are even separable from shaped, coloured and textured objects)?
Quoting fdrake
Very well put fdrake.
Taking account of having the experience is itself it's own experience. Thinking intently about all the different aspects of one's experience is much the same experience aside from it need not be spoken, but could be, if need be. It's precisely what it's like to think about our own thought and belief.
Language used as a tool to slice up(think about) our experience... that's what furnishes the distinction between the shape and colour of the table.
"Property" is just a name.
Right, so this is where the Bayseian Brain feedback stuff comes in (that I gave you the link to in PM). I think your model is right, but the conceptual stuff does seem to be able to make some pretty strong links with the neurons involved in executing bodily processes, so that leaves us with the slightly puzzling question of why concepts around what words, images mean to us (which can only possibly be learnt culturally) can have a massive impact on how we gather data, and how we respond to it (even subconsciously), and yet concepts like "It's OK, it's just my heart beating faster because I'm nervous", or "it's OK that the world is moving past but I'm sat still because I'm in a car", don't seem to be able to exert that same level of feedback control in panic attacks.
The most obvious answer (and my personal favourite because I've seen it work in therapeutic environments), is that they can exert that level of feedback, and the reason they don't generally is exactly to do with Kahnnemann's system 2 energy requirements, as you suggest. It's just too damn hard.
A little digression, but a worthy one, there's yet another book which I strongly recommend by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir called 'Scarcity'. It's basically about economical psychology, and it's very good, but in it they develop the idea of bandwidth. Simply because of the energy requirements of the brain, we cannot think of too many things at once, it's like we all have a bandwidth throttle. This really only applies to the frontal cortex, and even then to limited sections of it, as the post-natal development of the brain isolates some important parts (possibly because of this problem, like reserved bandwidth for the important bits). I think that's why bringing new concepts to bear on sensory inputs and bodily feedback is so damn hard, but not impossible. Digression over.
Quoting fdrake
This is unbelievably close to Karl Friston's work on Bayesian feedback in brain processes. The first time I read through what you wrote I thought of his work, but on the second reading it's almost identical, astonishing. This article gives an overview.
Whether it works. Whether you think it helps you achieve whatever it is you're trying to achieve with it (prediction usually, but also justification, comfort...)
Quoting Terrapin Station
Then how is that a property of the thing and not of the point of reference (or the two combined). If that point of reference suddenly popped out of existence, what would happen to the 'properties' the object had that were only from that point of reference?
Quoting Terrapin Station
You're confusing concepts I create with concepts I voluntarily create. My nominalism here doesn't fit in with your magic free-will woo I'm afraid, so the idea that my mind creates these concepts is not necessarily synonymous with any ability to control them.
.......implies two separate and distinct mechanisms from which concepts arise. Is that what you meant to suggest?
Yes, I think of concepts arising in one of three ways (mostly based on standard child development work). There are clearly concepts we're born with (spatiotemporal models for one), then a whole bunch seem to come along immediately post-natally (object permanence for example), then the refinements come in adolescence/adulthood (social theories, science etc).
The first are virtually impossible to change (though in childhood, ways round them can be constructed), the second are very hard to change, and third are fairly malleable by comparison.
........which implies contingent rule;
Quoting fdrake
......which implies necessary physical law.
How can both inhere in a pure wetware environment? In effect, law is subsumed by mere rule, which contradicts itself.
What do you mean by "mere rule". Isn't a contingent just as powerful as a law. Isn't a contingent just a law that describes a necessary function - if->then? Markov chains are perfectly computable are they not?
Understood.
The question then arises, how is it possible to distinguish whether concepts arise from different mechanisms, or concepts arise by degree from a simpliciter, or, divide into simpliciters from a whole, from one mechanism? The obvious answer would seem to be, the difference in concept kind, or, the difference in their respective application, demonstrates the difference in their respective source.
Is it not reasonable to suppose, that if concepts arise from different mechanisms, they should be different in and of themselves? It follows necessarily that if the difference in concepts is given, there needs be a faculty whose sole modus operandi is to determine, not which concept but which kind of concept, is required for that which concepts are designed to accomplish. Then, have we not succeeded in complicating the human rational system without proper warrant?
I thought that was called a conditional. There are lawful conditionals, yes; “if/then” is merely a form of cause/effect, which has the power of law in its a priori principles. There are no lawful contingents.
I reject the idea that contingency has the power of law. Law incorporates the principles of universality and necessity, whereas rule does not. Mathematics being the prime example: if the human understanding of mathematical principle doesn’t hold no matter where a human finds himself, he has no access to knowledge whatsoever, at least in his present evolutionary status.
Although, in the Grand Scheme of Things of course, everything is contingent because absolute truth is unknown. Even so, we generate conditions under which understanding is prevented from contradicting itself, and the predicates of law are such.
I think what @Isaac is imagining as a concept is quite different from, in virtue of being a more general form of, ideas about what we do with rationality. Philosophical concepts like justice or modus ponens or "The Private Language Argument" are just one type of concept (I think) in what Isaac is discussing.
We can populate an entire philosophy through (rational/reflective) concepts, concept generating mechanisms (interpretive paradigms, ordinary language philosophy and deconstruction, say), conceptual links (logical inference, induction, ampliative reasoning). These concepts are for the most part articulable; we know of them, we can relate to them as (roughly) distinct objects or themes, we can write about them, discussion surrounding them allows them to propagate, research about involved topics allows the concept to grow. This is an apophantic domain. Broadly concerned with articulation in language; declaratives, knowing that, knowing how to reason; how to think rationally. This is typically the domain we study in epistemology (what are items of knowledge, how do we know what we know). It's the surface of a much deeper sea.
But that's just one type of concept (with this reading of it); if you try to articulate how you would catch a ball, you'd probably only be able to do something like; "Keep your eye on it, judge the distance and speed, raise your hand and make the best corrections you can to your position to grab the ball"; "judge the distance and speed" there isn't apophantic; it's pre-reflective even. We can't articulate that kind of concept so readily; it's a know-how, an embodied concept, requiring adaptive regulation between our body's state and the ball's state through how we process our senses and integrate information from all of 'em and about ourselves. The modes of linkage between the ball and our body are much different from the modes that link concepts in argument and rational thought. This is what lays below the surface.
When we reason, we do a lot of borrowing from what lays below the surface, and we do so without being aware of it. The kind of mechanism that notices a contradiction between propositions is probably a more abstract form of the kind of thing that notices a discrepancy between the ball and the position of my body; reasoning is (well, conjecture with some evidence) just one way of attenuating discrepancies and forecasting our actions.
Seeing the world from a purely apophantic viewpoint; an ontology of properties and objects, concepts, subjects and predicates, propositions and propositional content -minds and bodies even; misses a lot. And for analysing ourselves, it's a disastrous error; it stops us asking where all that shit comes from and how it works.
But when we reason, we can't avoid taking something similar to that perspective; but we can be aware of the blinkers it prediposes us to and cultivate habits of thought that circumvent them (hyper reflection). Moreover, it's not always relevant to think about this stuff: we don't need a neurological description of a bad argument to practice critical thinking. We're still active beings no matter how we describe ourselves.
For me, a combination of neuroscience and psychology, but I don't suppose that's the only way.
Concepts, for me, are just dispositions to behave, I don't divide ideas from the behaviour they entail, and, being a physicalist, those dispositions have to be brain states, the physical cause of certain behaviour in response to certain stimuli.
It's just that talking about them as if they were this is totally unhelpful because we can't get outside of them. We can't talk conceptless language to articulate, or categorise concepts. Like trying to arrange items in a drawer when one of the items is the drawer.
So we take the first group (of the three I mentioned in the last post) at least, as a given, probably much of the second group too (immediate post-natal concepts) even when examining the neuroscientific basis of those very groups. Personally, that doesn't fill me with the existential confusion professed by the "hard problem" crowd.
The thing is not to see these 'concepts' as static input/output machines, but as Markov-like calculating devices, capable of subtlety adjusting their structures in response to stimuli, so as to produce something different in different circumstances. So it's not really fully described by if/then laws, I don't know how to parse it in if/then logic, but it would be something like...
If A then B (where B is "change A a bit, its not quite right, I was expecting it to do C").
Coming back to this draft, I see @fdrake has already explained this.
Absolutely.
This is exactly the kind of unification (or rather avoiding an artificial divide) between action and the concepts that dispose one to it. The 'law of non-contradiction' is no more than "I can't do that and that".
Logical contingency (in this context) might be A=B (when C). I'm no logician so I'm sure there's a more accurate way of putting it.
In the brain we could say A is sensory input, B is the response (signals to other areas, production of neurotransmitters, production of neural extension) and C are various environmental and mood circumstances.
The difficulty with applying the term to the way the brain seems to work is that one possible B is to change A. A is not faithfully reported from some objective external state of affairs, the report is biased by the response to it.
True. "Earth" is just a name, "concept" is just a name, in fact all proper nouns are just names. Were you trying to point out something more than just that?
The same thing as always...
Are we naming something that exists in it's entirety prior to our name? If so, what supportive argument are we using to say that? If it's simply because we say so - by definitional fiat - then that's inadequate here. The saying so requires some knowledge of what the thing being named consists of.
As it pertains to the thread, and the notion of properties and their part in our experience, well it gets interesting when the person using the notion explains how properties play a role in experience.
I'm not convinced this is helpful. In trying to diversify your conceptualization of what constitutes a concept I think you are, ironically, in danger of flattening the distinctions between basic intuitions or cognition (your first category), inductive or habit-induced expectations (your second category) and concepts as they are ordinarily conceived.
It seems reasonable to think your first two categories are shared by animals. Concepts as ordinarily understood are dependent on symbolic language.
So regarding this:
Quoting fdrake
I think that would better be called an embodied cognition than an embodied concept, since animals do these kinds of things just as well as we do.
So, if I read you correctly, you're claiming that properties are not in any way separate from things.
I'm inclined to agree with that. Different, but not separate.
Some things exist in their entirety prior to our naming them. The properties of such things must also exist prior to our naming them if such things consist, in part at least, of those properties.
:up:
Thanks to both.
My literature and philosophical inclinations cross-reference with fdrake’s comment more than Issac’s, although each are interesting and informative.
I would echo this sentiment regarding the thread itself...
By comparison.
Why is it unhelpful to have an understanding of conceptual architecture which does not distinguish us as well from animals? Or conversely, what is it about distinguishing us from other animals that is so helpful it must be maintained in any understanding of neural systems?
I think that's a nice corrective, but I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water. I did consider writing "embodied cognition", but I didn't think that conveyed well (in context) that embodied cognition has sub processes that inter link. "an embodied cognition" might've been better.
I also wanted to portray the relevance of embodied cognition to conception; so using concept in both places seemed appropriate. Conception still leverages body stuff that we usually take as conceptually unrelated to it.
We do experience the world. The universe experiences itself via us. Drop the mysticism and see it as an amazing scientific challenge, not a philosophical one.
It’s a fine line between comparison and relation. It suffices to say comparison, when the rational chronology is from knowledge backwards to perception, insofar as knowledge may or may not compare one-to-one apodectically with the object. In the case of that chronology from perception forward to knowledge, which is the major concern of reason anyway, wherein all procedural methodology is strictly a priori, the much more general relational operative is better suited for deducing precisely what the object is, out of the manifold of possible objects it might be.
Arguments can be made either way, I suppose.
Hmmmm.......
I can’t walk and walk. Isn’t that more incomprehensible than contradictory? I didn’t think comprehension to be the proper measure of contradiction.
First, properties definitely are NOT separable in that way.
It seems like you're asking about things having properties sans experience, which is fine, but presumably you're not just saying there's no experience period, are you? (In other words, you'd just be saying that there is no consciousness/no conscious beings, etc.)
Two different 'that' s. I thought that might be clear from the context. All I mean is that some seemingly abstract concepts like the law of non-contradiction need not be represented in the neural architecture as a single concept at, but merely present in each model. So the spatiotemporal model would deny the possibility of being both 'there' and not 'there', the somatomal models denies both sensation and no sensation, etc...
I figured as much, that you were intending “I can’t do this and that”. It would be semantically nit-picky, if we were talking about anything except the logical law, which doesn’t allow any ambiguity.
Aristotle would shake his head in great dismay to hear us talk of “two different that’s”.
Quoting creativesoul
Quoting Mww
So, we're talking about methodological approach here, aren't we? I find some of the language quite unhelpful. Unnecessarily complex.
If the question is how is it possible to distinguish whether concepts arise from different mechanisms, or by degree from a simpliciter, or divide into simpliciters from a whole, aren't we asking two questions about our candidate?
What does it consist of?
What is it existentially dependent upon?
Dunno about anybody else, but I am. No one denies that humans do things, but examination of methodology is required for understanding how it is possible those things are done. If there is an interest in it, of course.
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Quoting creativesoul
Not so much about the candidate, for the candidate, in this case, a concept, is presupposed. In effect, we are asking two questions about possible mechanisms which serve as sources of the candidate.
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Quoting creativesoul
Because the candidate is presupposed, it’s existence is given but that of which it consists is at this point, irrelevant, because the source that facilitates its existence has yet to be determined.
1.) Without a source, there is no indication of what kind of concept it is, nor what it is used for, which makes its constituency moot. Not to mention, there is no indication concepts have a constituency, even if they absolutely must have a source. After the source is identified, it is the purview of the logical laws of rational thought, as to whether or not a concept has the capacity to do its job as reason asks. Whether or not the concept is drawn from the correct source, is the determining factor of its employment, not that of which it consists.
2.) That which a concept is existentially dependent upon, is the entirety of the argument, is the only potentially informative question to be asked about concepts, for from that, both 1.) and 2.) are answerable.
Back to methodology. Reason the verb, is of course, a procedural methodology. A speculative procedural methodology predicated on logical relations. Logical relations having to do with what we think about the world as it appears, with respect to the world as it actually is.
All that to say this: you’re on record as saying we are too far apart in our thinking, so.....enough is enough, right?
We've had several discussions that widened the gap. That's not to say that every one will. I'm more than willing to continue this one. Are you?
Is it though?
How can we know what a concept is existentially dependent upon if we do not know what a concept consists of?
Sure. I’m old, retired and lazy. Perfect for philosophical musings. Have to acknowledge, however, we’ll bore the holy bejesus outta the physicalists, anthropologists, empirical psychologists in the audience, as well as the subjective idealists and phenomenalists. Hell...just about every -ist ever invented, except maybe empirical realists, and even those guys are apt to shrug off most speculative metaphysics.
Maybe. :smile:
New thread? "What are concepts?" perhaps as a title?
The SEP begins with this...
Concepts are the building blocks of thoughts.
Of course, I strongly disagree!
Would it matter, if concepts don’t consist of anything? What does a notion consist of? An idea? Other than to say what each of those does, or from whence they arise, what else can be said about them? If objects are predicated on the concepts that characterize them, how is it possible to characterize the concept, except with another concept, which tells us nothing about the constituency of concepts.
What do you think is the constituency of concepts?
Thought and belief. Correlations drawn between different things.
OK, so concepts correlate different things. What are those things? And how do concepts correlate them?
Concepts do not correlate different things. Thinking and believing creatures do, and they do so by virtue of drawing correlations and/or associations between different things. Concepts are developed by virtue of drawing correlations between names and referents.
You may be interested in this as well. It has everything to do with our earlier exchange, and it ties directly into a much earlier conversation in the Kripke thread(reading group).
Oh, ok. We draw correlations and concepts are the results of the correlation of names and things named. Does that mean the thing and the named thing are things of thought or things of belief then?
Could you rephrase the question? I cannot make much sense out of it.
Never mind; extracting information in the wrong direction, kinda.
I agree we do correlate things. And such correlation develops out of thoughts. I hesitate to call such correlation the development of concepts.
Concepts begin with naming. They gain in complexity by talking about the referent using it's conceptual identity(name), for doing so is to multiply the correlations drawn between the referent and other things.
Simply put, there is no difference between one's concept of a dog and one's thought and belief about dogs.
This is agreeable, but doesn’t say anything about what concepts consist of, which is the base of the dialectic. And to say concepts begin with naming only kicks the constituency can down the thought/belief road, for now we have not only concepts presupposed as extant with respect to their source, but also names presupposed with respect to their concepts. If concepts begin with naming, the names must already have occurred somehow, in order for them to begin the correlations from which concepts develop.
Try this: concepts do not begin with naming, but end with it. This way, the presupposition of names is eliminated, as well as their constituency, because the concepts are the names. Now, all that remains is the actual correlation, that which a conceptual identity relates to.
And the source of them. Can’t neglect that. Probably the most important aspect of this whole thing.
Done for the night. Been real.
:smile:
Cheers. Til next time.
Because you hold the reverse, that thoughts (and beliefs) are the building blocks of concepts? Is this what you mean by......
Quoting creativesoul
Step 1: reconcile the chicken/egg temporal dichotomy. Do we think, thereby develop concepts to justify the thinking, or do we conceptualize, then think by means of them.
Eneenie meenie miney moe.....
You've proposed this in past. It's not a good characterization. It's not just a matter of which came first. It's also matter of what both consist of. Correlations drawn between different things...
So, it's not so easily characterized as chicken/egg. Eggs came first though, as far as that goes. Chickens evolved from reptiles. Reptiles lay eggs.
The evolution part is important to keep in mind. One's theory of mind(thought and belief) must be amenable to evolutionary progression.
It certainly is if there’s no way to tell which one of two or more somethings came first. How are we supposed to keep in mind evolution is important if it isn’t just a matter of which came first. How can there be said to even be any evolution if the matter of a first, and thereby a succession in time, isn’t resolved?
This I think is only important if we think concepts consist of something other than just other concepts. Actually, I guess it could get real muddy, depending on the scope of reductionism being played with.
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Quoting creativesoul
There is an inductively quantitative evolution, as major name concepts multiply in complexity by a compendium of minor names inhering in the same phenomenal object, which always comes first. There is deductively qualitative evolution, as the procedural method itself reduces from the compendium of possible named identities for a phenomenal object to a particular named identity judged as belonging to it, which always comes last.
There’s your evolution!!! Happy now? Simultaneous bi-directional evolution. Betcha never saw that one coming, didja!?
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Nevertheless. You brought up evolution, so.....lay it on me. What do you consider evolving and how do you consider it evolving?
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Quoting creativesoul
Of course, no argument here. Their names are in the literature, if one knows where to look. Do you have names for them of your own, or from some other literature?
I call our reports cognitions. Will you agree reports are at the end of the cognitive chain? Or for you, where are reports located? Where....when.....does a report manifest?
Super interesting article.
If I've read the article right, we have that actions and anticipations are both generated to minimise predictive surprise of their motivating model. In turn, actions and internal states are sampled from the internal model and used for this predictive task, then re-incorporated as representations (sufficient statistics) of previous states (specifically their parameters). Predictive surprise and entropy are tightly related, and entropy minimisation is linked to energy expenditure; it makes sense that the relation between our embodied minds and their environment would be an entropy minimising process in a non-incidental manner, as that's an efficient solution to acting in accord with environmental and bodily regularities - utilising both to act.
How this is postulated to work in practice is set out in Box 1.
These is an overall process of external states, sensations, internal states and actions.
External states at time t: are samples from a model of form M1 based on previous external states at t-1 and actions at t-1 with some error.
Sensations at time t: are samples from a model of form M2 based on external states at time t and actions at time t-1 with some error.
Internal states at time t: are samples from a model of form M3 based on internal states at time t-1 and sensations at time t. The specific model of form M3 which is formed at this stage is an approximate minimizer over all models of type M3 with respect to criterion C1.
Actions at time t: are samples from a model of form M3 based on internal states at time t and sensations at time t. The specific model of form M3 which is formed at this stage is an approximate minimizer over all models of type M3 with respect to criterion C2.
(Edit: something interesting here is that precisely what counts as a "time step" is just... one part of the process feeding into another, the paper doesn't write it out like that, it does it in terms of dependency arrows.
Edit 2: another thing presenting it as time steps under emphasises is that a perturbation can intervene at any one of the processes and will propagate its effects through the arrows; if a perturbation happens in, say, the sensations component, it will propagate to the internal state and action components without the intermediary action step, but also with mediation through the action step. Imagining, say, holding an electric fence makes the hand clench up, it might well propagate to the actions component as the clenching reflex but also the internal state as "i'm being electrocuted" or "what the fuck")
Criterions C1 and C2 are functions of model type M3; specifically they minimise the free energy.
In both, there is a representation of the previous internal states and the current external states, a "recognition density", that represents the causal structure of the environment in terms of change propensities given interventions (our actions and environmental activity); this is called Q. Then there is a representation of (the representation of) the previous sensations and the representation of the current external states, which is like a current 'self model' (our anticipations and memories and presence at the time), this is called P. Both criteria add the mismatch of P from Q (the kullback liebler divergence) to the surprise (informational discrepancy) of P given the previous self model.
C1 minimises (the above paragraph) over the panoply of internal states that have previously been sampled; an adjustment of our internal state to the current situation representation.
C2 minimises (the above paragraph) over the panoply of suggested actions that have been previously sampled; an adjustment of our behaviour to minimise the distinction between our model of the causal structure of our environment and our self model.
Our self model updates through a variational inference procedure.
The proposal I gave would have there being more than one functional form in the M3 class; and the functional forms would interact. Less parsimonious, messier. They may be consistent with each other depending on whether the models in M3 factorise over input sources; like partitioning a likelihood into different factors (say, a model for people in Africa and people in America for birth rates, the two being different; analogously a model for visual information and proprioceptory information being independently weighted).
What both emphasise is that our minds realise from a "set of available minds" consistent with its history.
I'm not asking about things having "properties sans experience": I would say that properties are only known via cognition. To speak about properties "outside cognition" would be to posit that noumena have positive attributes. That would be problematic, but in any case was not my concern.
Of course I would not deny that things appear to us, but the idea of experience seems to arise as a reification of the abstract generalization which is thought of as the process of appearance as such.
Yes, it seems reasonable to think that animals, to varying degrees, do something like what we call imagining and thinking, and this seems justified since human imagination and thinking is not strictly dependent on language, but also consists in multi-sensory processes of "visualization" or image-forming.
I guess we could also call this pre-linguistic activity conception, as distinct from language-based conceptualization. So, I think that it's reasonable to say that animals conceive, but that they do not "have concepts", because the "having" relies on the hypostatization that language enables. Something like that anyway
Quoting Isaac
Just as I say to fdrake above, I think it is more helpful to maintain distinctions between linguistically and culturally elaborated conceptualizing capacities, and the primordial somatically-based embodied cognition we share with animals.
Indeed, it could get muddy, but it need not. It is most certainly quite complex, but there's also a very basic simplicity about it, as must be the case given the evolutionary progression of thought, belief, and concepts. It's not all reduction, though. Not on my view anyway. I mean, language is recursive, so that must also be taken proper account of. The framework we offer must take all sorts of things into account.
Of course I would concur with the need for a timeline. As you've asserted here keeping evolution in mind requires some sort of succession. With all that in mind...
What I meant by "it's not just a matter of which came first", was that that is an gross oversimplification of the methodological approach needed in order to even be able to acquire the knowledge we're seeking to obtain here. I think you'll agree with this? Knowing which came first requires knowing what all thought, all belief, and all concepts consist of. For when we know what each consists of, it offers us solid ground to be able to deduce which came first, by knowing what each is existentially dependent upon.
For example, if all A's consist of B, then no A exists prior to B. If all A's consist of B, then each and every A is existentially dependent upon B. That which is existentially dependent upon something else cannot exist prior to that something else. These are the sorts of reasoning that come into play here.
If you could be so kind, I would like for you to confirm whether or not I adequately understand what you've offered here. I've broken it down for easier reference. I don't think that I've broken anything up that needs to stay together, if you know what I mean. It's an interesting take, if I understand you correctly. There's some agreement, I think...
:smile:
Quoting Mww
The above seems to be referring to the quantitative increase of our concepts via naming practices. I take it mean something like our concepts increase in quantity along with the number of names we use. Specifically speaking, you seem to be also claiming that there is a hierarchy of namesakes involved within our use of concepts. I take this to be referring to all the different names of all the different features of a referent(the same phenomenal object). So, for example, if I have read you correctly, the major name concept could be "tree", and the compendium of minor names would include all of the names for the features, properties, and/or attributes of the tree. "Leaves", "roots", "trunk", etc. would all qualify for being in this compendium of minor names.
Do I have that much right?
What I'm left wondering still, is not only what exactly is it that you're claiming "always comes first", but "first" - as in prior to what else? I want to say that the primary namesake comes first, but I'm hesitant for you may be saying that the phenomenal object comes first. If it's the latter, then I would agree that some conceptions are of phenomenal objects and in those cases the object 'comes first'.
Quoting Mww
This bit I cannot understand. Could you set it out with an example?
:brow:
Quoting Mww
I thought we would agree there.
:smile:
Do I have names for those concepts of my own? I wouldn't say that. I am very fond of simple ordinary language when adequate. Given that we're discussing the evolution of concepts, thought, and belief, we must also keep in mind that the proposed complexity level that we're claiming exists at some specific time period must belong to a creature capable of having such complexity. I mean, in the beginning, the thought, belief, and/or conceptualization must be at a rudimentary and/or very basic level of complexity. In addition, those rudimentary thoughts, beliefs, and/or conceptualizations must consist of that which is amenable to evolutionary progression.
To directly answer your question, or at least what I think you're asking me for...
Thought, belief, meaning, and truth all exist in their entirety(on the most basic level/degree of complexity) prior to our conceptualizations/names of/for them... that is... prior to common language use.
Quoting Mww
That all depends upon what we're reporting upon. Metacognitive endeavors, such as the one we're involved in, are most certainly "at the end of the cognitive chain". Thinking about our own thought and belief is metacognition. Not all thought and belief is metacognitive.
Not all reports are existentially dependent upon metacognition though. A young child - particularly an honest and talkative one - will offer their own report of all sorts of stuff that they're thinking about. This youngster's report is not at the end of the cognitive chain. Well, strictly speaking, until the child learns to start talking about it's own thought and belief, and it's own language use, it's at the end of what's cognitively possible - at the time - for them. However, assuming that they go on as most do, the end of the cognitive chain(metacognition) comes later.
:smile:
Nice discussion. Kudos!
:smile:
That's precisely the divide that needs bridged...
Yes and no...
Thought and belief are the building block of concepts(on my view), but, that's not exhaustive enough. Correlations drawn between different things are the building blocks of everything ever thought, believed, spoken, written, and/or otherwise uttered.
Of course, I'm setting that aside in order to understand the position you're presenting, for the time being anyway. I hope to compare the two later.
This approach puts all concepts on equal footing as being the names. It would only follow that there are no concepts prior to naming. I could agree actually, but something tells me that you may not? My agreement to that would lead to a denial that that which exists prior to it's namesake is a concept.
There are cases in which we would find ourselves in dire need of drawing a distinction between our conception and it's referent. There's no difference between our conception of games and games. There is most certainly a difference between that which exists in it's entirety prior to our naming it and our name. There's an distinction regarding existential dependency to be drawn and maintained here...
How else do we discriminate between such pre-existent things and our names for them?
Here is where elemental constituents come to bear alongside the considerations of existential dependency...
Yes. The great thing about the free-energy approach is that it gives both a mechanism and an evolutionary story to the Bayesian modelling system which we already have a good idea the brain uses.
Quoting fdrake
I can't find a non-paywalled version, but the paper which started all this is Ernst and Banks's 2002 paper on visuo-haptic relations. Basically, they presented a ridge-measuring task where visual stimuli were deliberately made uncertain and haptic stimuli more certain (we traditionally trust our vision more readily that we trust our touch). They modelled an estimation method using Bayes Theorem and a normal Gaussian distribution for widths of the ridge as the prior. They then tested people's actual estimates and found a really strong correlation indicating that people were somehow actually using Bayesian inference to estimate the width of the ridge in the face of visual uncertainty.
Similar experiments have been since to confirm this (Ernst and Banks didn't really set out to find this). A classic one with poor contrast moving dots where participants had to estimate the direction of movement despite not being able to see the dots clearly. Unbeknownst to them, there was a slight probability bias in favour of one particular direction. It took, I think, abut two minutes for their Bayesian model to pick up on the fact that the dots more often moved in one direction and adjust their priors for movement accordingly, even when there were really no dots at all, in fact. We do Bayesian modelling in our heads, it seems.
Quoting fdrake
There was an experiment done on this, but I can't remember it well enough to even look it up. If I recall correctly, there are time steps involved but they're specific to the model being used (visual, auditory etc). I wish I could track down the paper, but I don't even know where to start.
Quoting fdrake
I'm inclined to agree. Most work on this has been done on perception and although the data correlates well, there is some discrepancies. My guess is that the discrepancy is caused by other models in other areas of the brain interfering at a sort of meta level.
Back to the topic...the sense is that our feeling of 'an experience' is exactly this meta-model trying to put some sharp edges to the whole fuzzy procedure. We can't actually work well with fuzzy data, we can't possibly 'look behind the curtain' to actually have an awareness of the variational inference procedure going on. Why not? - Well on an ecological level, we simply wouldn't behave as efficiently as a creature which had a clear answer, on an epistemic level, how would we experience that with some means of modelling it...
Really nice summary by the way.
I don't see how they can be distinguished. When a chimpanzee rejects a previously gratefully accepted cucumber as reward on the grounds that the other chimp has been given a grape, are they not using a model of justice, or fairness? We verbalise such a concept, chimps don't, but the model (in terms of expectations and behavioural response) is still in some social animals. I'm struggling to think of an example where we, as humans, might verbalise a concept which is completely absent in its entirety in other social animals.
Or perhaps they just wanted a grape...
Nah, Chimpanzees also favour fair (50:50 split) offers in Ultimatum Game experiments to unfair ones (80:20 split), even when the unfair split is in favour of the proposer.
I like this conjecture a lot. Explaining the unity of consciousness in terms of our body's self modelling processes as realising a single action-sensation-internal state from a space of possible ones is pretty neat. We must act in some specified way, and that specification coincides with a collapse (through sampling) into a unique state.
Quoting Isaac
One thing I'm generally apprehensive about with Bayesian brain approaches is the parameter optimisation mechanism. A lot of effort is put into the neural implementation of the modelling procedure, but less seems to be put into the neural implementation of the optimisation mechanism.
A rough guideline for how this works is that there is some neuroscientific model [math]M(\theta)[/math], where [math]M[/math] is the total model (the whole dependency loop in the referenced paper) and [math]\theta[/math] are the model parameters. In order to make a prediction of a specific value; say the ridge width in your example; the model has to be mapped to a specific set of parameters [math]\hat{\theta}[/math] which then allow the model to output a prediction based on the mapping; our predictions of the ridge width at a given time. This mapping is called a point estimation procedure.
One strength of the paper (again, if I read it right) is that it dodges the problem of "which point is output from a probabilistic model for our action?" by having random sampling from a posterior distribution obtained by variational inference (what sampling procedure though? How is it in the wetware?). But the optimisation; model choice steps; in constraining the M3 functional forms are conjectured to work through steepest gradient descent.
Without any math detail, steepest gradient descent is like pouring water onto a landscape defined by a function; a valley with elevations and contour lines; it travels down into the valley down the (locally) steepest slopes, the 'flow of water' is the iteration of the algorithm from step to step down the valley towards its basin. Unlike in nature, the water's movement needs to 'know' which directions are which and what they mean. In the algorithm, the "valley" is a cost function, whose "elevation" and "angle from the bottom on a contour" are parameters (directions) which are optimised over; there is also some geometry applied to the directions; how far is what from what. Steepest gradient descent finds the closest thing it can to the minimum of the cost function with some parametrisation and some geometry.
It is plausible that if we had complete model specification of the human mind, it would not really matter so long as some part of its dynamics implemented the steepest gradient descent. But whether and how the process internally optimises with steepest gradient descent is left unconsidered.
This is kinda first world problems at this point, considering it's usually easier to model something first then pick an appropriate estimation procedure, but I'm still a bit skeptical of "model first; then estimate" when both are running simultaneously in the same wetware. On a computer, you input the model and the optimisation constraints (cost function, also space geometry if you're pedantic) to find the parameter estimates; our brains seem to model and estimate at the same time.
This is alleviated in the paper by having parameters sampled from models, rather than deterministically outputted from them (if I've read it right, again) globally through some optimisation algorithm, so I can see an argument that specifying 'the general statistical structure' of our mind 'before' looking at how it estimates itself is a better approach, I'm just suspicious that something of fundamental importance is being missed.
Because this is also interesting, @StreetlightX had a thread on this at some point in the past. The gist of it was that relational concepts admit of a degree of abstraction; "analogy (is) the core of cognition" as Hofstadter puts it. Monkeys can learn relationships between tokens quite easily (this is red, that is red), but they find it much harder to learn relationships between generated types (this is coloured, that is coloured) or (this is a pair, that is a pair) (in Street's example); they also seem to need a token based learning exercise for more abstract concepts. I think it would be quite surprising if a monkey could be taught what tuple is in the general case; there probably aren't enough tokens to serve as an external memory bank for an arbitrarily relationally complex abstract object for monkeys to learn it.
