@Count_Timothy_von_Icarus - just to clarify, this is directed at @Meta_U, right? It’s kinda hard to tell at first glance.
I completely agree with you, in any event.
Your comment on the point seems coming from unusually narrowed psychological point of view. But the point in discussion was from metaphysical, philosophical and logical aspects on the consciousness, which is the forum’s main interest.
We can deal with any topics i.e. psychology, religion, art etc, but note that they have to be dealt with under the logical and rational point of view.
It sounds pessimistic and dismissive for aspiration for new knowledge. I admit the discussions on randomness in law of cause and effect was not very meaningful.
I was trying to clear the continuous misinterpretations and misleading arguments on it by Metap.
C’est moi!
An excellent question. How is this accomplished? Even moreso when considering something more complicated, yet entirely voluntary. Like picking up a pencil and writing or drawing something you’ve never written or drawn before. How many specific thoughts about specific muscles do you have? It takes the coordination of an amazing number of muscles. This muscle on the index finger does this at the same time that muscle on the thumb does that. Middle finger remains the same for this part while this other muscle on the index finger changes to this movement. Nobody thinks like that. So how is it accomplished?
I did say I couldn’t argue it was thinking with any confidence.
We certainly have non-linguistic thoughts.
Yes, we think about things we see and hear all the time.
It often seems that way. But I’m not sure I’ve ever tried to figure out where a thought came from and not been able to trace it back. But I haven’t tried to trace back every single thought I’ve ever had, so maybe some did appear from nowhere. I’m sure I’ve had dreams that were not a continuation of waking thoughts. If it can happen in dreams, I guess no reason it can’t happen while awake.
If you are so sure that my example is not relevant, then why would I need to elaborate? It seems like you are asking me to waste my time. Anyway, it’s quick and easy, so I’ll go through it again.
Let’s assume that a particular event is designated as a random occurrence. It might be the image you have at time X in the dream state, or it might be the transmutation of a particular atom in the state of radioactive decay. If these two are both designated as random, they are analogous.
So, to say that it is random that you have a particular image, rather than some other image, is to say that there is no reason for, and therefore no cause of you having that particular image. Understand so far? If there was a cause for that particular image, rather than a different image, we could not say that it was random. Now, it is incoherent and unintelligible because it stipulates that this event spontaneously occurred, without any reason for it to occur. That’s like claiming something comes into existence from nothing.
I’ll get to this. but until we get through the other part there’s no point. So let me know how you do with that explanation of why “random” is unintelligible, and maybe we can proceed toward my proposed alternative to random.
I think you need to read both Aristotle’s On the Soul, and Metaphysic again. In the former, the soul is clearly described as immaterial. Therefore it cannot be a material form. In the latter he explains the two very distinct senses of “form” and “actuality”. I don’t know how anyone could assume to understand Aristotelian metaphysics, and not judge him as proposing a dualism of substance.
I mean, it’s even stated as primary and secondary substance. Why do you try to explain this away with some “two-modes” nonsense? The whole point of the law of identity is that it puts the identity of the thing within the thing itself, rather than what we say about the thing. Therefore the form of the thing itself is clearly distinct from the form in the human mind, as the true identity of the thing. And, the form within our minds is different (not the same). It’s an incorrect interpretation of Aristotle to claim that it’s “two-modes” of the same form. If it was “the same form” it would be the thing itself, by the law of identity.
So, do you think that you could explain the two distinct senses of “form”, and “actuality” which Aristotle explains, without implying a dualism of substance? As I said in the other post, the two types of “actuality” described by Aristotle are demonstrated to be incompatible with each other. So I don’t see how two-modes of the same form makes any sense at all.
I was trying to be not dismissive on your claims even if it sounds absurd.
A particular atom in the state of radioactive decay? I don’t know what that might be. Ok, you could read about it on ChatGPT, but have you seen it with your own eyes? It has nothing whatsoever to do with the state of your mind when you are dreaming.
I feel you have not read my posts so far at all. Or if you did, you haven’t understood anything about it.
Seeing the images in dreams may sound random event, because you see different images every time you dream. You cannot predict what you will be seeing in your dreams this week. In that sense it is random. However, that doesn’t mean it has no cause for seeing the images.
