Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Philosophy Club

[Maxcady10001]

Of course, it was meant that the consciousness of others cannot be read through a screen. That is a function of one's own sight.

[Sculptor1]

Reading words on a screen is a demonstration of consciousness? How so?

Why don't YOU answer MY question?

[Maxcady10001]

Once again, an inferral based on one's own experience. There is no sense of other's senses, just an empty assumption. The direct experience of other's experience never comes, there is only an intention read into symbols from one's own experience.

[Maxcady10001]

Sculptor1

Why are you so willing to ignore everything contradictory about materialism? You don't question cause and effect, substance, subjectivity or conditionality. You don't look at any of the concepts behind materialism and yet you insist it is the obvious truth. How is life so simple for you?

[Consul]

I have to agree with Tamminen, materialism is absurd. It is entirely reliant on the imagined concepts of cause and effect…

??? Materialism is compatible with various realistic conceptions of causation, and even with antirealism about it. For example, materialism is perfectly compatible with the universe being as described by Heil, i.e. such that causal relations aren't real but merely apparent:

"If the universe were a single, unified field, or a single field pervading space-time, or, for that matter, a Spinozistic unified One, truth-makers for causal claims would be non-causal ways the universe is. The field, or the One, would evolve in ways that would be describable in terms of particle interactions, collisions among billiard balls, salt`s dissolving in water, and all the rest. But the deep story would be non-causal.

If the field or the One played the substance role, it would be worse than misleading to imagine that it, the field or the One, caused its states, ways it is. The relation of a substance to its modes is not like the relation of internal states of your body to your breaking out into a rash. Your body is a complex thing made up of many complex things in constant interaction with one another and with the surrounding environment. But the field or the One is a unified simple with no parts to interact, and no other substances with which to interact. The evolution of such a substance over time would amount to an expression of its nature. In the absence of any other substance, this evolution would not be an effect of a cause. Ordinary perceived change, ordinary causal interaction would resemble ripples arising in a pond and moving across its surface, but uncaused by the wind or changes in the pond`s constituents or surroundings.

Just as it would be a mistake to think of the properties of an electron as being caused by the electron, so it would be a mistake to think of the evolving properties of the unified field or the One as being caused by the field or the One. An electron’s properties are ways it is, modes, expressions of its nature. If these properties change, the source of the change is either spontaneous or the result of an interaction with something outside the electron. In the case of the unified field or the One, there is no outside, there is only the expression of the nature of the one substance.

I admit that these remarks are excessively speculative, but my aim here is only to leave open the possibility that we could be led by fundamental physics to allow that causal truths could have non-causal truthmakers. How likely this is to happen is anyone’s guess."

(Heil, John. The Universe As We Find It. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. p. 132)

[Consul]

Once again, an inferral based on one's own experience. There is no sense of other's senses, just an empty assumption. The direct experience of other's experience never comes, there is only an intention read into symbols from one's own experience.

That I'm not the only subject of consciousness in the world is anything but an "empty assumption". There is indirect (biological/physiological/neurological/psychological) evidence for other consciousnesses, on the basis of which analogical inferences to other consciousnesses are justified. For example, don't you think you're justified in believing that your parents are conscious beings just like you?

[Consul]

Smart's text on materialism in the Encyclopaedia Britannica:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/materialism-philosophy

[Maxcady10001]

How does the substance's evolution amount to an expression of its nature? This assumes, the substance was not able to express it's nature or exist, which makes the substance subject to temporality, the substance having come into existence. And how can what is temporal have no parts? Time being the relation between parts, and necessitating a beginning and end.

How can a substance have modes of existence? This implies that it changes, or that it is more than one, both of which contradict the idea of a substance. If a substance changes, it must have interactions with something other than substance, and if it is more than one, it is not a substance, because there can only be one.
However, he clearly says a substance does not change, nor does the substance act on its modes, but that its modes change spontaneously. I don't get it. What is a mode to a substance? Is it a form of existence? Does a substance have different forms of existence? This means it changes, so how can things be phrased that way? How does a thing go from one form to another without changing? Unless you assume said things have always been in existence, but that can't be true because he said things are subject to spontaneous change. So how can a thing have modes of existence but not change?

