How do we know the subjective world isn't just objective?
Yes, this is the opposite starting position from a recent similar thread.
Quite a few philosophically minded folk would love to do away with the subjective/objective distinction. It does cause quite a few headaches (which may or may not be objective, see following debate).
The idealist side would vote for everything being subjective, or intersubjective. But there is the realist/materialist side that might vote the opposite.
So can everything be considered objective? That would include perceptions (see direct realism), thoughts (brain scans?), dreams (coming to seem to remember?), bodily feels (empirically measurable?), qualia (incoherent?), beliefs/desires (eliminable?), perspectives (God's eye view?), etc. Can we really do away with the subject/object distinction?
Quite a few philosophically minded folk would love to do away with the subjective/objective distinction. It does cause quite a few headaches (which may or may not be objective, see following debate).
The idealist side would vote for everything being subjective, or intersubjective. But there is the realist/materialist side that might vote the opposite.
So can everything be considered objective? That would include perceptions (see direct realism), thoughts (brain scans?), dreams (coming to seem to remember?), bodily feels (empirically measurable?), qualia (incoherent?), beliefs/desires (eliminable?), perspectives (God's eye view?), etc. Can we really do away with the subject/object distinction?
Comments (57)
If I were an eliminative materialist I suppose I might argue for this, but I'm not an eliminative materialist. I rather believe that eliminative materialism is completely ridiculous. All the stuff you mention--perception, thoughts, etc., is subjective. It's mental phenomena, and that's all that "subjective" refers to.
If this isn't the case, then there is no subjective view and the idealist/solipsist "view" is really an objective reality.
What are dreams without waking? What is inner dialog without dialog others can partake in? What is consciousness without lack of consciousness? What is mind without mind-independent?
You mean like that? I suppose you can turn that around. What is mind-independent without mind (something idealists love to ask realists)?
Historically, the debate about objectivity only entered philosophy post Kant. The ancients and medievals rarely discussed it. As to why that is, I think it's for meta-philosophical reasons: that before the advent of modern philosophy, humans didn't conceive of themselves in the same way; they instinctively felt a part of the world, due to their sense of relatedness to Divine. The sense of separation and 'otherness' that characterises the modern self-understanding was part of the loss of that sense, and the passage to modernity (cf Max Weber's 'disenchantment of the world'.)
(The relationship of forms of consciousness to historical periods is one of the major themes of Owen Barfield's books.)
But classical materialism certainly believed that there must be an ultimate explanans, some material entity in terms of which everything else could be explained. That's what materialism means, after all. But then along came the discovery of matter-energy equivalence, which queered the pitch somewhat; now materialism was obliged to included 'fields' as well, which hardly seem material.
But, as is well-known, if generally not very well-understood, quantum mechanics has undermined the notion of an ultimate material point-particle. That was one of the consequences of the discovery of the Uncertainty Principle and the wave equation, which threw doubt on the existence of an ultimate point-particle. It was the implications of this that caused Einstein to muse as to 'whether the moon still exists when we're not looking at it'.
My considered position is that 'objective' and 'subjective' are poles within experience. They are, in Buddhist terms, 'co-arising'; but then, you also find in Schopenhauer 'no object without subject'.
The difficulty people have with that is, 'do you mean, if I go to sleep, the world disappears?' But that, I think, is the 'imagined non-existence' of the world. Quite advanced philosophers have fallen into that trap; G E Moore was said to have asked, are idealists saying the train wheels disappear when all the passengers are on board?
I don't think idealism does say that. What I think a Kantian idealism says, is that whatever we say about existence, and indeed our experience of the world, is inextricably connected with the way the mind synthesises sensation, perception and judgement so as to "create" it's world. (The later development of the concept of 'Umwelt' or 'Lebenswelt' by Husserl is relevant to understanding that.) It is within that conceptual and perceptual matrix that we make judgements, see, remember, reflect, predict, and so on. So it has an unavoidably subjective element; the illusion of materialism is that you can see the world, as if there were nobody in it, as if the subject has been bracketed out altogether (cf Nagel's 'view from nowhere'). But that conception is still a human conception, albeit one in which the quantifiable elements are fixed according to theory, and so which is inter-subjective, not merely or simply subjective.