We are here to investigate the nature and cause for the mental event of seeing images in dreams. I hope you see the point this time. It is crystal clear in this post.
We are not going to use laboratory experiments or clinical methods for the investigation, because we are not psychologists, scientists, and the religious agony aunts. We are going to use reasoning and logical analysis for the investigation, because this is the philosophy forum we are in.
Please read my post above. No one can fail to understand what “random” means in the context.
The immaterial agent is a concept which needs full elaboration on what it is. You cannot use these unfounded concepts without explaining and proving what they are in philosophical discussions.
I did, and I have no comment. I am obviously no one.
It is such a simple and clear point. Philosophical investigation is all about making abstract objects, concepts and events as well as writings to clear ideas.
It is not about making them more complicated and more abstract gibberish.
I think this understates where Kant’s approach leaves us. Kant’s claim isn’t that untrained minds merely struggle to grasp reality. Its that no mind — however trained, however disciplined — can ever know things as they are in themselves to any degree of adequacy, because the categories that make cognition possible are what cut us off from the in-itself in the first place. That’s not an observation about the difficulty of attaining wisdom. It’s a structural thesis about the limits of cognition as such.
I think the last sentence here is exactly right. The earlier philosophers would absolutely agree that we don’t start out with transparent access to Being. Aquinas himself was very clear about this: the human intellect begins in potency and has to be actualized through experience, discipline, and sustained inquiry. Nobody is born a sage. So if the point is just that wisdom requires effort and formation — yes, full agreement.
The phrase “this is not where inquiry ends” rightly implies that the gap can be progressively (though never finally) closed . And that’s precisely what Kant denies. For him, the limitation isn’t a starting point that we work to overcome — its a permanent structural feature of cognition that can’t be overcome. No amount of discipline or intellectual formation changes the fact that the categories apply only to appearances. So the Thomist and the Kantian agree on the starting diagnosis but disagree fundamentally about the prognosis.
The Maritain reference is apt here. The “intuition of Being” isn’t intended to be some mystical shortcut — its the recognition that the intellect is always-already naturally ordered toward Being, even if actualizing that orientation takes real work and is never finished. That’s a world apart from saying the orientation is blocked in principle.
I think we should be clear that this is the human intellect which Kant is talking about. I don’t think Kant even considered the possibility of other forms of intellect.
The big difference is that Aquinas allows for the reality of other forms of intellect. This may actually prove to be important in the modern world of artificial intelligence. But Aquinas talked about the immaterial intellects of the angels and God, and definitely thought that the gap will be closed, when the intellect/soul is separated from the body.
Interestingly, the dialogue I had with Gemini converged on the understanding that for the believer, intelligibility is prior, not because it is inherent in ‘the world’ (or the thing itself) but because of the dependence of the world on the Divine Intellect. Theism does not see the world as having an inherent reality independently of God. This is why Eckhardt says that ‘creatures (created beings) are ‘mere nothings’’ - they are real by virtue of participation, not 'in themselves’.
I read Maritain’s ‘intuition of Being’ as ecstatic - outside the normal subject-object relationship that characterises the natural state. I should add, I first encountered Maritain through another syncretic book, called God, Zen and the Intuition of Being, James Arraj.
A thought that occurs to me is that if essence is not something that can be empirically confirmed, it is because it requires a kind of participatory knowing. If it is blocked ‘in principle’, it is because of what the East calls avidya, ignorance, and what the West designates as ‘the fallen condition’.
Now this is something that I expect the philosophically-inclined Christian to be able to agree with. Maritain says that Kant doesn’t have this ‘intuition of Being’, which I think is likely true. But we have to recall that Maritain, and St Thomas, already assume the whole framework of Christian belief, which Kant has explicitly distanced himself from. He, like Descartes, was trying to start again from first principles.
Anyway, there’s a mountain of commentary on all of this. I have an idea about how to approach it, but I have to return to my book project for now. As always, thank you very much for the intelligent criticism.
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What is factually incorrect? Measurement is an interaction; it’s a probe that causes collapse. This is factually correct.
Disregarding that Brian Greene is a string theorist and should be treated with more skepticism than other quantum physicists regarding how he interprets and talks about quantum physics, his explanation you quoted still does not oppose what I said.
