Retail and Global Skepticism

[selfAdjoint]

Here is a discussion by Richard Rorty (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2003/10/05/out_of_the_matrix?mode=PF) of the philosopher Donald Davidson which suggests that we should forget about Descartes and the notion of inner impressions versus the outside world.

[hypnagogue]

I can't say I agree with everything in this article.

One way to sum up this anti-Cartesian line of thought is to say that words acquire their meanings by being used in roughly similar ways by most speakers, not by being paired off with particular experiences or objects. (If men and women consistently use "blue" in the same way on the same occasions, they automatically mean the same thing by "blue.")

I agree that words acquire their meanings in this way. All the same, however, once words are acquired in this way they do go on to be paired off with particular experiences or objects.

For instance, if men and women consistently use "blue" in the same way on the same occasions, then they mean the same objective thing by blue (in this case, they have agreed to call light of so-and-so wavelength "blue"). But this is just a behavioristic account of language. Once the word "blue" has been acquired, it is indeed 'paired off' with the individual's conscious perception of blueness.

But one individual's conscious perception of blueness can (in principle) differ from another's. So although objectively/behavioristically two such speakers would 'automatically mean the same thing by "blue",' in actuality they would be associating the word with different internal conscious perceptions. If one could perceive directly what the other experienced as 'blueness,' he would certainly not say that this other person meant the same thing by "blue." (He would say, for example, "that's not blue, that's green!")

I realize that this is exactly what this Davidson fellow argued against, and that this article can't really capture his philosophy in any depth. But the above points seem so obvious as to be incontestable. This theory of language looks to me suspiciously like a simple behavioristic account that denies the existence or importance of conscious states.

In a famous article of 1974 titled "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme," Davidson explained why we did not have to worry about another familiar science-fiction suggestion: that an advanced civilization, flourishing in a faraway galaxy, might wield concepts that are forever beyond our grasp, concepts entirely incommensurable with our own. The reason is that every language, even the most advanced, has to get its start as a set of behavioral responses to stimuli, responses that can be correlated with our own responses. So there is no such thing as an unlearnable language.

Once again, I have to say 'hogwash!' Same behavioristic symptoms as above. It's easier to recognize the flaw by inverting the situation. Imagine that we meet another intelligent form of life, and assume that this life form has absolutely no emotional analog of 'shame.' They can certainly learn much of our language, and even learn the behavioristic indicators of human shame, but this race can never really grasp what it feels like for a human to be in shame. This is precisely because they do not have the proper internal emotion to 'pair off' with the word 'shame,' once they have acquired a rough understanding of it in the objective/behavioristic sense.

[zk4586]

Well, I just happened to stumble upon this thread while doing a search, and I have to argue a point here:

But one individual's conscious perception of blueness can (in principle) differ from another's. So although objectively/behavioristically two such speakers would 'automatically mean the same thing by "blue",' in actuality they would be associating the word with different internal conscious perceptions. If one could perceive directly what the other experienced as 'blueness,' he would certainly not say that this other person meant the same thing by "blue." (He would say, for example, "that's not blue, that's green!")

Such differences in "internal conscious perceptions", whatever they may be, hardly seem important to me. As long as colors can be agreed upon, thus allowing people to create understanding between themselves while operating in the world, I don't think we have to worry about whether two people are experiencing different internal perceptions when they refer to various colors. For example, if one person asks another person to hand him a blue crayon, all that matters is that both agree on which one is the blue crayon. It seems insignificant whether or not both people's internal perceptions are the same.

[RageSk8]

I agree with zk4586 point that as long as one knows how to use the word "blue", one has the concept of "blue". But, I must say that this argument, as true as it is, will not persuade hypnagogue. To hypnagogue and others like him – those Dennett calls “the new mysterians” – we holists will always be ignoring the defining aspect of consciousness: phenomenological data. Hypnagogue seems to admit that we holists have a handle of on the behavioral and objective aspects of meaning but not on the “true conception” of meaning, the ineffable core of human experience that breaths life into terms. I don’t know how to debate this point, namely, because I have no idea what use phenomenological data is to meaning. The only way we can ever know if someone has the concept of a word is if they know how to use that word. All of this talk about “what it is really like” seems like quixotic foolishness to me.

Hypnagogue said:
I realize that this is exactly what this Davidson fellow argued against, and that this article can't really capture his philosophy in any depth. But the above points seem so obvious as to be incontestable. This theory of language looks to me suspiciously like a simple behavioristic account that denies the existence or importance of conscious states.
And he is mostly right. Rorty’s article can’t capture Davidson’s (or Wittgenstein’s thought) and either can a few forum posts. However, his is only partially right to say that we deny the importance of conscious states. We do not deny we have mental states - we just think of mental states in vastly different terms. Hypnagogue thinks that we miss “what it is like” for an individual to see the color blue. What exactly is seeing this color blue? Who is this personage watching the Cartesian theatre? In our opinion once we have mapped out all of the causal relations of a mental state we have mapped out the mental state. We’re done. What else could be done? How could a mental state be defined more than this? Even hypnagogue would have to admit that we could never describe “what it is like” to see the color blue. He believes that seeing blue is intrinsic and ineffable. This is why we holists view hypnagogue and those who side with him as mystics tilting at windmills.

[Les Sleeth]

Originally posted by zk4586
Such differences in "internal conscious perceptions", whatever they may be, hardly seem important to me. As long as colors can be agreed upon, thus allowing people to create understanding between themselves while operating in the world, I don't think we have to worry about whether two people are experiencing different internal perceptions when they refer to various colors. For example, if one person asks another person to hand him a blue crayon, all that matters is that both agree on which one is the blue crayon. It seems insignificant whether or not both people's internal perceptions are the same.

When you say "internal conscious perceptions hardly seem important to me," it seems you are saying this in relation to the importance of language. I believe what hypnagogue is talking about however is the nature of consciousness. I don't think he would disagree with you that for practical purposes, at the moment of asking for a crayon the issue of how conscious experience works makes much difference to getting the crayon one asks for. At the same time, the fact that we get the expected crayon doesn't tell us all that went on in consciousness which allowed such an action to take place.

[Les Sleeth]

Originally posted by RageSk8 I agree with zk4586 point that as long as one knows how to use the word "blue", one has the concept of "blue". But, I must say that this argument, as true as it is, will not persuade hypnagogue. To hypnagogue and others like him – those Dennett calls “the new mysterians” – we holists will always be ignoring the defining aspect of consciousness: phenomenological data. Hypnagogue seems to admit that we holists have a handle of on the behavioral and objective aspects of meaning but not on the “true conception” of meaning, the ineffable core of human experience that breaths life into terms. I don’t know how to debate this point, namely, because I have no idea what use phenomenological data is to meaning. The only way we can ever know if someone has the concept of a word is if they know how to use that word.

Calling your view of consciousness “holist” is about as apt as a skeleton claiming to define humanness. I say that because you seem so obsessed with structure and "parts" that you don’t see, or feel, the integrating aspects that fills the gaps between parts.

So, you “have no idea what use phenomenological data is to meaning”? Your tone indicates you interpret that to mean we who disagree with your dis-integrated approach are deluded. But it could be that the new mysterians are mystifying to you the same way an ape is mystified by why he can’t pick up water with a fork.

Originally posted by RageSk8 What exactly is seeing this color blue? Who is this personage watching the Cartesian theatre?

Exactly! That is the question you and Mr. Dennett are trying to get around. You don’t have a way to answer “who is this personage” and so you have decided to create a model that denies the nature of experience. In other words, since your model cannot explain all that is present in consciousness, you simply deny that the aspects exist at all!

Originally posted by RageSk8 In our opinion once we have mapped out all of the causal relations of a mental state we have mapped out the mental state. We’re done. What else could be done? How could a mental state be defined more than this?

The map of California is not California. And then, California is not merely my journey from one point on the map to another point on the map. The map isn’t even close, and can never come close, to describing the “whole” of California.

Originally posted by RageSk8 Even hypnagogue would have to admit that we could never describe “what it is like” to see the color blue. He believes that seeing blue is intrinsic and ineffable.

What difference does it make whether or not he can describe what blue is like? If I needed you to understand me or know what I know before I could properly exist, then you might have a point. But I am perfectly able to live relying on my own certainty. Description only means something when we are communicating, it has nothing to do with the existence of an object or quality.

Originally posted by RageSk8 All of this talk about “what it is really like” seems like quixotic foolishness to me. . . . This is why we holists view hypnagogue and those who side with him as mystics tilting at windmills.

I see your hiatus hasn’t brought you much humility.

[zk4586]

I don't intend to speak for RageSk8, he's perfectly capable of answering LW Sleeth's criticisms on his own, but for my part I must respond to the following:

When you say "internal conscious perceptions hardly seem important to me," it seems you are saying this in relation to the importance of language. I believe what hypnagogue is talking about however is the nature of consciousness. I don't think he would disagree with you that for practical purposes, at the moment of asking for a crayon the issue of how conscious experience works makes much difference to getting the crayon one asks for. At the same time, the fact that we get the expected crayon doesn't tell us all that went on in consciousness which allowed such an action to take place.

I don't deny that such conscious states exist (nothing in my first response would suggest that), I simply think that the most important - and yes, the most practical - questions about consciousness address relations between individuals. In my view, one need not concern oneself with the nature of consciousness, merely the outward manifestations of consciousness (particularly language). So to ask a question regarding internal conscious perceptions is to ask the wrong kind of question and to ignore the only interesting (and informative) aspects of consciousness.

[Les Sleeth]

Originally posted by zk4586
I don't intend to speak for RageSk8, he's perfectly capable of answering LW Sleeth's criticisms on his own, but for my part I must respond to the following:

I don't deny that such conscious states exist (nothing in my first response would suggest that), I simply think that the most important - and yes, the most practical - questions about consciousness address relations between individuals. In my view, one need not concern oneself with the nature of consciousness, merely the outward manifestations of consciousness (particularly language). So to ask a question regarding internal conscious perceptions is to ask the wrong kind of question and to ignore the only interesting (and informative) aspects of consciousness.

First let me say that my criticism of RageSk8 was not intended to be associated with you. If it seems hard, it is because of what I see as his arrogant attitude, one which I have witnessed plenty of times in the past. A slight problem here at PF (IMO) is teenagers (or close to it) who, hiding behind the shelter of their computers and IP's, behave like know-it-alls or, it seems, vent their frustrations with parents and adults on the people here. I am pretty sure you and I disagree, but I don't see that as a problem, but rather as an opportunity to trade ideas.

I know your view is that "one need not concern oneself with the nature of consciousness, merely the outward manifestations of consciousness." I say, if you want to run your consciousness that way, fine. The problem is, you are agreeing in essence with Rorty's point that we define consciousness, for humans in general, as that which is MOST intended for language and human interaction. I see that as arrogance.

I say that because I personally do not want to make the priority for my conscious development interacting with others (and consequently language). You can do that if you want, Rorty can do that if he wants, RageSk8 can do that if he wants . . . but I decline the opportunity. There are plenty of others who agree with me too.

This attempt to define consciousness as language and human interaction is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to model a human as a machine. It is the latest functionalist/behaviorist strategy to convince us poor ignert humans there is no inner being. The truth is, those so determined to do that only know they haven't figured out how to be aware of innerness; they do not know anything about, nor do they investigate properly, those who have achived something inwardly.

Personally, I prefer to make the first and foremost priority for my conscious development learning how to be content and happy within myself, and how not to be dependent on others (or anything else) for that. My second priority might be human interaction; I do consider it important . . . just not first. So that's why I say to attempt to define what the priority of consciousness should be for all of us arrogates others' right to decide for themselves how they should and will develop it.

