/lit/ - Literature

Very tempting to believe this, but consider for a moment the fact that we can discuss consciousness. Barring extreme coincidence, does this not show that consciousness interacts with the physical world?

>>19669370
>Barring extreme coincidence, does this not show that consciousness interacts with the physical world?
Why would it? That there is evidently a mind that can think about consciousness, and exercise control over the body to speak about consciousness, only indicates the simultaneous presence of consciousness and the mind+body. Consciousness being present *is* a precondition of us having knowledge of the mind thinking and speaking about consciousness, but this itself is not confirmation of an interaction.

>>19668978
>when consciousness is only an observer
All passive observation by virtue of even having visual stimuli presented to it necessarily interacts with subconscious processes in the brain. Object quality discriminations and processes of pre-reflective identification, unity, synthesis, etc. are being made without being immediately conscious of these processes. There is necessary and constant interaction.

>>19669370
Epiphenomenalists btfo yet again

>>19669672
All you have to do is ask them: >if Qualia are real, and Mary leaves a black and white room and finds herself in a world of dazzling colour, how could she express this newfound change in her conscious experience without an interaction between consciousness and her brain-mouth apparatuses?

Consciousness is physical. Your thoughts are mot separate from your brain and thoughts are physically detectable as brain activity. No amount of clever world play can change the truth. Cope.

>>19668978
based and ponty-pilled

>>19669631
>All passive observation by virtue of even having visual stimuli presented to it necessarily interacts with subconscious processes in the brain.
Having something be presented to your awareness as an observed or known thing doesn't involve any change in the awareness which knows that content. Interaction does not simply mean 'a relation between two things' but it means a 'reciprocal action or influence' between the two, if one party in a relation remains unchanging then by definition that's not an interaction since if it is remaining unchanging there is no action or influence being exerted upon it in such a way as to produce any change or effect in it.

Having awareness of one visual content, and then having the field of vision shift and another visual content being known by awareness, is not an example of an interaction with awareness because what you have in both cases is the exact same awareness with the exact same unique quality of just simply being aware and the only thing that has changed between the instances is the specific content being presented to that awareness, but differences in B (the different visual contents) don't demonstrate a difference or change in A (awareness) or that an interaction (whereby both parties are changed in some way) has taken place.

>Object quality discriminations and processes of pre-reflective identification, unity, synthesis, etc. are being made without being immediately conscious of these processes. There is necessary and constant interaction.
None of these things are examples of awareness itself or examples of interactions with awareness either, they are all part of the psychophysical mental acts or mental processes involved in taking in sensory knowledge and having it be presented as a display to awareness. Awareness doesn't make identifications, it's what is aware of the mind identifying things and assigning them meaning. Awareness doesn't synthesize things into a unity, it remains an undivided unity itself and simply is aware of the unity of simultaneous perceptual contents that the mind produces through combining different sensory inputs at once into a display.

>>19669720
>Consciousness is physical. Your thoughts are mot separate from your brain and thoughts are physically detectable as brain activity.
Consciousness is not thoughts, it's what's aware of them, what is aware of thoughts is not itself another thought, and this consciousness that is aware of thoughts has never been shown to be physical.
>>19669672
Epiphenomenalism is not the same thing as saying that awareness does not exert control (i.e. exercise volition), because in Epiphenomalism mental events in general have no impact on the physical world but in contrast to Epiphenomalism if you say that just *awareness* does not exert control or impact things this still leaves one room to place volition as something that resides in the mind, of which awareness is aware, in other words the mind can have volition and through this impact the physical world or participate in two-way interactions/causal relations with the world, even while the awareness that is aware of that mind doing so remains unchanging and not impacting anything.
>>19669693
>>if Qualia are real, and Mary leaves a black and white room and finds herself in a world of dazzling colour, how could she express this newfound change in her conscious experience without an interaction between consciousness and her brain-mouth apparatuses?
The mind can think about past experiences without an interaction occurring between the mind that is doing so and awareness. All that is required is for the experience of the first room to be assimilated to memory, and then thought can draw upon that memory to speak about it as having occurring, at no point in this is an interaction with awareness required. Awareness was aware of the sensory perception of the room, aware of the shift to the 2nd room, aware of the mind thinking about the memory, and aware of the mind directing the mouth to speak, but none of these "awareness being aware of X" entails an interaction.

>>19669831
Awareness of x has to interact with awareness of not-x, otherwise there's no way to even have awareness

>>19669844
This gives me some clarity. Are there other similar axioms/principles regarding awareness?

>>19669844
>Awareness of x has to interact with awareness of not-x, otherwise there's no way to even have awareness
That doesn't even make sense logically, when you look at a banana and have the awareness that there is visual knowledge of a banana taking place, you don't have to think about not-banana or interact with not-banana to have immediate access to the fact of visual knowledge of the banana, nor does your visual knowledge have to shift to look at something else in the room before you can know you are seeing a banana, the visual knowledge is immediately self-evident to awareness without anything else being required, just as we have immediate access to our own thoughts.

In any case, Awareness remaining itself while something else (sights, sounds etc) changes is not a valid example of an interaction. Since the sensory organs and the mind combine to produce a display of content which is given or flashed before unchanging persisting awareness, no interaction is required but the mind is what interacts with the world while awareness just remains as the non-interacting onlooker of what that mind is doing.

>>19668978
Even illusions have material effects on brain operations. If consciousness is required to process fright and fright can cause death than did not consciousness itself in that instance cause death? No one is just an observer, otherwise it would not be consciousness, but an itch, a forgettable effect

>>19669863
It seems very likely that the poster I had responded to—given that he has separated out awareness from mind and consciousness and volition as an object-less eternal presence which does not interact with anything—is from the pajeetology threads, so his source is Shankara, for whom awareness is as he is describing. Conversely, I would say that there must be changes in this awareness for it to be aware of change, and moreover, adding an "awareness" on top of consciousness does not really help us understand anything we are asking about the mind and body, because now we almost have this awareness relating to the mind as the mind relates to the body. However, if he holds that this awareness does not interact, i.e. does not interact with the mind it is somehow observing, how is this not just a repetition the related claim of a mind/body dualism? Which could have been argued for without adding "awareness" on top. The reason is of course, to be compliant with scriptures, which insist on this awareness.

