I was referring to the doctrine that I cannot be wrong about what I introspect. No-one can contradict me if I say I am in pain or afraid. I have doubts about this view, hence the qualification.
What do you mean by “internal” here? Something in your mind? Or something in you body?
Do you think that introspection delivers information about your private experiences?
To me there’s another issue here. If assume that perceived meaning is “inside the mind,” then why do philosophers so readily invoke “conceivable” as if conceivable by a shared universal basis of cognition ?
To me this uncritical but automatic assumption is best explained by understanding signs as perceptual objects that social organisms use at least and primarily to organize their practical cooperation.
The “privacy” of the-meaning-of-the-sign-for-me is roughly equivalent to others not being able to smell with my nose. The difference is that the significance of signs is especially determined by the history and training of the individual sign-perceiving organism.
Is this or that “conceivable” ? Even the “meaning” of “conceivable” flaps around helplessly the more this sign is isolated from a conspicuous relationship with non-verbal conduct.
Joe can swear to me that he is picturing a round square. I can tell him that I can’t make sense of him. I might be tempted to constrain the significance of signs for other people. “Nonsense-for-me is nonsense-for-Everyone.”
But we are back in “the universal mind,” even while many thinkers insist that each mind is primordially and absolutely isolated.
To me it’s just signs as perceptual objects that can indeed signify different people, but we tend to try to understand and be understood, so we keep trading signs toward a greater mutual sense of “being there together.” We often get frustrated and give up.
Allow me to offer a clarification that you may (or may not) resonate with. I see Chalmers’s zombie argument as committing a reification error that I believe you would also want to resist. My take is that the insight driving his argument is sound, but that the execution of the argument takes a wrong turn. In my opinion, “what it’s like to be” is not best understood in terms of a missing object, property, feature or characteristic between two otherwise identical, existing entities. I might frame this in terms of the distinction between potency, form and act. You might frame it in terms of Bibol’s “not something, but not nothing”. Either way, I suspect that we’re both pointing to a similar insight, even as we express it in different terms.
The smell of bacon is “other than the bacon”, because what we smell is gaseous molecules which have separated from and are no longer part of the bacon. This spatial separation between the perceiver and the thing perceived (seeing is performed through another medium) is ontologically significant.
This statement is somewhat self-contradicting. If the object is a “unity”, then it definitely is “other than its leaves” the leaves being merely parts. A whole is more than the sum of its parts. When we talk about “unity” we talk about parts, and their interconnected relations, an internal coherency, whereby the parts are unified as one.
This again is very significant ontologically. We can name or describe a type, and say that all the members of that “set” form a collection, and we might even call this collection of members a “unity”. But clearly this type of object, as a unity, is completely different from the object, or unity, which is the artichoke. One is a collection of things which are judged as the same type, and unified by that judgement, the other is a collection of distinct qualities, unified by some internal coherency.
I agree that the brain, and the written word are spatially extended. However, there is a form of the word which is not, and that is when we think in words, these are, for me anyway, sound images. The written symbol is very important, because unlike the aural, it’s physical presence persists through time, allowing it to be a substantial memory aid. This temporal stability allows that very complex conceptual structures can be memorized as associated with that stable symbol, enabling advanced logic like mathematics.
There are a number of logical procedures which lead toward this conclusion. Here are a few to consider:
The first indication is that the common “spacetime” unity leads to the incoherent conclusion that spacetime emerged in the origin of the universe. That is incoherent because any sort of event or change, requires the passing of time, to occur. “Emerge” signifies such an event or change, so such a conception has time emerging from the passing of time.
Another good argument is Aristotle’s cosmological argument. If all the spatial activity and change which we observe is a matter of potentials being actualized, then we proceed toward the conclusion that the potential is prior to the actual. But this cannot be the case in an absolute sense, because every actuality requires something actual as its cause. So if potential was prior in the absolute sense, it could never actualize itself, and there could never be anything actual. Therefore there must be something actual (causal and temporal), which is prior to the spatial activity and change which we observe.
When we consider directly, the nature of passing time, and things like the appearance of free will, the arguments get more complex and difficult.