[confutatis]

Originally posted by RageSk8
Even hypnagogue would have to admit that we could never describe “what it is like” to see the color blue. He believes that seeing blue is intrinsic and ineffable. This is why we holists view hypnagogue and those who side with him as mystics tilting at windmills.

Sometimes I have the feeling that people who deny the ineffable aspect of experience are not really conscious, they just behave as if they were.

A blind man knows quite a lot about the color blue. Does that mean you have to be a mystic tilting at windmills to believe that vision tells you something you can't possibly learn with language?

[zk4586]

Originally posted by confutatis
Sometimes I have the feeling that people who deny the ineffable aspect of experience are not really conscious, they just behave as if they were.

A blind man knows quite a lot about the color blue. Does that mean you have to be a mystic tilting at windmills to believe that vision tells you something you can't possibly learn with language?

What exactly does a blind man know about the color blue?

[RageSk8]

My arrogant tone? There is obviously arrogance on both sides. There always will be in debate as people naturally believe they are right and the other is wrong. My description of those on your side as “quixotic” is completely accurate from the perspective of those on my side. Just as you thinking of my views as ‘misled arrogance’ is the expected and natural response. If you look at my post I take care to explain the divergence between the two conceptions of consciousness. I am all for the presentation of each conception and, in fact, encourage it (as shown here where I present your side's argument against Turing to promote intellectual diversity (http://physicsforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=16446)). Come on, you can’t honestly believe that “a slight problem here at PF (IMO) is teenagers (or close to it) who, hiding behind the shelter of their computers and IP's, behave like know-it-alls or, it seems, vent their frustrations with parents and adults on the people here.” I have no problem with honest debate, but I do have a problem with toning down debate so people don’t feel threatened or looked down upon. That’s BS. It doesn’t happen in actual academic debates and shouldn’t happen here. Anyways, back to the discussion…

Exactly! That is the question you and Mr. Dennett are trying to get around. You don’t have a way to answer “who is this personage” and so you have decided to create a model that denies the nature of experience. In other words, since your model cannot explain all that is present in consciousness, you simply deny that the aspects exist at all!

This is pretty close but misses and important aspect of our argument. What Dennett has done is present a new set of metaphors to talk about consciousness (a better set of metaphors in Dennett’s and my opinion). This is called philosophical therapy – the ‘cleaning up’ of old, outdated, messy metaphors and the pseudo-problems they create. Are you denying that your view of consciousness has a historical heritage with roots in Descartes? Descartes created a new vocabulary for describing the mind. There is no doubt that this vocabulary has gone through changes since first conceptualized, but those who agree with Dennett, Rorty, and Davidson see the basic model as fundamentally flawed. So, yes, we do attack the very questions that lie at the core of what is traditionally thought of as consciousness, but we also redescribe consciousness, conceptually recreate it in a different more useful form.

The map of California is not California. And then, California is not merely my journey from one point on the map to another point on the map. The map isn’t even close, and can never come close, to describing the “whole” of California.

This is equivocation. A “map” of California is not equivalent to a map of causal relationships. To put it in a different way, I think it is good enough to explain why it appears as if there is phenomenological data. You don’t.

Calling your view of consciousness “holist” is about as apt as a skeleton claiming to define humanness. I say that because you seem so obsessed with structure and "parts" that you don’t see, or feel, the integrating aspects that fills the gaps between parts.

So, you “have no idea what use phenomenological data is to meaning”? Your tone indicates you interpret that to mean we who disagree with your dis-integrated approach are deluded. But it could be that the new mysterians are mystifying to you the same way an ape is mystified by why he can’t pick up water with a fork.

Well, no. To quote Rorty: “ostensive definition requires a lot of stage-setting in the language, and that ostention without stage-setting (as when one says ‘forget about how it might be described; just concentrate on the feel of it – on what it is like’) does not pick out an entity.” This is what I mean by “holist.”

[RageSk8]

Originally posted by confutatis
Sometimes I have the feeling that people who deny the ineffable aspect of experience are not really conscious, they just behave as if they were.

A blind man knows quite a lot about the color blue. Does that mean you have to be a mystic tilting at windmills to believe that vision tells you something you can't possibly learn with language?

You have a strange view of language. Language is intimately tied with other interactions with world. Anyways, zk4586 said it best, "What exactly does a blind man know about the color blue?" My brother is red/green color blind. He sees our Christmas tree every year as "brown." In this case, he does not know the concept of green (at least in this instance) because he cannot play a language game where one identifies a Christmas tree as green. I fail to see how this challenges our position at all.

[Les Sleeth]

Originally posted by RageSk8My arrogant tone? There is obviously arrogance on both sides.

Agreed.

Originally posted by RageSk8 Come on, you can’t honestly believe that “a slight problem here at PF (IMO) is teenagers (or close to it) who, hiding behind the shelter of their computers and IP's, behave like know-it-alls or, it seems, vent their frustrations with parents and adults on the people here.” I have no problem with honest debate, but I do have a problem with toning down debate so people don’t feel threatened or looked down upon. That’s BS.

I do believe it because I’ve wasted hours and hours of my time trying to reason with kids who lack enough life experience to know if their theories actually work, but who nonetheless advocate them here with the zealousness of someone who knows. Maybe “toning down” might stand for speaking with some degree of acknowledgement that one just might not know everything there is to know about a subject.

Originally posted by RageSk8
My description of those on your side as “quixotic” is completely accurate from the perspective of those on my side.

Your description might be expected, but I don’t think you are correct when you say it is accurate, no matter which “side” from which it derives. Aren’t we doing epistemology? In such a case, one cannot claim the validity of a general (wholesale) statement based on incomplete retail data.

Originally posted by RageSk8 What Dennett has done is present a new set of metaphors to talk about consciousness (a better set of metaphors in Dennett’s and my opinion). This is called philosophical therapy – the ‘cleaning up’ of old, outdated, messy metaphors and the pseudo-problems they create.

If antiquity does not make ideas true, then neither does fashionability. I say Dennett’s ideas are not better metaphors, but spin that attempts to establish a philosophical foundation for his variety of physicalism.

Originally posted by RageSk8 Are you denying that your view of consciousness has a historical heritage with roots in Descartes?

I deny it absolutely. My view of consciousness stems from the time I have taken to directly experience it. How is one going to understand one’s consciousness by contemplating it theoretically? If to know the reality of things outside us we must “observe,” must we not also experience the nature of consciousness to know anything about it?

Originally posted by RageSk8 So, yes, we do attack the very questions that lie at the core of what is traditionally thought of as consciousness, but we also redescribe consciousness, conceptually recreate it in a different more useful form.

Very funny. What exactly is “more useful”? Useful to what or whom? If I were a politician, I would define “useful” as that which gets me votes. Useful to Dennett and yourself seems to be what supports your theory of consciousness.

[Les Sleeth]

Originally posted by RageSk8
You have a strange view of language. Language is intimately tied with other interactions with world. Anyways, zk4586 said it best, "What exactly does a blind man know about the color blue?" My brother is red/green color blind. He sees our Christmas tree every year as "brown." In this case, he does not know the concept of green (at least in this instance) because he cannot play a language game where one identifies a Christmas tree as green. I fail to see how this challenges our position at all.

I suspect what Confutatis meant was that a blind man can have a zillion concepts about the color blue, and talk about it, without having the slightest bit of experiential knowledge about it. Language might be tied to our interactions with the world, but that doesn't mean conscious experience must be tied to interactions with the world. The challenge to your position is found in the fact that you can't demonstrate conscious experience must necessarily be linked to what one thinks or says.

[zk4586]

Originally posted by LW Sleeth
I suspect what Confutatis meant was that a blind man can have a zillion concepts about the color blue, and talk about it, without having the slightest bit of experiential knowledge about it. Language might be tied to our interactions with the world, but that doesn't mean conscious experience must be tied to interactions with the world. The challenge to your position is found in the fact that you can't demonstrate conscious experience must necessarily be linked to what one thinks or says.

I still don't see how this is in any way true. What concepts can a blind man have about the color blue without experiencing it (through the senses)? How can he talk about the color blue?

And let us all just keep in mind that we're debating a question with very little, if any, real importance. There's no reason for hostility from anyone.

[Les Sleeth]

Originally posted by zk4586
I still don't see how this is in any way true. What concepts can a blind man have about the color blue without experiencing it (through the senses)? How can he talk about the color blue?

And let us all just keep in mind that we're debating a question with very little, if any, real importance. There's no reason for hostility on either side of the issue.

I've listened to a number of songs Stevie Wonder wrote where he created verses based on visual information, including color. I used to wonder [6)] myself what sort of mental images he'd imagined for those verses. I can only guess obviously, but possibly he questioned others about color, and possibly he took clues from his other senses, such feeling the heat of the sun and then associating it with his concept of color. However blind persons do it, they are able to develop color concepts without experience.

I agree about the hostility. However, I disagree that the question of consciousness is of little importance. Many of us recognize it as the place where physicalistic theory breaks down. Dennett and others are trying to make the case that the brain can be the cause of consciousness. My opinion is that the only way he can do that is to first deny the existence of those aspects of consciousness he can't explain with physicalist theory.

My objection to Rorty's point in this thread is the assumption that the primary functions of consciousness are language and thinking. A computer can talk and think but doesn't know it does. Self-knowing that can evolve understanding, wisdom, joy, love etc. as it learns is what the computer lacks, and it is also what the brain model of consciousness lacks. This evolved self knowledge doesn't need to speak or think, it just knows the way one just knows how to ride a bike once it's learned. I speak with understanding, but the understanding itself is not a thought and it is not language. It is a sort of conscious singularity (like love or joy) that is already in place. Those of us who believe in and want to develop this inner ability to know are who Dennett wants to label the new mysterions. I want to label him the new computer wanna-be.

[zk4586]

Originally posted by LW Sleeth
I've listened to a number of songs Stevie Wonder wrote where he created verses based on visual information, including color. I used to wonder [6)] myself what sort of mental images he'd imagined for those verses. I can only guess obviously, but possibly he questioned others about color, and possibly he took clues from his other senses, such feeling the heat of the sun and then associating it with his concept of color. However blind persons do it, they are able to develop color concepts without experience.

I agree that that probably is how Stevie Wonder worked visual information, including color, into his songs. Knowing that color plays an important part in people's lives, he asked friends what they associated with certain colors and emotions and so forth. But that doesn't mean that Stevie Wonder understands the concept of a particular color. Because he's blind, he can't tell you the color of something unless he's been told by someone else what the color is. He can sing, "The woman in red, The woman in red, Like fine wine she's going straight to my head," but that doesn't mean that he understands the concept of the color red, merely that he's been told that attractive women can often be found wearing a red dress (and no doubt has had "experience" with this fact). But he has no way of generalizing (on his own) his experience of color so that he can apply it to new things. He can't take part in a language game which uses color (and certain other things dependent on the sense of vision).

Originally posted by LW Sleeth
I agree about the hostility. However, I disagree that the question of consciousness is of little importance. Many of us recognize it as the place where physicalistic theory breaks down. Dennett and others are trying to make the case that the brain can be the cause of consciousness. My opinion is that the only way he can do that is to first deny the existence of those aspects of consciousness he can't explain with physicalist theory.

I say that the question of consciousness is of little importance for two reasons: 1) Even when simply confining oneself to the realm of philosophy, there seems to me far more important questions to ask (e.g. How should one live? What constitutes a just society? And so forth). 2) I doubt we'll ever come to any kind of consensus about the nature of consciousness and even if we did, I don't think it would really change the way we live our lives.