But I suppose that depends on the scope of "in its entirety"; abstracting a type from tokens is something monkeys can do, abstracting higher order types into abstract objects to synthesise even higher order types is probably not on the cards arbitrarily. Humans struggle with tuples (until we learn what's in 'em doesn't matter, nor does their length...).
I doubt all of our precursors would struggle though? The boundary between human and human precursor (in terms of cognitive development) seems pretty fuzzy.
Yeah, I think the idea goes way back to Geoffrey Hinton in the early 90s. It also explains the self/other divide (which we know to be spurious) because one has to distinguish those actions which arose from the models from those actions which are to be input into the priors, otherwise the model becomes too self referential to be truely adaptive. M3 is 'self'.
As to the issues with parameters...
It's very complicated and I'm somewhat out of my depth with both the maths, and the neurobiology, but I'll do my best to impart my understanding (most of this is from Friston's earlier work).
Neural architecture is built on three major properties - connection strength, connection heirachy (disputed), and connection locality (specialisation and integration between regions).
Memory (which, when it comes down to it, is what we're talking about with regards to priors) is primarily about connection strength in later life, but to do with heirachy and locality immediately post-natally. So parameters are mediated differently depending on when the priming sensory input (forward neural connections) arose. Your priors about cultural effects might be mediated by connection strength, but your priors about facial recognition be mediated by locality and connection architecture.
I think this is why people often struggle with neural correlates of concepts, they try to fit them to a single model of parameter encoding in the hardware (wetware) when there is actually a range of means by which parameters are encoded with quite radically different implications.
Quoting fdrake
Yes, unlike computers with fixed architecture, our neural hardware is responsive to use, so you have forward acting connections driving processes, backward acting connections modulating responses, and connection building/pruning in response to both (pruning connections being as important as building them, of course).
Quoting fdrake
Have a look at the function of backward acting modulating neural connections, you may find there the missing piece. They modulate the subsequent forward driving connections probabilistically by restriction of signal at an asymmetric pace with the forward connections. I don't want to drown you in reading material, but the idea is explained in this paper. It may answer some of your concerns.
Eh, I'm still a noob in this, I'll take any free education I can get. The forward/backward propagation steps in Box 3 in the Frisk paper are probably worth me reading more closely too (with the neural implementation of gradient descent through message passing in mind).
Yeah, I think it might be what you're looking for. Now I've got to try and get my head round what you and @StreetlightX are talking about wrt concepts.
I'm afraid I use the term rather loosely and it seems to have caused some not inconsiderable concern. For me, 'concept' rather pragmatically encodes what one can do with the data (neural connections/architecture) which the label is collecting. Its all about doing, so I struggle with concepts divorced from actions. I tend to come at this from an input-response model with, if necessary, post hoc analysis into verbally mediated concept talk. Even something abstract like maths, I consider the 'doing' of maths first and the verbal translation of that behaviour secondary.
In a sense I think I'm agreeing with what you seem to be saying, but I think I would tend to frame it as some behaviour still - the 'talking about' is actually the thing that encodes the concepts behind the words, the 'doing the sum' is the thing that encodes the concepts behind the maths.
...but I'm still not sure if that's quite what you both mean.
Final thought on this matter before I retire for the evening. In a striking coincidence, I remember reading about some experiments with monkeys (or possibly chimpanzees), where they were trying to get them to sum quantities of different types of object (so types of types). The first experiment failed, the second had partial success. Their suggestion of a cause...the first set believed too much in the significance of the colour - their Bayesian priors let them down!
Quark.
An odd word, n'est-ce pas? I submit for your consideration, that you, immediately upon reading the word here and now, referenced your experience with it. You didn’t look at the composition of the word by letter or order of letters, you related the word itself, as an established member of a particular language, with some referent, with that which the word is intended to represent. In other words, you already understand the word as a representation, you already understand the word relates to something, because antecedently, you understand and infer from that antecedence, that no word serves any informative purpose if it doesn’t refer to something.
But what, exactly, did Gell-Mann do in 1964, as causality for the absolutely very first instantiation of this particular representational indicator “quark”**? Without regard to the inherent silliness of the word, we can reasonably suppose he wanted nothing but a way to identify this theoretically mandated physical reality, even if such reality had never yet been demonstrated, and may never have been in the case Gell-Mann made a mistake in his theorizing.
From this, two significant predications arise:
1.).....the totality of an existence need not be given in order for a representation to be assigned to it; the totality of its possible existence needs merely be thought;
2.).....simply from the silliness of the name, that even if it is merely the framework for a name that is given, the name does not require any symbolic likeness to it, which in turn is sufficient reason to permit that names can be spontaneously generated without regard to representational pertinence**;
3.)....the spontaneously generated name “quark”, and the framework the name is to represent, in order to maintain logical consistency, must be the same thing, and therefore, immediately upon being named, the concept obtains.
4.)....combining 2.) re: spontaneous generation, and 3.) re: simultaneity, we can conclude that the relation to concepts, that is, their purpose in speculative epistemological methodology, does not in any way depend on a relation in concepts with respect to their development. Thought develops concepts relative to something, but thoughts are not the constituency of them.
** I’m aware of “Finnegan’s Wake”, and the historical precedence of the word. Hopefully, no rebuttal to the philosophical point being made, ensues, for it is obvious Joyce’s and Gell-Mann’s use of the word are only related accidentally.
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Quoting creativesoul
YES!!!! Concepts and naming ARE on equal footing, there are no concepts prior to naming, and it SHOULD be denied that that which exists in its entirety prior to its namesake, is a concept. We are not thereby denying existence of namesakes, whatever its entirety, that is, that which lends itself to being nameable, but rather, we are demanding the occasion for it.
And here, I think, lay the altogether more importance of source, which is the same as occasion, as opposed to constituency, of concepts, with respect to the correlations we both acknowledge for, or by, them.
Yes. Even if there must be a first, here meaning a first in a methodological approach, a first by itself is meaningless.
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Quoting creativesoul
This would be true enough, again with respect to a methodological approach, if it were not for the fact that there are firsts in that approach that have nothing to do with it, per se, but serve as means for its inspiration. You are correct for those considerations within the approach, but we still need a reason, an occasion, to use the method to begin with. And rather than knowing what all thoughts, beliefs and concepts consist of, it is better suited for the method, to know what they do. If they do what they do without contradiction or inconsistency, their constituency may not matter. That being said, there are those things the constituency of which is quite relevant, but it remains to be seen whether the constituency is a population given to them by their use. In other words, a faculty certainly has a population of a priori objects of reason for its constituency, but each a priori object of reason that is a constituent, may not consist of anything. We must nip inevitable infinite regress at the root somehow.
Quoting creativesoul
You got it...it is the object, the primary namesake, some thing of perception, to which the methodological approach can be directed. It appears from your terminology, you accept that the namesake has not been named, and no concept yet applies to it. If we wish to go even deeper into the particulars of the methodological approach, the namesake, while it suffices to call it a phenomenal object, because it is an object that will be named a phenomenon, technically it’s a sensation, and stands as the inspiration for the inductively quantitative evolution, which you readily grasped.
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Quoting creativesoul
Keyword....judged. If it be granted the quantitative, re: numerical, evolution concerns itself with part of the methodological approach, then the deductive qualitative, re: logical authority, should concern itself with another part. In short, when we understand a particular concept belongs to....names....a phenomenon, without contradicting what the concept has previously named (what we already know), we at once deduce what was previously a general unnamed sensation, is indeed cognizable as a certain named object. We are in effect, evolving from the general to the particular. It is how we arrive at experience, the last of the cognitive chain, called empirical knowledge.
I’ll address this, and forward my agreements with your comments shortly. I don’t want you to think there’s no common ground going on here.
What would you even be talking about when you say things like this given that you don't think the world has any properties? Are you just talking about things your own mind creates?
This seems to be all in the interpretation: alternatively, it could be down to a feeling of envy or a preference for grape over cucumber.
OK, I’ll buy that. At the very lowest level, these are concepts, and they can be empty of content. There must be truth, on order for something to be true.
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Quoting creativesoul
Ok, sound logic, yes.
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Quoting creativesoul
Yes. Reflecting back to names and concepts being equal here, in this dialogue, and the point I was making awhile ago in another where it was proposed that the criterion of the possibility of a conception (not of its object) is the definition of it. It is the name of the objects of concepts that are different than the name of the concept.
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Quoting creativesoul
Agreed, without equivocation. I think we need to stipulate correlations, in order to proceed.
Your turn. Agree, disagree, question all the above as you wish.
There's much to be said about our discussion. There are certainly several aspects I'm looking forward to getting into.
However, I think that I just realized that there's a bit of misunderstanding happening with regard to my own notion of elemental constituency and/or constituents(of our concepts). Specifically, it seems that you've taken that to include things like letters and such. Now, to be clear, that's not wrong(per se) but it is an incomplete understanding. By my lights, understanding is imperative to good, productive, and valid discourse. I'm assuming we both seek just that...
Just as I hope to better grasp the position you're arguing for/from, I also hope to be able to clearly state my own so that those who are capable can have a good grasp upon it as well. You seem perfectly capable. I mean anyone who can follow Kant, and particularly those who can use his framework from memory, which you seem to be doing, ought be able to follow the position I'm working from and developing.
In short, I would think that it would help you (or anyone else for that matter) to better understand my position if you kept in mind that I reject several different historical dichotomies. Most of the historical ones actually. This pertains directly to elemental constituency and existential dependency because correlations are neither immaterial nor material, external nor internal, mind nor body, objective nor subjective...
None of these dichotomies are capable of taking proper account of that which consists of both sides of the dichotomy. They are all inherently inadequate for taking proper account of correlations drawn between different things. They(correlations) consist of both... material and immaterial, external and internal, mind and body, objective and subjective.
The consequential scope of this could seem daunting. That feeling passes as things come into clearer view. That clearer view is practically inevitable when one consciously rejects the aforementioned historical inadequate dichotomies and the frameworks surrounding them. Witt's "bewitchment of language(use)" applies here. Rejecting inherently inadequate frameworks and dichotomies is akin to letting the fly out of the bottle, so to speak.
All this will apply to my next reply to you, as well as all the rest, and all previous ones. You may want to re-read some of them in order to sharpen your understanding given the new translation tools. The "quark" episode looks promising. Very timely. Very relevant.
Kudos.
Just wanted to mention something here. Do with it what you may. It's just dead on point relevant... on my view anyway.
Interpretation is always of something already meaningful. Our interpretations of what's going on in the chimps mind are nothing more and nothing less than reporting upon the meaningful thought and belief of the chimp at the time. Those are meaningful to the chimp... we can get them wrong if we do not work from an adequate criterion for non linguistic thought and belief.
I cannot make sense of any notion, conception, or model of fairness/justice without rather complex language use that talks in terms about what one wants as compared to what one gets(or has). Without this comparison, there is no notion of fairness or justice.
Can chimps compare what they have actually received with what they want?
Seems to me that that is impossible without the ability to compare one's own thought and belief(what they want) with what's happened and/or is happening(what they received). Thus, on these grounds(the chimp doesn't have what it takes to have a notion of fairness/justice) I can only conclude that the chimp quite simply did not want the cucumber, but rather wanted the grape.
Acquiring well-grounded true belief about what all thought, belief, and concepts consist of is a methodological approach. I also do not think that these are mutually exclusive goals. We can do both, acquire knowledge of what our thought, belief, and concepts do alongside acquiring knowledge concerning what they consist of.
A faculty, which I'm taking to be the Kantian notion, could be sensibly said to have 'a population of a priori objects of reason' for it's constituency. I'm a bit confused here though. Which a priori object of reason does not consist of anything?
Infinite regress is the least of my concerns. It's not a problem on my view.
From memory as rewards they gave the chimp cucumber first, then grapes; and found that after having the grapes the chimp rejected the cucumber (not sure of it was grapes and cucumber in the study but I stuck to those as they were the tendered examples).
Unfortunately many purported experts in the field of the human mind do not work from a framework that is even capable of drawing and maintaining the actual distinction between linguistic and non-linguistic thought and/or belief.
The result is misattributing meaningful content that quite simply is not there. A sense of justice/fairness is a noble aim to identify prior to language. I mean, that would be great step in the right direction for a well-grounded version of universally applicable ethical considerations. However, there's inadequate evidence to suggest that the chimp is either involved in Bayesian reasoning(I know that's currently popular) or working from a modell of justice/fairness.
Those kinds of social situations(not having what one wants, and not receiving what one expects) can most certainly be a part of one's developing such 'senses' as justice and fairness, but that's only after one begins talking about situations where one's expectations had already long since run afoul. Fairness is an assessment of what's happened.
Ah well... you'll have that!
Remaining to be seen presupposes the possibility of something or other actually happening. If we are looking to see if we populate the concept and we hold that there are no concepts prior to names, then we cannot admit anything else but...
We populate concepts by virtue of using names.
So...
What gives?
It doesn't remain to be seen. We cannot see such things aside from seeing the consequence of our premisses.
Either all names are concepts, or the elemental constituency of some concepts does not include naming practices and other such language use(descriptive practices) even though our knowledge and/or awareness of them does.
That which exists prior to our naming practices are not concepts if concepts are equal to names. How do you square this with the equivalency between concept and name that you drew earlier?
Sorry... the critical hat was on.
:wink:
I just don’t really see where this discussion is going? There appears to be a lot of emphasis on ‘concepts’ and ‘naming concepts’ ... why?
How did Banno say it???
It's just a bunch of esoteric language use that only philosophers care about.
The focus is on non linguistic thought and belief, per the OP. Some experience is had by non linguistic creatures. All experience consists entirely of the thoughts/beliefs of the creature having the experience. Some of us, myself included, are offering argument in support of our earlier remarks regarding "what it's like to experience X" where "X" is something that happened to a thinking and believing subject.
I claim that we cannot even offer an adequate report if we do not know what all thought and belief consists of. Experience is thought and belief based. All of it. That's my synopsis anyway.
The neuroscience is beyond my comprehension. I've been waiting for them(the experts, specialists, and groupies in/of the field) to admit that there is no one to one mapping between brain activity and particular thought. Many different thoughts correspond to virtually the exact same brain state. Admittedly, our technologies are offering more and more knowledge. However, there's no indication that the hard sciences(or soft ones for that matter) have acquired enough knowledge about our own thought and belief to be able to assert much at all. Thought and belief(thinking about stuff) involves firing neurons, and different physiological biological structures and systems, but they most certainly do not consist entirely thereof.
I believe that Mww is arguing from such a position. I do not. It denies direct perception the actual role it plays in rudimentary level thought, belief, and experience. However, I'm currently considering another's position. Sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised.
:smile:
It does no such thing. Anyway, I’ll just keep at eye out and jump in if I can. Probably not though tbh
Thanks
Ugh!
Really?
Phenomenology works from the notion of indirect perception. It presupposes two worlds. The real one(which we can know nothing about aside from it's existence) and that which appears to us(the phenomenal world)...
That's indirect perception of the real world.
You're welcome. I love sushi, just so ya know! Freshly sliced pickled ginger, freshly ground and prepared wasabi, and some good shoyu...
Mmmm.... Mmmmm... Mmmmmmm....
:smile:
Freshly cut and beautifully arranged sashimi. Dragon rolls... oh to die for!
I'm sure there are a plurality of different phenomenological approaches that I'm completely unfamiliar with. The one I've been considering here is Kantian.
What do you have in mind?
I'd like to see the abstract and/or the synopsis along with some video footage of the behaviour under consideration. That would be very interesting.
Yep.
Quoting Janus
Never ceases to amaze me the lack of respect for scientists we read about here. Not science itself, the people conducting the experiments. Yes, everyone is biased, flawed to some extent, but this is just plain disrespectful. Do you honestly think deWaal didn't think of that and try to control for it in his experiments? Do you think Brosnan Talbot and Ahlgren all missed that possibility when they repeated the experiments? Do you think Brauer and Tomosello just randomly changed the parameters of the game in their experiments? Was Josep Call just taking a wild stab in the dark when he set up the experiment to differentiate between unwilling and unable reward-givers? Jorg Massen's work with Macaques just another sloppy bit of guesswork?
I don't know if you've caught up on this yet, but scientists try to think of alternative explanations and control for them. a whole raft of other scientists try to remove confounding variables, alter contexts...these people are, despite the way they're negatively painted, quite interested in how other animals think. they don't tend to just set up an experiment off the back of fag packet that any casual lay reader can spot a massive flaw in and just say "fuck it, that'll do".
And another one...
Quoting creativesoul
Yet...
Quoting creativesoul
...sure, you know, I don't think they've thought of that, perhaps you better pop up to the neurosciences lab at Sussex and give them a few pointers, sounds like they need a bit of help.
Everything is phenomenon. I don’t even believe Kant meant there were two worlds? I guess you’re referring to the ‘phenomenal world’ and ‘negative noumenon’ - ‘noumenon’ is merely a limiting factor NOT some dualistic separation.
That said I haven’t read all of Kant’s work and I hear he may well have said something different in his later works. I talking purely from the COPR
Here. And just for Janus who seems to be of the impression that scientists just produce experiments, randomly guess some possible answer and then just walk away - here is a meta study with some refutations of the original, some alternative approaches and a summary.
I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings. I've offered very good solid reasoning for my claims. Perhaps you could dispel me of this mindset. Address the arguments I've provided.
Or...
What counts as non linguistic thought and belief? I mean, that's exactly what you're describing and/or claiming is going on in the minds of chimps. I've tremendous respect for scientists who work from methodological naturalism and employ Occam's razor. The subject matter is no easy task. If it were, we would have had it all figured out long ago. The real world keeps on showing us otherwise, by offering the unexpected.
I don't think Janus is as flippant as you imply.
Fair enough. I'm sure that not all experts/specialists are characterized well by what I wrote. The groupies... particularly some who call themselves physicalists... well...
Anyway. Point taken. Keep me in line. Gawd knows it's needed.
:wink:
If that's the case, then the notion itself can and ought be cast aside for it cannot be used to further discriminate between anything at all. It becomes superfluous, unhelpful, and offers nothing but unnecessarily overcomplicated language use.
So...
In the modified version the necessary precondition for agreement as a precursor to being rewarded was foregone...
The agreement is precisely what establishes the basis from which thought, belief, and feelings of unfairness/fairness arise.
Quoting Isaac
After reading through the abstract, it seems that they've done a pretty job determining certain things. You're invoking them as a means to support that the chimps in question work from some model of fairness/justice is just plain not supported by what you've offered as support.
Weird.
For me, a belief is a predisposition to act as if some state of affairs were the case in one's model of the external world (external to oneself). In neurobiological terms, that belief is the architecture of the neural network which responds to the sensory inputs relevant to that belief.
You say that similar thoughts engage different brain cortices, and, to some extent this is true, but that's only relevant if you presume the classification of these thoughts as similar (presumably on the basis of your recognising them to be so) has primacy. But that recognition is happening in the very organ we're trying to investigate, so we cannot presume it's representations as fact if we're to carry out an impartial enquiry.
Notwithstanding the above, two things. The brain is both specialised and integrated. Specialised areas are involved in certain activities. We know this because damage in those areas hampers those activities. Yet the integration of the brain results in feedback from those areas to other potentially related sites. Which sites are involved here depends, in part, on your personal history because vast quantities of these connections are made (and un-made) post-natally.
Secondly, the brain works, to some extent, probabilistically. Timings are asymmetric and very rapid (electromagnetic signalling) this essentially makes much of the brain a stochastic system but one which can, nonetheless be understood with statistical methods.
Really? You're going to quote the part of the report which outlines the reason why the experiments are being studied as if it were the conclusion?
There are then ‘modes’/‘intentionality’. I can ‘view’ a box as an object, a tool, a vessel, a metaphor, etc.,. I can also think of a box (mode of ‘thinking about’).
We can then start to ask questions about items of experience. What ‘aspects’ or ‘parts’ of a box can be said to be the ‘essence’ of boxes? How many sides does a box need? Do we have to necessarily observe every side or edge of a box to appreciate it as a box (can we observe a box from every angle - the eidetic givenness of a box regardless of our limited perspective).
The primary mode of human understanding and philosophical thought stems from the phenomenological principle.
I think Husserl thought Kant used the term ‘transcendental’ to mean ‘thing in itself’ yet I’m not convinced Kant meant this dualistically - Husserl had a go at him about that (mistakenly I believe).
From the subjective day-to-day lived life we don’t act as if the world is phenomenal. Our world is materiality for the most part.
No. Ooops. If thats true. Open mouth, insert foot. I'll attent to it more.
Keep me in line!
:yikes:
The second paper may be more in line with what you're looking for than the first, but when attending, I should make it clear that I'm not really "invoking them as a means to support that the chimps in question work from some model of fairness/justice "
Firstly, I presented them as an opposition to the idea that the grape/cucumber experiment could be explained simply by the chimp wanting a grape. The idea was to show that many many years of research effort has gone into eliminating such obvious interpretations, so the main thing was simply to show the depth of the research, it has unquestionably gone beyond mere preference.
Secondly, I'm not necessarily arguing that non- human primates have an abstract concept of fairness/justice like ours. For a start I think it more likely we'll find our concept isn't quite so abstract and top-down acting as we think, not that chimpanzees have topgdown acting abstract concepts, more that we don't. Also I wouldn't expect chimpanzee justice to be the same as humans, we're different species with different niches. What I'm arguing is that there's no evidence (occam's razor) to justify a belief that they are in some materially different category of process, not that there's no evidence they're different at all.
This is the essence of the problem we started with. You're making one huge assumption here - that our 'experience' delivers us a single, time-consistent, and system-consistent answer to any of those types of question. The evidence from the neuroscience I've been outlining seems to be that it does not. Don't forget one side of all neuroscience is phenomena. We can't compare anything at all with brain states unless we have one side of the equation being the answer to "what have you just experienced?".
What you say above is mostly irrelevant to the subjective experience because you’re dealing with the naturalistic approach - phenomenology isn’t concerned with that (at least not directly).
Time is certainly a huge problem as all phenomenon is unique. The ‘essence’ is getting to what always remains in some said experience - universal terms whose abstract meanings don’t alter within set parameters (the number ‘one’ is such a universal term when it comes to basic arithmetic and adding up a number of items).
So, talk me through it, if you will. We're asking...
Quoting I like sushi
First question, what would constitute a measure of correctness for any answer?
Example ... Imagine a box with no sides or volume
Depends on the definition of box.
Whether I can imagine a box with no sides or volume depends on what I decide a 'box' is. Since I'm encountering new concepts all the time, I'm quite used to changing (or broadening) my categorical definitions. So I can imagine an object with no sides and no volume (I can't picture it, obviously, but I can imagine it being a container in some hitherto undiscovered dimension whose ability to contain other objects is not mediated by 'sides'). Whether I call that thing a 'box' or not really depends on whether other people would know what I was talking about if I did.
So the answer to your question, I suppose, is yes, I can. Not sure where that gets us as I suspect the answer to every such question will be yes.
That is precisely the point of the phenomenological approach. It doesn’t have a dog in the ‘possibility’ race of some extradimensional existence or with semantic word play (or rather they are in and of themselves ‘modes’ of intentionality; one which Heidegger set his fancy too rather than the broader project of subjective experience).
None of this is in denial of accumulated experiences of some said experience (maybe ‘box’ has some personal meaning to you outside of facility of the item ‘box’?). An ant never crawls on a table, it crawls on an object of subjective experience we call ‘table’ - there is a difference, yet there isn’t a difference. It’s the perspective that matters to subjective experience.
Quoting I like sushi
Quoting I like sushi
Quoting I like sushi
This is all just another tired old variation on the same lame arguments we had against the "what it's like" objection. "it's obvious...", "you really do know...", "you're just pretending..."
Consciousness it seems is supposed to be completely unassailable by third parties...except apparently, when someone claims to have an experience of it which doesn't fit with preconceptions, then it's apparently open access as to what's 'obvious', and what's 'pretend'.
Note: the ‘you’ is a universal ‘you’ - inclusive of myself. I wasn’t, and try not to, attack what someone says like that anymore. It just makes the discussion go awry in my experience.
You may very well imagine the letters B-O-X, I’m not telling you what you imagine, I’m asking you to question the validity of the questioning and assumptions not offer up your hermeneutic interpretation of what I’ve said.
Can you imagine a box with no sides? As in create an image in your head of a physical box. The answer is no, as you said. I’m denying that you can speculate about some extradimensional box, but you cannot ‘see’ it.
To take this more in the direction you were steering, we could then ask if I could imagine a day with no hours? On the face of it most people would be inclined to say ‘of course not!’ But with a little thought it doesn’t take long to realise that an ‘hour’ is an empirical measurement and that time passes regardless of how we do or don’t account for it. The ‘mode’ of thought - the intentionality - is how we subjectively align ourselves.
I'm questioning both the accuracy (in terms of language use) and the usefulness (for our investigation) of that connection. I don't think "can you imagine" is limited to "can you form a mental image of", and even if we did impose such artificial limits, how is our thus shackled investigation of any use to us now?
Exactly, so where's my role in this phenomenal investigation? You say "let's just investigate what it is we actually experience, let's use that as our measure...", I say "I experience a feeling of being able to imagine such a box", and your immediate response is "no you can't!".
So your wife and kid are just creations of your mind in your view.
Did you tell your wife and kid mind-creations this?
(This is the sort of scenario where I really would love to be able to interact with you folks in person instead. I'd make sure they know this if you haven't told them.)
The point is noticing the modes of intentionality: speculating, thinking, feeling, saying, suggesting, reasoning, etc.,. And I don’t mean this in a language based hermeneutical sense only; hence my point about Heidegger doing Husserlian phenomenology in part. You may find that approach more to your liking though.
You can ‘feel’ something about a box. That is a mode. I could have said any 3-dimensional object of perception. There are certain - forgive me I get these Husserlian terms backwards sometimes - ‘aspects’ of a given object of experience (‘object’ in a loose sense of the term) and certain ‘parts’. I think it is the aspects that cannot be removed, but parts can, ie. removing the ‘shape’ of a table being impossible if we wish the table to be concrete object of experience, yet we can remove a leg and the table remains a table.
There are numerous ways to weave this. They are the modes of intentionality at work.
Sorry, typo. I’m NOT denying ...
It is even more problematic untangling ourselves from linguistic presuppositions - like with the tame example I gave with ‘hour’.
Well not just creations, I never said anything like that. I'm personally quite convinced there's some external reality, but if we're just talking about the division of that reality into this object and that object then - yes, and yes. I'm sure you're aware the we completely alter our actual cellular make up, so I presume you're not associating other people with their material matter. You know we can be primed to think even the table is a part of ourselves, so presumably you're not working on some consistent self-image. People with Capgras syndrome regularly do re-invent who their wife and kids are. So where's this going? What are you trying to say that my wife and kids (there are two, let's not be excluding anyone) are that is there in the external reality?
You don't even think there is an object that's another person. So what are you asking about?
Why would you?
Ahh, that makes more sense.
Quoting I like sushi
But look at Ramachandran's self-awareness experiments. Does the table have sensory receptors which link to our brains? Typically no. Two minutes of priming perception prior distributions and suddenly it does. There's no essence of table, there's what we currently perceive which is mediated by what we expect to perceive which is mediated by experience of what we have perceived, plus the architecture of the computational system it's put through. Then there's a whole host of other sensory inputs and memory inputs related to the table, none of which necessarily agree with each other. What we actually experience is then the current best guess as to the cause of those inputs. It changes from second to second sometimes, illusions can be created where the interpretation switches rapidly between one option and another.
I think a phenomenal approach can be really helpful. As I said, it's one necessary half of any psychological or neuroscientific analysis, but we have to be aware of the limits it's answers give us. We cannot reduce down the current experience into it's component parts without accepting that the act of such reduction is itself mediated by the very biases and preconceptions we're trying to investigate.
I'm asking about the placeholders in my model, the same model I presume you have since were both human beings and I think such basics as object permanence are fairly hard-wired (though work by Eric Corchesne with six-month old babies may call into question whether that's pre- or post-natal). there's a difference between beliefs in different contexts. As I've said before, a belief, for me, is just a predisposition to act as if some state of affairs were the case in one's model of the external world (external to oneself). But we use different models for different circumstances. This is what the whole work with mental inference has tried to demonstrate. so when you say to me, in a philosophy forum "are there real object in the external world?" I have to select which model of the external world to use. Here it's a very loose theoretical one and in it I can't honestly see how objects could be defined objectively, so the answer is no. When speaking to, or dealing with people in my social life, I act as if they were independent real objects, because in that context I'm using a different model. The first model would be next to useless in that context, and I learnt as much in the first few months of life.
You can't presume there's another human being if there's no object that's another person.
There can be no object that's Eric Corchesne, no objects that are six-month old babies, etc. on your view.
As I just tried to explain. One model for one type of behaviour - philosophising - no objects. Another model for another type of behaviour - relating to people, talking about who they are and what they said - objects.
Is there something about this multiple model idea you're not understanding? (and, yes, the very idea of models and multiplicity is itself a model, we can't escape this and look at it from outside)
If you were answering from the perspective of models earlier, and you have a model where there are other people as objects, etc., then why did you answer only from the model where there aren't other people as objects?
You'd have to reference the exact question for me to give you a comprehensive answer, but as to the topic in general, it's obviously one about the nature of our models, so I don't think it would have explained my position accurately at all to simply answer from within the model which I think is the very one in question.
When we were talking about properties. Specifically whether there are any objective properties. When I was talking about that and asking you questions about it I wasn't talking or asking about your "models," but even if so, why would you answer from the perspective of one model rather than another?
Everything I think is some model or other of the reality I'm thinking about, so there is no question that I can answer outside of some model or other. You asked about 'objective' properties, ones that pertain outside of any of my models. Notwithstanding the fact (one that I did try to communicate at the time) that I don't think it's possible to answer such a question from outside of a model, the closest I can possibly get to an answer would be from a model of how models obtain. That's why I chose that one.
Consider if you asked me in the middle of a chess game "can I take this bishop home?", Id' be crazy to answer from the perspective of the game, "no, bishops can only move diagonally and then only within the confines of the board, so there's no way you can move the piece all the way to your house". I'd presume we were talking about pieces outside of the model of 'how chess works' and in a meta model of spatio-temporal positions which the chess board is just a piece in. The rules of chess don't matter in this model, the 'reality' of the edges of the chess board as a constraint on the movement of the pieces no longer applies.
It's like that with questions about objects and properties. In one model I define objects from reality, I define properties from all the processes around them and I determine that those properties belong to that object. Another model then treats these objects as real fixed entities, like the boundaries of the chess board, and my behaviour assumes them to be.
You asked me a question about the first model , the one which defines and assigns properties.
You're not just observing models are you?
No, I presume I'm observing reality, but observing is a model-mediated process. I don't 'observe' without modelling. I see what I expect to see to a certain extent. That's what the whole load of neuroscience I've been talking about seems to show.
How would we be able to know this without knowing what the world is like sans modeling for comparison?
We determine anything by reference to deeper models, things like consistency and non-contradiction. We know (by reference to these) that observations is model mediated because we can manipulate those models and observe changes. We could, I suppose, theorise that reality actually does change somehow resulting from our manipulation of these experimental conditions, but it seems more parsimonious to assume the variations are internal.
If two people give differing, contradictory accounts of some state of affairs, it seems reasonable to assume neither necessarily has clear access to the state of affairs both are trying to describe. We don't need ourselves to have access to that states of affairs to evidence this, it is sufficient that we assume both cannot be the case and so if one can be wrong (which one must) then so can the other.
I can't draw anything at the moment, so we'll use this as a drawing instead:
A,.............................@.....................................B
Suppose A and B are persons. They both say something about @. What would be a reason to believe that @ from A's location is identical to @ from B's location, so that A and B's accounts of @ wouldn't contradict?
For that matter, we can just talk about A and B as locations, without people. The same thing would be the case.
Another way to illustrate this:
From one spatial point of reference, a table has this shape:
From another spatial point of reference, a table has this shape:
We could say those shapes "contradict" each other, but they're both really the shape of the table from different spatial points, and that has nothing to do with models or us our our perception.
A few things perhaps unrelated to each other...
1. Obviously we'd be talking about a situation where we're comparing two participants both in A's place, just at different times, experimentsttry to eliminate variables so, place is a really obvious one to start with.
So to follow through you'd have to say that @ at t1, when A is there, was different (had different properties?) from @ at t2, when B is there.
But if this is the case then we cannot say anything at all about @ because all we know about it is what it was like at t1.
2. The jump from the situation of two observers to say "we can just talk about A and B as locations, without people. The same thing would be the case." is unjustified. The table seeming to be some way is an activity of the observer. The best we could speculate is that it would seem that way if someone were to stand there. We still haven't escaped the fact that we do not access light waves (which themselves are just a model of what we observe on other devices, but let's not go there). We are only aware of visual representations after they've been presented from the occipital cortex, they've already been subject to modulation from backward acting neural connections, and filtered through architecture built by prior experience. The light waves bouncing off the table are a barely related trigger.
What are the properties of a Kaniza square? Are its corners 90 degrees, are its sides straight? How so if when you take the marking circles away there's no square there at all?