Within that understanding, there are degrees of objectivity, but objectivity is never absolute.
You mean a particular form of Idealism. If you had gone with subjective idealism instead, then there is no world independent of mind.
Quoting Wayfarer
Which would mean that materialism is false, and there is no truly objective viewpoint human beings can access, although there may be a noumenal reality.
In ordinary usage, the terms "objective" and "subjective" refer to judgements that we think do or don't meet normative epistemological standards. That is, is the person considering the evidence or merely expressing their opinion on the matter?
For example, compare "historians try to be objective and impartial" with "his views are highly subjective".
The problems arise, I think, when either that ordinary distinction is disputed (e.g., radical skepticism, subjectivism), or when it is applied to something other than judgements (e.g., dualistic phenomena, worlds, viewpoints).
Even under the ordinary distinction, we note the difference between dream experience and waking, but you do point out an interesting problem, which is that people can vary a great deal in their interpretation of things. I recall a thread (on the former site) where everyone agreed on the material being debated, but disagreed on what the philosopher had been arguing. It was to the point that one poster mentioned it as a vindication of idealism. And the material wasn't some dense postmodern text, it was Dennett, who is pretty clear on what he means.
There are many things about which objectivity is a pragmatic certainty. I'd say it's 100% objectively certain that the polio vaccine works and 100% certain that homeopathy doesn't (or at any rate, that no objective evidence can be advanced for it.)
Historians, judges and journalists are expected to be objective. 'Conflict of interest' measures exist so as to ensure that politicians and business people act impartially. You would never allow a person to judge a talent contest in which their child was a competitor, and so on. So pragmatically, objectivity is indispensable.
But the issue is not nearly so clear-cut when it comes to questions of meaning. The interpretation of the meaning of quantum physics is one, the meaning of evolution is another.
I think the underlying issue is this: that scientific method presumes to be dealing with a value-free and observer-independent domain, which it asserts to be objectively real. However I think that attitude is based on the presumption that there is an 'ultimate object' which serves as the foundation for the supposed 'scientific worldview'. According to philosophical materialism, that was the role of the atom, the so-called 'indivisible particle'. It is precisely that, that has been undermined by quantum mechanics. I think the implications of that are still being worked through; many people seem to assume that science has reached a kind of philosophical bedrock, when really the opposite is the case. This is an aspect of the so-called 'fact-value dichotomy' that bedevils much modern ethical theory.
This is associated with the post-modernist attitude of 'perspectivism', which says there is no ultimate objectivity, that facts are embedded in narratives, and the narratives always contain at least some assumptions. I think that's true, but I really wouldn't like to go as far as many of the academic post-modernists as it just ends up in a kind of pomo soup.
Quoting Marchesk
Again, we are simply talking about the correct and consistent use of terms.
Dreams without waking would be reality, not dreams. Inner dialog without dialog others can partake in is just gibberish (if you can even call it that), not dialog. Consciousness without a lack of it (I take this to mean what is consciousness without an external, non-conscious, reality, which is the same as asking what is the subjective without the objective?) is reality, not consciousness. Mind without that which isn't mind (which I take to mean the same thing as the previous sentence) is reality, not a mind.
What is the subjective without the objective? It is the objective and there is no subjective. Once you claim that some thing can exist without it's dependent, it is no longer the same thing. You are redefining it as the thing it is dependent on (reality or the objective), not as the dependent thing (mind or the subjective).
Which is the dependent, mind or matter? Which can be reduced or explained in terms of the other?
That and a couple other comments you make imply that you believe that folks must accept received view interpretations of the sciences, but that's not the case.
In my ontology, there's mattter in the "traditional sense"--chunks of "stuff," basically, and then there are structures of matter--that is the relations that the chunks of stuff are in with respect to the other chunks of stuff, and the structures are dynamic--they're in motion, so that the relations are always changing, and thus there are processes.
Relativity and quantum physics don't affect this in any way. Insofar as any interpretation of the sciences would disagree with my ontology, it's my view that the interpretation in question is wrong. At that, I interpret the sciences instrumentally (as do many scientists). Where the sciences tend to get into "trouble" is when they take instrumentally effective theories, and particular interpretations of the same (that is, interpretative statements that are additional to what are typically mathematical conventions), to be ontological commitments.