>>19669890
>you don't have to think about not-banana or interact with not-banana to have immediate access to the fact of visual knowledge of the banana
Then how are you aware "there is a banana"? There was none before. Now there is. You had to have awareness that there was no banana in order to recognize that there now is one. Otherwise you would see bananas everywhere at all times because your awareness cannot change. You must have returned to monke after all

>>19669930
Correct what they are describing is the illusion of awareness, not awareness itself: equivalent to the mise en abyme produced by the confluence of two mirrors: this seeming vastness they call consciousness, but it's just a a static screenshot of consciousness.

>>19668978
Matter doesn’t exist. Only consciousness.

>>19669953
If you follow this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion then you must be aware at all times of all things not-x, right?
So I'm aware of not-banana, not-chair, not-bed, not-skirt... how far can we take this? Not-peeled banana, not-rocking chair, not-untidy bed and not-tidy bed, npt-pleated skirt..? What about the unreal, or not-real? Awareness of the not-unicorn, the not-dualcorn, not-Godzilla, the not-kobold? You can see how you'd have to constantly be aware of several infinities of not-xs.

anomalous monism, hylomorphism, dual attribute theory, and some forms of eliminativism are the only options not blown to shreds, and require straight up solpsism to work.

>>19669953
The existential extension of objectivity is prior to its logical one. Something must exist in reality (I.e., not be an impossibilia) before it can be the subject of any potential proposition.

>>19670072
What? What is this nonesense of conflating actual existence with not being impossible

>>19670084
Something is an object in one or many of five extensions. The formal, the intentional, the logical, the identifiable and the existential. The existential one simply means that this thing exists for us, either physically or ideally. The logical extension implies that anything not logically impossible can become an object for a true proposition.

>>19670005
All those not-x's are just a manifold of absences. So when you are "aware" of something like the banana, it was absent from your awareness previously. Unless you are aware of the eternal unchanging banana which is ever present and self-revealing in all objects, even those which only appeared to be not banana

>>19670072
>Something must exist in reality (I.e., not be an impossibilia) before it can be the subject of any potential proposition.
Clearly this is not the case or people wouldn't have been making shit up since the dawn of recorded thought

>>19669909
>If consciousness is required to process fright and fright can cause death than did not consciousness itself in that instance cause death?
Fear is a mental modification which you are aware of, it's not awareness itself, if fear causes the death then that's an unaware (insentient) mental modification that is causing death, not awareness. If one asks how can fear be generated in response to one knowing exterior events without the knowing awareness participating in a causal relation with that fear? The answer is that the knowledge of the exterior frightful event involves two things, 1) the mental processing of that event including the visual data accompanying it, and 2) the awareness having immediate and unfettered access to that mental processing of that event. #1 can generate the fear response without #2 causing anything. Mental processing like thoughts can directly affect other mental processing and also initiate downstream physical changes, without needing the intervention of awareness.

>>19669930
> adding an "awareness" on top of consciousness does not really help us understand anything we are asking about the mind and body,
To the contrary, it helps explain why thoughts are contents that are revealed to us in a manner analogous to seeing external objects, we are not identical with or comprised of those thoughts, we *know* them through an inner sight, just like external objects are known through an outer sight.
>how is this not just a repetition the related claim of a mind/body dualism?
The following paragraph helps distinguishes them:

The unfolding of thought forms is an integral part of the evolution of prakṛti, and mental processes are simply the result of appropriate transformations of unconscious material substance. It is perhaps worth noting at this point that the Sāṅkhya-Yoga (and Advaita) view thereby avoids one of the most serious pitfalls of Cartesian dualism, since on the Indian account, mental causation does not violate any physical conservation laws. By including mind in the realm of matter, mental events are granted causal efficacy, and are thereby able to directly initiate bodily motions. And, conversely, material objects are able to have genuine mental effects, as required by normal accounts of, say, the flow of information involved in perceptual awareness of the environment. The representational content of sensory experiences, such as those which attend perceiving the blueness of the sky or the pungent flavor of espresso, can now be treated as straightforward consequences of the physical environment's causal impingements upon the mind. This is because, in contrast to standard Western dualism, there is no longer a causal/ontological gulf separating mind from matter

>Which could have been argued for without adding "awareness" on top.
It could have, leading to a Descartes-style dualism, which has problems that aren't found in the Advaita conception of awareness and which is a different conception of mind and awareness, and which has the problem of conflicting with our experience by not accounting for our awareness of thoughts
>The reason is of course, to be compliant with scriptures, which insist on this awareness.
There is also the fact that this is actually how we experience awareness of our own mental events, i.e. it accords with the phenomenology of how experience takes place. To say that thoughts or visual perceptions are either self-knowing or not known by anything (in contrast to known by an awareness) is in stark contrast to our experience.

>>19670127
Imagined things are not impossible things, quite obviously, as they have to be possible as the object of imagination. If you abandon your materialistic biases, you'd realize there is no reason not to grant them existence.

>>19670166
I knew I recognized that smell. But if you're saying mind is just matter to escape cartesian dualism, you can't add a pseudo-mind in the form of "awareness" and not be called out on it. If thoughts (from the mind) are revealed to awareness "analogous to seeing external objects" you are positing the exact same problem of relationship which the mind and body had. You could get rid of awareness/pseudo-mind and have this, so adding it does not do any better a job explaining things, just localizing them to a different scholastic context.