And indeed things are non-identical through time (which shouldn't be so surprising once we realize that what time is in the first place is change or motion).
Quoting Isaac
Saying what @ is like at T1 (and L1 (location 1)) is knowing something about (and saying something about) @.
Quoting Isaac
The justification is what the world is like.
Quoting Isaac
I pointed out that I'm not talking about SEEMING. This isn't seeming. It's what the table is really like.
Quoting Isaac
That's what's not justified. You'd have to support that claim.
Quoting Isaac
You're wanting to argue for representationalism. You'd need to present the argument for it.
I'm not a representationalist. I think that representationalism is obviously wrong, because the only way to argue for it is to assume that we can know some things non-representationally.
Quoting Isaac
The notion of optical illusions is incoherent if we don't know what's really there contra the illusion.
The idea, when we're talking about people, isn't that their perception is infallible. But to know that it's fallible, we have to know what they're getting wrong, which means getting something right. Otherwise the whole idea of fallibility is incoherent.
T1 is an infinitesimally small point, so I don't see how it can coherently have any data attached to it. Even so, properties of some object at some past time were not what you were referring to with regards to 'objective properties'. "Here is a coin", you said, not "there was a coin".
Quoting Terrapin Station
So I have to support claims where you get to say "it's what the world is like" without further evidence. The justification that we do not directly observe light waves are the numerous optical illusions where what we are convinced we observe are actually retinal negatives, polarisation, inferred colour in the peripheral region (which can't even detect EM wavelengths) and downright hallucinations.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I didn't ask about the notion of optical illusions though did I? I asked what the properties of the square you see there really are.
That mathematical view of time is just an abstraction. Time is simply motion or change. T1 is the changes or motion that are/is happening from some frame of reference (as opposed to the changes or motion that happened or the changes or motion that's yet to happen). So it's not an "infinitesimally small point" from most reference frames.
Re objective properties, they're the properties of x from some reference frame/reference point, which is a given relative spatiotemporal location. That should be understood, because it's an inescapable ontological fact.
Quoting Isaac
Yes, you did--that's a well-known optical illusion and you're asking about it. I actually see the "pac man" shapes and can tell it would give the illusion of a square. So yeah, those properties are there. Learn something about seeing things how visual artists see them. It's important for visual artists to learn how to see "what's really there" rather than seeing illusions, rather than filling in information from concepts we might have, etc. That's part of what makes the difference between amateur/"naive" and mature/professional visual art. Kids will draw a table as square or rectangular with 90-degree angles because that's what their concepts of tables are like (well, aside from circular/oval/etc. tables obviously, lol). They need to learn how to see what the table actually looks like from a given spatial location. Part of the trick to that is to learn how to just see shapes (without naming them, applying concepts, etc.), colors, textures, etc.--so you don't even think "table" or whatever.
Quoting Isaac
And again here you're talking about optical illusions. Can you address what I just said about optical illusions and fallibility so I don't have to just repeat it here?
Yet...
Quoting Terrapin Station
...and this isn't an abstraction?
I'm struggling to see any more depth to your argument than "things are not the way you think they are, they're the way I think they are".
Quoting Terrapin Station
No, I specifically asked you about the square you see, not the optical illusion as a whole. I want to know what the objective properties of that square are and in what they obtain.
Visual artists are not immune from optical illusions. As I've said you are experiencing one right now. There are two small blind spots in front of your eyes through which no light rays pass. I know this because if I put an object there in people who have damaged eye muscles (restricting movements of the pupil) they cannot see it. The image you see there is made up by your brain to fill in the gap. Your peripheral vision has no colour, do artists see all peripheral images in black and white? No, they make the colour up like the rest of us. Does the number 5 emit red light? No, so why do synathetes see it as red, do 'artist' synathetes see it black like it 'really' is?
No, the changes that are happening from some frame of reference are not an abstraction.
Quoting Isaac
I don't know why you think I'm forwarding an argument. I'm simply explaining.
Quoting Isaac
Obviously there isn't a square.
What happened to addressing what I said about optical illusions and fallibility? This is the second time I'm asking you.
Ha. You're simply 'explaining' what is the case, as opposed to what I think is the case. As I said...
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Terrapin Station
But you see a square. People can be genuinely fooled by optical illusions, they really see a square, it has right angles, straight sides, the lot. So where are those properties? What are they properties of?
Quoting Terrapin Station
You said artists see things as they really are. I answered that they don't. What more do you want me to address?
It seems a tight needle to thread. There's no guarantee that our representation of our environment's structure corresponds to the structure of phenomenal character associated with it, nor that retrospection using those representations allows us even to describe what representational mechanism made that phenomenal character. But nevertheless, we don't need this guarantee as a blank cheque; we don't need non-representational access to our environment to generate representational knowledge of it, precisely because representation is such a relationship between us and our environment.
This undermines the force of necessity accompanying phenomenological description; it's no longer an a-priori conceptual structure imbued with transcendental necessity through immediately discerning its own properties; and turns it into, like any representational mechanism, a machine for making conjectures.
We have to think of introspection and derived conceptual analysis as one experiment among others, as far as our inner workings are concerned.
Do we see properties? Give an account of properties, and we'll check.
This was the part I was talking about:
"The notion of optical illusions is incoherent if we don't know what's really there contra the illusion."
"The idea, when we're talking about people, isn't that their perception is infallible. But to know that it's fallible, we have to know what they're getting wrong, which means getting something right. Otherwise the whole idea of fallibility is incoherent."
It's very interesting, and I'm not finished investigating. Thanks for your subsequent clarifications on what you're claiming...
:smile:
I'm not 100% sure I get what you're saying here, so I may go off on entirely the wrong tangent, but...
What I was trying to say to Sushi in the comment you quoted was that any phenomenal investigation based on introspection (of the sort being described with the box) cannot even begin without the structures already in place we're supposed to be investigating. We've already decided what a 'box' is prior to our investigation of its essential properties, otherwise we wouldn't know what the parameters are to our imagination.
Can I imagine a box with no sides? Well I can certainly imagine something with no sides, so is that a box? It becomes linguistic, not phenomenological.
I can definitely see how phenomenological investigations can be useful with experience, but objects seem more of a community resource which therefore comes down to a linguistic investigation.
We don't need to know anything about what's 'really' there, we seem, just as a species, to be fundamentally interested in variance minimising. There appears to be a white square when the black circles are (what appears to be) behind it. As soon as the black (what now appears to be) pacmen are removed, there no longer appears to be a white square. We want to reduce this variance, we prefer a model which has either a white square or not. Not a model which has a white square one minute but none the next. So we choose one to be 'accepted' and label the other 'illusion'. Rather than doing so randomly, we do so by minimising variance with a whole host of other models too. The white square being the 'illusion' does this best. At no point in the whole process do we need access to reality nor even to care which is which.
= quale
= 'what it's like' language
I'm not keen on the word 'quale', but that's all it's supposed to mean in anything I've read that features the word.
Give me some examples?
There's absolutely no grounds on that for calling something an illusion, though. It's completely arbitrary (and ridiculous, and not something that you at all really believe).
I'm not keen on 'quale' in any context, and I like 'something it's like' in some contexts. I think 'phenomenal character' is probably better in most examples. Depends on the language of the example.
EDIT: were you asking for examples from philosophical literature?
You could just as well have these:
I take all these to be essentially equivalent.
Also, if you're going to go back to the "everything is a model" lie then again, we'd need to explain why you went with one model over the other. You didn't do that yet.
Quoting creativesoul
Nahhhh.....I was just circumventing what we don’t do when reading a word, as opposed to what we do, re: relate the word to experience. I had in mind to juxtaposition “quark” with, say, “ice cube”, or your “dog”, these being much more familiar, hence more easily fathomable, conceptual identities, but having the same naming procedure. I used a weird word to emphasize that all words are invented, have a first instantiation but always bear a relation, which prioritizes the relation over the word that names it. I was fretting over the length of the comment. Nothing to do with letters and such.
—————-
Quoting creativesoul
Absolutely. In keeping with that, please elucidate “report” for me, if you would, please. I realize you’ve probably done that already, sometime ago, but as I said......I’m very much nearer my expiration date than my born-on date, so my retention isn’t what it used to be. Humor me?
Here’s how it relates to the dialogue:
Quoting creativesoul
Quoting creativesoul
Quoting creativesoul
Is it that the combination of all three of those has something to do with “report”? I grant that everything ever spoken, written and/or otherwise uttered is the superficial rendition of the concept “report”, but I hesitate whether everything ever thought and/or believed should be deemed a “report”.
I don’t see how all the old-fashioned dichotomies an be eliminated, when the primary dualism intrinsic to correlation, is part of your theory. I mean, correlation just screams dichotomy, however simplistic it may be. It’s part of mine as well, but I’m not trying to get rid of it. Nevertheless, there is the dichotomy of experience and what it’s like that can easily be dismissed.
Little help?
Subjectivity isn’t a give or take. Without subjectivity there is no phenomenon to initially apply worded thought.
Fair enough!
You're joking I hope! Otherwise you are massively overreacting.
I said:
Quoting Janus
As I said before I have read of studies which seem to contradict the idea that chimps have a sense of fairness. So, I have formed the opinion that this is still controversial. But I haven't read the studies myself, and I don't have the degree of interest or the time to do so.
I do think of humans as animals, but I think the proposal that other animals employ "models" of fairness or justice in a similar enough way to us, for them to count as "models" is an anthropomorphic projection. A model is a full-blown conceptualization, and I can't see any way to coherently think that doesn't require symbolic language.
Now, I said at the start that I have read of studies which seem to contradict the idea that chimps have a "senses" of fairness; but I am not claiming that they don't. They may have a sense of fairness (as opposed to a "model" of fairness and justice) but I remain unconvinced that even this has been definitively shown.
See this for example.
If you can point to a study that does definitely show what you are claiming and explain just how it does show that, then I would be interested enough to take a look.
What else do think imagination is beyond forming images in some sense? Can you describe some further function?
All of these are nothing more than you lying in the bath and farting, and being aware of it.
( It's fucking self-indulgent btw :joke: )
I guess one way to get at the distinction I'm driving at is through the relationship of a perceptual feature to an environmental stimulus. How an environmental stimulus works is different from how it inspires a perceptual feature in an agent. The first how regards the environment; represented through a procedural description of a process in it; the second how regards the relationship of an agent (or agents) to environments.
Out of the jargon, running on a road, slope steepness (environmental stimulus) is felt in body posture change (perceptual feature).
Gotta have both, surely? Can't collapse represented into representation or modelled into model or signified into signifier.
Yes, indeed.
Is there a way to know the world without our modeling of it?
Eventually.....maybe....we would have arrived here, at this very place. It is not correct to say everything is phenomenon, but rather, every object of sensibility, called appearance, united with an intuition by imagination, is phenomenon. It is the same as an object in general, the form of objects in general. But not as yet a named object. Understanding synthesizes phenomena to some manifold of conceptions, and a logically consistent, non-contradictory named object is cognized. Or not. There are phenomena cognized as possible, there are phenomena cognized as impossible, but no phenomena will ever be cognized that is possible and impossible simultaneously.
Phenomena aren’t used to discriminate, it’s not their job. They are more than helpful; they are necessary, in order for concepts to relate to something given to us by perception. This is also why the source, or occasion, for concepts is vital, because these same faculties are used even if there is nothing presented to sensibility, which means there is nothing that appears....but the rational system maintains its operational capacity. We need to account for how we can think empirical objects when there aren’t any, or they are merely possible objects, and more importantly, how we can cognize that for which no object of experience is at all possible, while using the exact same system that gives us empirical knowledge.
I admit Kantian epistemological metaphysics is historical...to be kind. It is, nonetheless, complete in itself, and incorporates enormous explanatory power. Doesn’t at all make it correct, but what speculative philosophy is, especially one developed long before science got its fingers into the human brain.
If you insist on casting phenomena aside, what would take its place?
A report is an account of what's happened and/or is happening. They are all meaningfully based in thought and belief formation(drawing correlations between different things). With that in mind, not everything ever thought and/or believed should be deemed a "report" because some thought and belief is prior to language. Reports are existentially dependent upon language. That which exists prior to language is neither existentially dependent upon reports nor consists thereof. Not all thought and belief should be deemed "a report" because some exists prior to language.
Those three things are thought and/or belief statements. My offering them is to offer a report of my own thought and belief. The notion of report I'm using is quite simple, 'layman' even. I mean, there is no inherent nuance for you to be overly concerned with aside from the following common sense measure of understanding:That which is being reported upon always exists in it's entirety prior to the report.
The first claim is just plain common sense language use.
The second claim has been arrived at via (a heretofore undisclosed)deductive means. To shed a bit of light on that means, I'll offer this:We first look to what all thought and belief statements have in common that make them what they are. We keep in mind that in addition to being a common denominator of all thought and belief statements, these proposed basic elemental constituents must be able to exist in their entirety prior to language. Otherwise, our notion of human though and belief fails to be amenable to an evolutionary progression from no thought and belief(at the moment of biological conception) to the complex metacognitive endeavor that we're currently an active participant in.
The third claim is the conclusion arrived at from the groundwork 'elucidated' upon above.
->Quoting Isaac
Quoting Terrapin Station
->Quoting Isaac
If you don't like my answers then fine, but it's pointless keep asking for them as I haven't given you any, we're just going tend up going round in circles that way.
Yes, but it obviously seems that way to me otherwise I wouldn't have wrote what I wrote. It's not really much a contribution just to say "you got that wrong".
Quoting I like sushi
I don't understand this sentence at all, any chance of re-wording it?
Unfortunately not, but I do have an ear infection which is making me more than usually cranky (which is very cranky). I'm a little fed up in general, so adding glib rejections of decades of patient scientific research to my list of antagonists was all too easy. You have my apologies.
Quoting Janus
I don't see there's much point in pursuing the evidence, If you're not convinced by the two articles I gave CS here, then I have nothing more. I suspect what we really disagree about is not the evidence (though you may be more persuaded one way and I the other), but the definition of 'model', and no amount of evidence is going to solve that.
Your reliance on language to form complex conceptions is, I think, mistaken. there must first be a referent before there is a referring word. The concept has to come first. A very advanced brain, I'll give you as a necessary cause, but language... I think you're subliming certain mechanism of thought into something more esoteric than they really are.
Can you imagine a really load noise? Can you imagine the set of all sets? Can you imagine if you forgot where your home was?...
OK, but consider you're walking along the floor in some weird house, your feature detection system is telling you the floor is not level, you check with your level and indeed it is at 30 degrees. You walk into the next room and your feature detection system tells you the floor is steep, you check and it is indeed steep, it's 60 degrees. You walk into the next room and your feature detection tells you the floor is astonishingly steep, you check and it's 90 degrees.
Only this last never happens, because a floor at 90 degrees is a wall. you've decided already that whatever you're experience tells you about the steepness floor, it's only allowed to tell you certain answers because a floor only has certain steepness values before it's not a floor anymore.
And this is not arbitrary definition. It's strongly correlated with the very somatic feedback which modulates our perceptual experience. At what angle does a very steep floor become a wall? The angle at which we can no longer walk on it without falling over. Would spiders distinguish between floors and walls?
Quoting fdrake
I think you can. All I'm saying is that what is 'represented' to our conscious awareness is itself a model. So to take your running example. The experience of running on a road - the steepness alone - is 'represented' to us as an already integrated part of our 3D spatiotemporal model. There is no actual steepness of the road because 'steepness' is a variable within our spatiotemporal model, not a property of the road. When we then, as neuroscientists, or psychologists, or philosophers of mind, try to understand how all this fits together we must form a model of these models, right? But to do so, we have only the same system to use. I cannot imagine 5D space, not because there's no such thing (it's mathematically possible, even physically possible according to some). I can't imagine 5D space because I don't have a system in the device I'm using (the brain) that can do that.
Likewise with discussing the limits to such an investigation as this. Phenomenological or otherwise. Certain answers are ruled out by the parameters of the device we're using to investigate, What I'm referring to as our model of models, but if that term is confusing we could just say the limits of the device, just like a spectrometer can't detect how load something is.
It is a tricky subject because many people go for Heidegger’s Phenomenological Hermeneutics rather than referring back to Husserl’s Transcendental Reduction.
You cannot NOT be subjective. It isn’t a choice. You don’t need worded language to interact in the world of things. Much like an ant doesn’t need to understand it is on a table to be on a table - or us on a planet.
The term horizon is probably of better use. All there is is the horizon of subjective experience. I am certainly not saying we don’t bring past experiences along with us, that’s clear enough.
Yes, maybe, but we're talking to each other here. It's not true to say anyone can experience a box without sharing a common worded representation of box to me, because in saying it to me you're relying on a common use of 'box' to imply some parameters. My private distinction of what a box is never gets a look in, it's never relevant. The moment I even conceive of distinguishing 'box' from 'not box' I'm doing so entirely in a social ecosystem, I'm doing so entirely to get the word 'box' right. "Is this 'box', how about this, or this". My thought is testing what the world of my language users will accept as 'box' in different contexts.
My subjective experience of 'box' is inextricably tied up with the language community.
Why is it? Are you suggesting that it is impossible to understand what a box is without the word box?
Yes, pretty much. I think it's possible to understand what things do, how we can interact with them etc without language, but 'a box' is a distinct(ish) category of thing, and that division arose via our language community, my investigations into the apparent features I can use to distinguish 'box' from 'not box' are all tied up. It's how I learnt what a box is and so it's the way my neural connections represent it.
It's also strongly correlated with the floor's physical structure. So there's no necessary connection between the somatic component of our self model and the environmental stimulus, but in usual circumstances our actions and internal states are in strong accord with our environment.
The floor's steepness induces different features in our self model; there's positional adjustments we feel that mirror the floor gradient. We can see the composite of its topography, colour and how it distributes over space. It's definitely there, and we represent facets of it with perceptual features (and derived states of belief). We don't see our visual field, the visual field is a seeing relation between a body (and its history) and its environment.
In the neural model paper you linked me; there are external states with their own dynamics and outputs which are then integrated into ourselves, and modified by our actions. The external states are not phenomenal, nor are the effects of our actions on our environment.
For what it’s worth it doesn’t make any sense to me to say we can understand the function of a box yet not know what a box is. If the box is not it’s use then what exactly is the intersubjective naming of ‘box’ giving that wasn’t already present?
Cool. Thanks.
I guess my concern, with respect to understanding each other, was to eliminate “report” as a metaphor, as in the case where, say, the senses “report” their perceptions to their respective receptors. Of course, the metaphoric report from the senses, while such machination certainly “exists in its entirety prior to language use”, isn’t a thought or a belief either, until or unless such machination is taken into account by a thinking subject.
Yes absolutely. I fear we might be talking past one another here. I'm not in any sense arguing that there are not external states, nor that our internal states aren't tightly connected to them. What I'm concerned to avoid is an assumption that our phenomenal experience of our sense representations marks any natural or real division of those external states.
The difference is between saying there is a real box, and saying there is some reality part of which we can decide to refer to as a box. Hence my example with the floor/wall. When a floor becomes a wall is intrinsically linked to our form of life, it's not one or the other externally.
So, even though it's harder to imagine, I see the same being the case with 'steepness', or for that matter 'colour', 'spatiotemporal extension'... That defining this measure (as opposed to that) is similarly placing divisions in some general field of 'states of affairs' which are intrinsically linked to our form of life, and in this case, the biology with which we carry it out.
I'm not so much asking about the correct categorisation as just talking about what I see as the implications. You can call it what you like. The fact remains that introspection cannot determine anything about 'a box' that is not later necessarily mediated by the use of the term in our common language. I cannot find the defining features of a box in my mind, it is a category of my community of language users.
Quoting I like sushi
The first is specific, the other general. Token and type. I can understand the function of a box, or even every box I encounter or can imagine. None of that gives me the first clue as to what a box is and isn't as a type, for that I must consult my community of language users to see if I'm applying the term efficaciously.
Thanks
Whether that's the case or not (that it's really minimizing variance with respect to other models), it would be arbitrary that you're going with "minimizing variance" as the metric.
Yes. Observe it.
Corrected the quote, doubt it helps though from the sound of it.
I think you're not understanding the meaning of the word arbitrary. It just means on a whim, without a system or reason. Not without a system or reason that whomever you're speaking to happens to agree with.
Hmmm, yeah, I suppose. Observation tells me that, but use of “modeling” makes explicit I wish to know of. Observation in itself, tells me nothing of the world except it is not nothing.
Us old-fashion types would say....nothing in the form of a thing can ever give me the first clue as to the matter of it, but only that the matter of it is conceivable. But I guess that is a first clue, so.....
Probably!
Quoting Isaac
Aye! Glad. Sometimes it's hard to distinguish whether someone's making epistemological or ontological claims in cases like this. I was definitely misreading you as some kind of 'external world constructivist' or something. Interpretive bias on my part.
Quoting Isaac
I agree that it we don't track all the time, just most of the time we do as far as environmental stimuli are concerned. Keeping ourselves in touch with our body/mind and our environment is what our active perception does (ontologically), but the conceptual representations active perception generates do not thereby have a basis in reality (no epistemological guarantees from introspection or conception); there's always room for misapprehension, error, and the phenomenal character of our internal states being populated with representational entities that don't track the mechanisms that generate them (like an idea like "the will", which is sort of a conceptual feature analogous to a perceptual feature).
Quoting Isaac
The neatest way of placing divisions (incorporating or representing differences) is by using those in our environment. Like, when we see stuff, it's usually because it's there and reflecting light. Environmental stimuli typically have propensities to be perceived in the way they do; they provide the basis for features consistent with and driven by their character.
Well yeah, constructivism is pretty much where I'm coming from,im afraid. I mean, there's varieties of constructivist, but in the sense of model-dependent realism and Von Glaserfield in psychology. So epistemological constructivism, yeah, hermeneutic constructivism...bit too far fetched for me.
Quoting fdrake
Yes, absolutely with you there.
Quoting fdrake
OK, so take light as an example. One model it's just the opposite of dark, the stuff that we see, visible light. But that's just a model-dependent division of a wider electromagnetic spectrum no reason (apart from our eyes) why 430-770THz has any external world significance. So we see some arbitrary sub-division of electromagnetism. But then electromagnetism is just a model of energy types based on subdivisions we imposed on the experimental data, different energy bands. Then the division between energy and matter...
We're tracking something, but any and all descriptions of that something are themselves just models, and there's only one player in that game.
As when deciding to go with "minimizing variance" for a metric.
I don't really understand "makes explicit I wish to know of."
Observation shows you what things are like, properties they have, patterns that occur, etc. It tells you all sorts of things.
Minimising variance is a well-supported principle of self-organising systems. A large proportion of neuroscience, and significant sectors of biology are now based on the idea that systems aim to minimise variance as a means of maintaining equilibrium steady state, so unless you have anything substantive to counter that theory with contrary empirical data, then just saying it's 'without reason' seems a bit empty.
I think it's very easy to forget that modelling is relational. It's a two term thing. The model might be embedded or represented in some fashion; instantiated somehow; but it being implemented in us distinct from it losing its relational character. It doesn't cease to be a relation because it's instantiated, no more than "X is in a loving relationship with Y" (X R Y) is reducible to "X is (in love with Y)" (P(X)) and "Y is (in love with X)" (Q(Y)).
Quoting Isaac
Vision guides action. We do a lot with our eyes, just as much as stuff that reflects in that frequency range is relevant to us now, it was relevant to us in the past. We probably don't need to see in UV or IR because there weren't sufficiently strong ecological or sexual pressures driving selection in our ancestors for that. We have bright/dark in old primate ancestors - which makes sense for mostly nocturnal animals, but when we no longer were mostly active at night; there are simply more active and relevant reflectance profiles in objects around us, more light gets reflected just because there's more ambient light during the day; so if we're active in the day, greater visual environmental modelling capacity makes sense... Going from monochrome to colour? That's a lot of distinctions to act upon. We can distinguish rather a lot in our environment with our vision because it is useful for us as a population to do so.
I think it's easier to see models as relational without concerning ourselves specifically with humans, since we're ludicrously complex. A world without models being inherently relational would not have had the grass stripe the zebra, darken nocturnal predators, or make stick insects sticky!
Of course. As a general rule, nonetheless, when I investigate anything at all, “what it’s like” and “all sorts of things” is inversely proportional to the importance I give to the investigation.
But I understand what you mean: I observe a ZR1 and recognize it is like a Yugo.
You're not talking about empirical data. You don't believe you have access to empirical data. You're talking about a model that you constructed (just like you're constructing the model of "my reply"). The fact that your personal model makes the "minimizing variance" model common doesn't make it non-arbitrary. Trust me, as this is your model talking to you.
Not "like" as a comparison. "Like" as in characteristics/properties/qualities.
Thanks for the edit; clearer to me now.
All “likes” as characteristics/properties/qualities are themselves comparisons. An observer of the world’s characteristics compares them to the affect they have on him. As esoteric as that may sound, how else do we learn about them?
No, they're not.
"Compares to the effect they have on him"? What would that even mean?
Ok. So a thing has characteristics because it is ontologically necessary?
Necessary in the sense that it doesn't make sense to say that there's something with no properties/characteristics.
And observing those doesn't imply that one is making a comparison to something else.
Quoting Isaac
Sure, I can "visualize" a really loud noise. I can visualize a set of all sets as a container that contains all other containers. I can visualize myself as being lost.
The making of no sense is a comparison of necessity.
I suppose one can just look at something and not consider anything about it. But what if it interests him?
What about that? So, say, for example, that one sees a rock that one is really attracted to--say something like a rock of pink granite, so one picks it up to take it home.
I was asking you. After establishing interest, he takes it home. End of story?
Probably most people would put it in their garden, or on a shelf or something like that. (I'm not sure what we're getting at here.)
Interest in the pretty rock raises the question of how the interest came about, with respect to the rock’s characteristics/properties/qualities.
Spoken like someone who likes Kant's Noumena.
Quoting Mww
Kant was my favorite for a very long time. There are serious issues of inherent inadequate explanatory power however. That which exists in it's entirety prior to humans is relegated to Noumena, and as such is grossly neglected. The problem, of course, is that we can most certainly know much about such things, just not when and if we're using Kant's framework.
Quoting Mww
Nothing. There's no need for phenomena. We can remove it without losing anything. It's removal does not result in something missing. Rather, it results in something gained. Clarity by virtue of removing an unnecessary entity. The simplest, most basic rudimentary level thought and belief all involve that which is directly perceived. However, Kant denies direct perception of reality. Thus, Kant did not and could not draw and maintain a distinction between non linguistic thought and linguistic thought.
He also did not draw a distinction between thought and belief and thinking about thought and belief. That distinction can yield knowledge of existential dependency and elemental constituency.
I haven't forgotten about the studies. I've been doing a little bit of research into recent studies that are very similar, and a few podcasts which seem to reference the same/very similar studies. I'm particularly interested in the ones where coins are used in exchange for rewards.
They are very intriguing. Sadly though, one researcher in particular(regarding rhesus or macaques) was drawing unwarranted/unjustified/invalid conclusions that amounted to the personification of the the animals(anthropomorphism). However, not all of them did nor do all seem prone to make such mistakes.
Thanks again for drawing my attention to this...
Nada.
A worthy concern...
Nah, metaphor is poor philosophy. To say the senses "report" is to be involved in anthropomorphic thinking(the personification of the senses). I reject such talk/approaches.
Different strokes, and all... I find talking in such terms to be very unhelpful.
I see trees, not phenomenal representations thereof.
Be VERY clear here that ‘transcendental’, in this sense and the Kantian sense, doesn’t mean ‘spiritual’ or woo woo. We’re talking about the transcendent as the naturalistic and Husserl was trying to draw back to the grounding of rationality/logic/science/consciousness, hence the term ‘Transcendental Reduction’ meaning to take the givenness of the world and strip away naturalistic assumptions. He does throw out some fairly contradictory ideas and over time he shifted his positioning. He once said something akin to ‘concluding is a failure in the phenomenological investigation’ - some (that I’ve come across) took this to mean ‘just imagine what you like’, but that isn’t the point at all. The point is to abscond from everything except the task of, if you forgive my word-smithery, depreciating representations in favour of exploring what lies beneath (which is an infinitely endless task, yet not one that doesn’t offer rewards).
Also, understand that Husserl (“The father of Phenomenology”) was logician. He was very wary of historicism and psychologism. He aimed to bring the ‘subjective’ into the field of play for rational work. He felt quite strongly, so it appears, that the natural sciences we’re set up against subjective consciousness on firm yet not infallible grounding.
For further background on where he was coming from, he was clearly opposed to dualistic thought. He praised Descartes for starting up something yet glossing over the “I” “thinking” part of his philosophical disposition. I think it was Damasio who said it would be better to say “I doubt therefore I am” in his book ‘Descartes’ Error’, but I may be mistaken?
In terms of the contemporary attitudes of today, and even the past century (at least!), I’d say there is something to be said for our political, scientific and cultural regard for ‘subjectivity’ and the polarisatiln of ideologies becoming more prominent due to a lack of grounding for a ‘subjective science’.
Did Husserl have success? No. He did have some success, and I’m pretty sure the point is to find a means to remain constantly on guard against ‘concluding’ and/or ‘success’ as a finality of scientific/philosophical thought.
Personally I see Phenomenology as a bridge between the historical opposition of Idealism and Realism. Phenomenology doesn’t have a dog in either fight, yet it has a dog in both fights too only at a distance so as not to be heard barking let alone felt biting. I should say I don’t actually view ‘idealism’ and ‘realism’ as polar opposites, merely stating the philosophical history of this back and forth, tit-for-tat debate that has rung through the ages - with great discoveries.
I agree with that general sentiment. It's a matter of finding the common denominators between their thought and belief and our own. Consider evolutionary progression and ours must begin simply anyway. Theirs must and does as well. Senses of fairness are rather complex results from rather complex thought and belief.
An important consideration in support of the quote above...
Top down techniques require language use, as do bottom up techniques. Those are two names for two different techniques of reasoning. Both are existentially dependent upon common written language. Non-human primates' thought and belief cannot be. Non-human thought and belief does not - cannot - consist of either.
Is the tree I see a phenomena?
With the ‘box’ example I went straight down to the spacial essence. A tree with ‘no height’ is not a tree. A tree with no mass is not a tree (yet phenomenological disposition of tree isn’t concerned with empirical measurements per se, meaning an ‘image’ of a tree - a drawn picture - has naturalistic transcendence as an object of thought.)
This moves us into ‘empty intentions’ and the ‘unrevealed’ aspects/parts of some phenomenon. You never see ‘the front/back of’ or ‘the inside/outside’ as a unified eidetic experience. This is something Husserl calls ‘pregnant’, meaning phenomenon are always revealing/obscuring as they are constituted by our ‘intentionality’. You can look at a mirror as a mirror or look at what is in the mirror. The transcendent object of ‘mirror’ is identical for sensory perception, yet the ‘mode’ of looking is utterly different.
It is very much an expansive problem and one where navigation through the phenomenological approach is quite daunting, confusing and full of dead-ends. My personal interest lies more in what I cannot being into the worded sphere, that place from which new paradigms and concepts tweak human understanding from an unspoken ‘subjectivity’. The common saying of “A picture paints a thousand words” would be the best fit to describe this if we were to then ask ‘what words are yet to be crafted’ and/or ‘what words are redundant’, as well as coining ‘A subjective thought paints a thousand pictures’ showing a clear ‘bracketing’ of Heidegger’s hermeneutical phenomenology so many prefer over Husserl’s initial birth of the field.
'Minimise variance' is quite specific to variance within modelled statistical distributions, not just any and all variance. One semi-closed system (say a single specialised brain cotex) may be quite at odds with another because they have fewer extrinsic connections than they do internal ones.
Looking at the sympathetic nervous system as a system its clearly trying to maintain homeostasis right? But it's a cybernetic system so it needs to disturb the internal state to respond to a equal and opposite external disturbance.
Yeah, I think we're on the same page as far as the fact that models relate, but that doesn't in itself, lead to external world properties somehow having to inform them at some point. Our models only need to infer the cause of the input from one step outside their Markov blanket. The real state of affairs, whatever they are, may well be further back than that and our own system (to minimise variance) would only ever have to have a good, low variance model of the nodes immediately outside the Markov blanket of our conscious awareness.
When we look at those causes as part of some other system (as a scientist, for example) we have a different Markov blanket to work within, so the models may be different, but there's no reason I can think of why these nodes might be heirachical, like we getting closer to the 'one true source' each step we take. Each step is just a different game with different rules and different model will best satisfy them.
I'm not so sure personification is unwarranted. We immediately personify humans we meet and it would have been grossly incongruous, for example, for me to refer to my subjects as if they were empty machines when conducting experiments. At no point do we collate a hefty, impervious bank of evidence to back up such assumptions. As long as it isn't overwhelmed by evidence to the contrary, I don't mind a range of interpretations.
Anyway, glad you found something of interest. This thread has initiated a number of really interesting tangents.
But can't you, for example, imagine how you'd feel if you won the lottery? Surely there you'd be imagining a feeling, not an image? Even visualising yourself being lost, it's more than just the image isn't it? Doesn't it come along with feelings, thoughts you might have etc?