Starting with the most simple, we can keep dividing time into shorter and shorter increments, until we get to what appears to be the shortest increment possible increment of time. That shortest increment, Planck time, is determined by our ability to measure spatial change. So at one point in time there is a determinable spatial state of affairs, and at the next point in time there is a different determinable state of affairs. Time necessarily passes in between these two point to account for the difference between the two states. During that intermediate time, no measurable spatial change is occurring but the passing of time is. So the passing of time is prior to spatial change.
Things get more difficult with the concept of free will. Imagine that a free willing being can arbitrarily change, or even annihilate a particular physical thing, at a randomly selected point in time, “push the button”. This means that the temporal extension of the physical object has no necessary extension from the past, through the present, into the future. That the object can be arbitrarily changed at any passing moment by a freely willed act, indicates that the object cannot be judged to have any physical existence in the future. Statements about the future therefore are predictions. If we extend this principle to all physical things, this implies that the entirety of physical existence must be recreated at each passing moment of time. That means that the entire spatial world comes into existence at each moment as time passes, indicting that time is prior to space.
I hope that helps.
I look at this as a matter of being honest to oneself. Introspection is a personal experience. If I want to tell myself that I understand something which I do not understand, then that is self deception. And if I convince myself in this, I may proceed to tell others as if I truly believe what I have been dishonest with myself about.
Introspection proceeds through the mind, but it can tell you things about your body. So “internal” refers to both, within your mind and body. This is why it is useful toward understanding this unity. It definitely delivers information about your private experiences, as what I think is the only means of getting that information.
I need more chunks of qualia.
Is time prior to space
True. The mind can comprehend spatially extended written words and temporally extended spoken words.
As the brain is both spatially and temporally extended, this suggests that the mind also has to be both spatially and temporally extended.
You assume that space and time emerged from the origin of the universe
However, it may well be that space and time originated at the origin of the universe.
If that was the case, then there is no necessity that time precedes space.
Yes, an actual spatial activity is prior to a consequent spatial activity.
This does not show that time is prior to space.
Yes, time is contemporaneous with spatial states of affairs rather than time preceding space.
If there is free will, at one moment in time the future is not determined. But at this moment in time is a spatial state of affairs.
Time is still contemporaneous with space.
Yes, I have no real problem with saying this. I think it’s considering it “brute” that doesn’t sit well, but that’s probably more that I know individuals are going to assume/accept/infer many fundamental “facts” about their reality as a result, whereas the statement itself is, as you say, a bit boring and hardly touches the main issues people (well, people like us) tend to want to get into.
I also agree with this, but hten I think this is the impetus for Kant in some meaningful way.
This seems to point to distinguishing between “exist” and “real”. Some “real” must be “in reality” which, I think, can be understood as the totality of objects you mention. “exist” can mean just “obtain” in some sense like your marriage, or an hallucination etc..
I think perhaps you’re tkaing this one a bit far from it’s base. I would say the use of “real” here is more to do with effectiveness. It’s not a “true” x because it doesn’t behave like the standard. I don’t think this is the same use as saying “Hitler was a real man” and more like “Hitler was a real jerk” (Thanks Norm McDonald).
No, absolutely. You’re doing very, very well at talking to me, but not about it. I really enjoy it.
As I’ve monotonously pontificated elsewhere, the structure that I’m trying to point at here is discussed in Plato’s Parmenides and his “unwritten” doctrine. It’s also in Saussure’s “acoustic image” and Goodman’s “character.” Those last two thinkers offer a specification that is easily generalized.
The “jar of cookies” approach is the wrong way to make sense of an “equivalence class” in mathematics, and this EQ is the proper metaphor, if handled with caution.
Of course I’d say “chunks of quality,” because I don’t feel trapped behind an internal picture of the world. I am recklessly credulous enough to expect these signs to be there for a “you” that is outside of my own skull.
But I’m also comfortable with confessing to seeing chairs rather than brain-spun mediations of chairs. But are we doing a profound super-science here ? Or just expressing and explaining terminological preferences ? For me it’s the second.
I think you’re trying to do something with dialectics while ignoring people who try to tell you you’re strawmanning.
I think I do agree. My AI simulant analogy led me to appreciate Chalmers’ epistemological point—that consciousness isn’t something we can detect from the outside. But I don’t think the biological zombie is coherent. Once you stipulate a genuinely living human organism, molecule for molecule identical to a conscious person, I no longer see how the absence of subjectivity is intelligible. So perhaps the insight survives while the zombie argument itself doesn’t.