>>19669953
>>you don't have to think about not-banana or interact with not-banana to have immediate access to the fact of visual knowledge of the banana
>Then how are you aware "there is a banana"? There was none before. Now there is.
Awareness is continuous from the moment of non-sight of the banana to the moment of the banana being captured in sight and beyond these moments as well. When you have an unchanging persisting awareness, the difference between "no banana seen" and "banana seen" is constituted solely by a difference in the display being presented to awareness, hence no interaction is needed. The awareness that knows each is totally alike in both cases.
>You had to have awareness that there was no banana in order to recognize that there now is one.
You are making the mistake here of conflating two entirely separate things, 1) immediate non-conceptual awareness of one's own sensory perceptions, and 2) a conceptual thought about the contents of one's sensory perceptions that is relating it to other things in some way.

Having 1) or immediate non-conceptual access to (awareness of) the visual sight of the banana does not require that banana be contrasted with non-banana, it just simply requires the visual sight of banana take place, and that an awareness be present which is aware of (knowing) that sight

Having 2) or thinking about that banana in relation to the non-banana from before, does require knowledge of the prior absence of the banana

It seems you were trying to prove #1 requires the non-banana, but you slipped up and starting talking about something totally different which is #2, but that doesn't prove that #1 or immediate access to the visual perception of banana, requires the non-banana (and it doesn't).

>>19669963
>Correct what they are describing is the illusion of awareness,
Awareness can't be an illusion because illusions aren't self-aware and they have no sentient/subjective experience or capacity for it

>>19670213
>Imagined things are not impossible things
I didn't say that. You said something had to exist to be possible, which is either completely backwards or your attempt to overturn causality/production altogether. Things do not have to exist to be proposed (potentially "real"). Lots of things are proposed and believed in without being real in any objective sense.

Watch a loved one succumb to dementia

There, idealism BTFO. It's a shame but it's reality

>>19670035
>anomalous monism, hylomorphism, dual attribute theory, and some forms of eliminativism are the only options not blown to shreds,
Advaita's explanation has not been blown to shreds, and while it superficially resembles solipsism it is different from solipsism by acknowledging that other people's awareness is also real and taking place just as much as one's own awareness is.

>>19670255
Why are you talking about causality? Causality is the rule of the material world. We are clearly discussing ideal entities, which are intentional in nature.

>>19670257
>Watch a loved one succumb to dementia
>There, idealism BTFO
There's no difference whatsoever between the awareness of someone with dementia and the awareness of someone who has brilliant and perfectly healthy mind, the only differences that can be identified between the two people are in the things known as objects by awareness (and hence which are not awareness) like thoughts, emotions, fears, etc.

>>19670239
>When you have an unchanging persisting awareness, the difference between "no banana seen" and "banana seen" is constituted solely by a difference in the display being presented to awareness, hence no interaction is needed.
But there is no such awareness without appealing to your theology, because awareness is nothing if it does not have a relationship with what it is and is not aware of. You'd simply have everything all at once forever, or... nothing. No change, no awareness of change, because of an unchanging awareness. Now of course, you agree, because all those objects to be aware of are maya, or illusion, in the first place. They are negated. So why discuss consciousness with a nihilist? Just doing my public service announcement for the new year!

>>19670244
Dreams

>>19670267
You originally said things had to exist in order to even be possible. This is a way of getting rid of causality since nothing is ever potential anymore because it already exists. So if that's nonsense to you then you ought to rethink your pov

>>19670244
Your sense of sentience is false, purely second hand

>>19670230
>But if you're saying mind is just matter to escape cartesian dualism, you can't add a pseudo-mind in the form of "awareness" and not be called out on it.
Awareness isn't a "pseudo-mind" but it differs from the mind in almost every aspect. There is nothing to "call out" because this is indeed the truth, what's actually going on, and it's free of any sort of contradiction.
>If thoughts (from the mind) are revealed to awareness "analogous to seeing external objects" you are positing the exact same problem of relationship which the mind and body had.
No it's not, because observing something requires no interaction (you don't interact with a distant mountain or star by seeing it, the same is true of awareness observing thoughts) and so there is no mind-body interactionist problem present that would normally present a problem for Descartes-style dualism. Have you even been paying attention or did you already forget this was pointed out in multiple posts above? The only problem of interaction arises if you say #1 exerts control over or causes effects in #2, but if #1 is simply aware of #2 without exerting control over it or causing effects in it, then there is no problem to begin with.
>You could get rid of awareness/pseudo-mind and have this, so adding it does not do any better a job explaining things, just localizing them to a different scholastic context.
No that's wrong, because if you get rid of a separate awareness then there is no way to account for how we actually have knowledge of things in a way that aligns with our experience. *Something* is aware of thoughts or we wouldn't' know them at all; however we don't experience individual thoughts as being self-aware of themselves, this leaves observing witness-consciousness as the answer for what knows them, this is both the most logical answer and what best characterizes how our actual lived experience takes place.

>>19670277
Dreams aren't an example of an illusion being self-aware, they are known by us, i.e. our awareness experiences them. Even while the dream presents an illusion of being real we experience it through a real awareness.

>>19670301
The mind is aware. You're taking awareness away from it and making it a super-mind that does what mind does, and you needed to do this because you made mind into matter/body. It's very transparent.

>>19670305
>you can be aware you are dreaming, a change between wakefulness and sleep, therefore awareness is unchanging even though everything else changes
Your theology does not help us understand consciousness

>>19670274
>You'd simply have everything all at once forever, or... nothing. No change, no awareness of change, because of an unchanging awareness.
Awareness being unchanging doesn't rule out awareness of change taking place, if awareness is A and changing objects are B, a change in A is not required for a change in B to take place. If A remains unchanging while revealing through the fact of its presence whatever B is, then changes in B alone will automatically produce awareness of changing things even while A remains constant and unchanging.