I would figure 'what it's like to be X' involves the totality of first person experiences X is aware of, be it unguided thought streams or sensations. Wouldn't you say it's clear you experience a stream of anticipations, aspirations, history different from me? That's enough for a 'what it's like to be?', wouldn't it? It's also what leads me to be so bizarrely confused with individuality, i.e. despite there not being a concrete feeling of 'self' and no ontic boundary between conscious agents, assuming physicalism, there is a stream of unique experiences and a spatiotemporal localization of experiences which is stable over time. What mechanism in the world would result in awareness of my particular stream of experiences and not yours?
Regarding qualia, wouldn't you say experiences involve perceptions that are distinct from whatever causes those perceptions 'out there'. I mean you can stimulate a part of the brain and shut off or induce a color of blue, or the sight of a number etc even when there isn't one. So empirically it looks like what you see is not exactly the same as what's in front of you. Doesn't that provide unambiguous evidence for first person qualia [i.e. percepts]?
I never wanted to deny that there is a phenomenal character of experience. What I picked a bone with, to my reckoning, was the way people split up experiences using the word. If you are quite happy to label facets of phenomenal character "qualia", for some suitable sense of "facet", this is fine with me.
What is not fine with me, say, is an arbitrary division between "colour qualia" and "shape qualia", say, without some account of why the division makes sense. In that example, we do perceive colours and shapes differently; colourblind people can agree with non-colourblind people on the shape of objects perceived differently; but I don't think it is warranted to go from this to thinking of "colour quales" and "shape quales" as distinct facets of phenomenal character; the colourblind person and the non-colourblind people still don't see the object's colours without its shape or its shape without colours.
So, the mechanism that contrasts the two cases is based off of bodily differences in how people process visual information (which is sensible), but why would that distinction immediately propagate into (be relevant for) distinctions in lived experience of each agent between colour experience types and shape experience types?
I'm picking a bone with an inference (style of inference, really) tacitly drawn when using the phrase. It has presumptions that are worth challenging.
Well so then what do you make of mental modularity? Lesion studies, stroke survivor case studies, document highly specific perceptual defects- inability to perceive motion, inability to globally perceive colors, inability to recognize faces that is correlated with damage to specific regions of the brain. All of these seem to suggest to me there are separable elements of experience that aren't necessarily part of a single phenomenal fabric prior to being weaved into a unified conscious experience. I can imagine making an argument for qualia supported by semi-independent, parallel sensory processing units.
Yeah! I don't think perceptual features (motion detection, colour sensitivity) are generated as a unified whole. What I want is for people to pay more attention to the generating mechanisms for perceptual features, and not to do so a-priori like with "red quale". I care where the distinctions come from because I want the accounts to be right.
Quoting aporiap
Definitely. So my desire is to see accounts which look like: (stimulus information types/distinctions) <=> (perceptual feature types/distinction) <=> (information processing system types/distinctions) <=> (first person experience types/distinctions); systematic inter relations between these phenomena, studied. Not:
(a priori conceptions of experience types) = > (first person experience types/distinctions)
And I certainly wouldn't like (a priori conceptions of experience types) => [ (stimulus information types/distinctions) <=> (perceptual feature types/distinction) <=> (information processing system types/distinctions) <=> (first person experience types/distinctions)]. That's such a lazy waste.
It's an interesting question: how do we imagine feelings without actually feeling them? Winning the lottery, being lost; of course I can imagine feelings associated with those experiences; but if in that act of imagination I am not actually experiencing a full-blown feeling then what am I doing? I would say it is akin to visualization; when I imagine the house of my childhood, it is not as though I am looking at it, or at a photograph of it; it's not as if I can look at my visualization and count the bricks, compare their colours and so on; yet I call it visualization nonetheless.
That's why I earlier referred to imagining a sound as a kind of "visualization". And I think imagined feelings,actions and thoughts are also kinds of visualizations. We experience tactile, auditory and motor, as well as taste and smell and many kinds of somato-sensory visualizations I would say. Well, at least that's my experience. I suppose it's not a given that we are all the same.
That makes sense, I definitely agree with that. Yea unless there's an acknowledgment of the hypothesized and falliable nature of an a-priori quale division, it's very dangerous to do
Which is part of why it's frustrating that people find it "so obvious". There's a whole theory of perception required just to look at what the "features" of our experience really are, and where they come from.
Edit: so just for an example. There's change blindness, like in the door study. Something that phenomenal character usually has associated with it is that we are aware of the phenomenal character or that it is somehow accessible within the experiential state. Whatever makes the guy giving directions in the door study not notice (not be aware) that the person he's giving directions to changes shows that what perceptual features are accessible; those which partake strongly in the phenomenal character of experience; are strongly context sensitive. The context down-weights the relevance of visual feature changes in the guy giving directions' environmental model because of what he's currently doing and how he's doing it. Even then, the result would not hold (probably) if the people looked sufficiently different.
So, we can't even go from "visual processing" to "phenomenal character of vision" without auxilliary contextual information. With the right context, say classifying images for presence of red, even "red quale" might make sense!
Quoting creativesoul
Sorry, but this has nothing whatsoever to do with Kant’s noumena. I hate noumena. He made it so farging difficult to understand what he means by it, says one thing here, something else there. There is one particular definitive rendering I use for reference, because gives, not what it is, but an unambiguous place for its use, in juxtaposition to what humans usually use. And I’m human, so.......
In short, as we all know, for every this there logically is a that. Humans cognize this way, but there is logically a way to cognize humans don’t use, completely unknowable by us. Phenomena for us, noumena for those other guys that ain’t humans, but are some other kind of rational agency.
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Quoting creativesoul
Humans since the dawn of the age of reason have speculated on all sorts of stuff supposed to exist long before us, so I wouldn’t think such was neglected. If you wish to term those things existing in their entirety before human as noumena, I have no problem with it, even if I wouldn’t. Maybe the Greeks did tag such things with that nomenclature....dunno. Pretty sure German Enlightenment epistemologists didn’t.
On the other hand, you may be referring to existences in their entirety that are not physical existences, but instead are existences in thought. I see where the negative kind of noumena would enter the fray, for they are called “intelligible existences”, in opposition to existences of sense, which are phenomena. And they are neglected, because they must always lack intuitions because there are no “intelligible intuitions” to be given from the kind of existences which must give rise to them.
Now, this is the Kantian understanding. If you have a way to give noumena an otherwise respectable life, what process have you developed to accomplish it?
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Quoting creativesoul
Agreed. Lipstick on a............Oh.
Never mind.
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Quoting creativesoul
This presupposes you know what “tree” is. What do you see when you see a thing unknown to you?
In order to process information most efficiently, we reduce the quantity of information transmitted to the brain by applying concepts as ‘efficient summaries’ of information. So four black circles with a white box in front of them provides the same relevant information to the brain as the four rotated ‘Pac-Man’ shapes, only requiring less neurons to fire.
An artist must learn to process the information both (or perhaps a variety of different) ways, and to apply the ‘model’ or value structure according to the task at hand. It isn’t so much about ‘what’s really there’ as about the value structures we tend to apply in most situations - that is, the relativity of our value structures in relation to the ‘experiencing self’.
From a more objective standpoint, it’s not an ‘illusion’, but an alternative subjective experience of the same reality. Understanding the similarities and differences in value structures applied - without evaluating them - enables a more objective understanding of ‘what’s really there’ than prioritising one value structure over the other. Unfortunately, language (like a form of art) is itself a value structure, so in describing what we then understand, we are necessarily reducing the quantity of information transmitted by applying concepts in a particular formation in an effort to transmit the relevant information - ie. reduce information loss.
When a computer graphic artist produces work for the internet, part of the production process is to determine the most effective format to transmit the highest quality rendition of the artwork in the smallest file size. Information loss is inevitable - the trick is to ensure the relevant information is retained. Having a variety of different algorithms (value structures) to select from is a necessary resource, and only the artist will notice what subtlety of information is lost in each version (although they’d be hard pressed to describe it).
So, for some reason or other some folk want to intentionally neglect the tree?
:worry:
Quoting I like sushi
That's what we named it? Investigation over.
I'm curious what you think...
Some people were claiming that some of those experiments offered adequate evidence for concluding that very young children and some non human primates are recognizing the existence of other minds...
I did not and do not agree with that conclusion, not based upon the evidence I'm privy to.
The experiment involved the subjects observing two specific objects being placed into a particular container/box. There was more than one container. They showed their own surprise when they looked for themselves into the box and did not find what they were expecting to find.
Then, under similar enough circumstances(I suppose), they observed another looking into the wrong box and showed that that bothered them in some way. The speaker claimed that such displays proved somehow that they recognized that the other had a mind???
I found it rather odd that they chose some experiments/games which are not even capable of showing in humans what they are wanting the same experiment to show in non humans?
Attributing thought and belief unique to humans to non humans is not only unwarranted, it's also a misattribution of meaning as well.
That was a serious question and a serious reply thereto.
It makes no sense at all to bracket out the tree, when we're talking about seeing the tree.
Thus, there is no single correct answer to what it's like to experience something.
We can still know what's common to all thinking and believing creatures' experiences by virtue of knowing what's common to all thought and belief.
Experience is one such thing.
I would agree with Husserl in that regard...
Some. Not all.
In simplistic terms, yeah. It’s something like that. If we splice in Kantian terminology here, what we call ‘objective’ is intersubjectivity, the ‘subjective’ is the phenomenological reduction (epoche), and naturalistic sense of objects of perception is framed by negative noumenon - positive noumenon (the thing in itself) beyond comprehension yet assumed; hence the ‘negative’ being the only term of import to human consciousness.
Like many philosophical ideas it seems so bloody obvious that it’s easy to dismiss it and move on. I’d say phenomenology - in all it’s iterations - it the most ‘obvious’ I’ve come across.
Use that as a measure. Phenomenology is dead in the water.
Whereas I reject them all on the exact same ground. They all work from grossly inadequate notions of human thought and belief. They all employ some of the same inherently inadequate dichotomies as well.
There's no need for talking in phenomenological terms. It adds nothing but unnecessary complexity. It cannot account for that which consists of both subjective and objective things. Experience is one such thing.
You don’t have to like it. I’m just telling you what it is.
I'm failing to find sense in experience happening to someone who is not aware the experience is their own. I'd say 'to experience' is the same thing as being conscious, and I also fail to see how consciousness makes sense without self-awareness.
Yeah, I agree. We can actually see a lot of this happening in the brain. When you imagine a tree, the visual cortex is engaged in a very similar way to when you actually see a tree. What happens next is (I think) quite remarkable. Signals are sent to the eyes to move them in the direction the tree would be if it were there. The brain is assuming a tree is there (because you created an image of one) and 'sending' the eyes to check. What happens then is you get feedback from the part of the cortex which delivers the primary visual input to say "there's no tree here" and you update your model from "there's a tree in front of me" to "I'm imagining a tree in front of me". The whole thing is then rationalised post hoc as 'imagining a tree'.
Interestingly, it seems that this is (at least partly) what is wrong with schizophrenics. They do not have the same primacy mechanisms for visual input. They 'see' a tree with their imagination, their eyes go looking for it, see nothing, but the brain then places primacy on the image in the forward driving part occipital cortex, not the data delivered by the eyes.
Anyway, that aside, all I meant - way back - when I said about being able to imagine a box without sides, is that 'imagine' does not have to be about visual images, it can be about concepts, feelings, thoughts etc. I may not be able to 'see' such a box in my mind's eye, but I can imagine how it might feel to be in a world where such a thing existed. Apparently, time slows down (or is it speeds up?) for atoms accelerated near the speed of light such that they decay faster (or slower) than the same atom type at rest. I can't imagine what's happening there, no picture I can form of it represents what the scientists say is going on, yet I do live in a world where such a thing is the case. If, one day it's made into technology, someone might say "pop your pizza in the slow-down-time machine and it'll keep for years", and I'd say "sure, fine" without having the faintest idea what's going on. It's the same with the box. I can imagine someone saying "going on a long trip, just pop all your stuff in the box-without-sides, it'll store everything", "wow, how does that work?", "It's multi-dimensional", "uhh-huh...just show me where to put the stuff".
I said I reject the dichotomy.
Quoting I like sushi
I've nothing further.
Consciousness comes before self consciousness. Self consciousness is being aware that one has thought and belief. Being conscious is having/forming thought and belief.
There is no ‘subjective’/‘objective’ dichotomy in phenomenology. If there was I’d reject it too. There reason there is so much jargon is because it is needed for precision. I’m giving you a brief summary here.
What do you propose instead as an approach to discuss ‘experiencing’?
Read my posts here in this thread.
No, it's not just an alternative, it's the model which minimises variance. You're making the same unwarranted presumption Terrapin made about artists. The experiments about updating predictions in the light of ambiguous data conforming to Bayesian models was not done exclusively with non-artists. The mathematics behind free-energy limits based on requirements for self-organising systems to reduce entropy against probability gradients do not only apply to non-artists.
I can see how an artist might actively look for some alternative way of seeing something, Terrapin gave the example of the child drawing a table rectangular, whereas an artist would draw a parallelogram, knowing that a parallelogram (or trapezium) on the 2d page represents the table best. But the model of the table isn't more real in the artist's mind nor are these alternative models in the same field, one is how to negotiate the object in our spatiotemporal environment, the other is how to make marks on a page to best invoke such a table. Two different models with two different variance-minimising results.
What experiment would you set up to show that humans had this feature?
On what ground does one make this last claim?
What metric does one use to distinguish between eye movements and eye movements in a particular direction for a particular purpose? How can signals be sent to move the eyes to see a tree that is nowhere to be seen? If it is nowhere there is no way to move the eyes in that direction.
The same could be said of any and all eye movement that may happen during the experiment. That's a problem isn't it?
The rest of that post seems to rest upon this notion of "signals sent to the eyes to move them in the direction of a imaginary tree."
But if there is a thought without "self" isn't that just the same as philosophical zombie or a computer?
I've been watching, reading, and listening to quite a bit.
Which feature?
Not on my view...
Click on my avatar. The site provides a good one. Read through some of my own topics on thought and belief, meaning, and truth... There's a common theme in all of them, if I've been consistent. That is an aim of mine.
I can at least assume you’re not a fan of Heidegger given that you hate jargon? There is certainly a number of peopke who take Wittgenstein to be someone who leaned toward the phenomenological take on language - I agree, it is about as blatant as can be if you read Philosophical Investigations.
I don’t think we’re on the same page though so I’ll leave it.
GL
The experiments were done with appearing and disappearing dots of ambiguous contrast with cameras facing the eyes that track movement. Subjects were first asked to focus on where they thought the dots appeared and followed a predictable pattern. the eyes tracked the expected appearance of the next dot before it appeared, or even when the dot was not in fact at the expected location. The subjects were then asked to imagine a particular layout of dots on the blank page and their eye movements mirrored those seen in analysing and predicting the real dots.
Every experiment is only moving us toward a better model, one better able to make predictions, a more elegant one, or one with fewer assumptions. You can tear anything down using "but how do they really know". If there's some alternative explanation you'd rather believe, then you're welcome to it. Personally, I think you'll run into contradictions with other models in other areas, but at the end of the day, I can't precis the whole of cognitive neuroscience here (though I appear to have tried) such that you'd be satisfied the explanation is a good one one respect to other experimental results, other working theories etc.
You can either accept it into your world-view, if you like it, take it on advisement as "oh that's interesting", if you remain unconvinced, or reject it entirely if it conflicts with views you hold dear. What I don't think is rational is to reject it on the grounds it hasn't removed all doubt. Nothing does.
You said "I found it rather odd that they chose some experiments/games which are not even capable of showing in humans what they are wanting the same experiment to show in non humans?", yet you seemed to be saying, in the rest of your posts (maybe I've got this wrong), that humans were unlike non-human primates in their abilities in this regard. So I thought you would have an experiment in mind which showed as much to your satisfaction, but maybe I've misinterpreted what you're saying.
Quoting Possibility
I wasn’t disagreeing with you as much as you seem to think I was. They are two different value structures applied to the same reality, and can still both be used to make marks on the page and invoke a table. When you’re talking about two drawings on a page, they ARE alternative models employed in the same field. One is more real on the page than the other - it conveys more relevant information about the table in the same field than the rectangle does. That they are better suited to different fields, I agree with - hence my comment that the artist must learn to process the information both ways.
Ah, I see what you mean now. You mean "the artist must....in order to produce art" . I read it as "the artist must..." in the same sense as the non-artist simply trying to make inferences about the the object in general. My mistake.
I would argue experience necessarily must be subjective experience, and subjective experience I think implies the subject which is "self", i.e. self-awareness. So for example, to make computer consciouss and experience emotions or smells, all we have to do is give it self-awareness and appropriate sensors.
No, he does not. Direct perception is given; direct knowledge is denied.
———————-
Quoting creativesoul
He didn’t want to because he didn’t have to. There is no such thing as linguistic thought, if thought be understood as the human rational system in action. No language is used whatsoever, until or unless that action is to be expressed, either subjectively in which case a subject immediately expresses to himself, or objectively in which case the subject mediately expresses beyond himself. When I ask or tell myself what I’m thinking, I must have already thought it, in order to have something to ask or tell myself about. The split second before I reach down to tie my shoe, is not filled with the words “hey, dumbass....your shoe’s untied”. And I certainly don’t go through the maze of linguistic representations telling me all that possibly happens because of it.
Why do you think the phrases like “it all happens behind the curtain”, or “sub-consciously”, or any of a myriad of expressions typifying the speculation that our system of thinking is all accomplished without our thinking about it. When someone says, “I just don’t have the words for it” all they are meaning is their understanding of such experience does not abide with the language to relate it, even thought the experience itself is fully resident in the subject. Which makes explicit the experience, which is nothing but the rational system in action, cannot be predicated on its expression. This reflects to my assertion the other day, in that all words are invented, which means language is invented, which makes explicit thought is always antecedent to the language it invents. The case is equally well served by the fact that different words used by different thinking subjects express the same thought in each subject respectively.
Thought takes time. Why would Nature require the time necessitated by the manifestations of natural law in our brains, to be heaped upon the time require to transpose each constituent of thought, re: manifestations of natural law, whatever they are theorized to be, into a linguistic representation? When someone says, “it flashed before my eyes!!”, do you think they meant some words flashed, or was it an event that flashed? It was some experience that flashed, without a single linguistic representation attached to it. In that instantaneous, infinitesimal split second before I bend down to tie my shoe......well, you know what really happens, I trust.
QED!!!!!! Dammit!!!!
Is it any wonder philosophy never really solved anything? If it did, what would we have so much fun with?
Red Herrings.
It seems that you're asking me which experiment I would prefer, without ever setting out what it is that we're looking to prove. I'm strongly objecting to anthropomorphism; a.k.a. the personification of something other than a person; a.k.a the misattribution of uniquely human attributes to that which is non human.
Bayesian Reasoning is one. A sense of fairness is another. You've recently expressed ambivalence regarding the act of misattributing thought and belief that is unique to complex common language users to creatures without; that's what attributing some human thought and belief to non human primates amounts to. That's the conversation backdrop.
What does the dot experiment prove with regard to whether or not some non human animal can possibly use Bayesian reasoning, or have some sense of fairness/justice?
Are you walking back the earlier claim? You've recently denied offering the experimental results of the grape/cucumber trials as support for also saying that the participants were working from some sense of unfairness/fairness and/or justice/injustice. That denial is false. It contradicts what happened. You did propose such.
In order to have a sense of fairness/unfairness or justice/injustice, the candidate under consideration must have already experienced reality not matching up to expectations. Unexpected results are part of what a sense of fairness requires for it's own emergence. The results are thought to be unfair/unjust solely as a result of not following an earlier agreement. In order to develop a sense of justice/fairness, the candidate must perform a comparative assessment between what they expected to happen and what did happen. To do this requires naming and descriptive practices. That how one begins to become aware that they have a worldview.
What's the difference between a non human primate's clear behavioural signs of discontent because they did not receive what they expected, and discontent as a result of having a sense of justice/fairness?
A clearly understood agreement being broken.
It has been said that the primate felt cheated as if he did the same work as her(his partner) but did not receive the same reward. It is clear that his expectations were left unmet. Clearly, his behaviour put his discontent on display for all to see. There is nothing to further suggest that those unmet expectations were also further thought - by him - to be unfair.
The above is thinking about one's own thought and belief. That is linguistic belief because it is existentially dependent upon language use.
Quoting Mww
That would be non linguistic thought and belief.
Here there is a distinction to be made between unspoken thought and belief that is existentially dependent upon prior language use, and thought and belief that can be formed and/or held by a language-less creature.
I can sit on a chair and think about triangles without using language. I cannot if I've never used language. Thus, such thoughts are themselves existentially dependent upon language even if our having them in the chair is done in silence.
Yes, that is what I'm asking you about. If my null hypothesis were that attributes such as a sense of fairness were not unique to humans, what kind of experimental result would force me to think otherwise. Or are you suggesting that something other than empirical evidence should force me to hold a different null hypothesis?
Quoting creativesoul
The dot experiment has nothing to do with non-humann primate abilities. You asked me about how they measured gaze directions with regards to conscious harvesting of inference-related data, it's a standard scientific technique, nothing controversial.
Quoting creativesoul
The results of those experiments are pretty vague. They rule out a few extreme theories at either end of the spectrum, but they could reasonably support a number of quite different theories. That's why there's still no consensus on the matter.
Quoting creativesoul
And you know this how?
Quoting creativesoul
Nothing, you just said, discontent related to a sense of fairness would also be a form of response to not receiving what one expected.
I'm not really interested in this "prove it" attitude. Hundreds of intelligent and dedicated people have spent decades trying to iron out these exact differences by creating more subtle and controlled experiments. If you want to just come in without any technical background whatsoever and dismiss the whole enterprise on the basis of having skimmed through one or two papers on a subject you don't even fully understand, you're welcome to. I'm not going to be involved.
Those are not the only options. I'm saying let's look and see if a sense of fairness/justice is unique to humans.
Is a sense of fairness/justice unique to humans?
That is the question here. In order to know that we must first know what our sense of fairness/justice consists of. What does our sense of fairness/justice require in order for it to begin working? I've been setting this out.
We have to know what it is that we're looking for.
So, those particular experiments produced results that provide equal support for different reports/accounts of those experiments, particularly reports/accounts regarding the content of non human thought and belief.
Decades of careful study and accounting practices largely informed by methodological naturalism, use of logical reasoning, and knowing what all thought and belief consist of. The studies you've presented here included a number of assertions from prior studies that were being challenged. I'm guessing I'm more in agreement with the previous conclusions from the previous studies and/or experimental results.
The scientific work that went into the very beginning of that abstract seems to agree with me. One of the necessary prerequisites for humans when testing for a sense of fairness/justice was agreement between parties.
The modified tests could not include the agreement because non human primates cannot make an agreement with you to do certain things and receive certain rewards. They can draw correlations between their own behaviour and receiving the same reward afterwards. They can develop expectations. Those expectations can lead to intense discontent. They can be angry and violent. They can be despondent and no responsive, etc. They cannot be said to be feelings and/or thoughts of unfairness/injustice because there is no prior agreement in the mind of the candidate from which they feel like they've been cheated.
:worry:
Evidence?
Are you suggesting a human without language cannot think? If so you must be using the terms ‘language’ and ‘think’ in a particular way. Explain yourself.
It’s more than that, though. The capacity for creative thought and alternative modelling serves us well beyond art, too. Many of our conceptual models are inaccurate or limited, leading to conflict and error in how we interact with the world. The flexibility to present and apply alternative or adjusted conceptual models enables critical thinking that leads to more accurate concepts and more effective and efficient interaction with reality.
Our sense of fairness/justice consists of anything we want it to consist of. It's not a term that pre-exists humans making it up.
Quoting creativesoul
I'm pretty sure none of the experiments made any judgement about the "content of non- human thought/belief. I don't think thought/belief is even the sort of thing that can have content, so don't even know what evidence for such would look like.
Quoting creativesoul
Check out the argument from epistemic peers.
Quoting creativesoul
Again, you know this how? From your decades of primate research perhaps?
Quoting Possibility
And how would we know that?
So, behind all these weird and irrelevant replies coming from you is the simple confession...
I'm assuming that non linguistic animals(non human primates) are capable of having a sense of fairness/justice, and you need to convince me otherwise.
Is that about right?
What is thought and belief then, if it is not the sort of thing that has content? How do you discern between thinking of trees and thinking of dots if there is no difference in the content?
This difference regarding thought and belief, and particularly what it consists of, may be the primary wedge between our viewpoints.
Well, this is certainly at the heart of the matter...
Is our sense of fairness a term?
I would think that if you sincerely believe that non human primates have some sense of fairness/justice, then it would have to be the case that that sense of fairness/justice predates humans and thus does not require terms at all.
Which means that our sense of fairness/justice - if it predates our language use - does not consist of anything we want it to.
:brow:
No - why would I need to convince you otherwise? If I thought your views might cause harm to me or others, then maybe I'd have a crack at convincing you otherwise, but outside of that scenario I can't think of a single reason why I would want to do that.
Quoting creativesoul
I think a belief is a disposition to act a certain way, its an inference manifest in the action it sets in motion. I think all living things, and some non-living things, have beliefs.
Thoughts, for me, are any neural activity, only creatures with brains can therefore have thoughts. The two are not the same.
Quoting creativesoul
We don't have a sense of fairness. I have one, and you have one but there's no reason at all why they should be any more similar than is required to have the most basic conversation on the matter. It never ceases to amaze me the power of this nonsensical conviction that we can somehow 'drill down' into words which never had a detailed meaning in the first place and somehow find some inherent truth that no one ever put there.
Of course the notion fairness did not predate our language use. Creatures had certain beliefs prior to language use. I've no doubt those beliefs varied. Which collection were going to come under the umbrella of 'fairness' was determined by the language community using the word, and at no point in time did they ever sit down to thrash out exactly what it, or any other word really means.
You've misunderstood. I was asking if that assumption was the one you're holding...
That notion of belief grants inference and disposition to act to inanimate objects.
Of course thoughts and belief can be different.
What's the point of all this irrelevant bickering? I have one. You have one. We have one. It doesn't have to be the exact same. We have one.
Does it make any justified sense at all to say that the non human primate has one?
I'm asking you for exactly what counts as a sense of fairness? What is the criterion which - when met by any and all candidates - counts as a case of that candidate having a sense of fairness? You and I meet the criterion.
What is it such that the non human primate meets it too?
Quoting Isaac
Why do you keep going off on these tangents and arguing about stuff that I've never claimed? I'm not asking about what a word really means. I'm asking you to set out a minimum criterion for having a sense of fairness.
There is some agreement between us here. Perhaps it can be put to good use. We both agree that some language less creatures are capable of having belief. You're also claiming that what counts as a sense of fairness is determined by the community using the word. I do not disagree.
What I'm getting at is that if a sense of fairness exists within language less creatures, then it does not consist of language; it is not existentially dependent upon language. Rather, it exists in it's entirety prior to our naming it. The same holds good of thought and belief.
In other words...
We can get them wrong.
Yes, I understood that, and the answer was, no, that's not the full assumption I'm holding because it does not contain the assumption that I need to convince you otherwise. To clarify, I think non-linguistic primates have a sense of fairness, I'm working on the presumption that you don't (because you stated that fairness requires a pre-existing agreement and that such agreements are impossible without language), I'm arguing in defence of my position, I've no desire to get you to change yours (at this time). Does that clear things up?
Quoting creativesoul
I have no problem with beliefs being attributed to non-living things, but if you do, then the notion could be limited to such states when expressed in the architecture of a brain. It makes no difference to my defence. The main point is that I don't believe they can be sensibly talked about as having 'content' in the same way a book has 'content', they are not necessarily 'about' other concepts (though they can be).
Quoting creativesoul
A sense of fairness, for me, is a belief that some restorative action should be initiated if certain resources in certain scenarios are not distributed either equally (by default) or according to some rule which has been previously established between individuals in a group.
Non-human primates can be said to have met that criteria if the take restorative action (complain, show negative emotion etc) in such scenarios. the evidence is stronger where alternative explanations for those restorative behaviours have been ruled out by careful experiment design such as the use of ultimatum games, tokens, eliminating social hierarchies etc. instead of simple resource distribution.
I am not of the opinion that such alternative explanations for apparent restorative behaviour needs to be entirely ruled out before we accept the hypothesis because I think that would imply an unwarranted principle of anthropocentrism. We know we evolved from primates, we should presume, as a default, that they share all of our traits until we demonstrate one to be unique, not presume all of our traits are unique until we prove that they're not.
You mean that you have a model where there are non-linguistic primates and they have a sense of fairness, but it's strictly something you've constructed. Objectively, you don't believe there are things with properties that make them primates or make them have a sense of fairness or anything like that. You should always be clear that you're simply talking about models that you've constructed, and this reply is part of your model that you've constructed in your view, too.
I'm getting at the fact that Isaac believes that things like primates and qualities they have are a mental model of his own devising. If he's going to claim to believe that, he can't start talking about primates like he believes there really such things and he can observe them.
Yes, that's right. Luckily most of my models are shared with my interlocutors with sufficient congruity for us to dispense with the declarations to that effect. But any time you feel the need to clarify the matter, feel free to do so.
Your "interlocutors" are part of your model, no?
Yep. You're definitely getting the hang of this.
So why would it be noteworthy that people you're making up share the model you're making up? It's more curious that some people you're making up--like me--think that you're a philosophical mess.
I never said it was noteworthy. Useful, not noteworthy.
Quoting Terrapin Station
As you have many times before, you're confusing a model of my construction with a model over which I have voluntary creative control.
Yes. That's quite helpful. One minor note, however, to reciprocate that clarity...
I'm suspending judgment regarding whether or not agreement is necessary. I mentioned that and argued for that as a result of the experiments involving humans that was referenced in the beginning of the abstract you've provided. The author made a point to mention both parties entering into an agreement about what was to be expected when they performed specific tasks.
I do think and would strongly argue that language is necessary. It seems to me, as stated earlier, that fairness/unfairness consists of not only unmet expectations, but further those unmet expectations aren't just unexpected, but they are further thought of as being unfair.
This implies some sort of agreement, but I'm not certain that an earlier agreement is always necessary in order for one to think that what happens unexpectedly is unfair/unjust. That further qualification of not just being unexpected, but also being unfair/unjust most certainly requires rather complex language.
Thinking that something is unfair/unjust happens when we're mistaken about what's going to happen. Being mistaken about what's going to happen doesn't always require language use. Thinking that the unexpected results are unfair/unjust most certainly does, for it requires some measure of morality(what ought happen).
As mentioned before, our views on thought and belief differ in crucial ways. I don't think that that has to be a problem though. We agree on much more than we disagree. That said...
The above could be thought to be an aside, but I think that it's actually the direction that our considerations must go when talking about what it's like to experience X. It seems to me that there is no correct answer to the question, regardless of the value we give to X, because so much of what we're talking about when we talk about experience is the experiencing creature's thought and belief.
When we're claiming that some non human creature has a sense of fairness/justice, we're saying something about that creature's mental ongoings(thought and belief). Thus, it behooves us to know what all thought and belief consist of, lest we have no way to know whether or not some creature or another is capable of forming/holding those kinds of thought and belief.
I'm having trouble with the equivalence being drawn between clear discontent due to false belief about what's going to happen(accompanied by and exemplified after unexpected events/results), with complaining and taking restorative action. There's no issue with discontent being characterized as showing negative emotion. However, not all discontent and negative emotion are equivalent to complaining and/or taking restorative actions.
Quoting Isaac
I'm of the opinion that unless and until we know - as precisely as possible - what makes our trait what it is, it is impossible to know whether or not it is unique to humans or not.
One thing I took note of here was that you're attributing a sense of ought to non human primates. Now clearly, if they do indeed have a sense of ought, it cannot be exactly like ours. However, and this is a point that needs made here:All senses of ought must have something in common such that none are existentially dependent upon language - if it is possible for a language less creature to have one. There must be common denominators - on a basic, elemental, rudimentary, language less level - which all senses of ought(all senses of fairness/justice) have in common, including our own. In other words, our account/report(model if you prefer) must be amenable to evolutionary progression. It(a rudimentary language less 'version'(for lack of a better word) must begin simply and accrue in it's complexity. More importantly...
All senses of ought/fairness/justice must follow our model. Our model must not only describe language less senses of ought/fairness/justice, but it must describe the version which is capable of developing in a language less creature's mind(thought and belief), and must also make a good amount of sense while and when doing so.
The minimalist criterion you've offered is restorative behaviours when unequal distribution of resources is experienced, or a breach of agreement where inequality was already agreed upon.
So, whatever these restorative behaviours are existentially dependent upon; whatever they themselves require in order for them to be realized, whatever they consist of cannot include language or language use if we are going to remain coherent when claiming that language less animals are performing them.
I'd like to talk about these...
Which ones do you find convincing enough to conclude that those subjects are indeed performing restorative behaviours stemming from and/or showing a sense of fairness/justice? Which experiments show conclusively that those animals are acting out of a sense of what ought be done as compared to what was?