Both are categories, and categories are created by the mind. I'm a monist, so I believe that there is only one primary substance and because we already have meanings for "matter" and "mind", then I say we use a different term for the primary substance - say "information". So, mind and matter are both dependent upon information.
So I'm taking it that you were linking to Harry Hindu's post? What definition of "information" are you using so that you think that the idea of "information" as an ontic simple, or at least an ontic foundation, makes the slightest bit of sense?
That idea goes back to Norbert Weiner, who said:
Computing Machines and the Nervous System p. 132.
There are many different definitions of "information," yes. That's the case with many terms. There are many different conventional definitions of many different terms. Some terms have a wider variety of common definitions, especially when they're as ultimately vague as "information" is. To make claims about information, though, we need to have some idea what the heck we're referring to--and that's what I was asking. Simply noting that there are a bunch of different definitions doesn't cut it.
No one is saying anything like "thoughts are secretions of the brain," and no one is saying anything like "thoughts are energy output of the brain."
"Information is information," in context, is just nonsense. I mean, of course, yeah, x = x, no matter what we're talking about, but we might as well simply be using "x" in this situation, because what are we talking about?
It seems very close to your often-repeated assertion of the identity of experiences and brain-states.
Well that would certainly be wrong. We'd have to examine his argument for this to specify where he's going off the rails, though.
Quoting Wayfarer
Identity is different than saying that something is a secretion or output of something else.
Actually, the dichotomy between matter and mind isn't the dichotomy I was trying to emphasize. By definition, matter can exist without mind. The same cannot be said about subjectivity. As subjectivity is defined as being a limited and/or skewed view of all there is (the objective, or reality), then subjectivity is dependent upon the existence of an a priori objective reality.
[b]If subjectivity isn't defined as a limited and/or skewed view of the objective, then subjectivity becomes all there is (the objective), and there is no subjectivity.
Quoting Wayfarer
Quoting Terrapin Station
I think it is important at this point to say something about identity.
Definition : A and B are said to be identical if : whenever it is the case that A, it is the case that B, and whenever it is the case that B, it is the case that A.
This is the notion of identity at work when we say, "Bachelors are unmarried men". [Note : As has been pointed out, identity cannot be as trivial as "x = x", which is true of everything.]
I was briefly pursuing the following idea on another thread before the ugly real world interceded and pulled me away : It is not brain states (i.e., particular arrangements of neurons) and consciousness that are identical. Rather it is brain activity and consciousness that are identical. Or more properly, it is a particular subset of brain activity and consciousness which are identical (since there is some brain activity not associated with thought).
"Bosh!", you say. But are either consciousness or the corresponding set-of-brain-activity ever encountered without the other? If not, then by the definition of identity given above, they are identical. It would seem that the only objection to this argument would be to disagree with the given definition of identity, or to show the existence of brain activity without consciousness, or to show the existence of consciousness without brain activity.
x=x IS certainly an identity, but yeah, it's also trivial in both the formal and colloquial sense; it's true of everything (although sometimes people equivocate, of course).
Quoting Real Gone Cat
I don't agree with the above in this way: states ARE activity, they are dynamic, they are processes. No static things exist.
I agree that mentality is just a subset of brain states/processes though. I point that out frequently.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
The folks on the opposite side of me in the debate seem to believe that consciousness is, at best, only correlated with brain states in some ways. They say a lot of things such as "consciousness has no location," things that apparently make sense to them, but that I can't make any sense out of. Most of them seem to believe that consciousness could obtain without brain activity, although how they'd show that to anyone who doesn't believe it is another question. Really, it seems to me that most of them are motivated by their religious beliefs. Their philosophical views are what they are always with the purpose of supporting their religious beliefs.
The reason I emphasize activity over state is that I think "brain state" is usually interpreted to be a snapshot of the brain at a given moment. I do not think your definition of brain-states-as-process is shared by most - and can lead to confusion. When the state of any process is talked about, isn't the implication one of what the process is like at a given moment?