Also, there is no reason to suspect anyone else is conscious, not even my parents. As you said, indirect evidence, an intention or a cause is read into one of my own sensations. Their existence as a conscious being is entirely fictional, and an ideality.

I honestly don't know why there are so many types of one theory. Next time I won't say anything, and i'll keep my generalizations to myself. Also, the connection between mode and substance might be lost on me, or too subtle for me to grasp.

[Maxcady10001]

This guy heil is saying a substance has no parts, no connection to its modes, it doesn't change, no causation between its modes, but it does evolve, and its modes change spontaneously? This guy sounds crazy, and he has eliminated any area of dispute. I can't argue with him.
Besides the point on a substance's evolution making it temporal, and giving it parts, there is nothing else I can argue with him about.

[Consul]

This guy heil is saying a substance has no parts, no connection to its modes, it doesn't change, no causation between its modes, but it does evolve, and its modes change spontaneously? This guy sounds crazy, and he has eliminated any area of dispute. I can't argue with him.
Besides the point on a substance's evolution making it temporal, and giving it parts, there is nothing else I can argue with him about.

The modes of a substance are its attributes, properties, or qualities; and these are certainly ontologically connected to it: Substances have/possess/exemplify/instantiate attributes.
(Spinoza calls only essential properties attributes, but I don't follow him here: Attributes are essential or accidental properties.)

When Heil considers the possibility that "the One is a unified simple with no parts", he means to say that a substance lacks substantial parts, i.e. ones which are substances themselves. He doesn't mean to say that a substance also lacks spatial or temporal parts. (Of course, a zero-dimensional substance lacks spatial parts too.)

As for qualitative change, if the whole world is one substance and the only substance, then what Heil says is that it changes its local accidental attributes spontaneously, i.e. without being caused to do so by any other substance.

[Sculptor1]

Why are you so willing to ignore everything contradictory about materialism? You don't question cause and effect, substance, subjectivity or conditionality. You don't look at any of the concepts behind materialism and yet you insist it is the obvious truth. How is life so simple for you?

Life is not simple. Materialism is complicated. It was designed to replace naive dualism and it has never failed since then, but has grown in meaning and scope as more is uncovered about the universe through its method.
I ignore nothing. I have overlooked nothing. Materialism has given us command of science; the knowledge of how the universe actually works.
There are no contradictions. All contradictions are reserved for dualism.

[Consul]

How can a substance have modes of existence? This implies that it changes, or that it is more than one, both of which contradict the idea of a substance. If a substance changes, it must have interactions with something other than substance, and if it is more than one, it is not a substance, because there can only be one.
However, he clearly says a substance does not change, nor does the substance act on its modes, but that its modes change spontaneously. I don't get it. What is a mode to a substance? Is it a form of existence? Does a substance have different forms of existence? This means it changes, so how can things be phrased that way? How does a thing go from one form to another without changing? Unless you assume said things have always been in existence, but that can't be true because he said things are subject to spontaneous change. So how can a thing have modes of existence but not change?

No, Heil does not say "a substance does not change". He says "the source of the change is either spontaneous or the result of an interaction with something"; but if there is only one substance, qualitative change cannot result from interactions with other substances and must hence be spontaneous, i.e. result from an "inner drive", an internal impulse or propensity.

[Maxcady10001]

If you admit substances have temporal parts, how is there still the existence of the substance? One of the first questions I brought up, as a problem with all constants. Where is the substance if the substance changes? How can a thing change yet remain the same. If a thing can change and yet remain the same arguments for the soul, and self, and God, and plenty of other metaphysics have opened up. What is it that allows substance to do this?

[Maxcady10001]

Sculptor1

Where's the demonstration of other's consciousness? A demonstration that is not deduced but directly experienced. Once that is posted, then materialism has never failed.

[Sculptor1]

Where's the demonstration of other's consciousness? A demonstration that is not deduced but directly experienced. Once that is posted, then materialism has never failed.

Your response meets my empirical requirements. If that is not good enough for you, it is not relevant. We live in a material world and all evidence of consciousness derives from clearly definable matter.

Please demonstrate consciousness.
What do you mean by it? And please show evidence of it without the presence of material.