What's the difference between behavioural discontent as a result of the cognitive dissonance that takes place when expectations are dashed by what happens and having behavioural discontent as a result of thinking, believing, and/or 'feeling' like what happened is unfair/unjust, or ought be somehow corrected?
Does all sharing count as having a sense of ought/fairness/justice?
Can one share solely as a result of liking what happens afterwards? I think so. This may be something that can be used in an experiment. What would happen if we offer all of the resources to any particular individual who is not under any duress. Well results have varied, and none of them support what you've put forth. However, perhaps the experiment was not up to snuff, so to speak...
Let's say we have two individuals that have conclusively proven to us that they are not prone to exhibiting dominant behaviour. Not only individuals, but of the same litter/brood/etc. These two would need to have a well established documented history of passive behaviour with one another. It would be best if these two had a history of grooming each other, resting together, playing together, etc. Most importantly, there must already be a habit of sharing behaviour between the two. There must already be results showing us conclusively that these two 'siblings' are prone to equally distributing the available resources between themselves. Otherwise, there is no way to show that they think and believe that they ought correct the situation when the resources are not equally distributed. So...
In addition to having the right sorts of individuals mentioned above, for the experiment, these two are to be kept in separate chambers adjoined with some readily accessible pass-through that would allow either to share resources with the other if they so chose to do so, without threat of consequence. It would be best if the shared wall is clear.
The experiment must begin by developing new daily routines; one where each could be shown as expecting something particular as a reward if they performed some simple task. They will always remain in full view of one another, and close enough to see what the other one has received for performing the same task. There need to be a well documented history of equal reward for each specific task.
Then...
We could introduce the new unexpected result of one receiving much more and/or all of the resources as opposed to both receiving equal amounts. It is here - in this very circumstance - that a sense of fairness/justice would be put on display by virtue of one of them voluntarily offering the other an equal amount of the resources.
This is wrong, because we do have experiences of seeing red without seeing red. Dreams, memory, imagination and optical illusions do not count as seeing red. And as was noted earlier, the part of the brain that creates color experiences can sometimes be stimulated in blind people by other means.
You can imagine or dream it. You can also do an activity while paying attention to something else, thus not experiencing it. An example would be driving down a highway on autopilot where you're thinking about something else or listening to the radio.
We're asking if bats have kinds of experiences that we don't because there physiology differs, particularly with the use of sonar. Surely human experience does not encompass all possible experiences in the universe. And a good reason for thinking this isn't so is because sensory organs, brains and body plans differ across animals, and there are tons of things outside of human perception.
A simple one would be seeing in four primary colors, which some animals have the eyes for that and even more.
It's not a trivialism when we try to determine whether machines can be conscious, which is also the case for other animals. Does a pig or a cow experience pain, and if so, is it ethical to eat them? Should we medically test rats if they have subjective experiences of suffering?
Those are meaningful questions.
The question is asking what the word is like instead of how we think and perceive the world to be, which has clearly undergone lots of revision over time, as we've discovered that world is not what we naively took it to be, and that we can be wrong. So yeah, we're part of reality. That doesn't mean we understand that reality exactly as it is. Turns out it's a lot of work to figure out and plenty of skeptical questions can be raised in the process.
And yet those people are seeing red.
I can remember/imagine the taste of chocolate, but I cannot taste chocolate now. In certain states - like dreaming - I can taste chocolate (the dream is a direct experience as is a hallucination, being difficult to distinguish between waking, or ‘normal’,states of consciousness).
The question is not complete, it should go like this:
What it's like for Y to Experience X?
And let's get specific:
What it's like for a human(Y) and a dog(Y) to experience taste(X) and desire(X)? Clearly that missing Y may very easily be the determining factor in describing how it is to experience X, and X may very well be the same in all cases.
But what is this Y all of a sudden and how could have conversation about it make sense without it? Don't know about the second part, but as for the first: Y is "experiencer", the "self", it's the "subjective" in the phrase "subjective experience" that defines 'qualia' and what 'sentience' means. Because the only one kind of experience is subjective experience.
Hard problem of consciousness. I say this self-awareness, i.e. qualia, i.e. sentience, i.e. consciousness, is about hardware and interface, rather than software and signal encoding. In any case there is nothing similar in entire human knowledge that could fit here and explain this _subjective_ phenomena, it has no parallel in any of our sciences, except science fiction. Seriously, some kind of "dream" of the type 'Total Recall' or 'The Matrix' are the only kind of mechanics we know of that could, at least in principle, address this problem.
Yes, but the existence of phenomenal consciousness is a trivialism within the worldview (that I have) that of course pigs and cows and rats experience pain and of course machines can be conscious, if they have the right functionality to do so (which pigs and cows and rats and humans clearly do), because to deny that something with all the functionality a human has to experience (e.g.) pain is in some way not really experiencing it is just nonsense on such a view. The existence of phenomenal consciousness meaningfully distinguishes such a nonsense view from mine, sure, but it's not something that's special about humans, not something that distinguishes us from anything else. The functional stuff about access consciousness totally is, though.
How can possibly a computer have 'functionality' which could explain 'subjectiveness' of the experience?
What is it like for bits?
Basically. We don’t see photons or molecular surfaces. Rather we see chairs and apples.
If they weren’t separable, then physics would be very much like our naive perception, and the ancient skeptics would have had little material to start with. Bit that’s not the case.
To be explicit - I’m sure some folks here are ignoring this because it’s inconvenient - we don’t ‘see’ a chair. Our immediate field of vision is miniscule. The majority of subjective visual perception is ‘painted in’. There are other instances that show our limited means of focus and attention of how we become primed for certain experiences. If everyone here focuses only some proposed set of ‘input’/‘output’ and ‘processing’ then you’re all missing the point of the subjective experience by pretending what you see with your eyes/occipital lobe/language is the focus of the experiencing ‘act’ ... clearly it isn’t. Don’t confuse the experience with the directedness of subjective experiencing. Don’t ignore the how experience is spacial and temporal simply because you cannot quite reconcile ‘experience’ with these terms in an articulate manner.
In this light we don’t experience an apple or a chair, we experience our intentionality constituted through intersubjective perception.
Expanding language leads to expanding our time consciousness. If you negate terminology from a language you confine conscious understanding. This isn’t something I am making up. There are clear cases that show how language affects time comprehension - to the point where grown adults act like infants being unable to hold and compare two separate concepts (eg. colour and location). These adults were not mentally deficient and some did pick up the ability to hold two concepts at once (because of exposure to a more complex language that took into account connected concepts).
Be wary of those that dodge any possible use of a new concept. Such thinking is essentially dogmatic. That said I do often try and avoid crazy word salads, but not because I don’t find a broader lexicon as useful or insightful, but simply because it’s bloody hard work and once the task is done you’re never sure if you’re going to achieve anything by stepping out of common parse
That our sensory input does not reflect true reality is separate problem from ontology of the subjectiveness of experience.
Right, but noting this distinction is a rebuttal to the those who want to dissolve the issue by saying that being part of reality means the internal/external distinction is misguided. That our subjective experience of being in the world is different from the world is meaningful and raises an ontological question of subjectivity.
If there was no meaningful subjective/objective distinction to be made, then the problem of perception would have never been an issue, science would mostly back what our senses tell us, and movies like the Matrix and Inception would have never been made. Also, no p-zombies.
But that's not the case, and the issue of subjectivity keeps coming up in its various forms, because it's fundamental to our experience of the world.
Just the very fact that we can dream of interacting with the world without actually doing so is sufficient.
Some people can visualize to that level of detail. I like you, have never been able to do that. But i do hear my thoughts as if they were spoken.
Scratch a Wittgensteinian and you get a Humean.
Yet all you've given thus far is...
Quoting creativesoul
Quoting creativesoul
Quoting creativesoul
I'd agree with all of those (with the same caveats as you). But you've not demonstrated any of them are necessarily dependant on language, so I don't see how they're relevant to your argument.
Quoting creativesoul
Yes, but this just goes over the ground we've already covered with regards to terms. There isn't something which just is what thiugh/belief consists of. There are just the phenomena we observe, how we choose to group them and what we choose to call those groups is arbitrary. I've already defined what I'm referring to by belief and thought. I've not heard (or perhaps not understood) how you're using those terms.
Quoting creativesoul
Well, why don't you start with what you would expect to see. If taking restorative action is not sufficient, then what, by your measure, would be sufficient. Say someone says to you "hey that's unfair", but you think they might be lying, what behaviour would you look for to confirm that they did genuinely believe it to be unfair?
Quoting creativesoul
As I've said, I don't believe in experiments showing anything 'conclusively'. They might overwhelmingly contradict a theory, in which case it should be rejected, absent of that you're free to continue rationally believing any of the huge range of beliefs the experiments does not actually contradict.
Thst being said, Franz dWaal has placed a large bowl of grapes within reach during the reward experiments, and has given grapes/cucumbers in different combinations in prior exchanges. Together these satisfy me that simple expectation frustration is not the explanation (otherwise prior priming of expectation would have made a difference), nor is it simple greed (otherwise the larger available reward would have made a difference). It does seem to be related to a social peer getting a better reward, so if there's expectation involved, it's an expectation of equal distribution of rewards. I'm happy to call that a belief in fairness.
Quoting creativesoul
Nothing. The expectation that rewards be distributed equally is what a belief in fairness is.
I am talking about subjective experience. People here seem to be talking about subjective experience by attaching their position to a physical realist position that is only ground in scientific investigation. Be clear, VERY clear, science sets out to reduce the ‘subjective’ in favour of the ‘objective’.
Talk about eyes, occipital lobes and retinas is not an experiential investigation.
No it doesn't. It demonstrates that red experiences require both, red things and the ability to see them as such. It also demonstrates that the internal/external and objective/subjective dichotomies are inadequate for taking proper account of experience.
That's probably closer to my view, but still not on par with it. Thought and belief. That is what all experience consists of. Much of it is socially mediated. Some of it is internal. All of it consists of meaningful correlations drawn between different things.
By that token no talk can be an experiential investigation. Talk requires referring terms which requires agreement as to the referrent, which, by definition, cannot be subjective in the sense you're using the term. To say anything at all is an engagement in collective agreement about referrents, so the only completely subjective investigation by your standards is entirely silent meditation. A great idea, but doesn't work very well on an Internet forum.
What on earth are 'red experiences'? I've certainly never had one.
You and I are in near complete agreement on that. I was just following suit(so to speak).
Our difference seems to be regarding what counts as warrant for concluding that the animal has a sense of fairness. I've just read your latest reply to our ongoing discussion about the experiments. I think I'm recognizing the sticking point(s).
So you think that the colors we experience are out there in the world? Are they attached to photons or molecules? How do they get into our brains?
Does this also apply to sound, taste, feels? Does 2 degrees celsius air molecules feel objectively cold? How do you reconcile different sensations among animals or even humans? Maybe I'm from a cold climate and find that warm.
I know that there can be no hallucination, dream, and/or illusion of red if there is no red. I do not work from the dichotomies underlying your account. Rather, I reject them as inadequate.
Would you say the same thing about pain?
No.
Simple. Take a sensation, call it 'red'. Job done. 'Red' isn't out there waiting for us to find it, we experience things and give some of them names, the names have to be related to some external behaviour otherwise naming fails (no one else knows what we're talking about). So examining this external behaviour is adequate for examining the referent of the name.
So you're a color realist. Alright, fine. But at least with pain we have something clearly subjective.
Reminds me of Quine, Witt, and Kripke all rolled into one - aside perhaps from the use of "sensation".
We've been through this, I don't see any reason to presume that the 'object' comes first. What I can and can't imagine comes first, then I divide that up into objects according to how useful I find each division. Whether I can think of a shape with no angles is about the meaning of the word 'shape'. If the word 'shape' means 'things with angles' then no, I can't. But that's just deductive tautology, I haven't learnt anything.
What good is that notion of subjective?
No, we don't, otherwise the word wouldn't mean anything. If any subjective experience counted as pain without any objective measures, then how would we ever learn what the word meant?
To denote that our experiences are not mirrors of reality, and thus when we create explanations of reality, we have to take that into account. A physicalist is going to miss out on something if they don't include our experiences, since we are part of the world.
Also, because it raises the possibility of skeptical scenarios we have to deal with in philosophical discussions. And along with that the possibility of some sort of idealism as a response to skepticism. But that can also be motivated by cognitive concerns as well as experiential ones.
Turn that around and you have the same problem. If there were no subjective experiences of pain how would we ever learn the word? We wouldn't, because it wouldn't be an experience for us.
Yes, pain and other sensations are accompanied by objective measures, which helps us know when people are in pain. But not always.
I find this whole thread kind of strange when the primary questioning is of the phenomenal, of subjective experience, and of consciousness. Phenomenology (Husserlian) is precisely a field of philosophical thought that came into being to deal with these questions.
Instead a see the same old repetition where people get bogged down in arguments about dualism, reality, and naive realism.
Yes, but why does it have to be a subjective experience for this to be the case? 'Pain' we all learn, is the word we use to indicate whatever it is that motivates us to those particular sorts of actions. There need not be any subjectivity to it (as in inaccessible to physicalism). I could be a robot and still learn to label the tweaking of my diodes which causes me to writhe about and cry 'pain'.
(notwithstanding the fact that we all know robots are prone to pain, especially in all the diodes down their left side)
That's not why I use the word pain, but okay, maybe the rest of you zombies use it that way. I use it to refer to feeling pain, not my resulting actions.
Quoting Isaac
But only because humans who do feel pain first coined the word. But okay, let's go with the p-zombie robot world with no humans. They coin a word pain-z which means writhing about and crying when diodes are tweaked. That isn't what we mean by pain.
Why not? Because I can writhe around pretending to be in pain, or maybe for some other reason like a seizure. Or I might be stoical about it. Not all pain manifests in some observable action. Behavior itself is not enough.
Quoting creativesoul
It's existence makes no difference, 'unicorns' don't exist, the idea of 5 dimensional space doesn't exist... None of this makes them immune from the fact that in order to talk about them we must agree on a referent for the term. None of this makes them immune from the requirement to delineate things along the same lines as others in order to talk to them about those things.
Quoting I like sushi
The mere existence of a field which aims to do something does not in any way constitute evidence that it succeeds in that task.
How would you know?
So how does phenomenology help avoid those topics? So we start with our experiences of being in the world. But at some point don't those old questions rear their heads?
How would I know that people can pretend to be in pain, like actors or liars? Is that really going to be your argument?
No, how do you know that such actions can sometimes not be pain. How did you learn that?
Is it though? How can examining our behaviour when describing something that exists in it's entirety prior to our naming it be adequate for examining the referent?
What measure could possibly be used to know whether or not we've gotten it wrong?
Quoting I like sushi
Arguing in favor of direct perception does not equal arguing for naive realism. I readily acknowledge both direct and indirect perception. The former is not mediated in any way shape or form by/with language. The latter is.
How did the people who told you they were pretending find that out?
I wasn't talking about our behaviour whilst describing it, I was talking about our behaviour whilst experiencing it.
Ultimately because at some point primate/monkey ancestors developed mirror neurons and were able to formulate some theory of mind to understand other people's actions. And one of those kind of actions would be deception.
No, that's not how mirror neurons work, they only indicate intentions related to behaviours, they can't magically distinguish different intentions from identical behaviours.
But some animals, humans in particular, do develop a theory of mind where we can look at the context of someone's identical actions and infer their intentions. But yeah, we do have to learn that, which partly comes from other humans like parents or older kids teaching us, and in part from just interacting.
I'm not really sure where this is going. You're not defending behaviorism, right? You're defending a Wittgenstenian understanding of the term pain.
Right, so actions in one context=pain, actions in some other context=pretending. This is still all externally identifiable. Objective.
You might want to mention that TT(theoy theory) is just one of three main contenders for explaining the relation between empathy and mirror neurons. The other two are simulation theory and interaction theory, or enactivism. Its this third one that borrows heavily from Husserlian and Merleau-Pontian phenomenology, by rejecting the idea that we consult an internal theory of mind to interpret others actions and instead directly perceive the meaning of their intent in the action itself. How we manage this requires delving into the gestalts that give us access to an intersubjective world, explain realist materialist science and at the saem time deprive materialism of its claim to self-grounding.
It’s like you read what I wrote with the singular intent to disagree. Yet you agreed and didn’t realise. I plainly said it wasn’t about what exists. I then said ‘existence’ as an ‘object’ of consciousness does matter.
The successes snd precision of the natural sciences is due to the utilisation of objective measurement, the holding fast to absconding from subjective noise. The point of phenomenology is to give a means of exploring and making use of the subjective by absconding from objective noise - not to deny it, but to bolster it by establishing the grounding of all human knowledge and experience which necessarily stems from the subjectivity of being not the objectively assembled naturalistic attitude.
I am not pretending to have a full grasp of this. It’s an difficult shift in thinking to make and it’s not one that comes without resistance.
We cannot measure subjectivity by objective means. That is the heart of the issue many either cannot see or refuse to accept. Probably because it’s quite a worrying thought to say that the ‘essence’ of what we regard as most dear (our experience of life) is effectively out of the reach of objective measurement making it seem by the scientific attitude as either trivial, illusional and/or removed of essential ‘value’.
A sense of ought/fairness/justice is to assess what has happened in light of what ought to have happened. All such assessments are comparisons between one's morality(what ought to have happened) and what happened. This requires thinking about one's own thought and belief(what ought to have happened) while also thinking about what did happen. Language use is necessary for that sort of division of thought content and subsequent comparison. Thus, language use is necessary for having a sense of ought/fairness/justice.
An agreement most certainly requires language, as it is to stipulate one's own acceptance of certain things(conditions).
You're not talking about observables. The sense of fairness consists of thought and belief, as I've been setting out heretofore. A sense of fairness is not equal to the behaviours that it may play a role in influencing.
I suppose you don't mean each disposition and emotion has its own sense, like that of touch and smell, but is there anything actually contradicting that notion?
And how about consciousness itself is actually a sense like taste or hearing, sixth sense as they say in Buddhism. Is there anything we know that can prevent this for actually being true?
Could you explain the patterns of reward in these experiments? The above is too vague to know what the experiments entailed.
Fairness would require some sort of undeniably altruistic redistributive behavior(hence the earlier suggested experiment). Seeing another receive something that one wants but did not receive themselves could result in discontent, regardless of any prior primings and/or patterns of reward. Wanting what another has does not count as a sense of fairness.
Isaac and I understand one another regarding a sense of fairness. No, it's not like physiological sensory perception, although it is existentially dependent upon such.
Consciousness - on my view - is the ability to draw correlations between different things. It begins simply and accrues in it's complexity according to the content of the correlations(and the capabilities of the candidate).
So... All behavioural discontent due to unmet expectations counts as thinking, believing like what has happened is unfair/unjust and/or ought be somehow corrected?
Surely not.
What have you offered here that warrants our conclusion that the candidate has the expectation that rewards are distributed evenly as opposed to the expectation of them (continuing)to be distributed consistently?
Show me an animal not under duress who receives all of the resources and voluntarily distributes them equally, and we'll have an animal that either likes the results of doing that or an animal who has shown a sense of fairness.
But it isn't, or we'd always know whether someone was in pain. There's even medical situations where a patient will complain about a condition their doctor can't see a symptom for, resulting in the suspicion that it's psychological. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it turns out the patient was right.
But in either case, the point is the patient experiences some form of discomfort that isn't objectively identified.
"Ability to draw correlations between different things", is that not the same thing as intelligence?
In any case, it's only functional description, not ontological, unless you are suggesting these "relations" somehow exist as actual, causal phenomena, and it just so happens they have this property to be conscious.
All intelligence is existentially dependent upon thought and belief, for it all consists thereof.
The ontological description begins when we start looking into the content of the correlations.
However, that still leaves related ontological and epistemological questions unanswered.
So, after reading through those studies, in addition to relevant links therein as well as other resources regarding the same studies, it seems that studies clearly show some sort of sensitivity regarding inequitable distribution during social circumstances. I'm still not convinced that that equals and/or counts to having a sense of fairness/justice.
However, it most certainly could be the origens thereof!
Thanks for the discourse. If you'd like to talk about something in particular, I'm down. If not, my appreciation in spades!
:smile:
I'd have to just track down the paper, I'll have a look for a non-paywall version.I don't think this format is an appropriate write out the details of what amounts to a very large field consisting of decades of research. If you're amenable to an idea, I can point you in the direction of some more in depth resources (which I hope I have done), but I think that's the limit of a series of short posts. Certainly if you're largely opposed to it, nothing I can write in a few hundred words is going to be sufficient to convince you. Imagine the entire volumes of work that's been done on this, all that writing was not wasteful padding, so I can't give a thorough account without simply repeating it. Does that make sense?
Quoting creativesoul
The main thrust of my view is that all beliefs are identifiable by the behaviours they instantiate and are themselves, literally, the arrangement of brain architecture which gives rise to these behaviours. The details of exactly what they that behaviour consists of is undoubtedly quite complex. That being said I think the above gives a fairly reasonable sketch, yes, but it is undoubtedly more complex.
Quoting creativesoul
Again, it's probably best if you just read the literature yourself. Heres a deWaal paper with a considerable number of links to the primary evidence. He talks about sharing and the various models that have been proposed to describe it on page 6.
Quoting creativesoul
Again, you've simply asserted that language use is required for these things, I'd like to hear your full argument for how you link the two. At the moment, as I see it, you seem to be saying that gestures, facial expressions, arrangements of neurons in any way...none of these are capable of carrying the content you're looking for, but making a particular shape with my mouth and voice box magically carries this other world of content. I just don't see how at all.
I've certainly never encountered such a situation. You're suggesting that a patient might come to a doctor, telling them that they're in pain, but show absolutely no signs at all of being in pain, no alterations to their movements, no sensitivity to touch, no defence recoil, no adjustment to their daily life, nothing...just the statement "I'm in pain". I think in that situation the doctor would quite rightly say "no you're not", that's not what pain is, you've misidentified your feeling".
Pain always results in some behaviour to the effect of demonstrating the pain, even if it's just a micro-expression, even if it's delayed. Until that point we might 'suspect' pain, but we do not know it's pain.
Again, I'll ask, how would you possibly know what 'pain' is (which of your many feelings is the one correctly called 'pain') if you could not identify it at all times in others? If there was even one circumstance where the correct feeling to call 'pain' was hidden from you completely, how would you know that some other feeling you're having is actually also called 'pain', afterall, it might be the one that's been hidden from you? How would anyone properly use the word 'pain' if no-one knew the basic extent of which feelings were to be grouped under that term?
It doesn't matter one jot what terminology you want to use. Call it 'it'. 'It' cannot be used in a conversation with another person unless that other person has some idea what it is you're referring to by, or expecting to achieve by using, 'it'. The use of 'it' must be bounded by at least some joint understanding of that use, some collective, community venture, it cannot be solely subjective otherwise it is useless as a term of communication.
But we don't and we can't always identify what someone else is experiencing. That's just a fact of our existence. We only have partial access to other people's minds though their behavior and what they choose to tell us. We simply don't always know whether someone else in pain.
Quoting Isaac
But it doesn't. People can choose to ignore minor pains. I have a headache, but if it's not severe, I don't have to say anything or hold my head. I can just ignore it and focus on something else. How much pain one can endure without reacting in pain depends on the individual.
Quoting Isaac
It's not hidden from me because pain is a subjective experience that can be accompanied by behavior, but not always. And if that fact doesn't square with a certain view of meaning acquisition, the so much the worse for that view.
To explain further the ‘it-ness’ is an ‘existential mode’ of intentionality.
If you wish try and untangle where you see possible conflicts of terminology.
I’m just laying out as best I can as how I understand phenomenology. I’ve done this by drawing on the example of natural science being inclined toward an objective approach that actively seeks to leave out subjective perspectives as much as possible. It is probably helpful to view phenomenology as a mirror of this where leaving out what is objectively determined by the naturalistic attitude is a means to investigating subjectivity.
The existent items are not the direct concern of phenomenology, yet ‘existence’ as a ‘mode’ is as a phenomenal ‘object’ of experience - the ‘horizon’.
As what I hope is a more tangible way of expressing this we don’t tend to consider being on Earth orbiting the Sun. We are, yet now that I’ve drawn attention to this our ‘intentionality’ shifts. As soon as the question of ‘existence’ is brought into play then our ‘intentionality’ shifts to phenomenon as existing ‘objects’.
I’m happy to accept that generally people say ‘real’ to talk about number and word concepts and ‘existent’ to talk about this or that ‘box’, ‘chair’ or ‘table’. For phenomenological investigation the ‘real’ or ‘existent’ are only ‘modes of intentionality’; meaning they are not of direct concern for the itemization of ‘objects’ as ‘real’ or ‘existent’. The phenomenon is the subjective regard.
Maybe that only makes partial sense? I’d appreciate it if you could see a way to build a bridge of understanding here and tell me. We certainly seem to be in roughly the same area here.
It's a fact I dispute, a fact I'm asking for your support of, your empirical evidence for. To say something is 'just a fact' is quite a strong assertion (it implies that any and all theories which assume it isn't are all untenable), so it's one I'd expect a significant amount of evidence for.
Quoting Marchesk
Then how do you know that feeling is a 'pain'? How do you know it isn't some feeling other people are calling something else entirely?
Quoting Marchesk
I'm talking about the time when you claim it is hidden. Again, it is not a 'fact' simply by your declaring it to be one.
Alright, so have you ever found out someone was feeling discomfort when you didn't realize it, or vice versa?
Quoting Isaac
I drink too much the night before and wake up with a mild hangover. At the office I talk to coworker and do my work without saying anything. Nobody asks me about my hangover or offers some aspirin.
I don't know what more to say other than it's a basic aspect of our experience that we don't always know what our fellow humans are feeling, including pain, nor can they always tell what we feel. It's part of of our daily interactions, it's in our language, it's all over fiction.
You seem to be arguing that we should always be able to tell whether someone is in pain.
OK, that makes sense. In my terminology, that would be the active variance reduction seeking if the system relating to the model currently in focus. Our models of the world are utility based, they don't necessarily join up, nor even fail to contradict one another, so focus needs to be confined to the model at hand in order to gain more confirming data for it. Maybe that's still too 'sciency', but I can see some common ground there.
Quoting I like sushi
This is the bit I hit a wall with. We 'regard' a phenomena, yes? So having regarded it, we presumably then want to say something about it? Otherwise the activity is simply silent meditation. So when it comes to saying something about it, the words we use must have some effect on the community to whom we're speaking, which means they must either already know, or be able to gather by your actions, what to do with the word you've used. (more simply, what the word refers to, but I'm trying to be accurate here and words do not always refer).
So I kind of get how introspection might allow us to recognise a focus on different models (intentionality?), I get how we could conduct thought experiments on such modes to find out more about them. I'm stuck on how we could ever communicate the results to anyone without invoking community-held (objective) definitions for the words we're using, which means the referrents for those words have to be objectively verifiable to some loose extent.
Yes. My not noticing the signs and there not being any signs to notice are two different things.
Also, you haven't tried to answer my questions. How would you know that what you're experiencing is called 'pain'? How do you know you're using the word correctly?
Yes, but we also don't have any method that will allow us to always read the signs.
The sensation correlates with other human behavior enough of the time in situations that are often painful to use that word for it. There's probably edge cases where I wouldn't be sure whether to call it pain.
What reason have you got to think this?
Quoting Marchesk
But how would you know that? The sensation which allows you to continue without displaying any signs cannot be the same as the one which does not. Or are you claiming that we are voluntarily in control of all our external behaviors, even the micro expressions, galvanic skin responses, recoil defence etc which experts use to detect things like pain?
If we're not in control of all those autosomic responses, then a sensation which does not cause them must be a different sensation to one which causes them, no?
Even if we were to simply assume the two sensations were similar enough, you'd be positing a mental sensation which had absolutely no effect on you whatsoever. Where would the signal go? Or are you perhaps a dualist?
Because it would be used by courts and doctors.
I didn't say there was no effect, just that we can't always know what it is in other people. Of course at minimum there is neural activity. But it's not like we have super accurate brain scanners. We don't have anything that's good enough for court to determine truthfulness. Lie detector tests aren't terribly accurate, and neither are juries, police or even shrinks when it comes to reading people.
Again, how would we know? Without any external signs, how do the judges, jurors, doctors etc know that there is some feeling in the subject which they have misidentified (or missed entirely) for you to form this judgement that they regularly do this? I can see how they might temporarily make this mistake, but later find out they were in error. But this later updating of their assessment would be the result of some behavior. Absent of any behaviour at all, they'd have no way to know they were ever wrong and so you'd have no way to know that they regularly get these things wrong.
You can't use words correctly or incorrectly. If you're asking how do you know that you're using the word the "same way" as someone else (where we're ignoring that "someone elses" are only creations of your own mind in your view), you don't, but what does that matter for anything?
People can feel some way that no external behavior gives a clue to, regardless of what anyone calls the feeling in question.
The way you know that the person had the feeling that no external behavior gave a clue to is that they tell you at some later time. This happens frequently.
Could they be using the term they use in a way that's not at all like how you use the term? Sure. But there's no need to worry about that until it becomes apparent that they must be using the term differently, and there's a communication breakdown.
And could they be lying? Sure. But you can't know this better than what they're telling you. So again, until there's something that makes no sense supposing that they're being honest, and in inverse proportion to potential upshots of trusting them (the more significant the upshots, the more skepticism warranted), normally you just don't worry about whether they're being truthful, and we don't assume that someone isn't truthful.
And telling you at some later time isn't a behaviour? Or, if you want to say "well we didn't know at time X", then surely that applies equally to all data. Everything has some delay, even things we observe; we see them move, say, shortly after they actually have moved. We don't start saying that external world movements are mysteriously unknowable to us because there's some period of time where the knowledge was inaccessible. We're just happy to find out when we do.
What the hell are you talking about?
The idea is clearly about someone feeling some way at an earlier time, where there was no behavioral clue that they felt that way at the time, and it's clearly not saying something about there being a nervous system delay in response time.
You're arguing about this and now it turns out that you don't even understand what the topic was. lol
Right, and I'm obviously not disputing that fact. I'm disputing the implication drawn earlier in the argument that this means we should accept 'experiences vlike pain as being subjective, inaccessible to third parties.
If this were the case purely because there is a time delay between the experience initiating and us, the third party, being aware of it, then we could apply that logic to every single form of knowledge. There is a delay between an object moving and us being aware of it, we don't use that delay to claim that the movement of objects is mysteriously unavailable to third parties. It is unavailable, for the short time it takes for light to reach our eyes, but we find out eventually, and that's satisfactory, we count that as 'knowable' information.
The situation with feelings is the same. They manifest eventually as behaviours and are therefore knowable to third parties.
The reason it's subjective is because it's a mental phenomenon, and the reason it's inaccessible is that the mental phenomenon is not identical to any third-person observable behavior.
Of course, when you don't even really think that there are other people aside from your own model of them, this doesn't pan out so well, because you don't really believe that there are minds other than your own, etc.
No, but the mental phenomenon is a disposition towards some behaviour, so it is accessible in exactly the same way all other phenomena of the world are accessible, by their effects.
So first, the effects are phenomena. If you only access those phenomena by their effects, you'd never access any phenomena.
I didn't say that no phenomena weren't directly accessible though. I just said that all phenomena 'of the world' were accessed (in terms of us knowing about them) by other phenomena that they cause. At no point does the phenomena we imagine as being the real object (in your terminology this might be the noumena, the 'real thing'), at no point does that just enter our minds directly, it is some effect it has by which we know of it.
Now for you, the thing we thereby know is some property of reality, for me it's just another phenomena (an imagined object in a speculative model), but this distinction isn't even relevant here. The point here is that whatever 'it' is, we know it by some effect it is having, yet this doesn't cause us to label such knowledge as 'inaccessible to third parties'. The movement of a stone isn't known only to the stone by virtue of the fact that we only see the effect of that movement on our retinas. So why is the disposition of some brain known only to that brain just on the same grounds that we only see the effects of that disposition?
Objects are processes, and we can talk about processes that are not normally thought of as objects just as well, because they're phenomena just as well.
Properties of reality are phenomena. "Phenomena" does not refer to "imagined objects . . "
Representationalism is wrong re philosophy of perception.
You know something like light waves by looking at them. Light waves are phenomena. You don't only know them via effects they have on something else.
I have no clue how this relates to what I said.
As to the rest of your post...
Yeah, I'm aware of the fact that you have a different opinion, so simply restating it is not contributing anything.
I disagree that phenomena does not refer to imagined objects (in the sense I was using in context) because of my beliefs about how the brain works (all apparent phenomena are imagined objects, models created and tested for efficacy against reality which is not directly accessed).
I disagree that representationalism is wrong re the philosophy of perception. You don't make it so simply by declaring it is.
I disagree that you know light waves by looking at them for the masses of neuroscientific reasons I've been outlining in this thread. Again, simply saying something is the case does not make it so.
If we've now come to the usual point where you just declare whatever seems to you to be the case to actually be the case, then I'm done. All that's left is for you to call me a moron (or a child, or uneducated, whatever is your preferred term de jour) and then tell me my reading comprehension is to blame, then we can call it a day.