>>19670312
>The mind is aware.
No, it's not, this is completely contradicted by our experience and this is clear to anyone who thinks about it who is not burdened by ideological dogmas.

The mind is comprised of things like thoughts and emotions, and these are clearly *not* self-aware. A thought or emotion that had its own self-awareness which rose and fell with the rising and falling of that momentary thought or emotion would not be able to combine with anything else to produce the experience that we have of seamlessly knowing multiple thoughts in a smooth and orderly succession. Moreover, the fact that awareness persists during the transition from one thought to another and is aware of the transition shows that those thoughts are not self-aware, since an awareness belonging to one of those two thoughts could not itself witness the transition between them.

>>19670323
>Your theology does not help us understand consciousness
I'm not talking about theology at the moment, but phenomenology and philosophy of mind, and what I'm saying is just describing how consciousness and awareness of things actually takes place

>>19670325
A aware of B is not A unaware of B. Change!

>>19670354
I am not committed to an unchanging awareness that cannot be demonstrated, so I have no ideological issue with the mind being aware and changing over time with what changes it becomes aware of.
>>19670361
Your doctrine of an immortal transcendent awareness is of the same genus as theology

>>19669370
If this is the case, people like Daniel Dennett who deny the existence of consciousness is strong evidence that P-zombies/NPCs are real.

http://www.jaronlanier.com/zombie.html

>>19670284
Why are you talking about causality in regards to existence and potentiality? Causality doesn't lead from potentiality to actuality. A potential object is at least real as an ideality for the mind entertaining it as a potential.

Non-materialists have yet to effectively argue why consciousness emerges with increasingly complex brains. Human experience is richer than primates whose experiences are richer than canines whose experiences are richer than spiders and so on. If consciousness wasn't purely physical, then a clear path in terms of evolution of complex brains having richer experiences wouldn't be true

>>19670635
You're confusing consciousness with the mind

>>19670635
I’m not a consciousness nigger (Advaita Vedanta only really works by abstracting consciousness completely from its object), but you could certainly argue that evolution is a mental phenomenon. The fact that you already perceive the external world through the mind and don’t have direct access to it is enough for the burden of proof to lie on you to prove that the phenomena you perceive aren’t mind-dependent.

>>19670635
You have to distinguish between the brain as the center of cognitive activity, the mind as center of psychological activity, and the intellect as the seat of eidetic and transcendental constitution.
The intellect happens within language, so to speak, so only brains and minds capable of advanced linguistic capabilities can see the intellectual reality, and advances in cognitive and psychological capabilities should eventually result in the appearance of intellection.

>>19670635
You have it backwards

Monke aren't discussing consciousness on 4channel, they're happy and doing moke shit with their friends

>>19670485
What cause has something to be actual rather than potential... hmmm? But if things have to exist to even be potential, this question is gone.

>>19670679
>The fact that you already perceive the external world through the mind and don’t have direct access to it is enough for the burden of proof to lie on you to prove that the phenomena you perceive aren’t mind-dependent.

Sure, but the fact that physicalist explanations for how the world works accurately explains all sorts of things from the timing of eclipses, to what the weather will be next week, to how to get your dog to stop barking is all evidence on the side of physicalist theories. That chemicals can drastically alter perception or disrupt conciousness entirely (anesthesia), that you can predict how a person's thoughts or perceptions will be affected by brain injury with a fair amount of accuracy, etc.

Physicalists have a wealth of evidence to support their claims. The computer you use to read this, the electricity that powers it, the internet, etc. all work because physicalist theories about how the world works accurately predict what happens.

That alone is pretty great evidence, but what is better is that some of the essential laws of physics never get observed being violated. Granted, this is subject to the attack that plenty of "laws" have been subject to revision, but the fact that billions or observations consistently show the same laws of physics working is about as good as it gets for anything based in empiricism.

Now, obviously there are plenty of reasons why physicalism might be wrong. We might be trapped in a hell dimension by some Demiurge, and really subjective experience is the light of the Pleroma trapped in a physical prison. Or maybe we're in some sort of Matrix-like digital simulation. Decartes' Demon could be directing all our observations. We could all be Boltzmann Brains who only think we've been living for more than a moment as we come into being due to random combinations of matter, etc.

The problem I see here for people who want to push idealism is that they never seem to have solid answers for why their particular idealism is more likely than others. If you want to argue for idealism, it increasingly has become the case that you have to say "empircle evidence isn't valid." Which generally also destroys any evidence for why they think their theory is correct as opposed to say, solpsism, or being in VR.

Of course, various forms of physicalist theories have major problems too. Like, why should I buy into eliminativism or various takes hinging on predicate dualism, etc. when the best answer based on observation is "we don't know. It is going to take a long time and major advances in scientific knowledge about the brain to make these claims answerable with any degree of accuracy." However, at least those guys don't have to throw out empiricism or resort to claims of magical substance to make their indefensible arguments.

>>19670779
>Sure, but the fact that physicalist explanations for how the world works accurately explains all sorts of things from the timing of eclipses, to what the weather will be next week, to how to get your dog to stop barking is all evidence on the side of physicalist theories.
Yes, it does work within a physicalist paradigm. But that is just physicalism affirming itself. It also doesn’t show that those things aren’t dependent on the mind (the laws of nature, being, individuation, etc.)
>Physicalists have a wealth of evidence to support their claims. The computer you use to read this, the electricity that powers it, the internet, etc. all work because physicalist theories about how the world works accurately predict what happens.
I don’t think any idealist would argue that you can’t make theories about the world and have them be successful within certain models of the world. The argument is a metaphysical one.
>That alone is pretty great evidence, but what is better is that some of the essential laws of physics never get observed being violated.
Again, because you have a model of the world that affirms itself. What is your theory for truth? What criterion do you use?

