On this, de Broglie–Bohm theory posits the existence of hidden variables to explain quantum indeterminacy, and so clearly inaccessible physical phenomena are not something that can be ruled out a priori (and so far our experiments have only ruled out local hidden variables).
So if it’s conceivable that there are hidden physical phenomena then I think it’s conceivable that mental phenomena are hidden from everything but itself.
There certainly does seem something unique about the mind, even in physics. Under some historical interpretations of quantum mechanics, it is consciousness (and not just any measurement, e.g. consider the reasoning behind Everett’s universal wave-function) that causes the wave-function to collapse, and one of the assumptions of Bell’s inequalities is that the observer has freedom of choice. Perhaps mental phenomena being hidden phenomena is the explanation for all of this, including why the problem of consciousness is hard. As a plus, it may provide us with an avenue to maintain libertarian free will (and avoid many worlds).
Fwiw, (i’ve not traversed any responses to this…) Michael and I, i think, are aligned on this subject although it’s been a bit since we’ve been in the same thread on it - I find P-Zombies totally coherent. That is the nature of consciousness, in my view: that it’s not required for anything we do except feel. That’s why qualia must be a private sort of experience. They do not exist in the same sense everything else exists - A shadow doesn’t exactly “exist” does it? It’s not an object. But there it is.
I agree. Elsewhere I suggest that “from-a-point-of-view-ness” is a plug-and-play replacement for immanence or “inside-ness.” Basically the “perspectivity” of perception has confused many philosophers into an “introjection” (R. Avenarius ) of genuine/qualitative physical objects.
I’d say that thought “gets reduced” to signs that are empirical objects in the world. These signs are of course causally related to the firing patterns of neurons, etc.
As an Indirect Realist, I believe that I am not directly seeing a red table that exists in the world, but am seeing a representation of something that exists in the world. For example, in my mind is the colour red, yet in the world could be a wavelength of 700nm, and in my mind is a table, yet in the world could be a formless set of atoms. For the Indirect Realist, what is perceived in the mind is a symbol that has meaning because it represents something in the external world.
Direct Realism
However, a Direct Realist believes that when they perceive a red table in their mind, they are directly seeing (whether Phenomenological Direct Realism or Semantic Direct Realism) a red table that exists in the world, For the Direct Realist, what is perceived in the mind is not a symbol that has meaning, but what is perceived is the actual red table as it exists in the external world.
Spatial and temporal extension
There is a relation between the mind and the physical brain. The physical brain is spatially extended. It seems logical to assume that the mind is also spatially extended, in that the mind does not exist as a dimensionless point. For example, if part of the brain was damaged, such as in a RTA, and the mind was a dimensionless point, the mind would still successfully operate, but this does not seem to be the case. Even symbols are extended in space and time, in that a written word is spatially extended and a spoken word is temporally extended. In order for the mind to comprehend a spatially extended word, the mind must be spatially extended in some way, and in order for the mind to comprehend a temporally extended spoken word, the mind must be temporally extended in some way,
Suppose there is something in the world.
Indirect Realism
Suppose person A perceives a red table and is happy. Suppose person B sees the exact same something in the world, perceives a green chair and is sad.
As regards language, suppose person A perceives the word “table” and person B seeing the exact same something in the world perceives the word “chair”.
Indirect Realism is the position that neither person can know whether the perceptions of the other person are the same or different to theirs.
Direct Realism
Suppose person A perceives a red table. Direct Realism is the position that in the world there must be a red table (setting aside any special case of illusion or hallucination). Then person B will also see a red table. Person A will know what is in the mind of person B, and vice versa. The public red table will also be the private red table.
Suppose person A sees a red table and feels happy. Suppose person B sees the same red table and feels sad. In the absence of telepathy, neither person can know whether the feelings of the other person are the same or different to theirs.
As regards language, suppose person A perceives the word “table”. Direct Realism is the position that in the world there must be the word “table” (setting aside any special case of illusion or hallucination). Then person B will also see the word “table”. Person A will know what is in the mind of person B, and vice versa. The public word “table” will also be the private word “table”.