You wrote, "At no point does the phenomena we imagine as being the real object . . . " I wanted to point out, not just for your sake, but for anyone's sake who might be reading this at any time, that phenomena aren't limited to objects per se.
Quoting Isaac
I wasn't saying that it can't refer to that. Just that it isn't limited to that. It's not an exhaustive identity or necessary implication for the term in other words.
Quoting Isaac
And no one said as much.
It would be like if I said, "You don't make it so that it's not wrong simply by declaring that one doesn't make it wrong simply by declaring it is." Of course, you weren't saying as much. I could write that, anyway, but it would be kind of dumb to, because I know you weren't saying as much.
Quoting Isaac
You mean per the model you've created, right?
Thanks for that link. Impressive considerations and precautions taken by the scientists involved to minimize mistaken accounting practices.
Based upon those experiments, I am quite certain that there is some sort of sensitivity to equitable resource distribution(in some non human primates). I am quite certain that there is empathy at work(in some non human primates more-so than others). I am quite certain that there is some sort of expectation at work(in all non human primates). I'm not as certain that there is enough evidence to conclude a sense of fairness at work in the thought and belief of any particular candidate. However, it's quite interesting that some dominant individuals will voluntarily share.
Quoting Isaac
It's not so much as making a particular shape with one's mouth and voice box carries content. In fact, on my view, talking about carrying content doesn't make much sense at all. The content of thought and belief is not some monolithic structure capable of being carried.
More later...
The experience itself is inaccessible, because you don't have someone else's pain. But you might very well find out someone is or was in pain, and have empathy or recall a similar painful experience. So yes, the mental phenomena has related effects. But we can't always know what they are, or infer the correct mental states.
Luckily we share a similar biology with other humans, so often enough we can understand other people's mental states. But not always. Men can't know exactly what it's like to give birth. And we never know fully what it is to be someone else. Everyone has their own subjective experience of themselves and the world.
This goes back to a dispute over meaning. You seemed to be arguing for a behavioral view that pain is understood as something objective and not the experience of pain itself, because otherwise how could have learned to identify pain? To which I say hogwash, pain without the experience is meaningless.
Therefore, we understood pain to be something experienced that often but not always has observable effects, like hopping around and yelling. And it's something that can be faked.
Keep in mind that he doesn't even think there are any objective properties. And he believes that the world he experiences is simply a model of his own creation. So he doesn't really believe there are other minds per se.
I'm just happy to be part of someone's world.
I don't recall if it was in this thread. But yeah, he's basically said that he posts on here to work on his own model.
How else?
:smile:
There are a bunch of other things we could be doing. For one, imagine if folks were interested in others persons' views simply because they find other people and their differences interesting.
I admit that the use of ‘regard’ has to be taken in a broad and abstract manner here. I am not talking about my ‘regard’ for an object anymore than I mean my ‘intention’ when talking about ‘Intentionality’. The ‘regard’ is the ‘mode’ in the sense I meant it.
Phenomenon is what is ‘apparent’ and Phenomenology is the investigation into the ‘modes’ (intentionality) that ‘give aboutness’.
Quoting I like sushi
That sentence was more of an afterthought. Probably better to put a line through it as an attempt to explain my understanding of Phenomenology rather than as a certified exemplar of what phenomenology is about.
I am puzzled by how so many people see Heidegger and/or Gadamer as doing something different than what Husserl set out. From my reading they have helped elucidate certain aspects of phenomenology, but that is exactly the problem as well - meaning they appear, to me at least, to have taken a part as the whole (note: please ignore this paragraph if you want. Just voicing a point that has bothered me for a while.)
Yes. I think that's a pretty good summary of where the current evidence is at, in terms of what we can be fairly sure of and what there remains some considerable doubt over. I'm basically at the same place as you, only I'm presuming they do have a sense of fairness and waiting to see if I'm proven wrong by further experiments, you're presuming they don't and waiting to see if you're proven wrong by further experiments. Possibly this is because of other philosophical commitments we both have about the nature of mental phenomena.
What would "someone else's pain" mean here? I don't have you're chair either but it doesn't prevent me from both understanding what a chair is and talking coherently about chairs.
Quoting Marchesk
But we've been through this without you answering my questions, but you're just circling back to the same assertion. If there are times when we can't know what they are ('can't', not just 'don't happen to on that particular occasion'), then how would we ever know what word to use to describe it?
Quoting Marchesk
This just presumes there's 'something it's like' to give birth, which is the whole matter under contention here. If you're talking about that exact set of feelings, then no one can know what it's like to give birth, not even the person who's just given birth. Our memories absolutely demonstrably do not provide us with an accurate account of the feelings we experienced even seconds ago. In order for anyone to know what anything 'is like' by that token we have to generalise. In which case a detailed verbal description gives a perfectly good account of 'what it's like'.
Quoting Marchesk
How would you know this? There are 7 billion people on the planet right now, about 10 billion ever. Are there 10 billion combinations of feelings anyone can have at any moment? What if there were 100 billion people, would there still be enough variety for everyone to have a unique set? Will we run out at some time? What is the mechanism which prevents two people from having the same set?
Quoting Marchesk
What is 'the experience' if not the behaviours? Quoting Marchesk
Again, how would you know this unless you found out they were faking by some eventual difference between their behaviour and the behaviour of someone who is genuinely in pain?
This doesn't follow. A belief that the distinction of another mind is just a model is not the same as saying that only I exist. I'm quite convinced the external world exists (I actually think it is impossible to genuinely doubt that), I just don't agree that the distinctions we draw are real outside of our minds. It's like star signs, all there really are is just stars, we drew lines between some of them to make lions, bears, hunters etc, but those aren't real properties of those stars, we just looked at them that way.
(note - an reasonable alternative, to my mind, would be to say that the similarity to a bear was a property of that cluster of stars, but everything else it could possibly be is also a property, leaving everything with a potentially infinite set of properties. I think this makes sense, but is far less elegant)
Ha! Very drole.
Replacing one idiosyncratic technical term with another is hardly an explanation. A system which can only be explained in terms of its own technical language is just waffle. You need to bridge what you think Husserl means by his technical terms by reference to ordinary language. No one ordinarily use 'mode' to mean anything like what you're using it to mean.
So what you're saying is that other people exist, it's just that our talk of other minds is itself a model, and the model can be disputed. You're disputing the model that the experiences of other minds is inaccessible. That subjectivity is fundamentally different from objectivity. And thus you disagree with the hard problem of consciousness, that it's a "hard" problem.
Alright, fair enough. I think there's some room there for debate over exactly how "hard" the distinction is between subjective and objective. It could be that the distinction is only a human one due to a limitation of how we think, or based on how philosophy and language has developed into the current debate, or just that science hasn't quite caught up yet.
What I'm noting is that this distinction goes all the way back to the beginning of philosophical inquiry, so there's something fundamental at least in terms of human knowledge. The distinction being one between the appearance of the world to us, and how the world actually is. The current consciousness debate is just the most recent development of the long argued problem of perception and skepticism that arose a long time ago when people started asking questions about sticks looking bent in water and people having different experiences of sensation (perceptual relativity), and how animal sensory capabilities can differ from our own.
So close, it's hardly worth quibbling, but I don't think other people exist either. I think the real world, all that is the case, exists. Any division of that into separate objects, forces, etc are just models, just one way of subdiving things, among other options.
Quoting Marchesk
Yes, only I don't see how there can possibly be a way the world really is. Any 'ways' it could be require distinction (shape and form, even if only figurative) and I cannot see any convincing way in which distinction can be the case without anyone doing the distinguishing.
Yeah, that is definitely worth quibbling over! So, do you exist?
Quoting Isaac
But then how does the subdividing happen? What's making the distinctions? Is it "your" mind? Based on what?
Parmenides started this whole business by arguing that despite appearances, change was impossible and the world was really a sphere. My biggest issue upon hearing that is what makes the world appear like it does change, and it's much more than a sphere?
We can ask the same sort of think of a Kantian. What gives the mind the ability to categorize the noumena into the phenomena we experience? Doesn't that imply a pre-existing order?
And if there is a pre-existing order, then we have some basis for inferring it.
Quibble away. Give me a reason to think that the boundary between 'I' and 'not I' is one which would continue to exist (differently to the boundary between two other molecules of 'me') without some model determining that these molecules belong together as one thing, whilst these others belong together as another.
When I say people don't exist, I'm not suggesting there's nothing there, it's the grouping, the distinguishing, I'm disputing, not the existence of anything at all.
Quoting Marchesk
Same way anything happens, I'm not sure what you're asking here.
Quoting Marchesk
Depends on what model I'm using. I don't believe it's possible to refer without models, so I can't answer a 'what' question outside of some model dividing the world into individual referrents.
Quoting Marchesk
I went through this earlier in the thread. Just because I don't believe in any objective division of the world into parts, doesn't mean I think it's homogeneous.
Quoting Marchesk
No, I don't see any logical reason for it to imply anything more than heterogeneity. We can identify a pattern in a random sequence of dots, does that mean the pattern was really there all along? Yes, I think so. But does that mean the pattern is the way the random sequence is? No. It's just one pattern that can be determined out of many.
So the world is a heterogenous flux allowing for seeing different kinds of patterns. And this flux on occasion produces pattern matchers?
I'm asking how the pattern matching occurs in the flux of things. In any case, that sets up a dichotomy between the flux and the pattern matching, because we can ask how our patterns match up with the flux of the world.
There is no pattern matching, there's just the flux of thing. The only way we can talk about pattern matching going on is by agreeing to a model in which there are such things as patterns and matching.
Quoting Marchesk
Just because we can ask something, doesn't mean the world is the way the question assumes.
Patterns will always match up some way with the world, and will always be in error some way (because they are not the actual world).
If all is just electro-magnetic chemistry, that is 'material' in a sense it is measurable, then all we need is true definition. Right? For example, if definition of 'subjectivity' turns out to be "measure of self-reflection" then we would look for some kind of dynamics which is symmetric in some way, and compare one side with the other to see how closely they match, or "self-reflect". For example.
I cannot have your pain. I can most certainly have my own. If we know what having pain consists of... then it doesn't make much sense to say that having pain is inaccessible, does it?
:worry:
What on earth could be wrong with saying "other people exist"?
People do use ‘mode’ to mean ... well, mode. It is the manner/regard/approach used. It does take a certain mental leap to appreciate what Husserl is talking about because there is no concern for a physical agent.
Experience is subjective. You ‘know’ subjectively yet you don’t know how you know. We can objectively measure physical phenomenon and find out a lot, but the scientific approach has no means of dealing with subjective phenomenon other than by way of resorting back to empirical means.
Quoting I like sushi
Part of it is.
What's the difference between your notion of "subjective experience" and your thought and belief about what counts as such?
Sometimes. Not all.
One can know that their holding an ice cream cone and not know how to say it. This would satisfy your criterion.
One can know that when her mother utters "ice cream" that they are about to eat ice cream. They cannot say anything about the correlations that they are drawing, but they can be shown to clearly have already drawn correlations between their own mother's naming and descriptive practices and ice cream. This would satisfy your criterion.
They get quite happy when they entertain having it again. When mother starts asking again in the same way she always does they draw correlations between the language use and eating ice cream. They know what it's like to believe that they are about to eat ice cream, but they do not know how they believe that. They draw correlations between the language use and ice cream. This would satisfy your criterion.
The use of the terms directly involves her mother speaking endearingly with a certain tone accompanied with a certain loving facial expression. She can know that she's about to get ice cream because she's drawn correlations between her mother's language use and eating ice cream, and yet not know how she knows that much. This too satisfies your criterion.
That's only to say that sometimes we know yet do not know how we know...
Sometimes we know X as well as knowing how we do.
We know how to use this site to interact. We also know how we know. We learned how to use the site by learning to follow the procedure needed in order to do so. We learned how to talk about that learning experience as well. We know and we know how we know.
This does not satisfy your criterion. Rather it offers an example to the contrary. Thus, at a minimum, we must further qualify your claim captured in the quote directly above. Hence, my reasoning for the opening statement.
It's like you are saying you'd rather keep imagining than look through a telescope. Is it not the ultimate goal to actually move, if possible, any and all "phenomena" from philosophy to one of natural sciences?
There isn't no pattern matching. I'm not saying that nothing exists and that things don't happen. Pattern matching is happening in some part of reality, part of that pattern matching is identifying the thing doing the matching, in the same way as if I count the number of people on my bus the person doing the counting is one of those people part of the pattern [number of people} is the thing recognising the pattern. I'm disputing that there is an edge to that pattern making goings on that objectively defines it as one thing and the rest of the universe as other things(s).
I (and others) haven't arrived at this belief because it's the way the world seems to us to be, We've arrived at it becasue of a failure to feel satisfied with any objective criteria for distinguishing objects. So If you've got such a criteria, then we can ditch the whole idea of model dependent realism. Say an alien comes to earth, they don't even see in colour like we do, they detect some other part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and maybe the Weak Nuclear Force directly, maybe they have completely different model of how evolution and DNA works (afterall, we had a completely different model 200years ago). Give me an reason why they would still recognise you as one thing and me as another. Or even you as one thing and the chair you're sitting on as another.
Depends what you mean by 'wrong'. As a model, it's a brilliant one - useful, elegant, highly accurate predictions. But as some objective measure of the way reality 'really' is...I'll ask the same as I asked Marchesk above - what would the criteria for such a distinction be?
Right, but you said...
Quoting I like sushi
No 'mode' in the ordinary language sense (approach used) can 'give aboutness' in the same ordinary language sense because 'aboutness' is not a term in ordinary language either. A particular approach to thinking gives aboutness? Is that what you mean?
And none of this seems to at all address the concern I've been raising all along which is how we then proceed to speak about the results of these investigations without being able to use terms which both parties recognise the referents of, and if both parties recognise the referents, then the matter is not subjective, is it?
Not I sir...
I've no issue at all with saying that. Do you?
Saying what? I've lost your thread.
You said the above. I responded by asking what on earth could be wrong with saying "other people exist"?
If it is the case that you don't think other people exist, then there must be something wrong with you saying "other people exist".
What is it?
Yes, that's what I thought you meant. Which is why my answer was "it depends what you mean by 'wrong'".
If you mean objectively 'wrong' in a normative sense - 'one ought not to say "other people exist"', then you'd be suggesting that my believing something to be the case somehow creates a normative imperative for other people to agree, and speak that way. I wouldn't agree with you here.
If by 'wrong' you mean ineffective, not conducive to the task, then again, I disagree because we use different models for different tasks and most of the time, the model in which people don't exist is not very useful. That doesn't in any way prevent me from believing it to be the case.
I'm not going to continue to list all the other senses of 'wrong' you could have meant and their implications, you get the picture. I need to know what you mean by 'wrong' before I can answer your question.
Because you occupy different location in space, and especially because you seem to move infependently from the forces of nature. I guess I could say then, because you seem unnatural.
Every atom occupies a different location in space from every other, so that alone doesn't provide any grounds, not to mention the fact that 3d space seems to be a model which itself is open to question.
Which are 'the forces of nature' and which are my movements, prior to identifying me as an entity?
That's not the context where you exist as a collective entity. You need to look several levels of abstraction above... atom - molecule - cell - organ - organism. Surely at this level there should be no confusion what is and how much it is different and separated from everything else at the same level.
Can you state the problem directly, with some example if possible?
I find it odd when someone claims that they do not think other people exist.
Do you believe the following statement?
Other people exist.
I'm talking about objective existence, the 'context' in which we determine existence is subjective, it's a decision we make, there's no reason why we should determine objects on any given level of heirachy. We're we justifiably uncertain of our existence prior to having a model of molecules, cells etc? How would our alien, who only senses weak nuclear forces, have any concept of a boundary at a cellular level?
Quoting Zelebg
OK, so describe to me where 'you' end, and why there. Maybe some more detail will help me see where you're coming from.
Quoting Zelebg
You said that 'I' act against the forces of nature, but that would involve distinguishing between 'my' actions and those originating from the forces of nature. Without begging the question as to my separate existence, I'm asking what features of 'my' actions allow you to distinguish them from actions caused by 'the forces of nature'.
Objective criteria, granted. But the human species in general, as observer, does distinguish objects, from himself and from each other, which implies there is some criteria for doing so.
Would the subjective criteria of space and time be sufficient for distinguishing objects?
Yes, but incredulity does not constitue an argument. I'm asking you what your argument is, not what your feeling is about mine.
Quoting creativesoul
I don't hold single beliefs about the subject. As I've said already, for me, a belief is simply a disposition to act as if. It is therefore contextual. In the context of thinking about reality, in the widest sense I can, I'm disposed to act (in this case actions are all talking/typing) as if people do not exist, as separate objects. In the context of my day to day life, I'm disposed to act as if other people do exist.
Neither of these dispositions tells me anything about what actually does exist.
Yes, absolutely. What I'm arguing for here is model dependent realism. Not that nothing really exists, not any form of idealism, just that the only way we know reality is through our models of it and so (this is, for me, the important bit) no model can ever be shown to be more 'true' (where that means corresponds to reality) than any other, and no objects distinguished by those models really exist in preference to any other conceivable way of determining objects.
I can't remember why we got talking about model dependent realism in a thread about the expression 'what it's like'.
The reason for separation are new emergent entities, properties, and meanings. So we can talk about things like wetness and acidity, or letters and words, or ball and wheel, or osmosis and chirality... Subjective, perhaps, so what? Decision is not arbitrary.
I don't see how that question relates to what I said. What problem you are talking about - who has that problem, when, why?
In that case it wouldn't.
Individual organisms are distinguished from the environment by connections and relations between entities that make up that organism, like shared circulatory system, synchronized motion of all the parts, shape constraints that make up the body...
Autonomy & independence, like you can climb a mountain and raindrop can not. Is there some point to all these questions?
No member of Nature can act contrary to the forces of the Nature of which he is a member. None of my actions can be distinguished from forces found naturally, even if I am permitted to modify them to my advantage or interrupt their natural progression. Even the act of pure spontaneity, which we formerly considered the ground of pure thought, has its natural exhibition in random....a form of spontaneity.....nuclear decay, and theoretical quantum physics.
What is the non-arbitrary aspect then?
Quoting Zelebg
We're definitely getting crossed wires here, sorry. I don't know what part of my writing you think has expressed a problem.
Quoting Zelebg
So you're not 'connected' to the environment? How's that work?
Quoting Zelebg
I'm asking why the forces which lead to me climbing a mountain are not 'forces of nature'.
Quoting Zelebg
Yes, I'm trying to clarify what your objection is.
Yes, exactly. So I'm asking Zelebg how that distinction he set up can help him objectively identify a separate object. I can't see any distinction at all myself.
The human cognitive system is predicated on models it constructs of its own accord. Whether or not the models so constructed correspond one-to-one with reality is only governed by logical law.....which we also invented. On a smaller scale, if Nature informs us of an error in our models, we just start over. On a large enough scale, if our models are in error, Nature will treat us as any other non-evolutionarily viable entity, and rid itself of us.
My objection? To what point of yours when you made no point, but keep asking questions?
Do you have any point to make, what is it?
The objective stance I am guarded against is naive realism. There is no ‘knowing’ ice cream only subjective experience, an ‘object’ of experience. I don’t see how ‘knowing’ can possess unbounded universality. What is known truly is only known within set limits - been through exhaustively elsewhere I believe.
You don’t know by way of someone else’s knowing. You know only through you - which is subjectivity. The further issue is understanding that ‘objective knowing’ is ‘intersubjectivity’: the interplay of subjects not some item know as ‘the-thing-in-itself’.
Two subjects owning the same existence/reality are not ‘two’, that is maybe another point that causes confusion in this kind of topic?
How does nature inform us of an error in our models when we have no direct access to nature against which to check them, only other models?
Good point, and pardon my speaking too loosely. I claim dialectic license.
We do have direct access, but that doesn’t mean we are given Nature as it is in itself, but only as we perceive it. It follows that Nature doesn’t inform us so much as we inform ourselves, of errors in our models, when some model of ours isn’t consistent with another of ours, or isn’t consistent with subsequent observations of ours from which all models with empirical predicates are constructed, Nature merely giving the occasion for such possible disparities to be cognized.
Still, models are useless without something to which they relate, wouldn’t you agree?
Nor I, but there is precedent galore for these types of discussions wandering off into the subjectively-driven hinterlands.
Ehhhhhh...from where I sit, what it’s like to experience something, when push comes to shove, is none other than the experience itself. In other words, it’s a pretty dumb question to begin with. I mean, what it’s like to experience stubbing your toe is a lot like the experience of hitting your thumb with a hammer, which isn’t saying much, but what the experience of stubbing your toe is exactly like is .......well.....stubbing your toe, which isn’t saying anything at all, because we already knew that.
I think people ask what it’s like because “what does it mean” is just too hard.
As we say out here in the hinterlands......
Absolutely. A claim which should be allowed with much generosity, I think. We're only writing pithy responses, often (in my case) on a phone whilst travelling, we cannot be expected to write full technical explanations in parentheses to every term. So yes, licence granted...trouble is there are many posts where a charitable reading turns out to be the wrong one, and the term one thought a brief placemarker for a much more nuanced position was, in actual fact, meant as the full brazen assertion it superficially seemed to be... So it was worth a check.
Quoting Mww
True, but we mustn't sublime consistency. It is only what it is, no holy grail, nor marker of truth. A whole set of consistent models might still be miles away from reality, or consistent and close to reality but utterly useless to us.
Quoting Mww
No, I don't think I would, but I get what you're saying. I don't think proximity to reality measures the usefulness of the model. As such, I think it's theoretically possible that a model might be useful without relating to anything at all, but I haven't thought about that much, so my intuition may well be wrong. Interesting question.
Quoting Mww
Yes. Which makes it muchtthe same as what a 'game of tennis' is like. Its a bit like a game of badminton, but not quite, the only thing it's exactly like is a game of tennis, which doesn’t get us anywhere when talking about it. Nothing special about consciousness in that respect, as far as I can see.
I'm asking what you believe to be the case. What claim and/or assertion are you asking me to argue for?
Quoting Isaac
I find all of that odd as well.
A rubber ball is disposed to bounce when dropped onto a hard surface. According to your definition, rubber balls have belief.
That last comment does not make sense.
Earlier you denied/rejecting my comparison between Kant and phenomenology, instead opting for Husserl(???). Weird now to revert back to Kant. I've already briefly spoken about Kant's shortcomings. Some folk hereabouts think I've gotten him wrong. So, to avoid any and all disagreements about whether or not Kant meant and/or said what I reported him to have, I'll say this...
In order to be able to know what one is talking about when drawing and maintaining a distinction between the way things are and the way things appear to be one must have direct access to and knowledge of both.
As you note above, Kant posits the way things are(Noumena) as a negative limit to our thought. That is a purely(pun intended) self-imposed limitation borne of inadequate language use and/or linguistic framework.
Quoting I like sushi
What confuses me, at this point, is how/why you think that that has anything at all to do with what I wrote about knowing???
As I've stated many many times in past, and no doubt here in this thread as well, I reject the objective/subjective dichotomy.
Perhaps because what it's like to experience X consists - in very large part - of the candidate/subject's own thought and belief about and/or during that experience.
What is it like to experience having a sense of fairness/justice?
:wink:
Of course, it seems to me that the answer to that question requires knowing what a sense of fairness/justice consists of.
As I explained, I don't think I 'believe' a single thing, I believe a range of different (possibly even contradictory things) in different contexts. So I simply can't answer your question.
Quoting creativesoul
Implied (but I could be wrong). You're saying that you find it odd, but you're not saying that you'll cast out your old thinking and accept this new 'odd' way of looking at things. Yet you've not presented any justification for finding it 'odd', just the bare declaration. So what I get from that is that you find it odd, and that the mere fact that you find it odd is sufficient for you to reject the idea. So the assertion is that what I've said is not a good way of looking at things, yet the backing for this seems to be just that you find it odd.
Of course, it's possible you're just declaring you find it odd as nothing more than a point of interest. In which case, noted, but do you have an opinion on how useful the idea might, odd or not?
Quoting creativesoul
Yes, I don't see any functional distinction in this context, but I'm equally happy to say that 'beliefs' are just such dispositions that occur in brains.
Agreed, sublime here I understand to mean exalt to higher worth, so we mustn’t attribute to consistency more than it avows on its own. It isn’t a marker of truth, but merely an example of the form of its possibility. Nevertheless, we in our human endeavors naturally seek to lessen our own confusion, the means to which we demand of logic, which in turn absolutely requires consistency. Of course, logic itself is nothing if not a model of consistency.
——————-
Quoting Isaac
Perhaps not, but it remains for a model’s usefulness to relate to something, just from the fact it is a model. I’d say an empirical model, or, a model constructed on empirical principles, should proximate reality as much as the principles admit. A purely rational model, built on a priori principles, those of which no proper object belongs, do not get us any closer to reality, but rather, prevent us from straying too far from it.
———————-
Quoting Isaac
I’m not sure how consciousness got into this. Did someone lay the whole “what it’s like” thing on human consciousness? If one employs reductionism far enough, and under certain conditions, he should arrive at consciousness as the ground of all human a posteriori experience, thus diametrically opposed to a priori suppositions of “what it’s like”.
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Quoting Isaac
On another note: I rather think belief is a judgement of relative truth. One’s disposition to act is every bit as much a judgement he makes relative to some truth he has already considered. Close enough?
Yes, absolutely. We seem to dislike inconsistency - sometimes, I think, to our detriment... But then, I'm a psychologist, we get to play fast and loose with trivial things like logic, if it makes people feel better.
Quoting Mww
I'm not sure what "as much as the principles admit" refers to here, so I might be raising an issue you've already covered, but on the face of it, this seems wrong. Take the weather for example, the way it 'really' is (and here by 'really' I just mean according to our most intricate models) is really complex. At the moment, some of the world's most powerful supercomputers are used to process our models of the weather. Now suppose we made that model even closer to reality, that wouldn't make it better would it. It would become too complex for even our fastest computer and so next to useless.
Sometimes reality might be fiendishly complex and so what we really need is a model which isn't as close as we can get, because otherwise it would be too complex to use.
I'm trying to ground things like belief in the physical. A disposition to act can be represented (theoretically) in neural architecture, response to stimuli stuff. Calling it a judgement makes perfect sense, but just kicks the can further down the road insofar as what that judgement actually is physically.
The assertion is that I find it odd. Whether or not it is a good way of looking at things has yet to have been determined. I'm not certain that I understand it enough to render such a judgment at this time. I do think that the notion of belief that you're working from is inadequate.
Quoting Isaac
It could be used as a 'structural member' of a notion/conception/idea of mind that - quite simply - consists of a number of false conclusions, assuming consistency/coherency.
Acquiring knowledge of belief includes knowing how it is formed and held, which in turn allows one to know that all belief requires the physical and the non physical, for it consists of both and is existentially dependent upon both.
I'm puzzled here as well. You're claiming that no model can ever be shown to be true more-so than another competing/contradictory model...
Again, that's quite an odd claim.
Do you believe that we can be mistaken about that which exists in it's entirety prior to common language use?
You claimed that you do not believe other people exist. You're now speaking about believing a range of things in different contexts, and not believing a single thing...
Are you familiar with the notion of performative contradictions?
:brow:
Say you measure the perimeter of a bit of coral's by taking a photograph at it and drawing a line around its border. You can draw lots of lines, and it's a really irregular object, and you don't get the same line each time.
If your measurement of the coral's perimeter is [math]L[/math], and the true perimeter of the coral is [math]T[/math], you can write (assume a model):
[math]T = L + e[/math]
where [math]e[/math] is some error. If we knew the true measurement [math]T[/math] there'd be no need to form [math]L[/math] in the first place. But this is also true for [math]e[/math], if we knew what the error was exactly, we'd be able to add it to [math]L[/math] and recover [math]T[/math] exactly.
But what we can do is take a bunch of measurements, draw a bunch of lines, straighten them out to get a length. Say we've taken [math]n[/math] measurements. Then you can add all the length measurements [math]L_i[/math] together and divide by [math]n[/math] to get the mean length:
[math]\bar{L}=\frac{1}{n}\sum_{i=1}^{n} L_i[/math]
The virtue this has is that when you take their mean , the mean is known more precisely than any of the individual estimates (under some assumptions about [math]e[/math]).
So, we end up with a more precise estimate of [math]T[/math], but only if the assumptions are satisfied. Can we check if the assumptions are satisfied? Yeah, to some degree anyway. Is there always some doubt that the assumptions are correct? Yeah, since how you check the assumptions also has assumptions.
Does the fact that we're always working under assumptions entail that the coral does not have a true perimeter? I don't think it does. The error we make depends upon there being a true coral size as well as there being a fallible modelling process applied to it.
It would seem to be buried in there somewhere, somehow, inasmuch as if not, we are left with (personal subjective) absurdities as universal consciousness, and such even less empirically obtainable possibilities. I am drawn up short by the fact we do not think in the same terms we use to model the mechanisms we think with, and as things stand in the current state of our knowledge, belief is still something we think. So I hesitate to grant belief can be.....or soon will be.....attributed to neural architecture, but I don’t have a problem with the idea that disposition to act can be.
Perhaps you’re drawing off the fact science can monitor the stimulus/reaction complex, and thereby affirming the antecedent, by re-naming the stimuli as disposition to act, hence, belief. (?)
And yes, invoking the faculty of judgement does indeed kick the can down the same speculative road.
The perimeter is always from some (set of) spatiotemporal location(s), per some concept of what it is to "measure the perimeter" (since especially for something like coral a number of decisions are going to have to be made about what counts as measuring it versus what details can be ignored).
The spatiotemporal location of the surface of the coral isn't an objectively preferred spatiotemporal location. There are no objectively preferred spatiotemporal locations (or objectively preferred anythings for that matter).
It happens.
I offered actual examples that supported your claim, and actual examples that clearly did not. This gives us sound reason to conclude that that claim is inadequate, and was/is in need of additional qualification/quantification. Some. Not all.
If we hold that it is only the case that we can 'subjectively' know and yet not know how we know, then we are neglecting the situations where we not only know, but we also know how we know. Note also, that there was and is no need to invoke subjectivity here. It adds nothing but unnecessary confusion caused by an inadequate framework. Not to mention, the claim is false when taken at face value, as the examples to the contrary confirm.
We’re talking right past each other here.
Nice example, particularly given the ecological relevance of coral studies.
I would agree that the coral has some unknown definite length according to our own arbitrary increments, whatever they may be. I'm ignoring the constant change, of course. For practical purposes(tracking the increase/decrease in the size of coral reefs), we can get close enough to the actual coral size by virtue of the modeling techniques you've put forth for determining the average. The goal is to determine if coral reefs are in decline or not.
However, we cannot know what the actual(true as you've put it) size of the coral is at any given time as a result of it's constant change and the limits of our own measurement capability. That does not stop us from being able to know that there is an actual size. It also does not stop us from knowing whether or not our coral reefs are in decline.
Modeling thought and belief is not nearly as straightforward though.
Perhaps we are. Perhaps one of us is.
Perhaps you'd gain a better idea of what I am taking about if you would pay closer attention to the words I'm using. You've been saying all this stuff about what we don't do that I've never said we did.
To be blunt, I reject the very dichotomy upon which much of your worldview and/or position hinges upon. I've offered ground for that rejection throughout this thread. They've been sorely neglected in lieu of all sorts of other stuff that I've not mentioned.
Could we imitate this technique with the different models of thought and belief(mind)?
Naturally, the only thing we have to go on, in order to compare/contrast our models of mind with minds is the behaviour of candidates that have one. Another problem is that our models of mind are not comparable to the standard of measurement. With the coral, our mean is the average based upon everyone using the same standard and/or standards that are amenable/translatable/convertible to one another. This also seems to be a sticking point between the different models of mind.
On second thought, there are also brain imaging and neuroscience that could help us with comparing/contrasting our models of mind with mind. That stuff is aside from behaviour of creatures with minds.
Similar to, if not taken from, The Coastline Paradox, L. F. Richardson, 1951.
I feel like I've missed the broader point. Please set it out. I hate missing important stuff.
There are lots of ways coral size could be measured. We fixed a concept for what it means to measure the perimeter of the coral; a photograph of it from above has a line drawn around its outmost extent within the photo. The line is then measured. Broadly considered, this type of thinking crops up in model uncertainty and the design of a measurement procedure.
In my book, we can aggregate all that into modelling concepts; what notion of size we use for the coral is another assumption. We can make another one, a better one might be taking the coral and immersing it in water and measuring the volume displaced, but that destroys the coral.
Fix the background assumptions; there's still a true perimeter of the coral in the photo, the one of the photo. If there weren't, the equation [math]T = L + e[/math] probably would not work?
I did write a little bit about what assuming the boundary of the coral is a fractal would entail, but decided it wasn't relevant. The fractal dimension isn't a particularly good measure of anything like volume or length or area. If you put two Sierpinski triangles next to each other, one two times the height of the other, they have the same fractal dimension, but different convex hulls (the smallest triangle which contains all points of the fractal is bigger for the one which is scaled up).
Yeah, fractal curve lengths tend to infinity, which hardly works for measuring coral boundaries.