Originally posted by LW Sleeth
My objection to Rorty's point in this thread is the assumption that the primary functions of consciousness are language and thinking. A computer can talk and think but doesn't know it does. Self-knowing that can evolve understanding, wisdom, joy, love etc. as it learns is what the computer lacks, and it is also what the brain model of consciousness lacks. This evolved self knowledge doesn't need to speak or think, it just knows the way one just knows how to ride a bike once it's learned. I speak with understanding, but the understanding itself is not a thought and it is not language. It is a sort of conscious singularity (like love or joy) that is already in place. Those of us who believe in and want to develop this inner ability to know are who Dennett wants to label the new mysterions. I want to label him the new computer wanna-be.

I've already said that I believe the primary functions of consciousness are language and thinking. I don't need to go over that again. But I must object to the idea that a computer will never be able to attain certain features of human consciousness (such as emotion or self-awareness). There is definately a difference of complexity at work here, but I can't make sense of the notion that this difference is necessarily absolute.
--------------
"Turing shows that if a computer can add, subtract, multiply, and divide, and if it can tell the difference between zero and one, it can do anything. You can take that set of mindless abilities and build them up into structures of indefinite discriminative power, indefinite discerning power, indefinite reflective power. You can make a whole mind ... you can get ideas to think for themselves."
--Daniel Dennett, in an interview with Harvey Blume.
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/digicult/dc981209.htm

[Les Sleeth]

Originally posted by zk4586
I agree that that probably is how Stevie Wonder worked visual information, including color, into his songs. Knowing that color plays an important part in people's lives, he asked friends what they associated with certain colors and emotions and so forth. But that doesn't mean that Stevie Wonder understands the concept of a particular color. Because he's blind, he can't tell you the color of something unless he's been told by someone else what the color is. He can sing, "The woman in red, The woman in red, Like fine wine she's going straight to my head," but that doesn't mean that he understands the concept of the color red, merely that he's been told that attractive women can often be found wearing a red dress (and no doubt has had "experience" with this fact). But he has no way of generalizing (on his own) his experience of color so that he can apply it to new things. He can't take part in a language game which uses color (and certain other things dependent on the sense of vision).

I think you are making Confutatis' point for him. My interpretation of what he was trying to say is that one cannot have real knowlege of color without the experience of color. That is what is wrong with a model of consciousness as mere thinking and language. You can think and talk all day about the color blue, you might even manage to formulate the perfect blue concept, but you will still not know the color blue. That's because the impression of blue in consciousness does not get there via a concept, it gets there through experience.

Jumping ahead to your belief below about computers achieving consciousness, if a human can't know the color blue through thinking and language, how is a computer going to think its way to knowledge of the color blue?

Originally posted by zk4586
I say that the question of consciousness is of little importance for two reasons: 1) Even when simply confining oneself to the realm of philosophy, there seems to me far more important questions to ask (e.g. How should one live? What constitutes a just society? And so forth). 2) I doubt we'll ever come to any kind of consensus about the nature of consciousness and even if we did, I don't think it would really change the way we live our lives.

Those philosophical questions you cite as more important all involve humanity. To understand what is best for humanity we need to understand what humanity is at the core. This is the real reason for the debate about consciousness -- it is a struggle to decide everything from how we educate our children to what sorts of social design best fit human nature.

Originally posted by zk4586
I've already said that I believe the primary functions of consciousness are language and thinking. I don't need to go over that again.

We'll have to disagree about the primary function of consciousness. I think I can prove you are wrong, and I will attempt to do so in new thread. I'll be interested in your opinion.

Originally posted by zk4586
But I must object to the idea that a computer will never be able to attain certain features of human consciousness (such as emotion or self-awareness). There is definately a difference of complexity at work here, but I can't make sense of the notion that this difference is necessarily absolute. . . . "Turing shows that if a computer can add, subtract, multiply, and divide, and if it can tell the difference between zero and one, it can do anything. You can take that set of mindless abilities and build them up into structures of indefinite discriminative power, indefinite discerning power, indefinite reflective power. You can make a whole mind ... you can get ideas to think for themselves."
--Daniel Dennett, in an interview with Harvey Blume.
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/digicult/dc981209.htm

Just like those who claim we've all but proven life comes about through abiogenesis, so far all we get from Dennett et al. is exaggerated claims. To them I say, do it! Until they do, it is all speculation and they should stop pretending they have figured out what consciousness is.

Also, Turing did not show a computer "can do anything," he showed a computer should be capable of any sort of computing the human mind can do. I personally do not believe consciousness is built up from the complexity of computing operations. I think it comes about through the generalization of experience.

[zk4586]

Originally posted by LW Sleeth
I think you are making Confutatis' point for him. My interpretation of what he was trying to say is that one cannot have real knowlege of color without the experience of color. That is what is wrong with a model of consciousness as mere thinking and language. You can think and talk all day about the color blue, you might even manage to formulate the perfect blue concept, but you will still not know the color blue. That's because the impression of blue in consciousness does not get there via a concept, it gets there through experience.

After re-reading Confutatis' post, I don't think I missed what he was trying to say.

Originally posted by Confutatis
Sometimes I have the feeling that people who deny the ineffable aspect of experience are not really conscious, they just behave as if they were.

A blind man knows quite a lot about the color blue. Does that mean you have to be a mystic tilting at windmills to believe that vision tells you something you can't possibly learn with language?

It seems to me that Confutatis is saying there are certain intrinsic properties in consciousness directly related to the concepts that we acquire through experience. But I think he's making an unfortunate distinction between what we experience and how we describe what we experience.


Originally posted by LW Sleeth
Jumping ahead to your belief below about computers achieving consciousness, if a human can't know the color blue through thinking and language, how is a computer going to think its way to knowledge of the color blue?

A computer depends on imputs provided by a user. These inputs are interpreted by interplay between the hardware and the software. To me, this seems akin to sensory experience being interpreted by interplay between innate concepts and social constructs.


Originally posted by LW Sleeth
Those philosophical questions you cite as more important all involve humanity. To understand what is best for humanity we need to understand what humanity is at the core. This is the real reason for the debate about consciousness -- it is a struggle to decide everything from how we educate our children to what sorts of social design best fit human nature.

We have produced a number of very good ideas (supported by well-reasoned arguments) about what is best for humanity, none of which require us to get clear on the nature of consciousness.

Originally posted by LW Sleeth
We'll have to disagree about the primary function of consciousness. I think I can prove you are wrong, and I will attempt to do so in new thread. I'll be interested in your opinion.

Agreed. [:))]

Originally posted by LW Sleeth
Just like those who claim we've all but proven life comes about through abiogenesis, so far all we get from Dennett et al. is exaggerated claims. To them I say, do it! Until they do, it is all speculation and they should stop pretending they have figured out what consciousness is.

Also, Turing did not show a computer "can do anything," he showed a computer should be capable of any sort of computing the human mind can do. I personally do not believe consciousness is built up from the complexity of computing operations. I think it comes about through the generalization of experience.

There just seems to me no reason to rule out the possibility that computers may one day acquire emotions and become self-aware. Though, as you say, this goes back to ones particular conception of what constitutes consciousness and of how consciousness arises.

[confutatis]

Originally posted by zk4586
It seems to me that Confutatis is saying there are certain intrinsic properties in consciousness directly related to the concepts that we acquire through experience.

What I'm saying is that knowledge is not evidence of consciousness. The fact that a blind man knows a lot about 'blue' without ever seeing it proves my point. What a blind man does not know about the colour blue cannot be communicated, and that must necessarily mean conscious experience is ineffable.

But I think he's making an unfortunate distinction between what we experience and how we describe what we experience

Why 'unfortunate'? You mean there's no distinction, or the distinction should be ignored?

[zk4586]

Originally posted by confutatis
What I'm saying is that knowledge is not evidence of consciousness. The fact that a blind man knows a lot about 'blue' without ever seeing it proves my point. What a blind man does not know about the colour blue cannot be communicated, and that must necessarily mean conscious experience is ineffable.

That conclusion only follows if you accept that a blind man knows something about the color blue. I don't think that he does, and I've argued as much in this thread.

Originally posted by confutatis
Why 'unfortunate'? You mean there's no distinction, or the distinction should be ignored?

I don't think the distinction exists.

[hypnagogue]

Originally posted by zk4586
That conclusion only follows if you accept that a blind man knows something about the color blue. I don't think that he does, and I've argued as much in this thread.

This only supports the point you are trying to refute, though. If a blind man can know nothing of the color blue, then clearly the concept of blueness must include more than a linguistic account of blueness. Otherwise, the blind man would be able to know blueness just as well as you and I.

I don't think the distinction [between what we experience and how we describe what we experience] exists.

So if I read a description of a tree in a novel, this is the literally the same thing that happens when I look at a tree?

[confutatis]

Originally posted by zk4586
That conclusion only follows if you accept that a blind man knows something about the color blue. I don't think that he does, and I've argued as much in this thread.

If you argue that a man knows nothing about what he doesn't see, where does that lead us? Do you know anything about quarks, black holes, American history, algebra? Do you know your age, your last name, how many days there are in a week, what year the Beatles broke up? If you don't call those things knowledge, what do you call it then?

I don't think the distinction exists.

Well, if you maintain that knowledge only comes from experience, then you must necessarily accept that language and abstract thought have nothing to do with consciousness. Which is my argument!

[zk4586]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
This only supports the point you are trying to refute, though. If a blind man can know nothing of the color blue, then clearly the concept of blueness must include more than a linguistic account of blueness. Otherwise, the blind man would be able to know blueness just as well as you and I.

The reason I say that a blind man can't have knowledge of the color blue is because knowing what blue is depends on being able to use blue in a variable linguistic manner. That is to say, being able to recognize the color blue and then being able to apply that information to achieve some end. Go back to the example I used in my first post in this thread.

Originally posted by hypnagogue
So if I read a description of a tree in a novel, this is the literally the same thing that happens when I look at a tree?

All I'm saying is that there is no qualitative difference between what we experience and how we would describe (either to ourselves or to someone else) what we experience. Language has come to dominate the way we experience and interact with the world. Now, is reading about a tree and seeing a tree the same thing? No, I'm not going that far. But if you were to describe the tree, it would probably be in roughly the same terms as the author. So language, as I see it, places limits on how we experience the world.

[hypnagogue]

Originally posted by zk4586
The reason I say that a blind man can't have knowledge of the color blue is because knowing what blue is depends on being able to use blue in a variable linguistic manner. That is to say, being able to recognize the color blue and then being able to apply that information to achieve some end.

Being able to recognize color and then apply that information to achieve some end does not necessitate linguistic representations. Or does every animal that can discriminate and act on the basis of light wavelength information have some sort of linguistic representation of it?

All I'm saying is that there is no qualitative difference between what we experience and how we would describe (either to ourselves or to someone else) what we experience.

What does it mean exactly for there to be no qualitative difference between the two? I think it is obvious that there are rather considerable qualitative differences. If I hear someone utter the word 'blue,' it is qualitatively nothing like what I experience when I look at a cloudless afternoon sky. I can visually experience blueness without being aware of the linguistic token 'blue,' and likewise I can think of the concept of blueness in linguistic terms without visually experiencing it.

The only way the distinction vanishes is if we look at things from a purely objective view, without allowing a subjective, 1st person view. But why should we so artificially limit ourselves? Just because the 1st person view seems incommensurate with our established understanding of the 3rd person view thus far? I see no compelling reason to disallow subjective experience from our account of the world, other than in the interest of maintaining a certain worldview. But theory should not contradict observation.