He is basically talking about the uncertainty principle, in which we cannot get information about both position and momentum. The measurement problem is about how a quantum state cannot be measured without interacting with it. As soon as you measure something—even looking at something—the photons are already interacting and causing the superposition to become entangled.
And it is this that makes physicists dismiss Wigner’s interpretation of Von Neumann’s take on the measurement problem, because it misunderstands what a measurement is by disregarding that any measurement requires a connection to the wavefunction being measured, and that connection causes it to collapse to a defined state.
The notion that consciousness itself causes reality is derived from this interpretation and is not considered correct in modern physics.
This interpretation has been tied to the origin of pseudoscientific currents and New Age movements, specifically quantum mysticism.[1]
Wigner later rejected this interpretation in the 1970s and 1980s.
Niels Bohr is said to have rejected the necessity of a conscious observer in quantum mechanics as early as 1927.[2]
Wigner shifted away from “consciousness causes collapse” in his later years. This was partly because he was embarrassed that “consciousness causes collapse” can lead to a kind of solipsism.
Bohr said circa 1927 that it “still makes no difference whether the observer is a man, an animal, or a piece of apparatus.”[2]
A poll was conducted at a quantum mechanics conference in 2011 using 33 participants (including physicists, mathematicians, and philosophers). Researchers found that 6% of participants (2 of the 33) indicated that they believed the observer “plays a distinguished physical role (e.g., wave-function collapse by consciousness).”
If we are using science as it should be used here, the consensus rejects that consciousness causes anything like collapsing the wavefunction or plays a part in forming reality.
That doesn’t really argue against what I said there. I don’t know why you claim that I “believe we can get outside and see reality as it is,” as I’ve never claimed as such. You are confusing the concepts I describe here.
Reality exists independent of us, and it is known from consensus-based scientific research we’ve done. Measurements we do that correlate with other measurements prove this beyond our perceptual limitations.
Interpretive frameworks around these results are usually what pop-science does, what newspapers about scientific discoveries do. That’s a narrative-based interpretation that has nothing to do with the core subject we’re talking about. The narratives to explain science, like quantum physics, only exist as an introductory stepping stone into theoretical physics; they’re not the actual science or the method used to form a scientific consensus about reality. No real scientist is equating their scientific data with a perceptual framework or summary of that data. And I think it is an improper view on science to define it by the pop-scientific narratives that are used to explain things to non-scientists.
But what I’m talking about is the experience we have of our consciousness, and “actual” reality is not a perceptual framing; it is pointing at the external reality.
What I said was that external reality, the closest we get to “actual present time” within the locality we exist in at the moment, is happening before we experience any perceptual framework of it.
And since external reality needs to be processed by our brain and nervous system, correlate and correct against our sensory data to ground the hallucinatory state at which our prediction coding system operates, our sum experience that we point towards when we think of our qualia/subjective experience of reality is happening after external reality has happened.
It’s a physical limitation of our system, and as such, our system operates automatically based on updated mental models that are constantly updated.
What I describe as our experience is the experience of our short-term memory, or the streamed sum of all perception into forming short-term memory, including the perception of our internal processes automatically operating. But since this is used to update the mental model of reality for further automatic functions to change course (adapting to changing conditions), we experience this change of course correction… and this is what is felt as free will.
A deterministic system that, in its action/reaction loop, causes the experience of freedom.
Fundamentally, the parts we are aligned on are that experience is NOT reality itself. That the experience we have as conscious beings is a narrow, limited experience of actual reality. But where we differ is that you seem to propose that consciousness causes reality itself, which originates from Wigner, which Wigner himself rejected later in life, and which is not even close to being considered a valid interpretation these days.
Well, it is outdated in the way I said it is outdated, because they didn’t have the same rigid systems in scientific research back then; it was developed over the course of the 20th century. When I say “modern methods,” I mean where we are today, with methods developed as late as the 2000s.
But what does this have to do with defining the experience of the mind and consciousness? Why are you putting science and scientific research on mind and consciousness in opposition to the phenomenological concepts and subjective experiences?