>>19670764
>What cause has something to be actual rather than potential
None, that's specifically what I was saying, causality doesnt enter into the equation. Actuality and potentiality are simply different intentional modes toward any object.

>>19670831
Modes of what? Wouldn't a thing be actual, potential[lly actual], or just imaginary? If a thing has to be actual to be potential then everything already 'is;' there's no way to go from potential to actual. Nothing can be caused or produced or made actual since it would already be. This is a consequence of putting actual as necessary to potential.

>>19670779
>Physicalists have a wealth of evidence to support their claims. The computer you use to read this, the electricity that powers it, the internet, etc. all work because physicalist theories about how the world works accurately predict what happens.
Theories which have nothing to do with the vast majority of the content of consciousness. Physicalists dont distill syntactical categories, they don't create axioms for presentation, they don't breed kinds in captivity.
Idealists do not (or rather, the wise ones should not) deny the truth of those theories about the natural world. They do not however recognize that these theories are exhausting or even capable of handling our ideal reality.

>>19670862
A potential object is an object perceived outside of an act of natural perception (so, necessarily as an ideality), in which you thematize the object as one that could have been perceived as either an ideality under the mode of actuality, or as a physical reality given to you with its intuitive presence.

>>19670874
I don't think that works. Physicalists are making claims about the causes of mental phenomena. You want to rebut them, you can't just handwave away the entire contradiction by saying "those theories aren't exhaustive." Sure, they aren't. Very few people say they are; no one looks the the natural sciences for ethical guidance or a theory of aesthetics. But if you want to argue they arent correct about physical producing mental states, I fear you either have to say something silly like "empiricism is ok except when it says something about the mental world, then it can't be trusted," having to reject the natural sciences and empiricism altogether, or finding a way to refute them using observational data, which you can't.

Your point sort of seems like the equivalent of putting your fingers in your ears.

>>19671001
I don’t think you understand science. It never claimed to give absolute truths about reality. You, however, are treating it like a dogma and are “putting your fingers in your ears.” Most science doesn’t even make claims on these types of things: it is entirely descriptive (or at least good science is). The fact that you want to take the description as an undeniable truth is your own epistemological religion.

Proto psychology general continues. Keep it up friends.

>>19671001
>Physicalists are making claims about the causes of mental phenomena
That is an apt way of putting it. Cognition enables intellection in the long run, and certain entry level questions about intellection may be resolved by cognitive science. However, the building is not the build.
Empirical sciences are thoroughly incapable of handling the higher degree entities that we handle every single day. The very idea of treating conceptualization as a form of empirical abstraction is contradictory.

>>19671001
>Physicalists are making claims about the causes of mental phenomena
Different anon.
You understand that certain types of claims about mental phenomena make themselves into claims into *every* phenomena by inheritance. The end result is a very very circuitous circular argument, which is why a different type of science is necessary when discussing epistemologically significant phenomena. A psychology not identical with brute neurology.
I am a philosophical empiricist, and I am implying that because philosophy/psychology is ultimately responsible for addressing the kinds of epistemological question discussed ITT, it must take its place as the queen of the sciences. It's not that the other natural sciences are in any way false, but rather that a true interpretation of them requires more than just mathematical models.

>>19671193
Based. Science is tied up with our own mental categories and definitions of things (so is mathematics, really) - which is further tied up with the utility of the definitions for a society and the world and so on. What you get at the end is a circular truth that affirms itself. Moreover, science is constantly evolving and adapting to these mind-dependent categories. Anon would have to prove that there is a mind-independent reality through his mind.

>>19669693
>without an interaction between consciousness and her brain-mouth apparatuses?
Use her hands, fucking idiot.

>>19669720
>thoughts are physically detectable as brain activity
Prove it.

>>19670635
How do you know how rich the experience is of a dog or spider? Have you lived as a dog or spider?

>>19671030
I am sorry anon, but I think you are projecting here. I don't see myself saying anything of the sort there, and it certainly isn't what I believe.

I studied neuroscience, and I am well aware of its major limitations, and inability to give us a good answer the the Hard Problem.

I personally think it is a major issue that far too many scientists will, at best, have an introduction stating something to the effect of "everything I am going to say of course, is contingent on suspending serious epistemological issues that undermine materialism as an explanation of the universe, questions of semiotics and meaning, and. problems with empiricism in general. And of course everything I am about to tell you is going to be accessible only as mental phenomena, and any access you have to this material world I am describing is invariably filtered through the faculties of the mind.... but let's handwave that away for now and I'll give you a description of what the universe is from a God's eye point of view." I'm attracted to areas of study like the nexus of semiotics and biology because the lines get blurred there.

That wasn't my argument. My argument is that, if you accept empiricism and the precepts that guide scientific inquiry, and the validity of statistics, then you have to admit that physicalists theories in mind-body philosophy have a great deal of evidence backing them up. Indeed, it seems hard to me to see how you can deny a strong causal relationship between brain states and conscious experience without also having to jettison observation as a valid source of knowledge as a whole. There is just too much experimental data linking them. That doesn't mean we have the whole story, but we have a part. Likewise, the standard model in physics can't even incorporate gravity, but I think it's fair to say mass has an effect on space-time.

Anyhow, you didn't offer a rebuttal. You appear to have just decided to swap my post for the one you would like to criticize instead and replied to that.

>>19671030
I'm not really sure what you mean here. Do you mean cognition is too complex for science to say anything about? Or that science can never say anything about cognition? For example, even in 800 years, we have AI and we can 3D print people's brains with enough accuracy that the same person seems to emerge from them, but we still won't be able to say what conciousness is or what causes it? Or would AI and the construction of human conciousness through means other than sex and birth be impossible for some reason?

I certainly can't agree with expansive arguments like that. To be sure, there is a lot about conciousness that is a mystery. However, there are also extremely well documented relationships between physical phenomena and conciousness, and well developed causal mechanisms that appear to demonstrate how these work.

