Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Philosophy Club

[Gertie]

Faustus

Consciousness as in: qualia + the constant first-person-POV, is universal. That's why science has never found any sign of them.

Or, science hasn't found them because they are the artificial creation of confused Western philosophers and don't actually exist.

Now if you mix these two together, you can get something as stupid as 'I think therefore I am', which implies that the constant first-person-POV is somehow dependent on someone's individual brain/mind.

Can you supply so much as one uncontroversial example of a conscious entity with no nervous system, or am I wildly misreading what you are actually saying here, which seems absurd on the only reading I can struggle to give it?

If you believe your own experience doesn't exist, you're beyond confused.

And panpsychism is a respectable hypothesis. The fact that we don't recognise/assume first person experience, which is unobservable, except in beings which are made like us and exhibit it in the ways we do, doesn't discount its existence.

[Sculptor1]

The unfounded assumption is the idea that science has never found any sign of them which is clealy bunkum. Had it not been for science we'd not even be talking about them.

Oh, so the first mention of qualia occurred in a scientific paper? Which one was it? Who made the discovery and let the rest of the world know these wonderful properties existed, since no one knew before?

The whole idea that pain is subjective, and the realisation that colours are not "out there" nut only experienced in the head is pure science.
And it was Charles Sanders Peirce a SCIENTIST who first coined the phrase.
So yes it was in a scientific paper.
Check your ignorance before you make an **** of yourself

[Terrapin Station]

We may still ask how it comes to be that some physical events can be mental ones.

Different materials/relations/processes have different properties.

[evolution]

In, what is 'this', so called, "philosophical context"?

If you don't know what a philosophical context is, why are you posting on a philosophy board?

You still do NOT get it.

I KNOW what a 'philosophical context' is, from my perspective. All I was trying to do was understand better what your perspective of that phrase is. If you can NOT or will NOT back up, explain, or elaborate on what you say and claim on a philosophy forum, then WHY post in one?

[Terrapin Station]

If you don't know what a philosophical context is, why are you posting on a philosophy board?

You still do NOT get it.

I KNOW what a 'philosophical context' is, from my perspective. All I was trying to do was understand better what your perspective of that phrase is. If you can NOT or will NOT back up, explain, or elaborate on what you say and claim on a philosophy forum, then WHY post in one?

So what is your "'what is' presentation" for propositional knowledge in this philosophical context, per how you think about philosophical contexts?

[Steve3007]

And panpsychism is a respectable hypothesis. The fact that we don't recognise/assume first person experience, which is unobservable, except in beings which are made like us and exhibit it in the ways we do, doesn't discount its existence.

This is true of any phenomenon. The fact that phenomenon X is unobservable doesn't discount its existence. But it doesn't give us reason to think it exists either, does it? I don't know about you, but to believe that something exists I need more than "I can't demonstrate with certainty that it doesn't".

What reason do you have to believe that a phenomenon fitting the description "consciousness" exists in all things? Is it simply extrapolation from things that we have good reason to believe are conscious and which we have good reason to believe are made of the same stuff as things that are not noticeably so? In other words, does the argument essentially go: "I am conscious. I am made from atoms. Rocks are made from atoms. Therefore rocks are conscious."?

[Steve3007]

Or perhaps it's more of a set theory/classification thing. As in: "I am conscious. I am part of the Earth system. Therefore the Earth system is conscious.". This would be the same reasoning which leads me to simply say "I am conscious" rather than saying "my brain is conscious but my toes are not" or "a particular part of my brain is conscious".

If it's that, then we have the issue that sets and classifications are abstractions. I am part of an indefinitely large number of different sets depending on purpose.

[Atla]

Atla » 53 minutes ago

Consciousness as in: qualia + the constant first-person-POV, is universal. That's why science has never found any sign of them.

Will you explain this to me Atla, i.e. what you mean and why you think it true? I'm stretching a bit here.

I guess one could put it this way: this kind of 'consciousness' is existence itself, and what existence is like.

Things don't have existence, things are existence. So we can't use science, which is also part of existence, to look for existence.

I've also seen it expressed it like this (among many other ways): this kind of 'consciousness' is first order, and science is happening within this kind of 'consciousness'.

This is the perennial philosophy/nondualism (it comes in many flavours, and it would make interesting debates to try to find the most correct one). But the main underlying idea is the same in all of them.

This is also the default philosophy, it's true unless proven otherwise. Western philosophers aren't aware of this either. That's why people keep asking me to prove it. Prove what? They are the ones making claims based on some fundamental divisions that they made up.

But I've only seen like 2-3 people on philosophy forums who actually understood this philosophy, the other like 98% didn't make it that far. (This is where philosophy actually begins in my view, it's one of the three main assumptions we have to make in order to start working on the more difficult questions.)

[Terrapin Station]

This is also the default philosophy, it's true unless proven otherwise. Western philosophers aren't aware of this either. That's why people keep asking me to prove it. Prove what? They are the ones making claims based on some fundamental divisions that they made up.

People might just be asking you to explain what the f--- you're on about because it sounds like vague gibberish to them.

[Atla]

This is also the default philosophy, it's true unless proven otherwise. Western philosophers aren't aware of this either. That's why people keep asking me to prove it. Prove what? They are the ones making claims based on some fundamental divisions that they made up.

People might just be asking you to explain what the f--- you're on about because it sounds like vague gibberish to them.