Similarly, I think that to many folks, a static thing is implied when talking about "the brain". (I could be wrong.)
[Just as an aside, I do accept the notion of static things. An irrelevant point to this discussion, however.]
That could be that most folks think of it that way, but "at a given moment" in that sense is just an abstraction, and I think it's important to correct what I see as a misconception re seeing the brain as a static thing.
Thanks for your very clear analysis, and glad to make your acquaintance.
My objections to philosophical materialism are many and various, so I will try and keep this as brief as possible.
First, what does speaking of 'brain states' or 'brain activities' actually bring to the table? What's it saying? I posted an excerpt into another thread about this discussion, which was an excerpt from the National Institute of Mental Health press release from 2009, about brain research, and about the number of agencies and scientists involved in the undertaking (here). The complexities and the amount of information are enormous. But there is still widespread acknowledgement that the central mystery of how neural matter gives rise to conscious experience (i.e. the 'hard problem of consciousness' and the 'neural binding problem') is still nowhere near being understood, and may not be understandable in principle, even despite this vast research effort.
So I question whether the term 'brain states' or 'brain activities' really mean anything. The mere fact that when one is having a conscious experience, that the brain is active, is hardly signficant. It is understanding what that means which is necessary to assert any relationship of identity.
And how do we make that assertion? When we say 'bachelors are unmarried men', how is it meaningful to say that this is a 'brain state'? Very simple logical relationships, such as the law of identity, or the law of the excluded middle, are required to make any statements at all about the identity of this brain-state and that experience. But where in 'brain activities' are you going to find those logical connections? One thing for sure, is that without the ability to make rational inferences, to say 'this data means that', and so on, you can't even begin to examine the brain at all. But that is the very faculty you're purporting to explain! You can't put logic aside, and see where in the mass of neural data these are being represented; what you will be looking at, is a massive amount of data, and then trying to make correlations between data and meaning. And I say there is a problem of recursion there which it doesn't require a degree in neuroscience to see.
In respect of the separability of consciousness and the physical brain, two sources of data about those phenomena are accounts of near death experiences (e.g. research of Pim Von Lommel) and of children with memories of previous lives (e.g. research of Ian Stephenson). I know that mention of these sources on a philosophy forum generates a lot of heat so I'm not pressing anyone to believe them, simply pointing out that if such accounts are authentic, then consciousness and brain physiology are separable.
Overall the idea that consciousness is something produced by the brain, is analogous to the notion that television dramas are produced by the electrical circuitry in the television. So it's a kind of category error to assert that identity, motivated by the desire to deflate in unfathomable nature of first-person experience.
You must be saying something other than that you don't know what terms like "brain states" and "brain activities" refer to or what they're saying, because it would be ridiculous to not have any idea what those terms refer to, especially when you mention things such as "an excerpt from the National Institute of Mental Health press release from 2009, about brain research." How in the world would you know that "brain research" refers to, for example, if you can't tackle "brain states" and "brain activities"?
So you must be saying, but not making explicit, that you're reading "brain states" and "brain activities" to (at least) be (implicit) claims about the relation of those things to mind, and it's those (implicit) claims that you're questioning, so that you're NOT saying that you don't know what those terms refer to in general.
Aside from that, it appears that you're attempting to associate the NIMH press release that you're referring to and a survey of opinions about "the hard problem," but I'd bet dollars to donuts that the NIMH press release didn't actually present a survey about "the hard problem."
Not to mention that you're suggesting an argumentum ad populum (with the population in question being research neuroscientists).
Quoting Wayfarer
What in the world are you attempting to say in that paragraph? Is that some garbled version of the old "it can't be so because we don't have a mechanical blueprint of it yet" objection?
What I'm saying is that those terms are meaningless, it's 'neuro-babble' which appears to connote something scientific but in reality says nothing. I know what the research is about, what I'm saying is that you can't draw any philosophical conclusions from it.
The paragraph you have quoted from me contains an argument, which you have showen no indication of having understood.
Why "something scientific"? You know what brains are, right? And you know what activity is. You should be able to put the two together. No one is claiming that it's a term used in the neurosciences.
This is a philosophy forum, not a neuroscience forum. I don't know why you'd try to read comments as necessarily being about the sciences per se.