>>19671551
For example, no one can say exactly how anesthesia works, because you can't locate "conciousness" in the brain, but we do know that the administration of given substances that will pass the BBB are going to cause behavior consistent with unconsciousness reliably, and that people will reliably report the subjective experience of going under and losing conciousness when we give them anesthesia. We can also predict which chemicals will work well at causing loss of consciousness based on their chemical composition and how they're likely to interact with neurons. That's a pretty good causal link.

I mean, we don't have a holistic model of physics, but you can still say, epistemological caveats aside, how lift works and allows us to build planes. The link is exactly the same. You don't have to know exactly how matter works to get some sort of explanation. It's "the truth is the whole," not "only the whole is the truth."

>>19671589
People dream while under anesthesia. I wouldnt call that a loss of consciousness.

>>19671193
Yeah, I get that, and I think you're correct in your general assessment. I think this is why QM and cognitive/neuroscience are the two places philosophers and scientists continue to work quite closely.

I'm not sure if I follow how the circularity involved possess such a big problem though. It's circular, but it doesn't seem to be a particularly vicious circle. You can have working circular definitions (e.g. natural numbers, and they can elucidate a lot more than logically superior analytic statements using tautologies, which sometimes don't do any lifting at all.

Mind-body philosophy poses all sorts of difficult ontological questions, more so with physicalists theories (although I'm not sure how much more so), sure. How does this negate any of the findings that connect physical phenomena with mental ones? I'm still not seeing how the same methods that work for studying how a person's muscle fibers work suddenly break down when you try to look at how their eye produces vision. To be sure, the questions raised by the second are much harder, perhaps impossible to answer to our satisfaction, but the bits we can peice together would still seem to stand.

>>19671614
Well, I suppose it depends how you want to define being concious. I can recall deep sleep dreams fairly often, but they aren't much like regular dreams at all. More disjointed, repetitive fretting without particularly coherent thoughts being formed, and an absence of awareness of any sensory stimulation. It's conciousness in that some part of me is aware of something, but it's like 70% of the systems are offline and they are no longer connected to each other, if I had to use a bad analogy.

But I have a strange memory. I can remember things from when I was very young. Crying at night in my crib. Shitting my diaper once. And I recall parts of being under anesthesia and was unfortunately fairly aware during a surgery, but I also lose my keys all the fucking time...

>>19671551
>if you accept empiricism and the precepts that guide scientific inquiry, and the validity of statistics, then you have to admit that physicalists theories in mind-body philosophy have a great deal of evidence backing them up. Indeed, it seems hard to me to see how you can deny a strong causal relationship between brain states and conscious experience without also having to jettison observation as a valid source of knowledge as a whole. There is just too much experimental data linking them.
I am sympathetic to your position, but it seems entirely arbitrary to me. If you admit that you do not have access to a reality-in-itself, why posit that you do? Because it’s easier that way? I don’t think a truly inquiring mind would do such a thing. Everything that you are working with is filtered through the mind, and even the word “filtering” implies too much. There is no strict duality between the mind and matter. There is no objective, ready-made reality. I will admit that I am a philosopher and not a scientist, but I believe even quantum mechanics has come to similar conclusions.
>My argument is that, if you accept empiricism and the precepts that guide scientific inquiry, and the validity of statistics, then you have to admit that physicalists theories in mind-body philosophy have a great deal of evidence backing them up.
Why? Why can’t these things be mental? You already experience them as mental representation. Why try to go beyond that and affirm it as something alienated from the mind?
>Indeed, it seems hard to me to see how you can deny a strong causal relationship between brain states and conscious experience without also having to jettison observation as a valid source of knowledge as a whole.
Cause and effect is how your mind represents things to you. There is no objective causality existing “out there.” Nor is there any real duality between entities outside the one you imagine.
>I'm not really sure what you mean here. Do you mean cognition is too complex for science to say anything about?
I’m referring to your dogmatic approach to truth. I’m not sure if you have ever studied epistemology, but when people make statements about the truth it is polite to provide a criterion for that truth. Your criterion, however, seems to be empiricism itself. This amounts to saying that it’s true because it’s true.

>>19668978
When I walk into a room I see it. As simple as

>>19668978
This is pansychism which is my best bet for what's true, though maybe not in this way. This doesn't answer the question of why in this localised area the awareness feels like it is seperate from its environment and the greater awareness.

If the consciousness doesn't actively DO anything and inform decisions, why would an illusion of discreteness be needed for the brain to make decisions in its interest?

I think its more likely that outside of brains the "awareness" is super dim and retarded. Like not aware enough to be considered aware in any recognizable sense. Like the same note of a tuning fork ringing forever with like no variation

Rather it is when matter is sufficiently complex and reactive in structure that you get signifigant awareness. The complexity of a brain as opposed to basically any other object is the dim, one note "am" of matter in general knitted into an actual mind that can truly experience stuff. Like supposing you could take the note of the tuning fork and multiply it, manipulate volume, rythym, tone, layer it, and produce complex music.

In this scenario you feel that you are seperate from your environment in the same way an incredibly well sculpted and complex sand castle is obviously distinct from the rest of the sand on the beach.

>>19671681
>Why try to go beyond that and affirm it as something alienated from the mind?

Mostly pragmatic grounds. When my car starts misfiring, physical explanations of the world work quite well at helping me figure out what I need to do to fix it. I've not found any other theory that is particularly helpful.

I assume that if you developed all the symptoms of strep throat, you'd probably call a physician and get some antibiotics, right?

Now "matter" might not meaningfully exist without an observer. You can argue this multiple ways. A semiotic triangle presupposes a recipient. You can also get at the necessity of a "mind" of sorts for the universe to exist via other systems. Pure undifferentiated being is pure abstraction, nothing, a slight spin on the textbook example of Hegelian dialectical vis-a-vis sense certainty. It could not exist at all. But pragmatically, I can't see doing away with it and I've yet to meet any idealist who can either.