Basically “thought” has a wide use. So in this context I was aiming at discursive thought. I agree with Brouwer that there is relatively non-discursive mathematical thought.
You remind me that I haven’t responded to your last reply to me yet. Sorry about that !
Right. And I am approaching this as the attempt to “spell out” the basic beliefs that we enact.
I drive on the interstate, and I “live in” the perception of the 18-wheeler that might kill me. I see the face of my spouse smiling. I live the presence of my spouse, not the presence of an “internal representation.”
I care about science because it predicts and controls these “lived objects” — the perceptual world that is of course the “real world,” atypical moments are categorized as hallucinations or perceptual glitches now and then. Hallucinations are scary precisely because our helpless immersion in perceptual world. We might kill someone we love while afflicted with an intense hallucination. Terrifying ! But there is only “actuality” if perception is mostly the-world-itself, and even hallucinations are “real” in the sense of entities in the space of reasons that figure into our understanding of the world. “Your honor, my client hallucinated as the side-effect of a drug he was prescribed. The accident is not his fault but the fault of the pharma company that concealed such side-effects in its advertising.”
Thanks for clarifying !
The “mystified” physical object is an object of theory that has floated away like a helium balloon from non-theoretical life. If you drink the wine of the metaphysicians, you might forget why anyone cares about science in the first place. We predict and control “physical” objects — the genuinely qualitatively present kind — because it allows us to avoid pain. It also allows us to get pleasure.
I don’t mean the cheapest kind of pain and pleasure. Science might save my dearly beloved spouse from cancer. Science might fix my broken leg, giving me back my mobility. “Quality counts.” We count in order to manage quality, to steer the quality of the world toward “good quality” and away from “bad quality.” Any divorce from the “quality” of physical objects is “ideological.” The mundane is betrayed to scratch a spiritual-political itch. Any theory that de-realizes this “quality” is alienated baby-talk, harmless insincerity, a failure of self-knowledge.
Just a slight correction: I agree that the logical possibility is not ruled out, but I am much less convinced about the inference to metaphysical possibility:
My understanding is that he’s mainly targeting the thesis that all truths/facts are necessitated by physical truths/facts. IIRC he has a paper where he classifies materialism into several types and aims at one type in particular. My aim isn’t to defend that kind of materialism. I’m just not convinced that his zombie argument works.
The de Broglie–Bohm connection is very intersting. I’ll have to give that some thought.
I don’t understand why you think introspection appears to be immune from error.
What introspection tells us about, is the internal. And this is at least as important as the external. So we can’t write it off as unnecessary.
As you can see, I dismissed direct realism because I do not think these principles could ever account for the spatial distance between the perceiver and the perceived.
There’s another possibility, for non-spatial existence, other than a dimensionless point, and that is simply dimensionless existence, when dimensionless refers to spatial dimensions. A dimensionless point implies a spatial position, “simply dimensionless” does not necessitate any particular location. This would allow the non-spatial thing to have causal influence over many spatial points at the same time, without actually existing at any of these points, having no spatial position.
The non-spatial mind could have causal influence over specific points in the brain. The brain then is a spatial tool of the mind, which it uses in thinking. Damage to a part of the brain could annihilate this causal influence. The mind would not be destroyed, though it could not operate that tool, the brain.
Spatially extended things are very often tools of the mind. We see that in any physical tools, the mind puts them to work, to serve its purposes. The physical human body, a spatially extended thing, is no different. It is a tool which is put to work by the mind to serve the purposes of the mind.
The idea that the mind must be spatially extended to comprehend a spatially extended word is highly suspect. This is because of the nature of time, and the relation between space and time. If time is modeled as prior to space, the zeroth dimension rather than the fourth dimension, then space, and spatial extension, emerge from the passing of time. This would allow that a mind could know the spatial extension which will come into being, prior to it coming into being. And of course, a form of this is commonly called prediction. So it is highly likely that a mind could understand the spatial extension of a thing like a word, before the thing even has spatial extension. Another good example is blueprints.