Right, I see now. Thank you. Strangely, thats appearing a little incoherent - wouldn’t the mystification be to suggest that the apple is the experience? That’s more of a theological,new-agey type take on things. I’d have thought the scientific take was something along hte lines of
“No, there is not an apple in your head, and your brain generates the images you see - therefore, there is something between the apple and your image of it. That doesn’t necessarily mean it is not a veridical image, though. In fact, that is highly unlikely”.
The scientific understanding of hte visual system seems to imply something somewhere around this conception, no? I don’t think its scientific to take the world prima facie, without investigation. I would have though, and forgive is this sounds incredulous, exactly the opposite were the case - scientists are acutely aware of the(potential) inaccuracy of appearances.
And that means:
This seems to get it’s terms reversed 
Experience tends to be the “first step” and science takes on all the others. Perhaps we’re just thinking along different lines… there are many on the forum (and in this thread) who would argue that the “facts” of perception are not relevant to the philosophy of it - and make a claim for direct visual access to an object “out there”. That, to me, is the “hiding” the facts of the matter in service of a philosophically satisfying way to describe what we *do.
*
To my mind, the categories are backward (and, in essence I agree with both parties.. I’m an not a Direct Realist, but i’ve been pushed back from being an actual “anti realist” by those philosophical arguments.
I’m sorry you see it that way. I’m guessing that most of us feel misunderstood when we talk about this stuff.
To me that makes sense. This isn’t like math. It’s actual weird individuals trying and mostly failing to build a sense of mutual understanding.
I appreciate your honesty.
And I was already chiding myself for persisting against my sense of futility. Sometimes people just aren’t going to benefit from one another on this or that issue.
I totally get that culture war stuff obscures this issue. Yes, plenty of hippies are making a buck from elaborating bumper stickers. It’s no accident that I call myself a “positivist.” The original “evil godless” positivists tended to be phenomenalists in the sense of Mach and Avenarius, both critical and secular to their bones.
The apple is not reducible to any particular “experience.” For me the subject is not a container. And a simple investigation of perception reveals that the apple doesn’t even pretend to be “inside” my head. I see it over there on the table.
Zooming out, I see a traditional Christian ghost story ( the soul) being gobbled down uncritically by the tradition. This ghost story, this conspiracy theory, is familiar. It doesn’t smell like patchouli. But it does smell like sci-fi tropes. The boys these days take Elon for a sage. We “probably” live in a “simulation.” Someone is washing down their K with the bong water.
Weirdly the “sheen” of technology is divorced from the life of technology in the world. It’s a cargo cult in both directions, hippy or sci-fi.
I don’t believe in consciousness. There is no ghost. There are just objects in the world. But we are individual organisms, so the objects “show up” relative to our individual sense organs. Signs “signify” relative to our training and history as organisms in a sign-rich communal environment.
“Consciousness is the there-it-is-ness of the physical object. Consciousness is the “quality-right-there-that-just-is” of the physical object. Consciousness is the presence of the physical object.” But I think I am up against a strong tendency of reification. Metaphysics calculates with sacred stuff. So “consciousness as being” must “actually” be a stuff equation. Though it’s explicitly not and explicitly merely one risky formal indication among others.
We might blame Locke for “interpreting” the functional dependence of the manifestation of the apple on the location and state of the perceiving sense organs toward an internalization of the object. “Because” the object shows itself different as a function of the particular witness/perceiver, it’s not the apple that appears but an internal icon !
But we reach for that “internal picture” by stretching out our arms. Why don’t we have a surgeon remove the apple from behind our eyes ? He could eat half of it for his trouble.
The more initially plausible position was the old distinction between “inside”/secondary qualities and “outside”/primary qualities. But this theory was shot full of holes long ago. The demystified reading is that some qualities ( uncontroversially measure-able) are far more important for predicting and controlling all of the object’s qualities at the same time. If they cure grandma’s cancer, I get to enjoy her smile again.