Now, is reading about a tree and seeing a tree the same thing? No, I'm not going that far. But if you were to describe the tree, it would probably be in roughly the same terms as the author. So language, as I see it, places limits on how we experience the world.

Language places limits (rather tautologically) on how we describe our experience of the world. But description of a phenomenon is not the same thing as the phenomenon itself. If some mad scientist added a new kind of photoreceptor in my retina and then altered my visual cortex such that I then saw a totally novel kind of color, what would happen? Would I say 'hmm, there is some unknown color in my field of vision' before I actually visually experienced the color? Or would I visually experience this new color first, and then try to create a linguistic account of it?

[Les Sleeth]

Originally posted by zk4586
The reason I say that a blind man can't have knowledge of the color blue is because knowing what blue is depends on being able to use blue in a variable linguistic manner. That is to say, being able to recognize the color blue and then being able to apply that information to achieve some end.

I have to say that this concept completely escapes me. Now, if it weren't for this thread, I'd not tell you what I am about to, which is . . .

I live in a very beautiful place, 60 miles north of San Francisco a few miles inland from the Pacific in the middle of a vineyard. A great pleasure of my life is experiencing the misty presence of the ocean on the land. The land is primarily very steep hills, covered with various evergreen trees and other vineyards. In the morning and evening the moist air can be seen lingering in valleys and around vegetation, and when the sun filters through it -- whew! -- for some reason it really gets to me.

However, my point is that I spend a lot of time alone, and I seldom say anything to anyone about this place other than it is beautiful. But do you think because I don't talk or think about it I don't know it? Or, do you think the simple "application" as you put it, of me enjoying it isn't enough to make the experience useful?

Originally posted by zk4586
All I'm saying is that there is no qualitative difference between what we experience and how we would describe (either to ourselves or to someone else) what we experience. Language has come to dominate the way we experience and interact with the world. Now, is reading about a tree and seeing a tree the same thing? No, I'm not going that far. But if you were to describe the tree, it would probably be in roughly the same terms as the author. So language, as I see it, places limits on how we experience the world.

Again, maybe it dominates for you, but that isn't necessarily so for everyone. When I experience the morning mist here, I am not talking to myself or trying to find words for it. My experience is to join in the moment, be present, feel it . . . I don't need or want my mentality to be involved at all, to tell you truth. There are times when I want to use my intellect or when I appreciate language, and there are times when I don't. It's hard for me to understand someone wanting to live in his mind all the time.

[confutatis]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
Being able to recognize color and then apply that information to achieve some end does not necessitate linguistic representations. Or does every animal that can discriminate and act on the basis of light wavelength information have some sort of linguistic representation of it?

This may sound like I'm jumping to the other side, but if animals are not conscious (in a self-aware sense) doesn't that mean they experience nothing at all?

I can visually experience blueness without being aware of the linguistic token 'blue,' and likewise I can think of the concept of blueness in linguistic terms without visually experiencing it.

I'm not sure we can experience blueness before we have an awareness of the linguistic token 'blue'. Isn't it interesting that we have no recollection at all of our early childhood? Also, isn't it interesting that when you look around you, you can't find a single image which you can't describe? Don't those two facts sound a bit suspicious?

I don't think our perception of the world arised the way we usually think it does. I don't think a newborn baby sees the world the way an adult does, and learns language by matching words to objects. More likely it is an iterative process, whereby the child divides his/her perceptions into categories. Language starts as just another set of perceptions, but eventually it comes to dominate the whole process.

I have no way to know, but my guess is that a languageless being does not experience "blueness", "colour", "tree", or even "the world". The perceptions of such a being probably amount to a senseless mess which is constantly changing in completely unpredictable ways. If that is true, then parents not only teach children to speak, they actually teach them to perceive the world in a particular way. A way that is the product of thousands of years of evolution.

This is getting interesting...

[hypnagogue]

Originally posted by confutatis
This may sound like I'm jumping to the other side, but if animals are not conscious (in a self-aware sense) doesn't that mean they experience nothing at all?

Well, we can't be sure of animal consciousness one way or the other, but recognition and action themselves do not seem to require consciousness in order to work. Both recognition and action can be dissociated from eachother via brain lesions such that one can do one but not the other (although I am not aware of any cases where both do not work and the subject is still conscious).

I'm not sure we can experience blueness before we have an awareness of the linguistic token 'blue'. Isn't it interesting that we have no recollection at all of our early childhood? Also, isn't it interesting that when you look around you, you can't find a single image which you can't describe? Don't those two facts sound a bit suspicious?

It could simply be that the brain needs to develop before it can create long term memories.

I don't think our perception of the world arised the way we usually think it does. I don't think a newborn baby sees the world the way an adult does, and learns language by matching words to objects. More likely it is an iterative process, whereby the child divides his/her perceptions into categories. Language starts as just another set of perceptions, but eventually it comes to dominate the whole process.

I don't doubt that language serves an integral part in our categorization of perceptual experience. But categorizing perceptual experience is not the same as having perceptual experience. Certain brain lesions can interfere with recognition/categorization and still leave visual experience intact.

[zk4586]

I feel that I might have dug myself into a hole here, but I'll try to work my way out of it tomorrow by responding to everyone's criticisms. And to think, I just wanted to make one post about the unimportant distinction between internal conscious perception and linguistic description. My head hurts.

Oh, and btw, I fully admit that I didn't understand Confutatis' argument until just a few minutes ago when I read over some of the posts again. My fault entirely, I apologize. Once again, I'll try to sort through all the arguments tomorrow. That will be one long post. I need sleep.

[confutatis]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
It could simply be that the brain needs to develop before it can create long term memories.

I see no difference. What we call memory is just consciousness extended through time - you can only remember what you once were conscious of. To say we had no capability to make memories is equivalent to saying we were not conscious.

Besides, I believe it's a misconception to think it is even possible to have memories of early childhood. This has nothing to do with the brain, it's a matter of logic. The world as we experience is an elaborate interpretation of raw sensory data; it doesn't make sense to think people can be born with the ability to interpret what they have never seen before. Unless you believe in reincarnation, that is.

I don't doubt that language serves an integral part in our categorization of perceptual experience. But categorizing perceptual experience is not the same as having perceptual experience.

I think you are right and wrong. This sounds related to the point zk4568 was trying to make, and he may be right after all. But it is a difficult idea to explain, so let me try an analogy.

I don't speak Russian. Whenever I hear someone talk in Russian, I don't experience Russian words, I only experience a meaningless jumble of sounds. Even though I sense the sounds vary in pitch and timbre, I can't categorize particular sounds - it's all the same seemingly random mess to me.

Now if I keep listening, something starts happening. I may, for instance, take notice of the word "nyet". I will become curious as to why a seemingly ordered pattern of sounds appears from time to time amid the random mess. When that happens, I'm on my way to learning my first Russian word. But more importantly, I'm no longer experiencing Russian the same way - it's not just a meaningless jumble of sounds, at least some of it exhibits order and predictability.

Don't you think experience works the same way? That is, when we are born we're inundated with meaningless raw sensory data which makes no sense at all and can't even be 'categorized', for it's all the same mess. So we couldn't experience blue before we had a concept of color, and we couldn't experience color before having a concept of image, and we couldn't experience images before having a concept of vision, and we couldn't experience vision before having a concept of ... well, I don't know where the thing starts.

[Canute]

You make some good points but...

It is generally accepted that all our perceptions are 'theory-laden'. That is, raw perceptual data is not what we are conscious of, because we cannot perceive without theorising. As Einstein said (roughly) "We first have to create forms within ourselves before we can find them in other things".

However this relates to the interpretation of sense data. It doesn't mean that if we have not seen 'blue' before we don't experience it when it appears for the first time, it just means we have a very direct experience of it until we begin to 'laden' it with unconscious theories. It just means our perceptions (which are equally our conceptions) develop with time and with further reasoning and perceptions.

So your final para. seems back to front. Knowledge derives from experience (cf. Popper) rather than the other way around. This is also shown by the way we use 'ostensive' definitions of words.

[Les Sleeth]

Originally posted by Canute
You make some good points but...

It is generally accepted that all our perceptions are 'theory-laden'. That is, raw perceptual data is not what we are conscious of, because we cannot perceive without theorising. As Einstein said (roughly) "We first have to create forms within ourselves before we can find them in other things".

However this relates to the interpretation of sense data. It doesn't mean that if we have not seen 'blue' before we don't experience it when it appears for the first time, it just means we have a very direct experience of it until we begin to 'laden' it with unconscious theories. It just means our perceptions (which are equally our conceptions) develop with time and with further reasoning and perceptions.

So your final para. seems back to front. Knowledge derives from experience (cf. Popper) rather than the other way around. This is also shown by the way we use 'ostensive' definitions of words.

Good clarification.

One point with which I will take issue however is that "we cannot perceive without theorising." It's not hard to see why Einstein wouldn't be able to perceive without theorizing, but I think it is also the case with most human beings, just as you say.

Yet it isn't true for everyone because it is quite possible to develop the ability to perceive without the incessant coloring and editorializing given consciousness by our mentality.

In Zen stilling or quieting the mind might have been referred to as "polishing the mirror." It is a consciousness potential I continue to lament that we rationalists tend dismiss as impractical, weird or even delusional. In terms of practicality, if it can be achieved, think of its value to reflecting on subjects without bias. For me, conceptionless perception is one of my highest goals.

[hypnagogue]

Originally posted by confutatis
I see no difference. What we call memory is just consciousness extended through time - you can only remember what you once were conscious of. To say we had no capability to make memories is equivalent to saying we were not conscious.

You can only remember what you were once conscious of-- not necessarily, unless you are speaking exclusively of subjectively experienced memory. But I digress.

I would agree that consciousness is necessary to form experiential memories, but not that it is sufficient for it. That is, the proposition "If you have the capability to form experiential memories, then you must have been conscious at some point" is true, but not the reverse, as you seem to indicate: "If you are conscious, then you must have the ability to form long term experiential memories." There are straightforward brain lesion cases that seem to contradict this assertion; for instance, certain hippocampal damage hinders or destroys one's ability to form long term memories, but there is no reason to believe that the individual is not conscious because of it (short term memory remains intact, and the individual retains an ability to interact normally with his immediate environment).

I don't speak Russian. Whenever I hear someone talk in Russian, I don't experience Russian words, I only experience a meaningless jumble of sounds. Even though I sense the sounds vary in pitch and timbre, I can't categorize particular sounds - it's all the same seemingly random mess to me.

Now if I keep listening, something starts happening. I may, for instance, take notice of the word "nyet". I will become curious as to why a seemingly ordered pattern of sounds appears from time to time amid the random mess. When that happens, I'm on my way to learning my first Russian word. But more importantly, I'm no longer experiencing Russian the same way - it's not just a meaningless jumble of sounds, at least some of it exhibits order and predictability.

I see what you are getting at, but I still believe you are talking about categorization of experience and not experience itself. I see no reason why categorization should be taken a priori as a necessary condition for experience itself. You agree with me to the extent that you characterize your interaction with the Russian language before you have begun to decipher it as "experiencing a meaningless jumble of sounds."

What your language example highlights-- as Canute said in other words-- is an acquisition of semantic content. Semantics and syntax are heavily bound up, and I do not doubt that having a meaningful semantic understanding of something requires at least some kind of syntactical differentiation, along the lines of categorization and recognition. But conscious experience is not characterized by semantic content alone; it also contains phenomenal content. My linguistic and conceptual understanding of blueness is an example of the former, and my direct visual experience of blueness is an example of the latter.