It’s not what I’m doing here. I’m using evidence in science to extrapolate possible clues as to why we experience reality in the way we do. The properties of our subjective experience is its own phenomenological entity, and the sum of it all is not what science “explains,” but rather that science is pointing at the limits that form it; therefore, we can understand why our experience is as it is. Similar to how we scientifically know why we only visually experience reality within the narrow limits of the light spectrum we are able to register, science does not explain how we experience the world through our eyes; it only points to the properties that define our experience in relation to actual reality. Through this dichotomy, we are able to understand our experience better than attempting any idea of meaning that is only having grounding in arbitrary subjective ideas.
If, in your opinion, the philosophy of mind and consciousness is about the meaning found within our experience, then I would argue that such meaning, without grounding in external evidence, becomes a much more loose subjective framework, unable to hold a philosophical conclusion on meaning. It becomes too arbitrary.
Fundamentally, using reasoning about our experience as a dialectic between phenomenology and scientific evidence might be the only way to formulate any kind of objective sense of meaning about our experiences.
Otherwise, what protects it from becoming purely an arbitrary subjective conclusion on meaning? And thus, unable to be formulated as a philosophical conclusion that applies to everyone’s subjective experiences.
But the search for meaning in our experience of the mind and consciousness is, in my view, the wrong approach, as it must first be proven that such a meaning is actually there in the first place.
Meaning should be derived out of first understanding how something functions, and when you criticize scientific narratives as being subjective frameworks, you are essentially criticizing the actual subjective theories of meaning derived from the closest we have to objective agreement.
If meaning in your view should come from the subjective, from the phenomenological, then how does the narrative interpretation from scientific research differ anymore from such subjectivity? Other than grounding it to evidence to avoid concluding something too arbitrarily.
Aren’t those narratives closer to meaning than rejecting scientific evidence and attempting to formulate conclusions without it?
This is also why I think you misunderstand what I’m arguing about experience. You’re using the separation between the subjective and objective as grounds to reject any scientifically derived conclusions on experience, even though it isn’t proposing that the experience is a measurable entity. It’s not what I’m arguing, but rather that scientific evidence informs how we should understand our experience.
Scientific evidence does not supply a phenomenological answer; it gives us the tools to interpret experience more clearly and less arbitrarily.
But why would meaning and the significance of life be of any importance for the purpose of decoding what our experience of the mind and consciousness is? You seem to frame this as some kind of moral quest, rather than a quest to attain knowledge about what constitutes our subjective experiences of our mind and consciousness.
The humanist angle for me has nothing to do with the mind and consciousness; it’s a moral question attributed to what comes after any metaphysical/ontological/phenomenological musings on the subjective experience we have. If you want to discuss the humanistic aspects of the lived experience, then the topic shouldn’t really be about the mind and consciousness, but about how the lived experience manifests itself throughout life, personally and sociologically.
For me, that’s an entirely different topic of discussion.
Modern science does not use “primary qualities”; it’s this that I’m referring to as being outdated, as it is referring to a Galileo/Locke tradition, not modern science.
This is especially true given that modern science on the mind and consciousness focuses more heavily on the emergent properties rather than just a reductionistic perspective. Thus, it incorporates the existence of something that forms from complexity, rather than from easily measurable sources.
The point you’re making is not in opposition to what I’m talking about. You are mistakenly interpreting that because I use scientific evidence as a jumping board into forming a philosophical concept of our experience of the mind and consciousness, I’m therefore arguing from a God’s eye view of reality and our experience, which I’m not.
I stated what the science points towards, and then formed the conclusion that our experience is primarily the experience of the formation of our memory, happening after our automated adapting-based system acted out of a simulated mental model formed by previous memories.
That is the conclusion I’m making about the experience of our mind and consciousness.
Whatever humanistic follow-ups about meaning and that lived experience you are referring to are philosophical concepts that should come after establishing the scientifically formulated aspects of our existence, in interpretations derived from it, not in opposition to it. Otherwise, it becomes too loose of an argument about some meaning, purpose, and function of our experience that is less about the mind and consciousness, and more about ideas on existence, untethered from reality. And I don’t think phenomenology should be limited in that way to only be about the meaning of the lived experience, as it is still compatible with scientific evidence, and a phenomenological description of experience does not go in opposition with what I’ve laid out as the cause for our experience of the mind and consciousness.