I like your attitude on assumptions. We all got ‘em, we all make em. We all live by ‘em.
You’d have to ask fdrake for his broader point, but for me, it was his highlighting assumption and fallible modeling processes, with respect to them.
The curse and the beauty of human cognitive power.
This probably touches close to what Mww and Isaac hit on with prefer not to ask ‘what does it mean?’, and instead opting for ‘what is it like?’. So what is it like to experience ‘size’?
Ah. Gotcha. That much, assumptions and fallibility, are inevitable. Thus, the aim to reduce the likelihood of error built into methodological naturalism.
Recognizing the assumptions are key I think.
Reminds me of the rabbit-duck.. Despite the geometric identicality, it presents differently depending on what's perceived as anterior vs posterior. I think it's surprising that in spite of knowing this, you can't really perceive it otherwise, or at the very least it's incredibly difficult to see it simply as squiggles.
Indeed. But often is the case, that assumptions involve an unrecognized categorical error, in that this theory/model/logical conclusion doesn’t necessarily follow from that assumption.
I was under the impression methodological naturalism was created to circumvent the likelihood of error, by restraining investigations to measurable domains? What error do you consider built in to it? The fact it is humans doing it?
Are such errors determined by categories of our own choosing, or categories that exist in their entirety prior to our naming and descriptive practices?
Kant can't help here my friend, as much as I'd like to believe otherwise.
:meh:
Does phenomenology hold with “categories”, have them in its doctrine? I understand subjective requirements we hold in order to talk about things, just wondering what your name for those requirements would be.
As a means to cut to the quick of subjective experience what can ‘modeling’ do for us? Are we necessarily bound to ‘models’ based on accuracy of naturalistic experimentation? To be clear I am thinking more along the lines of pure mathematics and how that ‘science’ operates ‘beyond’ (fro want of a better term) natural sciences, yet also contributes a great deal of relation to the natural sciences and actually works in tandem with them to a large degree.
Many people have commented that ‘mathematics’ and ‘theoretical physics’ are pretty much feeding one another constantly to the point of being attributes of a singular pursuit. It seems to me that the key difference is one is directed more toward a predictive function whilst the other has no real direct concern for causality preferring to explore atemporal consequences, relations and patterning in a wholly abstract sense - a rather ostentive sense (pointing out obviousnesses within a set parameter of play). The point being here is that in an abstract sense the ‘accuracy’ is non-existent. The application to some given ‘existent’ - predictively - is necessarily always one set up in unknown bounds (the accuracy is always an estimate of the abstract certainty set up against the presupposed existing world of the natural sciences).
Note: I am not concluding anything here just digging into the depth of the problem for the grounding of natural sciences. I do have a vested interest here by what I’ve been trying to outline in regards to the direction of the ‘sciences’ (in the broadest sense) and our assumptions.
There is a pretty strong inclination among most people concerned about items like consciousness in understanding and accepting the underpinning principle of ‘intentionality’ - that is why I am a little taken aback by the misrepresentation of the term that is so commonplace.
In simple terms (incase the term is unfamiliar) ‘intentionality’ is not about intent in the everyday sense of the word. It means that we are ‘conscious of an object’ not that there is an ‘object’. We experience, all experience, is ‘of something’ not of nothing.
In this sense the ‘category’ would be the ‘aboutness’ of experience. Meaning if I hear a sound I don’t hear a sound, which I realise sounds needlessly obtuse as the means of communicating this is by words so charity is necessary and it is a damn strong reason Husserl used ‘adumbrate’ to get this across. I hear ‘a sound of something’ not a disembodied sound floating in some ether. That hopefully expresses better what is meant by ‘intentionality’ if you weren’t quite familiar enough with the term already.
So, you tell me in this light what ‘category’ means for phenomenology? I don’t really know. In terms of the different threads of investigation (especially in terms of hermeneutics) the investigation necessarily narrows in whatever direction people take it - it’s seems fairly clear to me that post-modernism is a further extension if this too, but I wish to stay on track.
This may or may not be helpful. The idea of a doctrine is perhaps a little misapplied here. Generally speaking I’d have to say the interest is in the pursuit of ‘pure subjectivity’ much in the same light as the natural sciences are in pursuit of ‘pure objectivity’. That said I am not suggesting either believe there is such a ‘pure x’ in either case it is merely that Husserl saw the lack of grounding to logic that essentially underpins the natural sciences. It’s sometimes tricky to know what he means as he developed his ideas and amended them over his lifetime and he sometimes means ‘science’ as we think of it and sometimes ‘science’ in reference to pure maths and logic.
I guess you could say ‘word concepts’ are the necessary categories that we have to apply. Depending upon our ‘mode’ of thought each word concept contracts and expands, in one field of perspective it seems ‘universal’ and in another it may seem ‘chaotic’. The more applicable the terms across fields (albeit in differing guises) is something hermeneutic phenomenology prioritises - but I’m personally not convinced by that route although, as with every route, there is use.
Sorry if that is too longwinded and/or unhelpful/confusing. I doing my best :)
The categories don’t determine errors, and we don’t choose them. Errors arise from irrational or illogical associations the subject thinks, and categories are merely the theoretical conditions which make cognition possible, so they exist in their entirely long before we give them names. Obviously, because we always cognize first, speak later, and never the reverse, about any one thing.
The idea of categories solves a problem, If you think it just causes another one, that would be on you, wouldn’t it?
Good synopsis. Thanks.
I’m ok with intentionality, subjective requirements, pure subjectivity/objectivity. Not too keen on categories being similar to, or synonymous with, “aboutness” of experience; I see them rather as that which makes experience possible.
Different strokes, same game.
By that I am clawing at saying something like ‘categories’ are investigated. This comes in the sense I‘vepreviously mentioned regard ‘pieces’ and ‘moments’ - pieces can be removed from an item, but ‘moments. cannot be removed (as with the examples of a shape without form, a triangle that has no angles, or a sound that has no tone). Just checked the terminology, he actually says there are two ‘parts’, ‘moments’ and ‘pieces’ (I previously referred to these as ‘parts’ and ‘aspects’ instead of ‘pieces’ and ‘moments’).
There is also a distinction he uses called noesis and noema, the ‘light’ and the ‘lit’ is the best analogy I’ve seen used to convey the basic meaning here. There is certainly more than a hint at the distinction between ‘act’ and ‘object’ yet they are more like different sides of the same ‘object of intentionality’. I kind of step away when it comes to the strange idea of ‘poles’ he uses, but I do find it interesting even though I don’t grasp what he meant/means exactly.
Basically it interests me because before I came across this I lacked the terminology to express my own thoughts and since reading more I’ve found some useful ways of getting a step or two closer to articulating my thoughts - I’m probably not bright enough to make the kind of conceptual leap I’d like to though (maybe I’m just looking down the wrong street, but I don’t think so just yet).
There is, once extended, a while mirage of ideas that can lead nowhere, but often enough they offer (at least for me) a peek into the possible beginnings of a fresh perspective.
Depends what you mean by mistaken. Do you mean have the wrong model, or do you mean have a model which is not identical to reality? If the former, yes, some models seem better for us than others, if the latter then definitely yes, the model is not reality and therefore cannot be accurate to it. But to be honest I'm flailing because I have no idea what you mean by "that which exists in it's entirety prior to common language use".
Quoting creativesoul
Yes, but I don't see how it applies here, you'd have to flesh the argument out. Are you suggesting that, in order for me to be arguing that there are no objective distinctions in reality I must believe in objective distinctions? I'm not sure how that works. I can have subjective distinctions and act on those whilst still believing there are no objective ones. I can still choose vanilla ice cream whilst maintaining a belief that choosing vanilla is not the thing everyone must do in this situation. I an say that I believe each man should do his duty and yet when some duty arises change my belief to 'each man for himself'. I can at a psychological level believe we are prone to cognitive biases yet fall for cognitive biases. I don't understand why you'd be suggesting that I cannot forward some model of how we think without preformative contradiction, just because I must think to do so. That would disable all philosophy, one could not forward a knowledge claim about what sort of thing knowledge claims are, one could not use language to discuss how language works, one cannot discuss a way one ought to think because one must already have thought hat one ought to discuss that...
We are capable of rationalising in theoretical models despite the fact that we are caught within them, the whole of clinical psychology is predicated on the idea.
Not necessarily. Could we not do the same thing with some complex function and our predictions of what it's solution might be prior to calculating it? Our T would be the calculated value of the function but it could be some function no-one has ever written before, so no-one knows what T is that data is nowhere in the world, our L would be distributed around our priors about the parameter for function a bit like that (maybe we'd look at the constants and the presence of any factorial functions etc), and our e would be distributed around the extent to which we're prone to miss key elements of a function which determine it's range of solutions. (there's more, but that's a sketch)
The mean of estimates L, would still be a more accurate estimate of T (under the same assumptions about e), but T is not true (in a correspondence sense), it's a mathematical fiction, a consequence of the function it is expressed by only if you follow the rules of mathematics, which, since no-one has yet calculated that function, does not yet exist as T, it only exists as potential T after following some rules.
Could this not be the case the with the true coral perimeter?
In a sense, yes, but any problem with doing so would only arise from a position that some previous definition existed whose only flaw was its inability to be thus monitored, and I'm not at all convinced that such a definition existed.
It's accessible in the sense that we do have similar experiences as human beings, but not entirely. What's inaccessible is each of our own personal experience. We're walking along the street. You realize I'm deep in thought. What am I thinking? You can't read my thoughts, so the best you can do is guess. And you didn't realize I had a headache, or that I'm color blind and see the world a bit differently than you.
I can share all that with you to an extent. But it's not something you can access yourself. We can't just peer into someone else's minds and watch their experiences like some kind of haptic VR setup.
This becomes even more the case with animals, since we're not dogs or bats, and don't interact with the world quite the same. Imagine having the body of a cephalopod and being able to activate thousands of light emitting cells on your skin to signal other animals. What would that be like?
Ahhh, so you're a meriological nihilist. That still leaves the fundamental stuff. Our alien visitors agree on the electromagnetic spectrum it seems. That's a starting point. And if they agree on EM, then they probably agree on chemistry.
Here's my point. The fact that pattern matching occurs means there's some sort of objective organization that results in pattern matching. Model Dependent Realism doesn't exist as a philosophy if nature doesn't produce creatures who do philosophy.
It's easy enough to imagine the universe without any philosophy taking place. Just have the physics be a little different.
Yep, this seems to be a line many are taking, but it's always expressed in this manner, or similar. I agree it would be a boon to model dependent realism to have an intuitive sounding answer, but I honestly don't get the problem, so it's unlikely one is going to come from me.
I mean, why have you put the word 'objective' in there? It seems to be entirely without warrant. If there is (something we model as) pattern matching going on, then there's (something we model as) a pattern to match. Where's objective come in?
Likewise, if there's (something we model as) modelling going on, then there's (something we model as) a modeller doing that. Still not seeing how 'objective' belongs there.
The problem is that the existence of words entails creatures who speak. And speaking is based in a biological reality. So it can't just be words, since the words depend on the biology of mouths and vocal cords and what not to be spoken.
Same with philosophizing. In order to do philosophy, there has to be something real that makes the philosophizing a possibility. Philosophy doesn't just exist. It exists in response to a world by creatures who are puzzled by their place in the world. Probably because their models never quite fit.
Yep, I've never denied the existence of reality, neither does model dependent realism as a whole (hence the 'realism' bit).
Quoting Marchesk
I don't buy this because essentially it leads to dualism (or idealism) and I think either create more problems than they solve. I'm a physicalist simply because it seems a default for me, and I need a good reason to discard it.
Simple: the colors, sounds, smells, tastes and feels aren't properties of the physical environment you interact with. Or at least not when it comes to our physical models.
Or to say it a better way, nobody has succeeded in explaining how they are.
But they're properties of my brain. I mean, when brains are interfered with those things respond differently, so I don't see that as a reason to discard physicalism.
They may be in reality, but brain models of neurons and neurotransmitters don't include sensation. That's just a correlation or outcome that we know exists from having brains.
The problem according to the esteemed Nagel is that subjective experiences (what it is to be a conscious being) are unique - "single point of view" in his words. Thus, since objectivity, a necessity for any physicalist theory, would be forced to ignore subjective experiences this will, in effect, make such theories incapable of explaining consciousness - the phenomenon they were built to explain.
What I don't understand is how and why "single points of view" (subjective experiences) precludes objectivity?
Is Nagel relying on the definitions of "objectivity" and "subjectivity" when he says any objective theory would be forced to exclude subjective experiences? This seems wrong since we may objectively study subjectivity or subjectively study objectivity without running into problems.
Is Nagel saying something more powerful in terms of relevance to his argument that it's impossible to view subjectivity under an objective lens? How did he come to have this belief?
Frankly I'm puzzled.
I mean it might be? To my mind there are two types of comparisons. Model output comparisons, like predictions or parameter estimates to other predictions or parameter estimates (how similar are these two models?), and comparison of model output to data (how similar are the predictions or parameter estimates to those in the data?). We only know "the true values" of the parameters in the data if we've simulated the data ourselves.
Regardless, I think that, like in Friston's approach, the model errors don't behave like predictions or parameter estimates, they're modelled as coming from some distribution, and when we take input data or perturb an external state as the result of an outputted prediction, there is some error which comes from a comparison of an observable whose value is not an output of some model. That's [math]T[/math] or [math]e[/math] "when exactly specified" in the coral measurement error model, the 'input data' in the coral model would be [math]L[/math].
Edit: a good rule of thumb in my book is that error terms crop up in models whenever they have a dependence on something external to it. If any model, even the human body-brain system has an 'error', there's an external source (a process which does not output model internal predictions or parameter estimates, but instead outputs observables/data that relate to the modelling process) associated with it.
If the universe went bang, and stars formed fusing heavier elements leading to life evolving, then somehow subjectivity emerged.
I go with matter can be removed but form cannot.
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Quoting I like sushi
There doesn’t seem to be any general consensus in the literature for either Brentano’s or Husserl’s intended meaning for noesis and noema either, so you’re not alone. Seems to me they’re trying to give the mind some character, instead of treating it as an abstract apex placeholder.
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Quoting I like sushi
Again, for me this reduces to the distinction between intuition and appearance. As Brentano claims, “...Every mental phenomenon is characterized by (...) the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object, and what we might call (...) reference to a content, direction towards an object (which is not to be understood here as meaning a thing), or immanent objectivity...”.
Everybody says the same thing, just in different ways.
Good luck with the fresh perspective.
This is another thing that keeps cropping up in discussions involving neuroscience that baffles me. What isn't just a correlation? If I throw a ball in the air on the moon, compared to the earth its relative falling speed is 'just a correlation' with the gravitational mass of the respective planets. Switching my light on is 'just a correlation' with illuminating my room. What is it that's marking out the correlation between neural activity and mental phenomena that singles it out for such unique inductive doubt?
Here, I suppose such a problem would arise, because if belief is held to be a subjective institution, re: judgement, and thereby defined with a priori predicates alone, it certainly cannot lend itself to empirical monitoring.
OK, I'm quite taken by the factor that errors are modelled as coming from some distribution, that's definitely an important thing for model dependent realism to account for, but... (you knew there'd be a but, right?)
Quoting fdrake
...how? How do we get access to an observable that's not an output of some model? We can't take in any sensory data without it being merely confirmatory of some model.
We could filter data back out again, possibly?
We don't accept raw data, any raw data, so all raw data is both selected and filtered through some model. If we knew what the model did, could we recreate the raw data by extrapolating backwards? Is that what you're getting at by pointing out the equivalent position of e to L in forming T?
I don't know of any neuroscientific support for the idea, I mean we could theoretically 'see' such recal happening because it'd need forward driving connections from the sensory processing cortices, but it sounds possible.
Yes, in a sense that's the reason I think it better to 'black box' the whole thing and look at the behaviour as indicative of what the whatever-it-is does to the inputs. I just can't see the need for descriptions of static mental states, they're not something I experience.
It's like [math]y = mx + c + e[/math], the independent variable [math]x[/math] doesn't have a model. It's playing the part of data in the model. Like when an error is observed in Friston's hierarchy and passed down. A prediction is compared to some input data, the error propagates down the hierarchy of models, producing adjustments.
Aah! Thanks for the explanation.
I wonder if that's entirely true. Scientific objectivity doesn't mean you ignore essential and defining aspects, here subjective experiences, of the object of study. Rather scientific objectivity is specifically designed to eliminate observer bias and in no way does it/should it overlook, in this case, subjective experiences.
I may be completely wrong here but the claim here seems to be, if you take the argument to its logical conclusion, nothing that is ever subjective can be scientifically studied due to objectivity being necessary in science. While this may somehow shield consciousness from attack it also makes consciousness a woo-woo pseudoscience. I don't know which is more preferable here - following Nagel into pseudoscience or give up one of my favorite beliefs that there is something about consciousness that defies the physical.
It’s given that everything human, happens because of the brain. I reject out of hand that what it means to be human, can be discovered on an o’scope. And I reject it because I just don’t like it; it’s anathema to my ego. Pretty piss-poor reason for rejecting a form of relative proof, I know, but tell you what.....even if you get your Quoting Isaac, you haven’t really learned what you set out to discover, insofar as you’ve got the “how” but not necessarily the “how come”, because your subject himself may not even know.
If you understood me as implying anything to the contrary, we ought chalk it up to poor writing on my part.
Well, it's because certain properties of experience are perceiver-dependent and not in the objects themselves. The air feels cold, but that doesn't mean it is cold in an objective sense (the feeling of cold varies between individuals and time). It just feels cold to you now.
This bit began with my pointing out that identifying the premisses is key. You agreed, then remarked that it is often the case that there is an unrecognized categorical error at work, such that the conclusions/model does not necessarily follow from those premisses.
I'm wondering about the grounds for charging another's position/argument/reasoning with such an error. If it is a categorical error, then I presume that is one kind of error. Specifically an error in categorization.
Is that much right?
Being mistaken about X is forming, having, and/or holding false belief regarding X.
Having pain is the experience. I have direct access to having pain of my own, and I have indirect access to another's. There are two kinds of accessibility here, yet you've claimed we have none.
Yeah, I should have said indirect. But it's also the case that we don't always have that indirect knowledge. It might exist in really subtle physiological cues, but we can't read brain activity that accurately, and we haven't put chips in everyone's heads yet. But sure, often enough we have some evidence to what people are experiencing.
So, we must surely abandon Kantian language here. For anything that exists in it's entirety prior to our naming and descriptive practices qualifies for that which exists in and of itself(Noumena). Furthermore, we must have knowledge of both our premisses and that which exists in it's entirety prior to our premisses in order to perform a comparative assessment between the two. That comparison is required in order to know that one has indeed committed the error called "categorical".
Looking back, I see I could have registered the statement without including a mistake you wouldn’t have made.
Simply put, you've claimed to think X but not believe X. In addition, you've claimed to not think that others exist, and yet here you are...
So, we agree that fleshing out the premisses supporting one's conclusions is key. Based upon the latest exchanges, I'm curious about what you're referring to when you wrote "unrecognized categorical error such that the conclusions do not necessarily follow from the premisses"...
Example?
Pretty much, with the caveat that “categorization” might not carry the proper inflection. One shouldn’t confuse speculative categories such as Aristotle’s or Kant’s, with Ryle’s semantic categorical mistakes. Rush’s song “Time Stands Still” is a categorical mistake of semantics; space is a property of objects is a categorical error of reason.
We have before us now, a listing of categorical errors...
Which ones will be used to render judgment upon whether or not a premiss of our choosing qualifies as being guilty of categorical error as compared/contrasted to other kinds of errors?
Yes, but in Friston's model the sensory input is from perception, not the world, and that's vitally important for the free-energy principle to work. There only any variance minimising incentive between the perception and the cortices which model the causes of that perception. As Friston himself says "There's no reason at all why the Bayes optimal model would be true, truth is not important here". The error that's propagating is one between the perception (low level hierarchy model) and the beliefs (higher level hierarchy model). There's nothing to cause the lowest level hierarchy model to minimise variance, not are there any mechanisms by which it could.
On the contrary, I'd go as far as to say it's the only justifiable reason to reject anything that isn't overwhelmingly contradicted by the evidence to the contrary. Pick your model and defend it until it's indefensible. I don't think we can handle any other way of approaching uncertainty.
Quoting Mww
I don't think the 'how come' is a measurable thing by any metric, so it's not a relevant investigation. Pick your reason.
That's just tautotlogy. What makes a belief false?
Quoting creativesoul
Did you not read what I wrote, or not understand it, or not agree with it. If you're not going to actually respond in any way to what I write there's little point in continuing is there?
This comment is discussing box 1 and 2 in the linked paper.
Aye, I agree with this! It even looks like something of a category error in terms of the internal state; when watching a bike move, is it represented as having wheels as a unity moving in tandem or two wheels linked through the bike? But there's still questions of accuracy and adaptation which are relevant. If you have a goal of opening a door, your hand position needs to adapt to where the handle is and how it works; there's an accuracy constraint involved with the door's location, functionality and so on; irrelevant of how it's split up into perceptual features.
There's an interface of perceptual features that are associated with external states. If I've read it right there's some function [math]f[/math] that "specifies the dynamics of external causes" dependent upon specific external causes [math]\gamma[/math], our processual model of them [math]f[/math], our proposed actions [math]\alpha[/math] and with some error [math]w[/math]. Our actions promote certain external causes; which actions are chosen depends on previous internal states/sensations/actions/external causes, our sensations/perceptions process external causes; how they are processed depends on previous internal states/sensations/actions/external causes.
Focus for a moment on the [math]\gamma[/math], if I've read things right these are "hidden causal states" which are later associated with environmental parameters [math]\theta[/math] rather than available sufficient statistics [math]x[/math], again if I've read it right. They are hidden, but inferred upon by the whole active-modelling process under some representation ("recognition dynamics"?).
Our ability to act well in an environment depends upon having a good model of it; to update our model through some error minimising in response to our current goals and current environment; the model doesn't just take input from previous modelling steps, it takes input from external states with their own dynamics under some processual representation*. It would be unable to guide action if it did not have a satisfactory (sufficiently accurate) representation* of the external states as they are relevant to our goals and bodily constraints.
I think you're emphasising that the starred representation* ([math]f[/math], I think in the paper) is another flavour of model; which it is; but it's also an observation process of relevant structures for us in the environment (we sample in accordance with it). What would be the point of all this modelling without its ability to promote accurate, relevant action - pulling causal levers whose structures we partially represent in the world? Like a codification of the world into what's relevant and available to us, and accuracy-prone (evaluable) perception and action within that codification.
Assumption that there is ‘a point’. Pointless question as far as I can tell. What does i mean to ‘have a point’ or ‘be pointless’? We can ask what the ‘theoretic’ attitude is doing, how it is structured and how theories change.
You could just settle on the hidden answer to your question and say ‘accuracy’ is the point - that was essentially what you implied. I ask what else could a ‘model’ do other than refine itself in order to increase accuracy? If increasing ‘accuracy’ is the be all and end all then some ‘error’ is an optimal means of exploring beyond the immediate bounds ‘known’. We don’t purposefully make mistakes, yet we certainly can, and do, learn from mistakes brought about by ‘inaccuracies’.
All of this needn’t be led under the assumption of some abstract ‘input’/‘output’ system. That is merely an expression of the ‘theoretic’ attitude - a necessary means for distinction among the ‘white noise’. For further more ‘substantial’ evidence for this neural priming is an expression of this in the ‘natural sciences’.
Yes, absolutely, so we definitely have to have a real world otherwise our models are modelling nothing, our entropy resisting organisation has to have some entropy to resist - we agree so far.
Quoting fdrake
Yes, that's my reading of it too - which is good because I'm trusting you to understand the maths better than I do.
Quoting fdrake
Yes, still in agreement here.
Quoting fdrake
OK so this is where we part, but it's quite nuanced, so I'm going to be as specific as possible.
1. I don't see anything in the maths (and this, I think is what you've been looking at, but I'm not convinced) that requires there to be distinguishable 'structures' in the environment. Only for there to be heterogeneity in the environment (otherwise it would be impossible to model, plus with no randomness, there'd be no probability gradient to work against). All I'm arguing here is that all 'structures' are models of some sort.
2. You're right about 'pulling causal levers', but the upshot of the free-energy principle and it's application to systems is that there is no higher goal. Even evolution is just acting on us as a higher order free-energy minimising system (Friston talks about evolutionary free-energy minimising in one of his lectures, but I can't find any writing on it I'm afraid). So we don't have a primary goal of survival in the environment, say. We have a primary goal of surprise reduction, as does evolution (as a system) and that imposes the goal of survival on us. so...
3. It leads us back to the comment that Bayes optimal solutions have no need for accuracy in the environment, only for variance minimising within the system.
I've used this example before, possibly, but Gravity is a really good one. Gravity (it seems) is totally wrong, completely not how things actually might be according to some very coherent alternative models. But it's a really effective model for how to get about on Earth. Completely inaccurate - very effective. It's quite possible, if not probable, to have completely inaccurate models which serve us very well in terms of variance minimising, and they will remain in place, even in favour of more accurate models (which might be too energy-hungry to actually use)
OK, rephrase it:
"How do we account for the presence of a modelling process that samples our environment and our actions based on causal stuff that's relevant to us (part of our model) in a manner that maximises our accuracy of representation of modelled content without requiring that the modelled content itself is informative of the structure of an external (unmodelled!) world?"
Quoting Isaac
Mmmm... I don't think there's any specified structure in the paper. But there's ghosts of it, suggestions. The external dynamics model [math]f[/math] and the sensation model [math]g[/math] are "continuous nonlinear functions of (hidden and causal) states, parameterised by [math]\theta_i[/math]" (where [math]i[/math] is the hierarchy level), they have a specific functional form. So there's some structure there, it's not "some arbitrary function", it's "some definite capacity of a human relating to a world" (albeit a very involved one). I'm thinking of [math]f[/math] and [math]g[/math] as "world->self" interfaces in terms of perceptual/sensation content and "self->world" interfaces in terms of actions taken. [hide="complication"]Since the whole thing's historically dependent it's all mixed up and reciprocally interdependent, but at any given instance of environmental data, it'll be an action result or a sensation/perception. [/hide]
So when you say:
Quoting Isaac
This gets mopped up by the error terms, no? There's a signal/noise distinction operative; the signal is encoded in the [math]f[/math], [math]g[/math] (in terms of external state "recognition dynamics" and sensations), the errors from these are current environmental or bodily heterogeneity.
I think you're interpreting the only site of interface between the agent and the "unmodelled" external world as the error terms (unstructured heterogeneity)? Whereas we might be able to representatively sample its dynamics using only our [math]f[/math] and [math]g[/math] models. I'm kinda reading this whole process as a machine for representatively sampling actions/sensations/perceptions from a dynamical causal model of relevant causal factors using available information (sufficient statistics).
Again, if I've read it right, [math]f[/math] and [math]g[/math] are not time varying functional forms: they embed one pattern which is evaluated at different arguments (like evaluating f(x) = x at x=2 and x=3); so they're individual level relational styles of individual to world. They're "the way our bodies weigh the causal structure of our bodies and our environment". I'm inclined to believe (1) that there's room for discovering real structure in the external world so long as [math]f[/math] and [math]g[/math] are representative (within our narrow window of concern/narrow scope of perceptual features) (2) that it makes sense to consider [math]f[/math], [math]g[/math] as embedded in an evolutionary process that would be surprising if "an organism's ability to evaluate relevant causal structure to it accurately" was not selected for (in some circumstances) - going back to my camouflage example from earlier.
Prosaically: sometimes the relationship between two quantities (and their represented phenomena) really is indistinguishable from a straight line. And this is exploitable.
So subjective experiences are simply beyond objective understanding. Something like non-overlapping magesteria that Stephen Jay Gould proposed to keep religion and science from each other's territories.
I guess we could proceed along those lines and say consciousness is literally incomprehensible because just like we can't separate the subjective from consciousness we can't take away objectivity from understanding/comprehension. After all comprehension has to be unbiased which is another name for objectivity.
Do you agree then that as per Nagel's argument, consciousness is, by its nature, incomprehensible? Or is there the better option of a type of comprehension that is non-objective which can access knowledge that objectivity can't handle?
This would probably derail us, but I can't help but indulge.
As if any approach to conceptualising anything was not a 'theoretic attitude'. Assuming you're coming at this from a phenomenological angle, the epoche only becomes relevant within an interpretive framework; its own flavour theoretical attitude. Spiralling out into its own mode of inquiry. No reason for primacy here.
I guess I should simply start my own thread and see if I get any traction there instead.
Thanks :)
I don't think so, because the error terms are related to the primary sensory input (box2 in Friston's paper) which are themselves non-updatable models (the model here being determined by the architecture - signal x being built from input y), the function only takes x (and errors related to priors as to the causes of x), not y.
Quoting fdrake
We might, agreed. But could we then feedback errors? The sensory inputs are one way, the first internal feedback loops are in the perception cortices. We can correct errors to say "that's not a grey square, it's just a shadow", but we can't update the retina with "that number of photons didn't hit you", or whatever 'real' feature we're tracking. So it comes back to the mechanism by which this update, reduction of errors, could take place. And without updates, we're unable make any claims to variance reduction towards any 'structures' which might be there.
I think so?
I'm imagining [math]f[/math] as causal indicators under some model. Let's say that we have, like in one of Friston's talks (the one you linked me?), a task where we invite subjects (in his case simulated) to classify images of faces based on their orientation; are they upside down or right-side up? We can imagine the environmental stimulus [math]\gamma[/math] here as the light reflecting off the images or the light emitted from a computer screen, consistent with/strongly suggestive of face patterns of course. The [math]\alpha[/math] actions would be the saccades, fixations and other eye movements employed in visual search for features that indicate the orientation of the face. But what's the [math]f[/math]?
Human subjects clearly have a sufficiently broad and tailored [math]f[/math] that allows us to do this task quickly and reliably. If you record eye movements of human subjects looking at faces, we look at eyes, nose, mouth preferentially. I think this has something to do with [math]f[/math] as it relates to this task.
A feature extraction/detection algorithm was used to make simulated agents learn a good [math]f[/math] for this task; IE, they learned what parts of the face to look at to quickly determine its orientation. IIRC the simulated agents were eye movement patterns, and the [math]f[/math] they learned were the representative features of the face for the orientation determining task. These turned out to be noses, eyes, mouths. You don't need to sample (eye fixation points + saccades) much from this feature space (eye related pixels, nose related pixels, mouth related pixels, or their associated characterisation in light frequency and apparent source) to determine the orientation of the face. These points of high information density relative to the task become causal indicators for the face orientation. If (eyes + nose + mouth look like this) then (face should be that).
You can always make an error in perception, or in a sub-perceptual task like allocating a part of a face to a facial perceptual feature. In terms of "what's not in the trend (the error) assuming [math]f[/math], the stimulus [math]\gamma[/math] and the action [math]\alpha[/math]?", we might be in a state of momentarily misperceiving that the face has one eye due to only sampling from one half of it, say, (these things seem to execute prior to there being a phenomenal character associated with the face), or we might judge a shadow on one side of the nose as a discolouration of it, and this error promotes another saccade [math]\alpha\prime[/math] to check for the other eye or other bits of the nose. We often saccade from eye to eye when first viewing a face (used to work with eye movement data, dunno how heavily weighted eye-eye saccades really are in facial recognition tasks). This is just conjecture, of course!
At any given "step" in these simulated agents' classification algorithm, they'll have an error associated with the probability of the face being upside down or not (a conditional expectation of the face being upside down given what's been seen, the internal state, the sensations and the actions). You can minimise energy expenditure and maximise accuracy by focussing on information rich features; if the algorithms, and we, tried to guess the orientation of a face solely by sampling from bits of bare skin on the nasal septum, we'd do a much worse job probably, as a small section of bare skin in the middle of the face that's not part of a facial feature is probably sufficiently reflection invariant that it won't inform either way.
So for the classification task, we can split the face up into the causal features of nose, eyes, mouth, and minimise the errors from there. Edit2: [math]f[/math] is probably really really broad but gets channelled into distinct behaviours by the history of the system. I don't think [math]f[/math] is updating for us, it's more that how we evaluate it changes over time, relative to what we've learned, what we're doing, and what our environment is (all the history embedded in our current action).
Edit: if eyes + nose + mouth seem arbitrary as causal indicators for facial orientation, their relative positions encode a lot. The nose is a roughly central point irrespective of the orientation of the image, and if you look up on the image and see a mouth, the face is upside down, if you look up on the image and see an eye, the face is right side up. And vice versa. The whole orientation of a human face is determined by the relative positioning of the eyes and nose and mouth; so it is not surprising that these features are learned for the task. If you wanted to represent this as (pixel colours) [math]\gamma[/math] with a feature model [math]f[/math] explored with eye movements [math]\alpha[/math] and current perceptual ambiguity [math]w[/math], I think that works too?
Edit3: pretty sure I'm confusing salience and information density here, though the two are related (I'm guessing, there's some reference to the distinction in the Friston paper, only worked with something related to saliency maps before).
I re-read the exchange. I understood it. I didn't so much disagree with you. Rather, I found that it was rather incomplete, in that you offered choices for me to agree with, but not one that was close enough to what I hold. You're the one asking me for clarification... I gave it.