Your argument is a cogent one for semantic contents of consciousness, but it is a category error to treat phenomenal content as if it were semantic content. As a result, the linguistic critique of subjective experience, IMO, never gets off the ground to begin with. For instance, even if an infant cannot make sense of its sensory experience, the mere stipulation that it subjectively experiences at all is already a refutation of the assumption that it needs to first categorize before it can perceive phenomenal content.

[Les Sleeth]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
. . .it is a category error to treat phenomenal content as if it were semantic content. As a result, the linguistic critique of subjective experience, IMO, never gets off the ground to begin with. For instance, even if an infant cannot make sense of its sensory experience, the mere stipulation that it subjectively experiences at all is already a refutation of the assumption that it needs to first categorize before it can perceive phenomenal content.

Right. If consciousness is linguistic/concept dependent, I wonder too how conscious development in an infant would ever get started in the first place.

[Canute]

Originally posted by LW Sleeth
Yet it isn't true for everyone because it is quite possible to develop the ability to perceive without the incessant coloring and editorializing given consciousness by our mentality.

In Zen stilling or quieting the mind might have been referred to as "polishing the mirror." It is a consciousness potential I continue to lament that we rationalists tend dismiss as impractical, weird or even delusional. In terms of practicality, if it can be achieved, think of its value to reflecting on subjects without bias. For me, conceptionless perception is one of my highest goals. [/B]
Sorry, my mistake. I should have said 'unless you are a practitioner of Taoism' or some such. As the Kuan Tsu says:

"What all people desire to know is that (meaning the external world).

But our means of knowing that is by this" (our self, our mind).

How can we know that?" (the external world)?

Only by perfecting this."

You're quite right to pick me on this. But I hadn't connected 'non-dual' with 'non-theory-laden' before. Thanks for pointing it out. It's obvious that the truth must come non-theory-laden now you've mentioned it.

[Les Sleeth]

Originally posted by Canute
Sorry, my mistake. I should have said 'unless you are a practitioner of Taoism' or some such. As the Kuan Tsu says:

"What all people desire to know is that (meaning the external world).

But our means of knowing that is by this" (our self, our mind).

How can we know that?" (the external world)?

Only by perfecting this."

You're quite right to pick me on this. But I hadn't connected 'non-dual' with 'non-theory-laden' before. Thanks for pointing it out. It's obvious that the truth must come non-theory-laden now you've mentioned it.

[:)] [:)] [:)] [:)] [:)] [:)] [:)] [:)] [:)] [:)] [:)] [:)] [:)] [:)] [:)] [:)] [:)] [:)] [:)] [:)] [:)] [a)]

[confutatis]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
I would agree that consciousness is necessary to form experiential memories, but not that it is sufficient for it. That is, the proposition "If you have the capability to form experiential memories, then you must have been conscious at some point" is true, but not the reverse, as you seem to indicate: "If you are conscious, then you must have the ability to form long term experiential memories."

That is not what I meant. All I said was that the fact that we have no memory of a particular event may be an indication that we did not consciously experience the event. Or maybe not. My point is that we can't be sure that newborn children are conscious of anything.

I see what you are getting at, but I still believe you are talking about categorization of experience and not experience itself.

I think you are overlooking the possibility that 'experience' is just another category with nothing special to it that can serve as a foundation to a solid theory of mind.

I see no reason why categorization should be taken a priori as a necessary condition for experience itself.

I didn't say categorization must be taken a priori, even though I see how you could understand it that way. I told you this is difficult to explain. The way I see it, both categorization and experience emerge from something else. From a certain perspective, you can say one creates the other and the whole system is self-created.

You agree with me to the extent that you characterize your interaction with the Russian language before you have begun to decipher it as "experiencing a meaningless jumble of sounds."

My analogy can't possibly get to the real issue, it was meant only as a rough guide to what I'm thinking about. Of course by the time one experiences "a meaningless jumble of sounds" one's mind is already filled with concepts. So the example can't possibly capture how one would respond to stimuli that cannot be categorized in any way, not even as "meaningless" or "stimuli". If you know nothing, then you are also ignorant of the fact that you know nothing and you would see no need to conceptualize anything.

conscious experience is not characterized by semantic content alone; it also contains phenomenal content. My linguistic and conceptual understanding of blueness is an example of the former, and my direct visual experience of blueness is an example of the latter.

All I'm saying is that your direct visual experience of blueness may not be as "direct" as you think. It may be that vision itself is an illusion created by your subconscious mind so that your conscious mind can make sense of raw sensory data. An abstraction of an abstraction, if you can possibly comprehend what I mean by that.

it is a category error to treat phenomenal content as if it were semantic content.

I said so myself a few posts back. But I still think that what you call 'phenomenal' has a structure that is very similar, if not perfectly isomorphic, to what you call 'semantic'. And I will offer strong evidence of that: everything that you experience as 'phenomenal' can be expressed through 'semantic'. But that doesn't mean they are the same thing.

Think of it as a room in which one of the walls is a mirror. So there's the room and there's the reflection. You walk inside the room and notice that the reflection is a perfect copy of the room except for one detail: you perceive yourself to be in one side only rather than in both at the same time. Even so, your reflection in the mirror looks as conscious as you are, even though "you" are not in it. That is, in a nutshell, the Chalmers vs. Dennett debate. Chalmers says "no matter how good is your explanation of the behaviour of the guy in the mirror, you can't explain why he isn't conscious". Dennett says "we have no reason to assume your reflection is not conscious anymore than we have a reason to assume you are not". I think both are approaching the problem the wrong way, but I have to go now.

[Canute]

I don't want to interrupt but when you say "everything that you experience as 'phenomenal' can be expressed through 'semantic'" that is the precise opposite of the truth.

[Jeebus]

Originally posted by Canute
I don't want to interrupt but when you say "everything that you experience as 'phenomenal' can be expressed through 'semantic'" that is the precise opposite of the truth.

I don't want to speak for confutatis, but how is semantics different from truth—if they both derive from meaning? If you experience something you categorize it through data, then in order to explain the "phenomena" you use meaning to describe the relationships of intentionality and then, by adverting to special operations, or sources, or contents, tells us the bendable truths through qualia.

[zk4586]

Okay, here goes:

First of all, let me try to clarify what I've been proposing: 1) Possible differences in "internal conscious perception" between two people aren't worth considering, because all that matters is that agreement can be reached, allowing the two people to achieve some kind of end. 2) The most important (and informative) aspect of consciousness is language. 3) Language is necessary for nearly all other aspects of consciousness to function.

I'll try to advance these claims as I deal with the following criticisms:

Originally posted by confutatis
Sometimes I have the feeling that people who deny the ineffable aspect of experience are not really conscious, they just behave as if they were.

A blind man knows quite a lot about the color blue. Does that mean you have to be a mystic tilting at windmills to believe that vision tells you something you can't possibly learn with language?

Since I originally misunderstood what you were saying, let me try my hand at this again: Of course, vision facilitates one’s understanding of certain concepts, such as color. No one would deny that. But, ultimately, I see language as being the way that the one makes sense of such concepts. So, for instance, it is not so much the fact that one experiences the color blue, but that one identifies the color blue (and goes on to achieve some end). This goes back to my first post in this thread.

Originally posted by hypnagogue
Being able to recognize color and then apply that information to achieve some end does not necessitate linguistic representations. Or does every animal that can discriminate and act on the basis of light wavelength information have some sort of linguistic representation of it?

But when dealing with human beings, whose lives are so dependent on language, I contend that language is necessary for such a process to take place. An animal that could make such a distinction would be acting in large part on conditioning, but I don't see how this could be true for human beings using language in complex scenarios.

Originally posted by hypnagogue
What does it mean exactly for there to be no qualitative difference between the two? I think it is obvious that there are rather considerable qualitative differences. If I hear someone utter the word 'blue,' it is qualitatively nothing like what I experience when I look at a cloudless afternoon sky. I can visually experience blueness without being aware of the linguistic token 'blue,' and likewise I can think of the concept of blueness in linguistic terms without visually experiencing it.

Are there really such differences? If language is really the foundation of consciousness, and if elements of a language have no intrinsic character, then hearing the word blue and seeing something that is blue are understood in the same fashion.

Originally posted by hypnagogue
The only way the distinction vanishes is if we look at things from a purely objective view, without allowing a subjective, 1st person view. But why should we so artificially limit ourselves? Just because the 1st person view seems incommensurate with our established understanding of the 3rd person view thus far? I see no compelling reason to disallow subjective experience from our account of the world, other than in the interest of maintaining a certain worldview. But theory should not contradict observation.

I guess we just find different things to be of primary importantance when thinking about the nature of consciousness.

Originally posted by hypnagogue
Language places limits (rather tautologically) on how we describe our experience of the world.

Yes, and such description (whether it be to ourselves or to others) is, as I see it, how we make sense of the world around us.

Originally posted by hypnagogue
But description of a phenomenon is not the same thing as the phenomenon itself. If some mad scientist added a new kind of photoreceptor in my retina and then altered my visual cortex such that I then saw a totally novel kind of color, what would happen? Would I say 'hmm, there is some unknown color in my field of vision' before I actually visually experienced the color? Or would I visually experience this new color first, and then try to create a linguistic account of it?

All I’ve been saying is that your linguistic account of the color is the important part here. How would you make sense of this color without language? How would you help someone else to make sense of this color without language? Understanding depends on a context within the language.

Originally posted by LW Sleeth
I have to say that this concept completely escapes me. Now, if it weren't for this thread, I'd not tell you what I am about to, which is . . .

I live in a very beautiful place, 60 miles north of San Francisco a few miles inland from the Pacific in the middle of a vineyard. A great pleasure of my life is experiencing the misty presence of the ocean on the land. The land is primarily very steep hills, covered with various evergreen trees and other vineyards. In the morning and evening the moist air can be seen lingering in valleys and around vegetation, and when the sun filters through it -- whew! -- for some reason it really gets to me.

However, my point is that I spend a lot of time alone, and I seldom say anything to anyone about this place other than it is beautiful. But do you think because I don't talk or think about it I don't know it? Or, do you think the simple "application" as you put it, of me enjoying it isn't enough to make the experience useful?

Again, maybe it dominates for you, but that isn't necessarily so for everyone. When I experience the morning mist here, I am not talking to myself or trying to find words for it. My experience is to join in the moment, be present, feel it . . . I don't need or want my mentality to be involved at all, to tell you truth. There are times when I want to use my intellect or when I appreciate language, and there are times when I don't. It's hard for me to understand someone wanting to live in his mind all the time.

Let me just say again that your enjoyment of such experiences depends on language, because as I see it, language shapes the very way that we understand such experiences. Language is the fundamental aspect of our consciousness. Let’s say that when you looked out on the beautiful hills surrounding your house, you couldn’t make out any distinct shapes, just a blur of color. You wouldn’t be able to classify (linguistically) anything that you saw, so you wouldn’t be able to make any kind of aesthetic judgments. I hope this makes sense, I’m tired.

[Fliption]

Just to add my 2 cents..... The relationship between language and my conscious perceptions is a learned one. This doesn't mean that it is a necessary relationship. I've been thinking hard on this one and I can't begin to understand what zk4586 is talking about. To hold such a view seems extremely egocentric. But I will concede I may not fully understand.

[Canute]

Originally posted by Jeebus
I don't want to speak for confutatis, but how is semantics different from truth—if they both derive from meaning? If you experience something you categorize it through data, then in order to explain the "phenomena" you use meaning to describe the relationships of intentionality and then, by adverting to special operations, or sources, or contents, tells us the bendable truths through qualia. [/B]
Hang on, where did 'truth' come from? You say here that first we experience, then we categorise, then we explain. It seems to follow that that experience is not semantics.