Basically, if we are to discuss the nature of the experience of our mind and consciousness, the interpretations and concepts in conclusions that draw from scientific evidence are logically far closer to any actual meaning than forming meaning out of only the messy nature of our experience of living. In the end, it almost becomes a conclusion that has no actual connection to anything other than whatever subjective view of reality that the subject has.
The question becomes… are we discussing the mind and consciousness, or the lived experience? Because they’re not really the same topics.
Are we though? If we had a system of action/reactions within a deterministic form, that is so complex that we, by the limits of our perception and understanding, mistakenly view it as a self-guiding free-willed system, then we are only experiencing it as being shaped in more complex forms than it really is.
From the perspective of the universe, we might be indistinguishable from any other physical progression of reality.
We might be equal to any other physical system and object in the universe, life itself could just be considered another form of state of matter, a higher complexity than molecular structure, the next step of molecular structures as a further complex system composed of them.
And to the universe, we might just be that higher state of matter, compared to the level under it, but nothing more or less as a physical aspect of reality.
We are doing things, making things, that would not exist if not for our intelligence using information to bring about an intended result. (I³?) Even if we were to learn that, without question, none of that is anything other than unspeakably complex physical activity, we would still be shaping the universe in ways that, to our knowledge, nothing else in the universe does. And, should we manage to not make ourselves extinct, we will only shape the universe more quickly as time goes by.
It certainly does. You are not able to wish away the philosophical issues at the centre of quantum physics.
Regarding your comments on ‘consciousness causing collapse’, I completely agree that consciousness or observation should be regarded as causal in a physical sense. I am not proposing any such idea. I am saying that what is known as the ‘wave function collapse’ is not a result of simply interfering with the objects of analysis. If that were so, there would be no mystery involved. As it is, there is whole publishing industry devoted to ‘interpretations of quantum physics.’ Were it as simple as you suggest, there would be no such industry.
But insofar as you say the mind can be understood objectively, then you are claiming to treat it as something we’re outside of, or apart from. Otherwise, how would it be possible to analyse it in the terms you propose, as the consequence of the interactions of cellular and neurobiological processes?
How can they not be? Going back to the original post: the definition of ‘consciousness studies’: “Consciousness studies is a rapidly developing, interdisciplinary field investigating the nature of subjective experience.” That is what differentiates consciousness studies from philosophy of mind, out of which it evolved, by incoporating insights from other disciplines such as cognitive and neuro-science and psychology. But the nature of subjective experience is central to it. That is what can’t be grasped ‘from the outside’.
This is not something of my invention. In Part I, Section 2 of The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Edmund Husserl presents what he calls “The Origin of the Modern Opposition between Physicalistic Objectivism and Transcendental Subjectivism.”
Here he traces the crisis through a series of historical-conceptual stages:
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Galileo’s mathematization of nature - The founding moment where nature becomes idealized as a mathematical manifold, creating a “garb of ideas” that we mistake for nature itself
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The split between primary and secondary qualities - Mathematical properties are treated as the “true” nature of things, while experiential qualities become merely subjective
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The dualism of res extensa and res cogitans (Descartes) - Reality splits into extended substance (objective world) and thinking substance (subjective mind)
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The paradox of subjectivity - The knowing subject who constructs this objective science cannot find itself within the objective world it has created
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The failure of rationalism and empiricism - Both traditions attempt to resolve this but remain trapped within objectivism
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The crisis proper - Science becomes increasingly successful technically but loses meaning for human life; it cannot answer questions about the meaning of human existence
I don’t expect that you will agree but it illustrates the phenomenological critique of what is often called ‘scientism’.
I couldn’t help myself – I read the word construct and immediately got into the discovered/created physical world debate.
True, while it stays away from a direct confrontation with the meaning of life, it has brought us many visions/visuals about the vastness of the universe. Science allows us to see, and it’s up to us to find meaning in life.
A matter of individual choice?
Being social animals, there’s never an individual choice when it comes to the meaning of life. It is developed, not discovered, through our association with each other. I hope that we don’t google it or ask AI what is the meaning of life for us.