The existence of such examples, hallucinations, dreams, etc., is another reason why direct realism ought not even be considered as a possibility. Therefore we shouldn’t get sidetracked by the limitations it imposes.
As I see it, the physical object “is” a “system” of its manifestation, its quality. I can’t smell the bacon with your nose. Does this mean that the smell of bacon is instead a “psychical entity” that is other than the bacon ? Or rather should we be eager to embrace such a messy explication that clashes with how we live ?
Is the “real bacon” hidden “underneath” its smell, taste, color, shape, etc. ?
In order to find the real artichoke, we divested it of its leaves.
The phenomenalist approach is to understand the object as the logical-temporal-interpersonal unity of its qualities ( its moments or aspects.). The artichoke is not reducible to one of its leaves. But it is not other than its leaves. A perception can be understood as the qualitative presence of the object “as” this leaf. Pre-theoretically we react to the “aspect” as the object itself. So it’s only phenomenology that unearths this mostly simply enacted structure.
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The shadow is “formed perceptual quality.” But so is the horseshoe. “Matter” is just a sound or mark that primates point at some formchunks of qualities but not at others. I suggest — inspired by Feuerbach — that the best way to understand “material” is as “perceptual quality.” As Plato saw, we lurch into a bastard discourse in order to do so. The world is “more than” form. We call the water “hot” but that hotness is more than a label, etc. Pain is a great example. A roaring screaming toothache is “there” as much more than a stupid label, a stupid mark or noise. Marks and noises are themselves there as “quality” that overflows any label.
Hmm. This appears to be mixing two distinct (or, can be made distinct, and I suppose I would argue them as such…) ideas: Living as if and living in the presence of. I’m not sure it changes anything in terms of what’s being described, but I do think it illuminates where some pressure is needed:
IFF my conception is, at the least, reasonable for me to hold and argue, then rolling these two together is an error. There is the object out there, which you are certainly in the presence of (well, certainly is a bit far but in Kantian terms I think i’m safe..) but that does not mean that the images you are reacting to are those objects. They could, for all I know, be perfect representations, losing no fidelity or structure and essentially the above is a distinction without a difference (as anticipated). Or, the case could be that the objects are not the same as the images you are living in the presence of. To whatever degree, this would then ensure that hte images were, in fact, images(or representations if you like) of those objects - their fidelity still would not matter as you can only respond to and live in the presence of, your images. I suggest the latter is the logical situation, but (as you initially said) the former is what is enacted regardless of its veridicality.
Hmm. Again, at risk of having misinterpreted you (and definitely, in this case, to my own benefit) this seems to support the concept that we can’t quite delineate the two. Hallucinations can be terrifying if they are subtle. I have never found a true hallucination terrifying, because it is obviously an hallucination (it can be controlled by my mind, not my senses). It is those aberrations which still respond to outside stimulus that get me sweating (again, totally open to having got this wrong in terms of your point..).
I grok this. Intuitively, I think, as you’re probably getting at, this is how people live their lives. But we live in convenient fictions all the time. Suppose, for two seconds, that consciousness is some kind of spread-out force into which we are simply plugged. We live in teh fiction of individual consciousness anyway. Similar with personal identity - it probably doesn’t obtain, but we live as if it does.
I don’t quite disagree, but the use of “real”, even in quotes, is quite uncomfortable to me here. I am totally unsure how I would tell you to litigate which is which, but calling the four-eyed dog with Capybara trotters for eyes in my visual field “real” when I cannot touch it (and any other object, I can) seems wrong in principle.
It may be that I’m just not the kind of thinker who can quite get into this - but the balance is still, imo, not quite robust enough for me to get something I can respond to from it.
I still do not know what this is describing. Can you try to avoid the poetic language (nothing wrong with it at all, I just would like to understand lol) and sort of, academically, tell me what you’re getting at?
I appreciate your response in general. But I will answer this question first.
Let me mystify the apple for you.