But I don’t see us as trying to “mirror” the “true situation.” It’s more like fishing for better words. To me words for our situation are “better” if they cohere with the way we live. Do my fooloosphical marks and noises go well with the rest of my conduct ? Does my theory of science have anything to do with how I live with technology ? How serious can I be when I say that I have never seen my friend or lover but only an icon ? Only a little picture of them inside my head ?
It’s harmless to talk such stuff precisely because we don’t live it. But not living it is a reason in my eyes anyway for not talking it. But it’s basically aesthetics.
I get the feeling you’re choosing not to name a few things here that need naming…
What ghost story? What tradition?
Seeing things is exactly the unreliable method of deciding such things. “seeing things” can occur with your eyes closed, my man.
Well, I don’t tihnk we’re going to come to terms them. Consciousness is the only undeniable aspect of reality.
Sure. Mach is great on this. So remind me how they check appearances against reality again ?
They just synthesize many experiences, weaving them into a coherent story, declaring some of them unreliable, etc.
Peirce basically nailed it. The “truth” is just the ideal limit point of tentative, evolving scientific belief.
Of course I completely agree with categorizing some experiences as “hallucinations.” Why ? Because of the long term qualitative (lived ) consequences.
Mr. PCP thinks he can fly. He feels wonderful, until he hits the concrete. “Delusions” are beliefs that lead to pain. But some foolosophers will tell you pain is “unreal.” Yet science matters because it saves us from pain, scratches our itches.
“Truth” is just snake-handling Jesus talk if divorced from the “quality” of the world for the organism.
Here’s a parody. The doctor, who has been reading philosophy, tells me that my cancer is “actually cured” but phenomenally or experientially raging. I will experience shitting myself, and basically continual agony, but none of this is real. It’s epiphenomenal, the concern of naive types.
My illusory internal consciousness will cease, but my metaphysically real self will be just fine. He will retire at 65 and go fishing every Monday.
Christianity. The eternal soul that escapes the death of the body. Heaven & Hell. Maybe Descartes was an atheist, but he kept the soul as internal theatre. See his early work on how a leg injury rings a bell in the pineal gland. Only matter in motion is real. Color, thirst, pain and so on are generated in the pineal gland. This amazing gland translates impulse into “qualia.” Try to hear this theory as if we weren’t weened on it.
I’d say that we are lost and helpless without a primary faith in our perceptions. Sometimes they betray us. A crooked stick looks straight when you pull it out of the water. The “oasis” is a mirage and we die of thirst.
But I see myself as reporting on our “animal faith” in perceptions. I don’t believe at all in some absolute foundation, in perfect certainty. We are animals in a dangerous environment. We enact beliefs that might get us crushed.
Seeing is believing, most of the time. And yes “see” is used with florid metaphoricity, but that’s because we are such intensely visual creatures, who live by primarily trusting in what we see as opposed to merely imagine.
—Joe broke the window.
—How do you know ?
—I saw him with my own eyes.
But maybe the witness is a liar, etc. No bedrock. Just a swamp that the pillars of science are driven into, which is empirical because it’s held responsible to perceptions, even primarily through perceptions of technology that works.
I’m sort of screwed any way I play it.
Reality is the basic fact, and reality is “from the point of view” of real organisms.
I reject “objective reality” mysticism that imagines reality that has nothing to do with experience.
But I also reject the understanding of “experience” as something inside.
Experience is world from organism-point-of-view. Experience is what we call reality from this or that organism’s POV.
Bluoin called this “ontological phenomenalism.” But it’s approximately a less naive realism.
I thought of a useful neologism for something like a philosophical zombie: simulant. A simulant is an artificial but completely life-like entity that can laugh, blush, apologise, and even appear embarrassed, yet is, in reality, an artifice devoid of self-awareness. It is not a philosophical zombie, because it is not biologically identical to a human being. Rather, it illustrates a simpler point: behaviour alone cannot answer the question of consciousness—the very conundrum that motivated J. B. Watson to found behaviourism. Watson’s solution was to exclude consciousness from scientific psychology; Chalmers’ is to argue that consciousness cannot be reduced to third-person descriptions and therefore must elude scientific analysis. Which suggests that oddly enough, they agree on the problem, although Watson’s solution was more Procrustean in nature.
But it is a word I really like. Somewhat like Philip K Dick’s ‘replicant’.