What are we referring to--do you know what "brain" refers to?
You said in another thread:
This is a typical statement of materialist or physicalist philosophy of mind, and that's what I am criticising. Consider the following quote from the Wiki article on Paul Churchland:
Now, if you replaced 'belief' in the above, with 'love', and/or 'hope', that is what you mean, isn't it?
If not, what?
Why did you drop the previous discussion? It's worth figuring out why you'd say something so ridiculous as claiming that you don't know what "brain state" or "brain activity" could possibly refer to.
At any rate, yes, I'm a physicalist/"materialist." No, I'm not an eliminative materialist. Not all materialists are eliminative materialists. I've been explaining this to you and others for well over six months now, ever since I joined the other, now defunct, forum.
So no, I'm not saying anything like what the Churchlands are saying when they make eliminativist statements. I rather think that eliminativism is quite stupid.
When you say 'objective' what do you mean? Are geometry, physics, and the other sciences all strictly objective, or are they also subjective. Or when you say objective do you mean 'real' as existing in the world outside of us, separate from us as things?
Didn't Kant connect the subjective with the objective, uniting or mediating them with reason which is objective universally necessary, reason which is the paradigm example of objectivity, yet is also a subjective ability,
Mind-independent. The objective world doesn't depend on us perceiving, knowing, or talking about it. It's objective precisely because it doesn't vary based on individual perception, cognition, etc. It's also objective in that it doesn't depend on us being human. Man is not the measure, if anything is truly objective.
Quoting Cavacava
Sure, if you accept Kant's account of reason. Then we can't know the noumena. Evolution is only true as it's correlated to us, not independent of us, even though evolution claims a time and process long proceeding humans, leading to human reason.
It's not hard to figure out. It's a meaningless term. 'Headache' is not a meaningless term - when you say you have a headache, I know what you mean. When you refer to 'brain state', I don't think it really means anything - I'm saying that equating conscious experience with brain states doesn't mean anything.
At least the eliminative materialists are consistent. So if you're not an 'eliminative materialist' - which materialist/physicalist philosopher do you think does represent your views? Any particular books, papers, etc?
You say that 'love, hope, etc' are physical things. My argument against that doesn't refer to love and hope, as such, but to logic and inference, the 'laws of thought' - such things as the law of identity, or the law of the excluded middle. But the same general argument can be extended to affective conditions such as love.
What I am arguing is that the basic rules of logic cannot be reduced to, or explained in terms of, physical laws. Ergo they're not physical. They can be represented physically, in writing or in computer algorithms. They can be grasped by the mind. But they're not physical, they belong to a different ontological category to the physical.
The same argument can be made in respect of all kinds of semantic content.
That's meaningless isn't it.
The objective as you have described it has no meaning, it may exist and have existed but that existence is meaningless without us. It was all meaningless until we came along and gave it meaning. It more a question of how we play into the schema of things, since there is no schema without us.
What's unfathomable, though, would be you saying that you have no idea what "brain state" would refer to period. That would be as unfathomable as you not being able to figure out, say "foot state."
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm certainly willing to entertain accusations of inconsistency. I only require that one specify the proposition that one believes I'm both affirming and denying.
Quoting Wayfarer
We kind of went over this before. Even if there were someone with whom I agreed on a significant chunk of their views, I don't want to effectively "pledge allegiance" to them on a message board, because 100% of the time in my experience, that goes off the rails. Folks expect you to agree with whoever you named wholesale in various specific regards, and then it's a battle trying to dissociate yourself from the other person. Why can't you simply listen to what I say and cognize it, realizing that there's no better representative of my views than myself? There's no other philosopher with whom I agree much more than 50% of the time (and it might be less than that) , and with most, I agree far less than that. In fact with some, I literally disagree with every sentence they write.
Quoting Wayfarer
As an argument, "cannot be explained in terms of x, therefore not x" is a non sequitur. Without getting into a huge tangent on what explanations are, explanations are things that we do, with a criterion that others accept them as explanations. That has no bearing on what something is ontologically.
Regarding "reduced to," depending on whether you use that term to simply denote identity, or whether you use it in a sense where identities are not necessarily reductions, this is either question-begging or also a non sequitur respectively.