Gee you don't say. The majority of people can't grasp this philosophy, even if they try hard. Not even in cultures, where their philosophers have already figured it out. And this fact has shaped the history of mankind.

[Terrapin Station]

People might just be asking you to explain what the f--- you're on about because it sounds like vague gibberish to them.

Gee you don't say. The majority of people can't grasp this philosophy, even if they try hard. Not even in cultures, where their philosophers have already figured it out. And this fact has shaped the history of mankind.

Well, and of course it doesn't help when people won't explain it in a clear manner, where they have patience and care about whether people understand them, especially rather than being snarky, condescending, etc.

[Atla]

Gee you don't say. The majority of people can't grasp this philosophy, even if they try hard. Not even in cultures, where their philosophers have already figured it out. And this fact has shaped the history of mankind.

Well, and of course it doesn't help when people won't explain it in a clear manner, where they have patience and care about whether people understand them, especially rather than being snarky, condescending, etc.

Nondualism is infinitely simple in a way, but it does require some rather deep thinking to 'get it', and it can be a longer process. That's why they need gurus in the East. Deep thinking is something you've shown again and again to be the enemy of. Nor are people obliged to fulfill all your requests, as you seem to think.
If you're really interested which I doubt, then put in the energy, you'll find plenty of material on the internet.

[Gertie]

And panpsychism is a respectable hypothesis. The fact that we don't recognise/assume first person experience, which is unobservable, except in beings which are made like us and exhibit it in the ways we do, doesn't discount its existence.

This is true of any phenomenon. The fact that phenomenon X is unobservable doesn't discount its existence. But it doesn't give us reason to think it exists either, does it? I don't know about you, but to believe that something exists I need more than "I can't demonstrate with certainty that it doesn't".

What reason do you have to believe that a phenomenon fitting the description "consciousness" exists in all things? Is it simply extrapolation from things that we have good reason to believe are conscious and which we have good reason to believe are made of the same stuff as things that are not noticeably so? In other words, does the argument essentially go: "I am conscious. I am made from atoms. Rocks are made from atoms. Therefore rocks are conscious."?

To me the two most obvious ways of accounting for phenomenal experience is that it's somehow reducible to fundamental material stuff, or it's fundamental itself. The other option I personally think is a strong contender is that our evolved-for-utility ways of observing, thinking about and modelling the world in such ways as these doesn't get to what the actual nature of what we're modelling is like. (The contents of experience might tell us more about us, than about the world beyond us).

The problem for monist substance materialism, as described by physics, is that it appears to have no in principle way of accounting for experience. That's why we can't just assume it will some day account for it. ( There's no place for experience in the current physical model of what exists). And the scientific toolkit which helped us come up with a physical way of modeling what exists and how it works, doesn't seem equipped to find a way of modelling experience in those terms. Experience is apparently unobservable and unmeasurable and can't be verified inter-subjectively, because it has radically different types of properties. (Hence talk of The Hard Problem). We might one day be able to explain experience in physical terms, but no-one knows how that could happen, except in the form of broad speculative hypotheses.

That's why some people reasonably posit experience might not ultimately be explainable in physical terms, and might be a different type of substance, rather than a property of material substance. Evidence like neural correlation suggests that if experience is a different fundamental substance, it is closely linked/intwined/integrated with material stuff. (Rather than a fundamental substance capable of floating about independantly as traditional spirit/soul type notions of substance dualism based in religious/Cartesian thinking suggests). There are different types of panpsychism which speculate about how that material-experiential type of relationship works (aka 'mind-body' relationship). Some suggest rocks have mental experience, some suggest they don't.

Potentially the most promising work being done on mental experience is IIT, which is trying to come up with ways of quantifying and predicting experience by looking at how brains work (it's led by two neuroscientists). They say their attempt at a science of experience implies panpsychism is true.


Who knows. (Nobody). But panpsychism is a serious contender.

[GE Morton]

Again, the distinction there is just like the morning star/evening star distinction. It's a distinction that stems from different perspectives. There's no actual difference in what we're referring to from those different perspectives. It's just two different ways to talk about it, two different sets of apparent properties, due to those two different perspectives.

Oh, I agree. But that is not what you were saying earlier. Earlier you were claiming that the properties of a thing were dependent upon spatio-temporal reference points.

The "radical" difference is that one perspective is first person/being the item in question and the other is third person. For every other thing in the world, we can only have multiple third person perspectives.

Well, first, it makes no sense to speak of perspectives when there is no possibility of more than one. For qualia, there is no possibility of any perspective on it other than that of the person experiencing one. And the object in question is not the observer ("first person/being the item in question"). The object in question is a quale --- something experienced, perceived, by that person.

Are you now identifying qualia with the person experiencing them? Do we need to repeat the definition of "qualia"?

[Terrapin Station]

Well, and of course it doesn't help when people won't explain it in a clear manner, where they have patience and care about whether people understand them, especially rather than being snarky, condescending, etc.

Nondualism is infinitely simple in a way, but it does require some rather deep thinking to 'get it', and it can be a longer process. That's why they need gurus in the East. Deep thinking is something you've shown again and again to be the enemy of. Nor are people obliged to fulfill all your requests, as you seem to think.
If you're really interested which I doubt, then put in the energy, you'll find plenty of material on the internet.

"Of course it doesn't help . . . " doesn't imply an obligation.

What sort of material would you say is pertinent? Can you give any sort of reference to it?