Some people (notably Wittgenstein) think language is crucual to consciousness but all we can say is that language is important to everyday human consciousness. There is no evidence that language is necessary for consciousness and, if it is, no explanation for how we became able to use language before we had an experience.

[confutatis]

Originally posted by Fliption
Just to add my 2 cents..... The relationship between language and my conscious perceptions is a learned one. This doesn't mean that it is a necessary relationship. I've been thinking hard on this one and I can't begin to understand what zk4586 is talking about. To hold such a view seems extremely egocentric. But I will concede I may not fully understand.

I think you do not fully understand. I had a very negative opinion of that view myself, but zk4586 said something that was like flipping a light switch for me. Suddenly I understood what he was talking about, and it does make a lot of sense, because it's not what I thought it was. It's definitely not extremely egocentric.

The difficult thing is to visualize how we would experience the world if we had no concept of anything. Hypnagogue et al seem to think you are born, open your eyes, see a loving woman, then two years later learn that the loving woman is called "mom". It can't possibly work that way. If you have no concept of anything you see nothing, because you can't tell the difference between mom, the wall behind her face, the toy in front of it, the ceiling above, the floor below, and so on. You only learn to see "mom" once you learn there's such a thing as "mom".

I guess the main point is that we need to learn to see as much as we learn to speak. This much is a fact: if a you keep a child's eyes covered for the first years of her life, she will not learn to see after you unconver them. If hypnagogue were right, upon uncovering her eyes such a child would look at something blue and say "ah, that is blue". But we all know it doesn't work that way.

Try to look at the world around you as a meaningless blob of colour that keeps changing. It's hard to do, but that's how the world really is. In reality the world is not neatly divided between "computer", "desk", "wall", and so on. Those concepts are simply a somewhat artificial perspective, a way of looking at things. Everything is the same "thing", and the process that drives us to divide our perceptions into neat categories is exactly the same process that allows us to communicate those categorized perceptions to other people. What rationale do we have to believe the two processes are not the same?

[confutatis]

Originally posted by zk4586
First of all, let me try to clarify what I've been proposing: 1) Possible differences in "internal conscious perception" between two people aren't worth considering, because all that matters is that agreement can be reached, allowing the two people to achieve some kind of end.

Now that I understood you better, this is the only point I still have a problem with. If you do not consider what differences may exist in internal conscious perception, you will never understand why agreement can never be reached. You seem to think that issue is irrelevant, I think it's more fundamental than anything else. It's the issue, period.

All wars are fought because of differences in people's internal conscious perception. If Bush could understand Osama, and vice-versa; if Sharon could understand Arafat, and vice-versa; if Dennett could understand Chalmers, and vice-versa... then the only problems left in the world would be the ones only God (or nobody) can solve.

(I added this as an afterthought: if we accept that differences in internal conscious perception may exist, then it's perfectly possible to talk about it, as we're doing now! It's a problem just like any other; difficult perhaps but not "hard" in the way Chalmers puts it. If the "hard" problem were really that hard, not even Chalmers would be able to talk about it)

[Fliption]

Originally posted by confutatis
I think you do not fully understand. I had a very negative opinion of that view myself, but zk4586 said something that was like flipping a light switch for me. Suddenly I understood what he was talking about, and it does make a lot of sense, because it's not what I thought it was. It's definitely not extremely egocentric.


After I posted that I continued to think about this. I did finally arrive at an understanding of what the point may be but I'm not sure. If I assume for now that my understanding is consistent with zk's point, then I think people are talking past one another a bit in this thread. I think the words "semantics", and "language" are throwing people off because it certainly threw me off. To say a person must know what the word "mom" means before one can see this loving women is nonsense. But that isn't what you mean. It isn't about language at all. It's about distinction. How the brain (or any other hardware for that matter) chooses to store the distinctions isn't relevant. So I don't think this is about language per se.


The difficult thing is to visualize how we would experience the world if we had no concept of anything. Hypnagogue et al seem to think you are born, open your eyes, see a loving woman, then two years later learn that the loving woman is called "mom". It can't possibly work that way. If you have no concept of anything you see nothing, because you can't tell the difference between mom, the wall behind her face, the toy in front of it, the ceiling above, the floor below, and so on. You only learn to see "mom" once you learn there's such a thing as "mom".


Even if I look at this the way I have described it above and not place so much emphasis on semantics and knowing what the "concept of mom" is, I still don't buy it. If this were true, you'd be opening up a chicken and egg scenario. It seems obvious to me that concepts are developed as distinctions are experienced. The feel of something hot and something cold is different. The physics of how these things impact the physical body is different so it follows that they would feel different. This difference necessarily causes the brain to make distinctions and develop concepts. And then language is an even more delayed development of simply assigning verbal labels as an effective way to communicate about the distinctions. This seems obvious to me so maybe I still don't get it.


If hypnagogue were right, upon uncovering her eyes such a child would look at something blue and say "ah, that is blue". But we all know it doesn't work that way.


We do? I don't think we all know this which is why we're talking about it. The only thing not so obvious here is whether this person would know to say "ahhh, that is blue". But it seems completely obvious to me that they would experience blueness(assuming the eyes were not damaged)


Try to look at the world around you as a meaningless blob of colour that keeps changing. It's hard to do, but that's how the world really is. In reality the world is not neatly divided between "computer", "desk", "wall", and so on. Those concepts are simply a somewhat artificial perspective, a way of looking at things. Everything is the same "thing", and the process that drives us to divide our perceptions into neat categories is exactly the same process that allows us to communicate those categorized perceptions to other people. What rationale do we have to believe the two processes are not the same?


Experience isn't all visual. So you're also claiming that putting your hand in a fire wouldn't feel any different than putting your hand in your pocket. If what you're saying is true, we would be able to create any reality we wanted simple by influencing our concepts and making the distinctions however they suit us. It is obvious to me that there is some external influence on the distinctions that we have. This external influence has to be experienced initially since there is no other way for it to be communciated.

So which came first, the chicken or the egg?

[Canute]

Originally posted by confutatis

If you have no concept of anything you see nothing, because you can't tell the difference between mom, the wall behind her face, the toy in front of it, the ceiling above, the floor below, and so on. You only learn to see "mom" once you learn there's such a thing as "mom".
I'm not sure how you arrive at this conclusion. Are you saying that we can see something without forming a concept of it. Surely to see involves simply opening one's eyes. 'Learning to see', in other words to do it in a normal adult human way, takes time, but seeing doesn't require learning. This is why babies don't like bright lights.

I guess the main point is that we need to learn to see as much as we learn to speak. This much is a fact: if a you keep a child's eyes covered for the first years of her life, she will not learn to see after you unconver them.
This is not born out by studies of adults blind from birth who for some reason gain their sight. 'Gaining their sight' means 'seeing'.

If hypnagogue were right, upon uncovering her eyes such a child would look at something blue and say "ah, that is blue". But we all know it doesn't work that way.
I think that this misrepresents Hypnogues position. He is not suggesting the child would know it was called 'blue', but just that the child would see what we call blue.

Try to look at the world around you as a meaningless blob of colour that keeps changing. It's hard to do, but that's how the world really is. In reality the world is not neatly divided between "computer", "desk", "wall", and so on. Those concepts are simply a somewhat artificial perspective, a way of looking at things. Everything is the same "thing", and the process that drives us to divide our perceptions into neat categories is exactly the same process that allows us to communicate those categorized perceptions to other people. What rationale do we have to believe the two processes are not the same? [/B]
I sort of agree but consider what you said here. A 'meaningless blob of colour' implies something that can be seen prior to the conceptualising and categorisation that follows.

If one cannot see a thing before one conceptualises it then what happens when you stub your toe on something you didn't see because you hadn't conceptualised it yet? Wouldn't this sort of thing happen all the time.

Still, you have a point. Studies with people blind from birth regaining their sight show that it takes a long time for them to learn to sort out their visual world, and many never get very far, being unable to judge distance from relative size of objects seems to be one problem. However these people get their sight back before they start learning to categorise etc, not afterwards.

Mind you, if you argue that a core of concepts and categories is inherited from parents then your argument might still hold.

[Fliption]

Originally posted by Canute
[B]If one cannot see a thing before one conceptualises it then what happens when you stub your toe on something you didn't see because you hadn't conceptualised it yet? Wouldn't this sort of thing happen all the time.


Canute,

Experience is more than just seeing. This scenario could not happen because if one has no concepts then they cannot experience stubbing their toes either. There is no concept of toe or pain. So if you follow this view to it's logical conclusion, then nothing would ever happen. No one would be alive today. Nothing can be experienced with concepts and concepts cannot be developed without experience. Again I ask, which came first the chicken or the egg?

[Les Sleeth]

Originally posted by Fliption
So if you follow this view to it's logical conclusion, then nothing would ever happen. No one would be alive today. Nothing can be experienced with concepts and concepts cannot be developed without experience. Again I ask, which came first the chicken or the egg?

That's what I think too, which is why I said earlier, "If consciousness is linguistic/concept dependent, I wonder too how conscious development in an infant would ever get started in the first place."

It seems to me we are discussing what is most basic or necessary to consciousness. Those who claim concepts and the language that derives from it are what most define consciousness, then how do they explain an infant learning before they have any concepts or language?

No, it cannot possibly be that concepts and language are most necessary to being conscious, but rather it is our sensivity to input, the ability to retain input, and self awareness of that input that then allows us to begin the admittedly advanced skill of developing concepts and language to represent what we've already sensed, retained and are now aware of.

[confutatis]

Originally posted by Fliption
Nothing can be experienced with concepts and concepts cannot be developed without experience. Again I ask, which came first the chicken or the egg?

That's what I've been trying to get at: it is a chicken and egg problem! Or perhaps a "how to lift yourself up by pulling your shoestrings" problem, or "turtles all the way" problem. It's definitely not the usual "A follows B" problem, which is what I think some people are claiming.

The thing that must be understood is that at some point, either in our personal history, or the history of our species, or the history of organisms, everything we know and experience today consisted of nothing more than a collection of completely undefined "stuff". The challenge then is (was), how do you define anything at all if you can only define things in terms of other things? It's not valid to appeal to anything outside the collection of undefined data, to define things in terms of something which has been mysteriously predefined by some unknowable entity.

The above is, in essence and as far as I can tell, the best statement of the problem of consciousness.

[Fliption]

Originally posted by confutatis
[B]That's what I've been trying to get at: it is a chicken and egg problem! Or perhaps a "how to lift yourself up by pulling your shoestrings" problem, or "turtles all the way" problem. It's definitely not the usual "A follows B" problem, which is what I think some people are claiming.


But why create such a problem when you don't have to? The other way is more obvious, logical and doesn't end up in a chicken/egg problem. Perhaps I've missed the argument for why this must be the case? Is there some sort of evidence or argument(other than it just is) that I've missed?


The thing that must be understood is that at some point, either in our personal history, or the history of our species, or the history of organisms, everything we know and experience today consisted of nothing more than a collection of completely undefined "stuff". The challenge then is (was), how do you define anything at all if you can only define things in terms of other things? It's not valid to appeal to anything outside the collection of undefined data, to define things in terms of something which has been mysteriously predefined by some unknowable entity.


Definition comes from experience. Where else could it possibly come from? With your theory, there is no answer to this question unless we invoke god or something like that. I say it's experience. Put your hand in a fire and tell me you couldn't establish a distinction between that feeling and typing on your keyboard.