>Why can’t these things be mental?
What's the difference between mental phenomena that invariably follow the laws of physical science and physical science being "real?"

Physicalist models are explicitly just that, models. You get physics to work by glossing over fine detail and summarizing so that you can apply mathematics to what you're working with. Sure, plenty of people don't get this, but it's still explicit in its philosophical origins.

It would seem to me that these two things get close to sharing an identity, with the exception of an ontological difference that I'm not sure really makes any sense.

>I'm not referring to your dogmatic approach to truth. I’m not sure if you have ever studied epistemology, but when people make statements about the truth it is polite to provide a criterion for that.

I don't think I'm being particularly dogmatic. Yes, I've studied epistemology. I'm most attracted to Hegel's particular kind of coherence epistemology, where truth is knowledge of the totality of all being, being coming to know itself as itself, the Absolute, or recognition of the self in absolute other. However, for practical purposes, the correspondence works a lot better.

Anyhow, if you want to discount the possibility of the noumenal, I can see grounds for that, although I don't agree with it. I don't have a particularly strong opinion. My point was that, if you accept that empiricism allows you to make valid claims about the world, you have the except that the physicalist models predict how things outside the mind influence the mind. I don't know how the ontological status of physical things is all that relevant. If you're going to go along with chemistry, you're going to be stuck with a lot of neuroscience too.

Now, I can see grounds for doubting all experience, I just don't see how that gets you anywhere (whereas I actually disagree with doubting the rationality of being).

>>19671681
On a side note, you might be disappointed if you look into QM. Yes, "observation" plays a role, but observation doesn't imply sentience. A mechanical sensor can be the observer. There is still the philosophical argument of "does the sensor measure anything if no one looks," but this is the same old "if a tree falls in a forest does it make a sound," repackaged and attached to QM for no reason except it sounds mysticalish.

>>19672167
That sounds snide on rereading, but it wasn't intended that way. It's just that "quantum" shit gets roped into "God of the gaps" arguments all the time, and it seems silly when you think that people were doing this exact same thing with electricity and magnetism when they seemed magical too. Nothing new under the sun.

>>19668978
Why can consciousness override certain biological impulses such as thrill seeking, hunger strikes or even suicide? Also imagination is important in human function (eg imagining what a desk you want to order online will look like in your room to see if it will fit, making a trap and imagining what will happen when the prey walks into it, or even as simple as imagining what is making the sound in the bushes), Does this mean that imagination is seperate to consciousness? As shown in the examples imagination does affect decision making

>>19672159
>I've not found any other theory that is particularly helpful.
So you admit that your opinion is based on nothing but the utility it holds for you?
>Pure undifferentiated being is pure abstraction,
This is funny because I don’t believe in Being. You, however, seem to think that matter exists independently and with self-existence.
>Physicalist models are explicitly just that, models. You get physics to work by glossing over fine detail and summarizing so that you can apply mathematics to what you're working with. Sure, plenty of people don't get this, but it's still explicit in its philosophical origins.
You seem to be agreeing with me at this point.
>My point was that, if you accept that empiricism allows you to make valid claims about the world, you have the except that the physicalist models predict how things outside the mind influence the mind.
My theory of truth is dependent origination. I think that certain models can produce certain truths so long as you accept the model. Due to the problems I outlined with materialism, I don’t accept materialism. This does not mean, however, that I deny the world. I believe that the world is real but dependent on mental categories and ideas (a substantial self being one of the main ones) which then produce a world of self-existing entities and duality.
>I don't know how the ontological status of physical things is all that relevant.
That was all I wanted to question. Whether or not you think this is useful is your business. I personally find materialism alienating and uncomfortable. I’m not an idealist either though, despite giving that impression. I just wanted to show you the other side of the coin.

>>19672225
And I apologize for being unnecessarily aggressive in this post. I’ve encountered plenty of materialists that refuse to engage at all with me, so I kind of transferred that to you. Best of luck with your investigations, anon.

>>19672225
Oh, and I misinterpreted your statement on being. I thought you were arguing that it existed absolutely.

>>19671551
>if you accept empiricism
Why should I in this particular instance. The content of your consciousness is separate from your experience in many cases. All indications show that ideation is not a process of empirical abstraction. No amount of drugs ingested will alter the idea of number itself, but it will impair the cognition and psychological activity of the mind which is able to consider the world as mathematical
>then you have to admit that physicalists theories in mind-body philosophy have a great deal of evidence backing them up
They are perfectly valid if they limit themselves to the boundaries defined by the object of their science, i.e. cognitive operations. Which, to be fair, is the vast majority of the time, and idealists anti-materialists are generally not generous enough to recognize it.
>>19671589
All idealism do not rely on some mystical component. Husserl's transcendental idealism goes so far as to say that even God would need a body, as all consciousness is the consciousness of an incarnated being. Intellection requires a body working under normal circumstances because all form of objectification requires a subject-pole.

>>19672129
>This is pansychism which is my best bet for what's true, though maybe not in this way. This doesn't answer the question of why in this localised area the awareness feels like it is seperate from its environment and the greater awareness.
The answer is that there is no panpsychism, but that consciousness is largely inter-subjective. You cannot account of your conscious activity without also taking account of your cultural and formative background. This is also how you defeat solipsism despite the problem of phenomenological closure.

>>19672415
>number itself
Bros... Plato was a mistake

In non-materialiast systems how do different people interact?

Why does not getting the mental object of food make you hungry? Why does not getting it long enough make your conciousness shut down and eventually disappear with death? Same with oxygen?

Or does conciousness continue after death in your model? I'm especially curious about these and how much people believe them, because I assume you still don't drive into incoming traffic and eat food, right?

I'm curious. I've read a lot of objections to materialism, but then these don't expand on how their system does work, just how it doesn't.