Categorical errors can only be demonstrated by showing the falsity of the proposition from which they were originally given. I suppose one could list them, but recognizing them would seem to be sufficient.
As already mentioned, c.e. is a mistake in logical form, wherein a subject of a logical statement and its predicate do not relate, or, the subject isn’t given a predicate to which it can be related. In the case of human thought, the subject is always a phenomenal object, and the predicate is always at least one of twelve possible pure conceptions. For instance, when I perceive an object, a category of “quantity” must relate to it in the logical form “all x are y”, I must think of that x as having y belonging to it. Because I already know all dogs are canines, if I perceive an object, and I judge the concepts fur, missing frontal lobe, dew claw, chewing teeth as predicates of it, but do not judge it to be predicated by canine, I commit a categorical error by cognizing the object as a dog. It may very well have been a wolverine.
But that’s not very hard to grasp. Where the system becomes relevant is when the object perceived is unknown to me. I must follow the logical forms in order to call the resulting cognition of it, experience and thereby, knowledge. If every rose of my experience is red, upon perceiving an object with some measure of the predicates of the red rose of my experience (flower, scent, petal shape, thorns, etc.) but is not red, I am justified in denying it is a rose at all. The dog example is a judgement of category “quantity” using the subset “universal” in the logical form “all x are y”. When it is proven to me the object I perceived is a rose, but not a red rose, then the category “quantity” invokes the subset “singular” in the logical form “this x is y”, and from that, I am justified in thinking the third subset of “quantity” with the “particular”, in the logical form “some x are y”. Henceforth, I should have no logical inconsistencies in cognizing roses of different color.
In 1904, trains, tracks, terminals, lightning, tape measures, pencil, paper, and a myriad of other real objects were already well-known. When ol’ Uncle Albert was whiling away the hours at his ramshackle desk in his ramshackle office, he put two and two together and came up with a four nobody had ever noticed. It would have been absolutely impossible for him to think any of what eventually came to be SR without the “existence” of those listed objects, without the “possibility” of the objective validity of his thinking, without the “relation” of cause and effect, and without the “reality” of the end result, which in this case was merely mathematical. The “existence” of SR’s objective reality, over and above its objective validity, had to wait for technology to play catch-up, but that does nothing to diminish the fact the whole thing was the product of sheer imagination, that is to say, predicated on empirical means but having no empirical ends whatsoever.
The categories of understanding (SR) are the logical conditions for pure thought, or, a priori cognition, and thus possible experience. The categories of judgement (roses) are the logical conditions for empirical cognition, or, experience. Both are themselves pure a priori rational faculties, therefore their respective products are far and away antecedent to linguistic conditionals. It follows that categorical error is simply the non-employment of the proper category with respect to an object, such that the thought of it is contradictory, or the cognition of it is false.
As an aside, these categories are my rendition of those things which we had previously agreed must exist in their entirety before we are permitted to make our correlations in what you call thought/belief.
I submit there is at least one metric for measuring at least one “how come”, and that measurable metric is behavior, with respect to the “how come” called morality. The former is directly proportional to, and directly dependent on, the latter. While behavior may only be observational, and hardly scientific, it can still be measurable by relation to some other behavior. And it would certainly seem to be relevant, considering the general proclivity for humans to piss each other off.
The categories are not phenomena, there is no object that can be thought for them. That which is not phenomena is not thereby automatically noumena. Noumena, if they be given at all, are only given from an intuition different than ours. Dolphins may think with noumena rather than phenomena....we don’t know, and unless we communicate with mutual intelligibility, we won’t.
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Quoting creativesoul
Premises in syllogisms or propositional logic in language form, yes, but the categories enter the cognitive stream way before knowledge, which makes explicit categories are not knowledge-apt. Categories are conditions, and we know them only as conditions, only as part of non-linguistic logical relations alone.
There is more than one acceptable sensible conventional sense of the term "categorical error". It is a name with more than one referent. The one will we choose as a standard to render subsequent judgment concerning a candidate of our choosing will directly determine, establish, and influence the judgment call. The sense sets the parameters. Not all senses of "categorical error" are commensurate.
So...
Why are we talking about categorical errors, when what counts as a category is completely and utterly determined by us?
I seek to discover that which exists in it's entirety prior to our discovery process, therefore prior to the naming and descriptive practices commonly called common language use...
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Noumena is untenable. I've already offered adequate argument for that conclusion. It's been left sorely neglected.
I'm not actually sure we mightn't just completely agree, so far as your actual line of thought on this extends, but I feel like I'm missing some connection, I may be just slow to join the dots, and if so I'd appreciate some clarification, but apologise if it just goes over old ground. To that effect, I want to re-phrase what I think we're trying to speculate on (just in case that's got lost along the way, and that's why I feel like I'm missing something). We're looking at whether, and how, actual structure (real existent patterns in the hidden states) from outside the Markov blanket of an organism are reflected in the models of those hidden states caused by the variance minimisation of the Bayesian functions inside the Markov blanket? If they are, then we can say there's likely to be structure in the hidden states, and, crucially, by structure I mean that they are some way, and not any other (as opposed to simply that they could be 'seen' as some way, but also could be 'seen' as another - which would be model dependant realism).
I know it's not the most complete of replies to your thorough exposition, but I feel like I might be going off on the wrong tangent entirely if I'm wrong about the above.
The reason I'm asking is because you've given pretty much the same understanding as I have in my mind of the process, yet I've drawn one conclusion from it, and you another. The salience modelling you describe is, as we've discussed, definitely a strong indicator that the underlying hidden states outside the Markov blanket must be heterogeneous (here in terms of light reflected), and I think you're right that information density and salience are linked (although see the discussion of edge detection later in the paper, for the difference. Edit - it's not in that paper is it, I've just looked, must be another one). But still that's all we're getting, heterogeneity, not fixed structure (the hidden states being this way not that way).
Let's say our hidden state is h (I can't do that fancy mathjax stuff - you'll have to guide me to some instructions sometime), and we give it some structure represented by a fixed value set, so h={6,10,19,108,4,9}, and this set fully describes the structure of h. Our f is modelling h by sampling. It's doing so efficiently, based on prior densities, updated by inputs from latest samples benefiting from some error recognition. If this were happening purely mathematically, we should fairly quickly end up with the sample set. But...
Firstly - If our priors for the input mechanisms are not expecting numbers above 100, there's nothing coming in to the higher level models (working on what caused the lower level ones) to feedback to get the input mechanism to update its priors to allow for the possible recognition of numbers over 100. We cannot get at the primary input to update it because they're hardware, not software. Their priors are the equivalent of drivers, or firmware, and so don't have the flexibility to be updated to account for any and all potential structures of hidden states outside of those they were created to detect, and, to meet your point about evolution, the physical constraints of the stuff they're made from.
(complete aside here, but this touches on the work Iain Stewart did many years back about morphological constraints vs. natural selection as being far more determinant of final organisms - but that's only tangentially linked)
Secondly - If we were to 'hone in' on h being {6,10,19,4,9}, that's not a wrong pattern, it's an incomplete one. Any interface with h won't be in error presuming that pattern, it simply won't exhaust the possible patterns. Like pointing to the constellation Orion and describing the pattern of the hunter with his belt and bow. It's not an error because the pattern is there, it just doesn't exhaust the possible number of patterns which no less error value.
I understand that, but I gave you what seemed to me to be the only options (perhaps I should have made that more clear), so any response which simply re-iterates your original position without explaining how you circumvent the issues I raised seems to contribute nothing to our mutual understanding of the issue.
You might have to clarify how you're distinguishing "how?" from "how come?" here.
As if I'm obligated to answer for issues you've raised that have nothing to do with my position...
Happy modeling!
:smile:
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Quoting Mww
Logical forms are existentially dependent upon common language use. Common language use... rudimentary thought and belief. Logical forms... rudimentary thought and belief...
Even our speculative capacity is limited. Language does have a habit of throwing up sentences that possess little to meaning.
What exactly does one mean by subjective experience.
I read Nagel's paper and he doesn't define subjective experience (SE) anywhere in paper. If I understood correcty Nagel's "single point of view"/SE is critical to his argument but what exactly does SE mean?
It can't be self-awareness because that's something every consciousness has so, according to Nagel's rules, can be objectively evaluated.
Is SE dependent on the milieu of our minds - mental objects like concepts and its derivatives and our physical surroundings insofar as they affect SE? If yes then we can be objective about them. We can, after all, be objective about concepts and whatever follows from them. Also the physical world too is amenable to objectivity.
If all what I said is correct then SE is an instance of our consciousness interacting with its environment, both of which it's possible to be objective about. Ergo, we can be objective about subjective experience.
Correct, which is why I mentioned Gilbert Ryle. I figure error in semantics or error in reason are the only two worth talking about. And because language philosophy is (insert pejorative terminology here), the only error worth a damn in philosophical discourse is grounded in pure reason.
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Quoting creativesoul
I suppose that’s right enough, although I would offer that we determine whatthey are, but not that they are; the former presupposes the latter. Nonetheless, all philosophy is theoretical, and if it should be the case that a foundational tenet of a particular theory is given as merely a condition for that which follows from it necessarily, and disqualifies such condition from any empirical determinant for it, it must be considered as existing in its entirety prior to being named as such, by the rational agencies that employ it in the normal course of its mental events, in accordance with the theory. The onus then falls on the opponent of the theory, to falsify the tenet by arguing successfully in the negative. He does his dialectical opposition no justice by merely claiming fallacious rationality used in the construction of the theory, but rather, is required to give qualifying justifications for it. It may be interesting to note that, at least since Aristotle, no one has been able to promote sufficient reason to nullify the need for, and function of, the categories. Doesn’t make the theory or its tenets fact, or even irrefutably the case, but standing the test of two millennia of argument is still pretty damn good.
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Quoting creativesoul
Cool. Let me know what you find? We can compare it to what has already been found. Or found acceptable, at any rate.
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Quoting creativesoul
Quoting creativesoul
In the first, the parenthetical suggest a “for instance”, as in, “that which exists in its entirety exists in and of itself, like for instance, noumena”.
In the second, noumena are claimed to be untenable, which of course, they are, for us.
By association, it follows that because categories exist in and of themselves, they are untenable noumena. This is false. Or, “That’s not only not right, it’s not even wrong!!” (Thanks, Herr Pauli!!!) Categories are neither untenable, nor noumena. In addition, I haven’t seen on these pages any adequate argument for noumena being untenable except from yours truly. Actually, him truly, me being the poor messenger. And because I probably would have agreed, and so remembered, if you’d presented adequate argument, I’m going to go ahead and say you haven’t. But surreptitiously with my fingers crossed.
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Quoting creativesoul
No, I think not. Logical content is dependent on language use; logical form, re: the Greek laws of comprehensible, rational thought, are not:
“....Pure intuition consequently contains merely the form under which something is intuited, and pure conception only the form of thought in general. Only pure intuitions and pure conceptions are possible a priori...”
A = A, e.g., is the pure form the content must take when language fills out the form, to accomplish comprehensible, rational thought, and thereafter, comprehensible, rational communication. You can fill out the job application with any ol’ information you want, but your paycheck might end up in Alaska, just as you can fill in the logical forms any way you want, but your cognition “bird” might be everybody else’s cognition “bathtub”.
We can move on, if you like.
There are several things to the definition. One is any experience which varies between individuals. The room feels hot to you, cold to me, and fine for a third person. The experience of temperature is subjective. If we wanted to measure the room's temperature, we use a thermometer which gives us an objective value which does not vary.
Another is private. I have a dream, and although I can tell you about my dream, you cannot experience the dream yourself. The experience is private to me. So although dreams can be studied objectively, the experience itself is only available to the individual who has that dream.
A third is perceiver-dependence. This is based on the kind of perceiver, and their sensory capabilities. So humans experience the world through five senses of an upright walking ape, with differences among individuals due to color blindness, being able to taste a certain chemical, incapacity, etc.
The perceiver-dependent qualities of human subjective expereince would be those sensations we have good reason to believe are generated by our nervous system, instead of being properties of the world around us. So shape, size and location are objective properties of things in the world, while color, sound, taste are properties we experience because of the kind of creatures we are. Going back to the room temperature, our experience of heat or cold is a perceiver-dependant quality. The temperature is objectively the kinetic motion of particles moving about, and not a feeling of coldness or heat.
Nagel makes the argument that science creates a view from nowhere that has no perceiver-dependent, private, perceptually-relative sensations. There is nothing it's like to be a wavefunction or a supernova or evolution. It doesn't feel like anything, it doesn't look like any color, it doesn't sound like anything. The particles moving about in a room don't feel cold or hot. Ultimately, it's mathematized models of some reality divorced from our experience of it.
I’m sorry if I’m taking your point out of context but I target it because it reminds me of the Hoffman argument, outlined in his TED talk. I don’t understand how the model can completely be unrelated to reality at all. Of course it is made for organism-relevant features, but surely you’d agree wavelengths picked up by the retina are coming from reality, and surely, at least the structural regularities in experience, are ‘real’, even if they’re not fundamental or reference frame independent. There’s a broader question of whether we are epistemically restricted to the point that we can’t intuit fundamental features of reality. I am still unsure if we can but I think there’s is evidence maybe we can. The fact, for example there is experimentally robust evidence for indeterminacy at smallest scales. indeterminacy implies no underlying mechanism or principle that results in the phenomenon. It would be hard to imagine or define what something more fundamental could be once you’ve reached a level where there are no deterministic principles. So maybe we have enough access to identify fundamental features or principles of the parts of reality we can interact with. What are your thoughts?
Two questions...
What are logical forms taking account of?
Would you agree that "that which exists in it's entirety prior to common language" is a category?
Pure reason? As in reasoning from an armchair?
I agree that subjective experiences are unique and no two are alike. What I'm suggesting though is that subjective experiences are constructed out of material that can be objectively analyzed.
1. Consciousness is universal in form. (There's no difference in the nature of consciousness between two conscious beings)
2. Subjective experience is necessarily unique and can't be something that is shared
Ergo,
3. Subjective experience is not consciousness
Ergo.
4. Subjective experience is the interaction of consciousness with its environment
5. The environment of consciousness consists of ideas and the physical world insofar as it affects consciousness
6. Ideas and the physical world can be objectively analyzed
7. Consciousness can b e objectively analyzed
Ergo.
8. The interaction between consciousness and its environment can be analyzed objectively
Ergo,
9. Subjective experiences can be objectively analyzed
Experience is subjective in that it is perceiver dependent and influenced by individual particular circumstances. Experience is objective in that it consists - in very large part - of the experiencing creature's own thought and belief about what's happening at the moment, and part of what's happening exists in it's entirety prior to becoming a part of an individual's experience.
So...
The objective/subjective distinction is rendered inherently inadequate in that it's use cannot take proper account of what all experience consists of.
Discard it.
Experience is a quality?
Consisting entirely of Quale?
I don't know, but it's something perceivers generate in the act of perception, memory, imagination, dreams, hallucinations, etc.
I would agree if we changed that slightly to "help generate"...
What's a "perceiver"?
Living organisms with active nervous systems and sensory organs.
An amoeba?
Does it have sensory organs and a nervous system?
It's a living organism that has some form of rudimentary physiological sensory perception.
You tell me.
I'm just trying to delineate. I'm not feeling objectionable at the moment.
Well, in the context of subjective experience, humans, since we know that for ourselves. Most likely other animals, given similar enough biology and behavior. But we don't have a means of being sure. Thus "what it's like" to be a bat.
But we can stick with humans as perceivers.
That's the only starting point.
I've expressed my own well considered opinion regarding the purported lack of means. We have a means. Language use. Not just any language use, mind you. Rather, language use that picks out the right kinds of things to further consider.
It's a crying shame that - given our remarkable extraordinary advances - convention has still not gotten our own thought and belief right...
What is there to say about ancient people’s assuming that our vision ‘shone outward’ rather than light ‘shining inward’? Now we know different and to suggest to think otherwise is counter intuitive goes against what we know historically. From this can we rightly assume that the natural human instinct is to view our ‘seeing this tree or that table’ as projected outward rather than as given by external illumination?
What I am getting at here is that when we ask “What is it like to experience X?” how can we possible start talking about how light comes into the eye when we don’t actually experience sight as ‘light coming into my eye and sending signals to my occipital lobe’. The scientific evidence for this does nothing to alter the initial experience of ‘seeing’ prior to this scientific attitude.
Also, in terms of language, if I talk about the sunrise do you experience the sunrise. Of course you don’t, yet language almost convinces you that you’ve just experienced this said ‘sunrise’. Talking about something is the experience of talking about something not the experience of said ‘thing’.
Along these lines if we talk about ‘what it is like’ what does that sentence mean? The ‘like’ is a redundant word because we’re not really asking about ‘likeness’ at all. To be a bat is to be a bat, and to be human is to be a human. Start by asking what it is to be human as you’ve got a little more insight into this yet no doubt you’ll find yourself equally as stumped when it comes to articulating what it is to be a human assuming the question is redundant because you are one.
There's a distinction which I either keep failing to explain properly, or people don't generally seem to think useful, but it's crucially important to model-dependant realism, that is between reality having structures and reality being composed of the structures we divide it into.
I've used this example before, so apologies for the repetition if you've been following the whole thread, but it's like the constellation Orion. It definitely is in the shape (vaguely) of a hunter with his bow, belt and dagger, it's not that such structure isn't there, but it's also on the shape of just about anything else you could draw between those points, maybe not an infinite number of things (I'm not myself sure on this point), but certainly more than the one structure we impose on it out of that range of possibilities.
So to your point about reality having structural regularities which are 'real', yes, I think such regularities are not only only real, but necessarily so. If reality were homogeneous there would be no random direction to entropic forces and so no probability gradient against which the free-energy reduction would work. What I don't see is any reason why those structures must exist uniquely defined. So when you say "wavelengths picked up by the retina are coming from reality" I don't think there's any reasonable way we could disagree, but 'wavelengths' are themselves a concept, they're just one way of dividing energy among others. We can't even determine if wavelengths are a wave in a field or a particle, not that we've 'seen' either because both are just models interpreting numbers on a computer (which are the only thing we actually have 'seen').
Another metaphor might be to think of reality as a multi-dimensional contour map, it definitely has hills and valleys (ie it definitely exists and had variable structures), but which dimension should take precedent in determining what features are 'hills' is an arbitrary decision, or in our case, probably a pragmatic one limited by the biological hardware we've managed to evolve.
Really interesting point about reaching indeterminism in our models and what that means for how fundamental they are. I'm tempted to agree with you that indeterminacy cannot be further reduced, and so if we had it right this would not be one-pattern-among-many but would truly be the entity out of which patterns are made (like finding the actual stars in my Orion example). I'm wary to commit to it though because we'd have to remember that all this is within one huge Ramsey sentence about quantum physics, the first 'If' of which may well be wildly off mark.
What's fascinating about indeterminacy at the heart of the whole thing is that it might make our estimates of noise truly Gaussian (rather than just the assumption of Gaussian in our models) by the , at a fundamental scale, which is a point I think @fdrake made about central limit theory.
So a bat wouldn't know what it is like to be a bat except in terms of what it is like to experience each new moment, and it only know what each moment is like by moving from that moment to the next. This phenomenological structure defines consciousness as intrinsically built of 'likeness', of the experience of the now as a comparison and a transtiion, a familiarity and a novelty. The now of consciousness is mediate rather than immediate. This radical mediacy at the heart of the supposed pure self-aware subjectivity of consciousness destroys the realist's dream of the purely empirical at the same time that it deprives the subject of its independence from the objects it perceives. Subject and object become only subjective and objective poles of an indissociable interaction in which there is no longer a subject that it is someting like to BE, nor an objective world independent of that subject which it engages with fro out of its solipsism.
Illogical thought; irrational reasoning.
The difference between reality and knowledge.
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Quoting creativesoul
Yes.
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Quoting creativesoul
No, that’s just plain ol’ run-of-the-mill thinking, or, practical reason. No one consciously thinks in terms of merely theoretical pure reason, armchair-bound or otherwise. That’s why pure reason is the ground, the antecedent rather than the consequent.
———————Quoting creativesoul
Fine. Go ahead. Try discarding it. You’re going to have to replace it with something, because it seems to be the case that the human rational system is entirely predicated on it. Besides, something can be inherently inadequate without being a complete failure.
So......shall we discard the physical state of affairs that represents the coolness of the room, or shall we discard the sensation of too cool that represents the physical state of affairs? Can’t discard both, because it is the distinction between them claimed to cause the problem, so elimination of the distinction should solve it.
Still, if you’ve got an alternative.....(once again) lay it on me.
Our armchairs await.
Yes, that's how we experience vision.Which is why naive realism doesn't work without a sophisticated philosophical defense. It can't just be asserted or assumed as the premise, since it's been challenged since pretty much day one once people started reflecting.
But back to consciousness.
Quoting I like sushi
The "what it is like" is just a way of saying that a bat may have a kind of sensory experience that we don't because bats make use of sonar. If not bats, there are plenty of other examples in the animal kingdom. And anyway, why should we expect human experience to be exhaustive of all possible experience?
Perhaps, but if that were the case, how would we account for knowledge with respect to that which we don’t project, or, which is the same thing, has nothing to do with sense? If we deny non-empirical knowledge, the science of mathematics would be impossible.
Other than that.......good stuff.
True, but we use our experiences to draw the inferences that make most sense of all the empirical data, and form explanations around that. Thus we come to know that vision works differently than how we experience it, which resolves a lot of problems that were noticed a long time ago, such as sticks bent in water.
I’d also say it’s a little like what someone means when they talk about ‘computer consciousness’ without a body - I wouldn’t call that ‘consciousness’ because I have no real means of comparison.
If we can in some way communicate with a bat then we’ll get some insight. Without a means of communication the bat may as well be a rock (note: we can have some form of minimalistic ‘communication’ with a bat).
We do use our experience to draw inferences about something possibly derivable from it, yes. But not always. Sometimes the inference comes first, and experience is then called upon to verify them. Or falsify them.
Telling, but maybe not more telling. But I was responding to empirical conditions, like seeing a table or a tree. Appreciation is not an empirical condition. Our natural/instinctual appreciation of the world gives rise to and sustains the other half of our subjective faculties........feelings.
Block made a similar argument with androids and nations.
Correct. But anthropomorphic. All that allows us to characterize a bat, is ourselves.
We do though, to some extent. If a car is racing toward me at great speed, my whole experience of the event might be a blur, and my body moving, little else. But if the car approaches more slowly, some part of that experience will be "that's a car", I might even recognise the make, bring to mind some facts about it, feel some repulsion to its colour etc.
Similarly, I don't see why some neuroscientific model of perception could not now form part of my experience of perceiving. To do so would require access to memory and higher cortex functions, so it's unlikely in fleeting stimuli, but no less a part of my experience when the stimuli is more drawn out.
Quoting I like sushi
Actually, they're mentally very similar. The same parts of the brain are involved in both, we're really just pasting on top of that an additional piece of information that tells us we're just imagining it. Obviously you're right, that additional factor makes it a different experience, but it says something about the idea of knowing "what it's like", there's not something so radically different going on in the 'experiencer', to that in the 'imaginer'
Quoting I like sushi
Yes, Hacker makes the same point in his dismissal of Nagel's argument.
Yes, but you haven’t reduced the anthropos, insofar as you’ve included the movement of bodies and changes in time into a system, re: “a bat would have to know....”, that we have no reason to suppose incorporates them. It’s not your fault, it’s the fault of the human system; we as humans simply can’t think in any way other than the way humans think. It’s absolutely impossible.
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Quoting Joshs
Understood. I would offer that Kant did the same thing in 1787.
“...For example, if we take away by degrees from our conceptions of a body all that can be referred to mere sensuous experience—colour, hardness or softness, weight, even impenetrability—the body will then vanish; but the space which it occupied still remains...”
“...With regard to phenomena in general, we cannot think away time from them...”
“...That space and time are only forms of sensible intuition, and hence are the only conditions of the existence of things (of experience)....”
————————
Quoting Joshs
Dunno about all those modern guys, but I think I can dig enough significance out of that to agree with it.
Perhaps not. But that wasn’t the intent of the Critiques, nor the Metaphysics of Natural Science. It didn’t matter to him, because even if he entertained the idea of an objectively causal world, it would still have to relate to the human capacity to understand it. If he had entertained the idea, would the substance of the Critiques evolved? Maybe, but it’s moot, because what we have of them is all there’s ever going to be.
I can’t imagine what he would do if he even knew about such notions as universal geometric space. Can’t blame him for failing to reduce them to something, if he didn’t know what they were.
Husserl wrote: Physics, whether represented by a Newton or a Planck or an Einstein, or whomever
else in the future, was always and remains exact science. It remains such even if, as some think, an absolutely final form of total theory-construction is never to be expected or striven for.:"
What he meant by exact science is a science based on pure geometry of space. The innovative mathematics of space-time in recent physics is still dependent on geometric idealities. Husserl wrote copously about how geometry's origin in pragmatic activities in the world, and how it morphed into a 'ready-made' set of axioms by the time of Galileo.
Have we actually evolved according to your view, or is that whole picture of evolution just another one of our models?
I get it. Kant used Thales, but......same principle. Wonder why the extended time frame between them. Maybe Thales’ set of axioms weren’t as complete.
What about logical thought, and rational reasoning?
:gasp:
I know you meant ‘came after him’ but ‘digressed from his aim’ would be more to the point.
The question(implied) was about the referent of the name "pure reason". To what are you referring? What is the criterion/definition of "pure reason" that you're working from here?
Try? That's hilarious. As if it's impossible to discard. Read my threads.
Quoting Mww
Nah. I reject it based upon my own knowledge of all human thought and belief. I 'replaced it' with a much better understanding of all the things which are existentially dependent upon and/or consist of both the objective and the subjective. Such things cannot be taken proper account of in terms of one or the other. All experience counts as such things. As does all thought and belief...
You don't seem to have discarded the distinction between the objective and the subjective. Can you rephrase the above sentence without using the terms "subjective" and "objective"? If not, and you need to use the terms, then they will be of no use unless you maintain the distinction between them.
I mostly agree, but what of this speech act itself?
[quote=Feuerbach]
The person demonstrating says and points out to me: “This is rational, this is true, and this is what is meant by law; this is how you must think when you think truly.” To be sure, he wants me to grasp and acknowledge his ideas, but not as his ideas; he wants me to grasp them as generally rational; i.e., also as mine. He only expresses what is my own understanding.
...
All presentation, all demonstration – and the presentation of thought is demonstration – has, according to its original determination – and that is all that matters to us – the cognitive activity of the other person as its ultimate aim.
[/quote]
The subject and object are vital concepts, despite their imperfections in certain contexts.
Using to refer is mention.
Could be a poetic way of talking about the good affects/effects that we sometimes have upon others...
Maybe?
Ah.
:smile:
If you can provide any examples of a language which doesn’t show at directed ‘outward’ I’d love to see it - maybe there is one or two, but I doubt it.
My point was how we layer on accumulated knowledge and regard it as if it is our natural intuitive attitude.
Yeah, like how we all know ordinary matter is mostly empty space with electromagnetic bonds holding molecules together tightly enough so that we can't see or put our hands through it without smashing it.
But that wasn't the conception of solidity before atomic theory developed, excepting those from the atomist school of philosophy.
There is certainly a similar aim with Husserl in that they both looked for a ‘firmer’ grounding. I don’t believe either assumed the task as one that could be complete - this is made explicit by Husserl at least.
What about them?
You: Why did you say that?
Me: Because (_____), so it had to be (_____).
You. Oh. Right. OK.
Now what?
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Quoting creativesoul
Ok, fine. Your own knowledge is sufficient for you to reject something. No problem. Nevertheless, claiming the ends (I replace it) justifies the means (better understanding) says nothing whatsoever about the means. You could fall back on sufficiency here as well, re: your better understanding is sufficient to replace, but that says nothing about whether the replacement is necessary because of the better understanding. To be necessary requires adherence to a law or a principle, the enouncement of which seems to be missing.
You’re always saying that a thing is possible, or that a thing can be done, but never how it is possible or how it is done. Without a how, it is reasonable that I maintain my own knowledge for the standing and authority of the subjective/objective distinction, rather than entertain yours in rejecting it.
Hell, you haven’t even shown how the subjective/objective distinction actually is inadequate.
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Quoting creativesoul
Threads. You have threads, separate from your entries in our dialogues? So you’ve already given a how, someplace else? In the chance you meant comments in our dialogues, I haven’t seen any how’s. And when I mentioned this before, you didn’t come back with the suggestion to read your threads. You’ve never suggested other threads to me for anything.
I don’t think I’m asking too much.
What are you referring to if there is no coherent distinction? Now, don't get me wrong, I think human experience, primordially speaking, is prior to any such distinction, but we cannot get any conscious handle on that primordial experience; it is rightly thought as transcendental.
Primordial. Fundamental state or condition.
I don’t understand how one can speak about experience primordially.
And if the distinction is the subjective/objective distinction, how can experience be prior to it?
Emerges out of, of course. That’s the opposite of prior to.
On the other hand, if I take mountain/erosion as metaphor for change, then I must say experience doesn’t change; each is as it is in itself. Experience is singular and successive, not a unity and changing, the technical definition of consciousness.
Don’t want to take you off on a tangent, but......just wonderin’.
Are logical forms taking those thoughts and reasoning into account as well?
First of all, I've never said that the objective/subjective dichotomy was incoherent. Secondly, I am referring to the typical use of that distinction. I can refer to another linguistic framework without assenting to it and/or accepting it. Thus, I'm not even sure what you're trying to get at in that regard. It's as if you seem to think that one must somehow assent/accept that which one claims to deny simply because one talks about it.
I'm suddenly being reminded of NOS in the racism thread...
The last bit, of course, I reject. Not only can we, I have gotten quite a good 'conscious handle' on primordial experience, if by that we mean experience prior to language acquisition and/or language less creatures' experience. One cannot get a good handle on primordial experience, if one doesn't have the basics of complex experience right.
Thought and belief.
Same story brutha! That's where it's at! Get that right, and much is gleaned...
That is what can happen if one does not have the basics of complex experience right. Mountains do not have what it takes. Anthropomorphism.
Coming from someone who has demonstrated a habit of ignoring all the tough questions leading up to a refutation of their own claims... well... that's a bit rich...
What exactly is your issue with it then?
Quoting creativesoul
If primordial experience, as distinct from conscious experience, is pre-conceptual then no discursive handle can be gotten on it, despite your promissory notes.
Perhaps it would be easier for me to understand what "mountains experience erosion" is taking about on your view if I knew what criterion you employ as a means to determine whether or not it makes sense to attribute experience to some thing or another.
I'm all ears...
Surely you're not really going to forward such an argument?
I'm not sure what you are aiming at here...isn't erosion a process of change?
It is inherently inadequate for taking proper account of that which consists of both. Experience is one such thing.
I think you'd change your mind if you carefully considered the logical consequences of that argument. It leads to a reductio.
How do you know this? That is... how do you know what experience is beyond conscious experience?
I think you may be conflating causality with experience. The latter is existentially dependent upon the former, but the former is not equivalent to the latter. Experience takes quite a bit more than causality.
Don't you see a problem here, my friend?
Seriously, I like the shit outta you(that's an endearing Appalachian American colloquialism), so I'm not being disrespectful in any way.
:cool:
Well of course. All sorts of people say all sorts of stuff all the time. Language use can be perfectly sensible and say stuff that's dead wrong.
I agree; we could say that experience is subjective insofar it is conscious, and it is objective insofar as it is not. But since what cannot be consciously apprehended cannot be an objective for us, then in that sense pre/sub/un-conscious experience is neither subjective nor objective, and in yet another sense is, or at least encompasses, both.
I don't see how it does. That our capacities for conceptualization emerge out of a pre-conceptual 'matrix' or 'context' does not entail that we can get a discursive handle on its pre-conceptual nature. That our conceptualizations are "influenced" or "structured" or "conditioned" by a pre-conceptual 'Real' does not entail that we can examine the nature of that influence, structuring or conditioning.
But it's not wrong to say the mountain experiences erosion if it does.
We see emergent layers of existence emerging directly from previous ones: atom - molecule - cell - organ - organism... Why then say conscious experience emerges from way down below instead from the previous size scale like everything else?
Mind emerges from the dynamics of overlapping densities of the magnetic and electric fields in the wrinkly cortex. Only now emergent layers reverse direction and new complexity of collective entities emerge inwards into the smaller and smaller size. We might be talking about the same size scale at the end, but I think I'm talking about a completely different realm, mental realm, quite real, testable and measurable, if we only manage to get sufficient resolution and recognize those emergent elements or "mental atoms".
All of those are items, in one way or another, of human experience; they are always already in conceptual form, so they are not what I have been talking about.
We could say, as for example McDowell and Brandom (and Hegel) do, in their various ways, that the Real itself is, exhaustively, in conceptual shape; but that would be a different argument.
If you remain consistent, you'd be forced to say that you cannot get a grasp upon anything pre-conceptual.
Quoting Janus
:brow:
Do you see the problem here?