The true apple is not red, not round, not sweet, and so on and so on. What is there for you as the apple is a “user interface” that actually hides the true apple from you.
One classic mystification is to identify the true apple with its numerical properties, its measurements. I love measurement, but measurement is only measurement through a reduction of a qualitative situation to a numeral.
You might think of me as someone who likes empirical science and finds it silly that foolosophers constantly want to negate and cancel experience, hide reality behind it somehow.
It’s harmless enough. I’m just surprised that more people aren’t aware of my influences on this issue. I see the tradition as having gotten over this hump long ago.
I am an Indirect Realist, but I would guess that the majority on this forum are Direct Realists, if not Phenomenological Direct Realists then Semantic Direct Realists.
Would you agree with the following?
Suppose time was prior to space, and space emerged from time.
In our world, symbols, such as the written word, are spatially extended. Our physical brain is also spatially extended.
What is the relation between the mind and the brain?
If the mind exists in time, then minds might have existed prior to the emergence of space. As space emerges from time, and if the mind existed in time prior to space, then not only would space emerge from time, but spatially extended symbols such as the written word would also emerge from the mind.
Therefore, even though the mind is not spatially extended, it could understand and casually affect spatially extended things, such as symbols and the written word, because spatially extended things emerge from time which is prior.
But, how can we know whether time was or was not prior to space?
Indeed. He is a great target, but I appreciate that he drinks his own kool-aid, is sincere. I don’t really mind if some people like to party that way, but if philosophy is generally that kind of thing, then I don’t want to say that I’m into “philosophy.”
Sort of following Plato, I’d say that we live among “chunks” of quality. That chunk of quality over there is a “rock.” Some other more complicated chunk is a “marriage.” The chunk of quality reflected in the mirror is a “me.” This chunkiness is the “form” of “enduring identity” of the quality it “synthesizes.” To me this is just a brute fact. We live in a world with things. “Boring.” And yet weirdly rich upon close investigation. We have the “same” music played on ten thousand saxophones over decades and around the globe. Or — I ask rhetorically — is this wild speculation ? Screw explaining. Let’s just report the structure that is in our faces already. That we ignore because it’s boring and “easy.”
I’m using “quality” instead of “matter.” Especially when “materialists” end up fetishizing mathematics as “true matter.” And I love math. But there’s a constant tendency to “forget quality” in the name of a label. Of course "quality"is a label. I have no choice. Plato had no choice. I can only caution that this is a pointer. But only “philosophers” need to be told that the world is “more than” “concepts.”
Does Sherlock Holmes exist ? Well yeah in some sense. To me it’s not scientific/rational to restrict “existence” to what turns out to be the elusive “meaning” of marks and noises anyway.
One dominant story is that “physical” stuff “really and truly and actually exists.” The only way to save this statement from being the mystic fog of neckbeard theology is to “ground” the sign “physical” in mundane practical life.
I can’t drink the imagined beer. I can’t drink the beer you promised me but haven’t yet provided. I can drink the perceptually present beer.
“Real” is typically honorific. I can’t spend monopoly money, so it’s not “real” money. Joe abandoned me when I needed a friend the most, so Joe is not a “real” friend.
In short, it’s all grounded in “care” or “giving a damn.” Mach is great on this. Science as technology and the theory that proves itself through technology is “real.” “Science” as the mask of another quasi-theological metaphysics is tiresome.
This is not an attack on you, just to be clear. I’m just sketching my objections to the background assumptions that might get in the way of our understanding one another.
[quote=“Michael, post:464, topic:2037”]
The claim is that if it is conceivable that something could be biologically identical to us (including outward bodily behaviour) but not have first-person experiences then first-person experiences are not identical to anything biological.[/quote]
Quite so. But how do you know if something is conceivable or not? The obvious criterion is whether it is self-contradictory or not. What do you say?
Perhaps that criterion is too strict and something a bit more flexible is needed - something like whether we could imagine the proposed situation. But that is extremely vague and not obviously true. It also very subjective.