Also, IDK if I agree with idealism being the most readily apparent and the burden of proof being on materialists. Children think the world exists. All ancient societies thoughy the physical world is real. Every major religion has a story of how the physical world is created. Doubting physical bodies is the non-standard thing. Dualism and idealism are recent inventions. Hell, the afterlife is a physical place is most ancient religions. In Christianity, you get a new body and go to a new Earth.

>>19672517
I think a lot of people have the wrong idea about idealism. In an idealist model, something being mental does not mean that it exists purely in that little inward space situated in the head (we only do this because a lot of sensory organs are situated in the head). To an idealist, the whole world is contained in the mind. Time, space, causality, the body and even that little inward space is mental to them. So when people ask questions like this it doesn’t really make a lot of sense. It would be like asking how materialists account for the imagination or something.

>>19672517
Depends, an absolutist subjective idealist will not be able to provide a plausible explanation.
However the idealist primary claim is not a negative one, contrary to the materialist. It is about the primacy of ideality in the phenomenological order. Husserl, a transcendental idealist, never denied the existence of the material world, or that the empirical sciences were appropriate to their object, if that object was within the realm of Nature.
But he did recognize the apodicticity of the problem of phenomenal closure, that is, that all contact with the material world are made within consciousness. Empiricists are right to behave themselves as positivists within the confines of their own sciences and bypass the problem itself, as it requires an exegesis of inter-subjectivity that would paralyze the entirety of natural sciences, while for the most part, empirical sciences *do* manage to limit themselves appropriately to their object.

>>19672682
>phenomenological order
What does this mean? From my understanding, phenomenology is the study of phenomena as they appear in consciousness. Also, what do you think about Heidegger and Nietzsche?

>>19668978
If you have gone ghost hunting enough you'll realize that consciousness continues for sure... I thought ghost hunting was bullshit and I only went because I was dating a chick who was into it, but after like 20+ ghost hunts I started having experiences I couldn't explain. I even saw a floating wet black ball once. Too crazy!

>>19668978
>since to observe something doesn’t necessitate interacting with or affecting it in any way whatsoever.
study physics kid
it's impossible to observe anything without affecting it

>>19671672
>and an absence of awareness of any sensory stimulation
This is the important part. Consciousness is simply awareness. It isnt awareness of sensory input.

>>19668978
>no you chud you cannot believe in a God you have to be nihilist estronaut like me!!!!

kek

>>19672702
>What does this mean? From my understanding, phenomenology is the study of phenomena as they appear in consciousness.
This is not wrong, however to understand it specifically you have to practice both the epoche ('suspension of judgement', originally a stoic practice, basically the neutralization of all ontological biases within your observations) and the phenomenological reduction, which is a state of pure receptivity despite a neutralization of "taken-for-grantedness" which is achieved through practicing eidetic reductions (as eidetic reductions ends us pointing us toward the realm of the transcendental). Once you have, you will realize that you are effectively confined to the limits of your consciousness, but that the very practice of phenomenology reveals a transcendental content to consciousness, which reinstates in the end the originary value of all that you have bracketed away throughout this reduction.
> Also, what do you think about Heidegger and Nietzsche?
I read Nietzsche nearly 20 years ago, and I haven't really felt the urge to return to him. In what sense would he be useful here?
As for Heidegger, I must recognized that a) I am biased against him because of both his personal and philosophical handling of Husserl's legacy, and b) I have not given him the proper attention to have a worthy opinion. I am older (37), I do not work in philosophy or academia, and my quality reading time is fairly limited, especially since I like writing at the same time. Between the 40k pages constituting the Husserlanias and the writings of the rest of the member of the School of Brentano, I am not entirely sure I'll ever get to read him.

>>19668978
>YOU are not the PERSON

uhhh ok!

>>19668978
Worthless speculation because it doesn't even factor in the interrelatedness of mind, in other words trapped in the error of solipsist atomism

>>19672805
Sounds pretty interesting. Have you gained anything interesting from this philosophy? I’m not one of those people that think that philosophy has to have a practical purpose, just curious.

>>19672866
It has completely changed my outlook, at 20 I was a materialist antitheist that didn't believe anything that hadn't been written by a phd holder in the last 10 years. And if anything, you can see it as a meditative practice bound by philosophical inquiry, aimed at producing a more intimate understanding of your introspective life.

>>19672866
>>19672896
And to be clear, I wasn't "convinced" by Husserl's arguments the way you espouse Hegelianism because you read Hegel and it made sense to you somehow. For the first 5 years of reading and studying phenomenology, I argued that Husserl was at least a realist and that even then his theory was fully compatible with a scientific materialism. I even argued this in a dissertation (the teacher was *very* generous and gave me points on my argumentation rather than my understanding of the reading material, obviously). For the next decade I tried as hard as I could to justify the inconsistencies in my own work from a materialist point-of-view. It has only been a couple of years that I have finally understood that I had to let go of my biases to properly advance.

>>19672914
>>19672896
Have you read much of Fichte? I'd guess you would have, if so what's your view of his thought?

>>19672926
Unfortunately no, not apart from excerpt in my German Idealism course, and Husserl's lecture on Fichte of 1917. It's shameful to say, but I feel that is a dire lack on my part. He seems to have made even more breakthroughs than Kant, and yet I know him as barely more than a footnote.
Another one for the list.
Man I'm seriously starting to despair.

>>19672967
I wouldn't despair, I've seen people write so much about Husserl that seems to line up with my own thoughts, after having read Kant and some other well known philosophers. Yet I still have not touched a single book of Husserl's, and yet I keep "intending" to. In the end I do not think it's that important. The thoughts in your own mind are what are most important, not the quantity of literature you've read. You might read Fichte only to find out that it adds nothing new to Husserl, yet without the former necessarily being "wrong" or anything like that.