Of course, I believe that logic, and everything else that exists, is physical. In my view, logic is simply a way that we think about relations of particulars, abstracting and extrapolating from particulars, all tempered by contingent facts re how our brains must work due to evolutionary requirements for survival given the sort of creatures we developed into phylogenetically. As a way that we think, it's a subset of brain states (which are processes).
Meaning is not objective, it's subjective, correct.
That doesn't imply that the definition he gave of "objective" is meaningless, of course. But it's us, as subjects, who assign meaning to it, as is the case with everything meaningful.
Knowing other philosophers who say similar things, would help to understand what you mean. So far, I'm finding that very challenging.
And I'm accused of non sequiturs?
A lot of people seem to believe that we understand the 'nature of thought' because it can be explained by evolutionary science. But that approach is called 'evolutionary reductionism'.
In any case, the challenge still stands. Meaning, logic, language, and the like, depend on the relationships of ideas, for which I say there is not an adequate physicalist account. You simply assume that these matters have been understood through the lense of evolutionary naturalism. I ask you for another representative of your views, and you don't have one. You're not advancing a coherent argument at all.
So, when you say 'correct', you have no idea whether the person you're talking to understands what you mean - correct?
Okay, but I don't know why. Is it a language issue? Is English not your first language and some things in English thus aren't clear to you? I try to write philosophy as plainly as I can while still capturing all the nuances of my view, and I don't mind explaining anything in other words just in case what I'd said isn't clear to someone.
Quoting Wayfarer
Fallacies are pertinent to arguments. That is, to stating premises and then asserting that a conclusion follows from those premises. "Non sequitur," of course, means that something doesn't actually follow (from the premises at hand). But I hadn't claimed that some conclusion logically follows from premises that I'd stated. I rather explained that you should have trouble with "foot state" if you have trouble with "brain state." After all, it's just a different body part, followed by the word "state." Again, I think the problem is that you're reading a bunch of stuff into "brain state." You shouldn't be doing that. You should read "brain state" just as you'd read "foot state."
Quoting Wayfarer
Sure--of course that would be your view. You're not a physicalist after all. If you were to feel that there's an adequate physicalist account of phenomena such as ideas, then likely you'd be a physicalist.
Quoting Wayfarer
What I was talking about with mentioning other philosophers is occurring in microcosm here. You're assuming that since I mentioned evolution, I see that as a wholesale explanation for everything. That's not at all my view. But it will probably be just about impossible from this point to dissociate myself from that template in your mind.
Quoting Wayfarer
As if those two things have anything whatsoever to do with each other. They do not.
Quoting Wayfarer
"Understands me" is what I'd say if we're being literal/technical about what's going on, not "understand what I mean.". I generally assume that others will understand me until it's clear that they do not. It's often clear with you and a couple other people here that "they do not." Those cases are interesting, because it's not so easy to figure out just what is going so wrong.
In your case, I'm suspecting it might be language issues to some extent--although that's just a guess, and it also seems to me that you have a tendency to read things where you apply dense ideological packages to what the person said, despite them not actually saying those other things. It seems like you often have some preconceived template in mind for most things, and then you understand things but fitting them onto those templates. When the actions of the other person don't mesh with the template, though, you can't figure it out.
At any rate, if you're interested in my definition of what understanding is, I can relay that, but it probably won't do much good with respect to how "well" we're communicating.
If you can't see how fatuous that comparison is, then really we have nothing to discuss.
ALL that the phrase "brain state," qua "brain state" says is the exact same thing that "foot state" says, just about another body part. Hence why I find it ridiculous that you'd have no idea what "brain state" refers to.
All that other ideological stuff that you're reading into "brain state," qua "brain state," isn't actually there.
To say "it was all meaningless until we came along and gave it meaning" is to admit that something (the "all" being referred to) existed before human consciousness. And the advent of human consciousness simply tagged this existence with "meaning". Fine, but that still seems to imply a mind-independent existence. (By the way, what "meaning" does existence have? Or, what are you implying when you use the term "meaning"? Is it simply that we give labels to things, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden naming all the birds and beasts? Or that somehow our minds imbue existence with purpose?)