The above is, in essence and as far as I can tell, the best statement of the problem of consciousness.

I agree that there is a problem of consciousness but I don't believe this is it.

[Les Sleeth]

Originally posted by zk4586
Let me just say again that your enjoyment of such experiences depends on language, because as I see it, language shapes the very way that we understand such experiences. Language is the fundamental aspect of our consciousness. Let’s say that when you looked out on the beautiful hills surrounding your house, you couldn’t make out any distinct shapes, just a blur of color. You wouldn’t be able to classify (linguistically) anything that you saw, so you wouldn’t be able to make any kind of aesthetic judgments. I hope this makes sense, I’m tired.

If you cannot stop your mentality -- internal dialogue, problem solving, imagination, etc. -- to the point that it dominates every waking moment (and jumps in while you are sleeping too), then I can understand why you believe what you do. In such a case you would be describing what concepts and language mean to you.

However, we are talking here not about what only you know, but what is true about consciousness in general, so you cannot accurately generalize from what only you know and/or those others who also cannot assuage the dominance of their mentality. If there are people who can actually be conscious of reality without concepts and language, then that has to be explained by your model, and it isn't.

Once I saw a film of a woman having a baby underwater. They also did it by candle light so when the baby came out bright lights wouldn't hurt his eyes. The mother was a very relaxed sort, and so this birth was very easy for everyone. I was impressed to see that once the baby was out of the womb, but still underwater and connected umbilically, it broke into the biggest smile you can imagine. Was that a conscious smile? By your theory, it was not because the baby couldn't explain to anyone how or why he smiled. But I say the baby didn't need language or concepts to be conscious that he felt good and found things pleasing.

When I am out walking here, enjoying a misty sunset evening, I can tell you for fact that language and concepts make no difference to what I am doing. I am not looking at a sun, trees, red-shouldered hawks overhead, rolling hills, perfect rows of grapevines . . .

I am experiencing. What? I don't care what. I just am interested in experiencing a yellow warm orb, greenness, pink and purple fluffy things in the sky, symmetry (of the rows), moist air . . .

See, at that time it is an experience to be felt, not to be defined. It is a unified experience, not one broken up by thought processes. You could take me to a new universe, where nothing was as it is here, and I wouid still be able to enjoy it experientially without knowing a thing about how it worked or what to call it (as long as I felt safe of course). On the other hand, if I wanted to talk about it or if I wanted to figure out what made this new universe function the way it does, then I would need language and concepts.

So, to reinterate my point, I am suggesting that you and others who claim concepts and language are the basis of consciousness may believe so because you aren't paying much attention to the potential for pure experience that consciousness is capable of. If so, then when it's time for us to enter into a discussion about the nature of consciousness, you might be generalizing from too narrow a sampling (your limited experiences), which your model reflects.

[confutatis]

Originally posted by Fliption
But why create such a problem when you don't have to?

Actually, we don't have to create any problems. Even the chicken-and-egg problem is not a real problem, at least not as far as chicken and eggs are concerned. The issue here is understanding. Does it do any good to say "experience is a given" and leave it at that? That explains nothing.

Perhaps I've missed the argument for why this must be the case? Is there some sort of evidence or argument(other than it just is) that I've missed?

Unfortunately this is not a clear-cut issue, otherwise there wouldn't be so much debate. The best I can offer by way of argument is this:

1: uwouaslkwnxhelalwiefshefowehlwoui
2: kjeisbnxgwyuerbnsepouwhsncjeugsb

A: "pain in the toe"
B: "clear blue summer sky"

At some basic level, 1 an 2 are what people are calling "experiences". So are A and B. You think it's obvious how one becomes the other, but that is only because you don't think something as clear as a blue summer sky could be experienced as anything other than the way you experience it.

Definition comes from experience

So how does "pain in the toe" comes from "uwouaslkwnxhelalwiefshefowehlwoui"? How does something defined come from something undefined?

Where else could it possibly come from?

Mysterious? Eternal? Self-created? Through an evolutive process?

I bet 'evolutive' has more power of explanation than the other three, but power of explanation has little to do with truth.

With your theory, there is no answer to this question unless we invoke god or something like that. I say it's experience.

Exactly how does "experience" differ from "God"? Both are undefined concepts.

And I didn't say the question can only be answered by invoking God.

Put your hand in a fire and tell me you couldn't establish a distinction between that feeling and typing on your keyboard.

If I have no concept of "hand" and "fire", putting my hand in a fire will cause me to feel something I don't understand. Which, I suspect, is what babies feel when they put their hands in the fire: they feel something they don't like and don't understand.

I also suspect that when you feel something you don't like and don't understand, it's because you're not experiencing it other than as a vague, undefined sensation you have no power to control. "I don't know why but I don't like this place"; "I don't know why but that person makes me feel uncomfortable". You get the idea.

[Les Sleeth]

Originally posted by confutatis
Actually, we don't have to create any problems. Even the chicken-and-egg problem is not a real problem, at least not as far as chicken and eggs are concerned. The issue here is understanding. Does it do any good to say "experience is a given" and leave it at that? That explains nothing.

Yes but so what? We are talking about how existence is, not whether or not the way it is explains things for us. The speed of light is constant in a vacuum, it is a given. Gravity shows up where there is mass or acceleration, it is a given. Photons radiate quantumly, it is a given.

Just because we can't explain why something is so is not a reason to discount that it may be as it seems.

Originally posted by confutatis
So how does "pain in the toe" comes from "uwouaslkwnxhelalwiefshefowehlwoui"? How does something defined come from something undefined?

I think the above statement shows you are confused. You seem unable to separate two very distinct potentials of consciousness: the ability to experience, and the ability to think.

Somehow I think you must already know what you are saying doesn't make sense. If you look at what defines empiricism, for instance, it is two very distinct processes: experience and logical thinking. It is not just thinking and language. Those days when human investigation into existence was only thinking and language represent the dark days of rationalism. It was the addition of experience to reason that birthed the scientific method.

Once you acknowledge thinking and experience both are elements of consciousness, then you can ask if their proportions can be altered. If you are now thinking 99% of the time and experiencing 1%, can you alter it to 95%/5%? How about 80/20? What about 60/40? What about 20/80? Oh my God, what would happen if someone could actually do (however temporarily) 0/100?????????

I don't know if you are athletic, but to be successful there one must learn to lean more toward experiential. Yes, sound principles of the sport must be learned, but once learned, the best athletic moments occur when you get ultra-experiential. It is as though all the tactics and skills you have learned just get done without thinking, almost like through some kind of elevated "seeing." The best musicians can tell you it is the same for them as they "feel" their way while playing music. Another simple example is learning to ride a bike . . . try to do it primarily by thinking and you'll never learn.

Originally posted by confutatis
If I have no concept of "hand" and "fire", putting my hand in a fire will cause me to feel something I don't understand. Which, I suspect, is what babies feel when they put their hands in the fire: they feel something they don't like and don't understand.

I also suspect that when you feel something you don't like and don't understand, it's because you're not experiencing it other than as a vague, undefined sensation you have no power to control. "I don't know why but I don't like this place"; "I don't know why but that person makes me feel uncomfortable". You get the idea.

It doesn't seem like you appreciate babies much. I am not saying they don't learn to distinguish by defining, and that language doesn't play an important role in that.

But a most (THE most to me) delightful thing about a baby is that he/she doesn't have a bunch of stuff his his/her head. They are very natural, and I say that's because they are so experiential. The more concepts clutter up their heads, the more they lose that beautiful naturalness.

You know, there are a lot of people who work hard at returning to that experiential place. Hmmmm, could it be what Jesus was recommending when he said "you must become as children again"?

Anyway, I disagree with trying to model human consciousness like a computer. No matter how much AI enthusiasts are convinced they will achieve consciousness, I don't believe they will because they will never get a computer to experience (if experience is defined as the ability to sense/feel events, know one has sensed/felt an event, and retain knowledge of that sensed/felt event). I see the attempt by some thinkers (not necessarily you) to eliminate the primacy of experience in consciouness as a step toward being able to call a non-experiencing computer conscious.

[Fliption]

After reading this response I'm not sure what we exactly disagree on.

Originally posted by confutatis
[B]Actually, we don't have to create any problems. Even the chicken-and-egg problem is not a real problem, at least not as far as chicken and eggs are concerned. The issue here is understanding. Does it do any good to say "experience is a given" and leave it at that? That explains nothing.


Exactly what is it you are trying to explain? Experience is not necessarily just a "given". It should be studied just like everything else. This study could conclude it is a given but it isn't my starting assumption. But asserting that it doesn't exists without language not only does not explain anything, it also opens up numerous other questions. And for no apparent reason as it seem to add nothing.


Unfortunately this is not a clear-cut issue, otherwise there wouldn't be so much debate.

To be honest, I haven't seen any reason why it shouldn't be a clear cut issue.


The best I can offer by way of argument is this:

1: uwouaslkwnxhelalwiefshefowehlwoui
2: kjeisbnxgwyuerbnsepouwhsncjeugsb

A: "pain in the toe"
B: "clear blue summer sky"

At some basic level, 1 an 2 are what people are calling "experiences". So are A and B. You think it's obvious how one becomes the other, but that is only because you don't think something as clear as a blue summer sky could be experienced as anything other than the way you experience it.


How else could a blue sky be experienced? Are you suggesting that a fire is anything other than hot?(I keep bringing up the fire example to draw away from all the "vision" analogies.)


So how does "pain in the toe" comes from "uwouaslkwnxhelalwiefshefowehlwoui"? How does something defined come from something undefined?

I don't know what you mean by "pain in the toes" nor do I know what you mean by "undefined". My only claim is that there is an input, called experience. I thought you were claiming there isn't any such input without concepts, but now it seems you are arguring that there is at least something experienced called "uwouaslkwnxhela...." Whether I have "defined" this thing as a pain in the toe or not doesn't seem relevant to the fact that the experience DOES exists.



Mysterious? Eternal? Self-created? Through an evolutive process?

Mysterious? What does that mean. Does that explain anything? Eternal? What does that mean? None of these mean anything to me. They certainly aren't any more valid than just asserting experience as a given. At least I know what that means.


Exactly how does "experience" differ from "God"? Both are undefined concepts.

Are you serious? If there is anything that I am certain of, it is my own experience. I know nothing of god. The fact that I can't define experience in such a way for you to objectively prove that I have it doesn't impact my knowledge of it at all.

And I didn't say the question can only be answered by invoking God.

Yes I know you didn't. But there was no answer before your last post and mysterious, eternal, and self creating are no better. They could be if I understood what they mean but currently I don't.


If I have no concept of "hand" and "fire", putting my hand in a fire will cause me to feel something I don't understand. Which, I suspect, is what babies feel when they put their hands in the fire: they feel something they don't like and don't understand.


Now we completely agree. Here you are claiming that there is an experience. I was under the impression that you didn't believe experiences existed without concepts. I don't have a problem at all with what you have written above.


I also suspect that when you feel something you don't like and don't understand, it's because you're not experiencing it other than as a vague, undefined sensation you have no power to control. "I don't know why but I don't like this place"; "I don't know why but that person makes me feel uncomfortable". You get the idea.

Again, I agree with this. But I could care less whether something is "vague and undefined". That doesn't mean it doesn't exists. It looks as if you concede this.

[zk4586]

Originally posted by confutatis
Now that I understood you better, this is the only point I still have a problem with. If you do not consider what differences may exist in internal conscious perception, you will never understand why agreement can never be reached. You seem to think that issue is irrelevant, I think it's more fundamental than anything else. It's the issue, period.