The notion that "there is no schema without us" has always struck me as a bit of navel-gazing. Or perhaps elevating one's self to the position of god. "Existence is nothing without me, so I must be awful important". Such thinking leads - logically - to belief in one's own immortality ("existence began with my birth, and ends with my death"), and omniscience ("I know all there is to know").
The part I have bolded is the issue at hand - i.e., the notion that neural activity causes consciousness. As if synaptic firing precedes the thoughts that occur. If this is so, then it should be possible to show consciousness existing without corresponding brain activity (perhaps in the moment following the synaptic firing). Is there any such evidence?
Neural activity does not "give rise" to consciousness. It is consciousness.
The difference between observing neural activity and experiencing that neural activity as thoughts is one of perspective. I am not fond of analogies, but it is somewhat akin to watching other cars drive down the street and sitting behind the steering wheel of your own car when you go on a journey. Its all point of view.
What exists and what has existed prior to us as a species is in the history we tell ourselves about the world, and the cosmos. I am not claiming and I did not state that there cannot be any mind-independent being, simply that whatever does exists is only meaningful to regards to us, it has no meaning in-it-self. The sciences, physics, mathematics, chemistry are all objective, they are rationally based and they explain the phenomena. The subjective and the objective are mediated by reason.
I doubt nature has a end, a teleology. I think that practical reason is 1st philosophy, that what we ought to do, what we value, what we find meaning in, what we think is historical gives us place us within the schema of things within a community of others.
However, it is not possible to observe neural activity as though from a third-person perspective. You can't reach that perspective on it. You might think it is possible, because intuitively, it seems like you're simply looking at something like an array of neural events from two perspectives. But the problem is that thought itself has an irreducibly first-person aspect; it can't be viewed from the outside.
You can see something like 'driving a car' from a third or a first person perspective, i.e. by either performing it, or watching it performed. But you're not able to watch the act of thinking in the same way, because there's no activity involved in thinking. If you were to watch the recording of brain activity, you might be able to infer what is being thought - with the right software, you can even interpolate images, but that is done through pattern-matching algorithms, which in effect replicate aspects of the process by artificial means. But you can't see 'neural activities' in the third person. (This is part of the import of the 'hard problem of consciousness', and also the 'neural binding problem'.)
As for the relationship of neural activity and consciousness, that works in two directions. So a blow to the head can cause one to loose consciousness, and changes to neural configuration can have cognitive and intellectual consequences. But it has also been found that by directed mental activities, one can actually change the physical configuration of the brain. There was a classic experiment a few years back:
Source
This was one of the studies that lead to the discovery of neuro-plasticity.
Meaning is a loaded word. Ontological structure is better. Does the world have an ontological structure independent of us? Is it differentiated somehow? If so, can we know this? Do any of our current schemas approximate it?
I think that epistemology leads to and structures ontology, not the other way around. What we believe we know, determines what is, not what is determines what we think we know.
So our reason imposes structure on the world?
I wonder what happens if we do make contact with Aliens at some point. Who is the measure of what is, us or them? What mediates between the two?
The problem with this objection is that you're rather mistaken that there is anything for which it's identical from reference point x, where x is a reference point at some remove from the object/phenomenon in question, and reference point y, where y is the object/phenomenon in question. It's a truism that all existents are non-identical at all different reference points, and that there are no reference point free reference points. What makes consciousness unique in this regard is that we are able to experience the same thing from both the reference point of being the object/phenomenon in question and from a reference point at some remove from the object/phenomenon in question. There is nothing else in the universe for which that is the case. Thinking that for all of those other things, reference points from some remove are the only reference points to be had, and not bothering to notice the uniqueness of all of those different reference points from some remove, are both grave errors.
Quoting Wayfarer
Geez, well there would be the whole crux of the problem with you then--there's no activity involved in your thinking.
Quoting Wayfarer
?? The neural binding problem doesn't have anything to do with the first-person/third-person perspectival dichotomy. We could note that that dichotomy engenders some additional difficulties for solving the neural binding problem, should one believe it's actually a problem (I do not), but the neural binding problem per se has nothing to do with the perspectival dichotomy.