All wars are fought because of differences in people's internal conscious perception. If Bush could understand Osama, and vice-versa; if Sharon could understand Arafat, and vice-versa; if Dennett could understand Chalmers, and vice-versa... then the only problems left in the world would be the ones only God (or nobody) can solve.

(I added this as an afterthought: if we accept that differences in internal conscious perception may exist, then it's perfectly possible to talk about it, as we're doing now! It's a problem just like any other; difficult perhaps but not "hard" in the way Chalmers puts it. If the "hard" problem were really that hard, not even Chalmers would be able to talk about it)

I'm sorry. The confusion here is my fault. When I say that such differences hardly seem to matter, the differences I'm referring to deal with concrete concepts (like color). Two people may possibly experience different internal conscious perceptions when looking at a particular color (Person #1 really does see blue, whereas Person #2 sees green but simply calls it blue because that's what he has been told to call it). I don't think I worded that very well but everyone knows the philosophical problem I'm talking about. I wouldn't say, however, that differences in internal conscious perceptions are unimportant if we're talking about more abstract concepts, such as beliefs, as you mentioned. The difference here, as I see it, is that conflicting conscious perceptions of concrete concepts can be buried by language (so that even the person holding these conflicting conscious perceptions does not know it). I don't see how this is possible when dealing with abstract concepts or even with complex concrete concepts (that is, a concept consisting of many different concrete concepts, such as shape or color). I've been using the word concept a lot. I hope I haven't confused you even more.

[hypnagogue]

This experiment (http://journalofvision.org/3/9/712/) demonstrates that infants only 16 weeks old can discriminate between colors, long before linguistic capabilities begin to develop in the average child. Are these infants conscious? Well, we can't be sure. But what seems apparent is that however we go about dividing up and categorizing the world, it can occur without language (unless you believe that the mothers' baby talk was necessary for their ability to discriminate colors).

If newborn turtles have the wherewithal to discriminate ocean from non-ocean, I don't think it's unreasonable to suppose that human infants have a natural ability to discriminate red from blue, regardless of a linguistic understanding of those concepts. How does descrimination arise if the initial state is one marked by a complete lack of discrimination? A good question, perhaps impossible to answer. Perhaps the assumption that experience begins as a completely incomprehensible jumble is simply false.

[confutatis]

Originally posted by LW Sleeth
We are talking about how existence is, not whether or not the way it is explains things for us.

A few days ago I was having a conversation with Marcus on the "Science and Mathematics" forum. I said, and he enthusiastically agreed with me, that the best way to understand metaphysics is to listen to great music. I'm not coming from where you think I'm coming.

You seem unable to separate two very distinct potentials of consciousness: the ability to experience, and the ability to think.

I can see it from another perspective: I have the ability to think about sensations, and I have the ability to think about language.

I can see it from yet another perspective: I have the ability to experience sensations, and I have the ability to experience language.

Which perspective is right, yours, my first, my second, or some other? It doesn't matter. Think of a building - the view from inside is completely different from the view from the outside, yet it's the same building. If the exterior walls are painted gray, and the interior walls are painted green, is the building gray or green? Can you really understand why some people think it's gray and others think it's green?

It's the same with the human mind. There are two currents, the "mentalists" and the "materialists" - the "insiders" and the "outsiders". Both think the other is wrong; both are right from their own perspective, and wrong for not acknowledging that the other perspective is just as valid. I lean more to the mentalist/insider side, but I'm trying to get a glimpse of the outside.

Somehow I think you must already know what you are saying doesn't make sense.

It's really hard to explain to people inside that the building looks gray from the outside. They expect it to look just as green.

The best musicians can tell you it is the same for them as they "feel" their way while playing music.

I am an amateur pianist, and I can tell you this: no matter how much "feeling" you put into the music, eventually it's all a matter of pressing the right keys with the right pressure for the right amount of time. There's absolutely nothing more to it. A piano can't understand feelings, a human can't understand what makes Vladimir Horowitz such a great pianist. While it's true that you will never play the piano well if you think in terms of mechanics, it's also true that you will never be able to play the piano at all if you ignore mechanics. It's not wise to ignore one perspective just because you don't like it.

But a most (THE most to me) delightful thing about a baby is that he/she doesn't have a bunch of stuff his his/her head. They are very natural, and I say that's because they are so experiential. The more concepts clutter up their heads, the more they lose that beautiful naturalness.

Do you have kids? I do. I have a beautiful girl and a beautiful boy. I like to watch the smile on their faces when I tell them they are angels from heaven. They smile, I suspect, for two reasos: because they know I truly believe that, and because they know it's true. But even angels from heaven can be studied, analyzed, discussed. It doesn't detract from their beauty and it doesn't take away the mystery of their existence. It's a mistake to think otherwise. Reason does not have the power to diminish the grandeur of the world; at worst it can hide some of it, at best it makes it even grander.

Anyway, I disagree with trying to model human consciousness like a computer. No matter how much AI enthusiasts are convinced they will achieve consciousness, I don't believe they will because they will never get a computer to experience

Why do you disagree with me then? If the perspective I'm offering is correct, then it implies one thing: computers will never be conscious because we will never know how to emulate consciousness. We may have some theories about it, but our theories will imply that consciousness must necessarily arises from an unconscious process - meaning must necessarily come from meaninglessness. Since we, the creators of computers, are already conscious, we're no longer capable of doing it. It's too late.

Notice that we have already built conscious computers: our brains! But it was a one-shot thing, no second chance at it, Dennett et al notwithstanding.

[Canute]

Originally posted by Fliption
Canute,

Experience is more than just seeing. This scenario could not happen because if one has no concepts then they cannot experience stubbing their toes either. There is no concept of toe or pain. So if you follow this view to it's logical conclusion, then nothing would ever happen. No one would be alive today. Nothing can be experienced with concepts and concepts cannot be developed without experience. Again I ask, which came first the chicken or the egg? [/B]
I think you misinterpreted. I agree that experience is a different matter entirely. That was pretty much much what I was saying, that the experience of seeing preceeds the conceptualisation of the images.

Therefore if (as was being argued) we cannot see at all until we have learnt to conceptualise properly then one can feel the pain of stubbing one's toe while being unable to see what you stubbed it on. This assumes that pain is a direct experience and not a conception (or only a conception at a much deeper level), and on that we maybe disagree.

BTW

Are you serious? If there is anything that I am certain of, it is my own experience. I know nothing of god.
Some would find that self-contradictory. [:D]

[Canute]

Originally posted by confutatis

The thing that must be understood is that at some point, either in our personal history, or the history of our species, or the history of organisms, everything we know and experience today consisted of nothing more than a collection of completely undefined "stuff". The challenge then is (was), how do you define anything at all if you can only define things in terms of other things? It's not valid to appeal to anything outside the collection of undefined data, to define things in terms of something which has been mysteriously predefined by some unknowable entity.

The above is, in essence and as far as I can tell, the best statement of the problem of consciousness. [/B]
It would be a bit Buddhist for a scientific statement of the problem, but as a deep one I reckon it's pretty good.

Defining must always begin with an undefined term, as for any dictionary or mathematical system. Perhaps consciousness (experience, Being) is it, after all it appears to be indefinable. Also it would naturally be the first thing to be defined, the first thing of which we are aware.

Equivalently 'defining' begins with knowledge and knowledge begins with experience and experience begins with an awareness of 'self'. Once we've defined 'self' we can define 'not-self' and all the rest follows.

As time goes by we start defining and categorising in more and more detail, and forget that our undefined term is actually outside of all those our systems of definitions, undefined in all of them, and wonder why we cannot define it.

Sorry, that's a muddle. If it makes no sense ignore it.

[Les Sleeth]

Originally posted by confutatis
A few days ago I was having a conversation with Marcus on the "Science and Mathematics" forum. I said, and he enthusiastically agreed with me, that the best way to understand metaphysics is to listen to great music. I'm not coming from where you think I'm coming.

I will admit that I have trouble understanding you. No one with whom I've interacted here at PF has so successfully kept me in the dark (or, have I been so confused about ). I remember wondering when I first saw the handle you chose if it was a play on the name Confucious, or on the word confusion. [:D]

From my perspective, you are not consistant, but I am open to being convinced I simply don't understand the way you are putting things.

Originally posted by confutatis
I can see it from another perspective: I have the ability to think about sensations, and I have the ability to think about language.
I can see it from yet another perspective: I have the ability to experience sensations, and I have the ability to experience language. Which perspective is right, yours, my first, my second, or some other? It doesn't matter.

But then, you go and say something like the above. What do you mean "which perspective is right"? I have never suggested either were wrong. What I have said is, experience is one thing, thinking is another. They are not in conflict. The question we are debating is, which is more basic, fundamental, necessary to the existence of consciousness: experience or thinking?

I think some of us are saying in this debate that you can have consciousness without thinking, but you cannot have consciousness without experience. Another little test: when we think, that necessarily is an experience, but when we experience, it isn't necessarily thinking.

Originally posted by confutatis
Think of a building - the view from inside is completely different from the view from the outside, yet it's the same building. If the exterior walls are painted gray, and the interior walls are painted green, is the building gray or green? Can you really understand why some people think it's gray and others think it's green?

No, I can't understand it at all in an intellegent person. A proper answer is that it is green inside and gray outside. What is difficult about looking (i.e. experiencing) both inside AND outside?

Originally posted by confutatis
It's the same with the human mind. There are two currents, the "mentalists" and the "materialists" - the "insiders" and the "outsiders". Both think the other is wrong; both are right from their own perspective, and wrong for not acknowledging that the other perspective is just as valid. I lean more to the mentalist/insider side, but I'm trying to get a glimpse of the outside.

That maybe true in general, but we shouldn't we expect more from a philosopher? Here aren't we trying to represent objective reality, and not the egocentric view?

But your representation of the two sides as mentalists and materialistst doesn't represent the "side" I am on. To me, everyone who is trying to figure out existence relying primarily on the mind is a mentalist; and then there are materialistic-oriented mentalists, and idealistically-oriented mentalists. My "side" is the experientialist. I believe one can never know or understand the whole of reality very well until one gives top priority to personally experiencing that which one thinks might be true.

Originally posted by confutatis
I am an amateur pianist, and I can tell you this: no matter how much "feeling" you put into the music, eventually it's all a matter of pressing the right keys with the right pressure for the right amount of time. There's absolutely nothing more to it.

If you play the piano that way, remind me never to show up for one of your recitals. [zz)]

Originally posted by confutatis
While it's true that you will never play the piano well if you think in terms of mechanics, it's also true that you will never be able to play the piano at all if you ignore mechanics. It's not wise to ignore one perspective just because you don't like it.

Yes, but who is making it a competition that is either-or? The technical aspect MUST BE LEARNED. No dispute! The competition is which gets priority in a performance, feeling or technical performance. Which does the average listener prefer, and which is the most enjoyable to perform for the musician?

Originally posted by confutatis
Do you have kids? I do. I have a beautiful girl and a beautiful boy. I like to watch the smile on their faces when I tell them they are angels from heaven. They smile, I suspect, for two reasos: because they know I truly believe that, and because they know it's true. But even angels from heaven can be studied, analyzed, discussed. It doesn't detract from their beauty and it doesn't take away the mystery of their existence. It's a mistake to think otherwise. Reason does not have the power to diminish the grandeur of the world; at worst it can hide some of it, at best it makes it even grander.

Here is that competition again. I am not trying to put down reason. I am asking which is more basic to the existence of consciousness, experience or reason.

Originally posted by confutatis
Why do you disagree with me then? If the perspective I'm offering is correct, then it implies one thing: computers will never be conscious because we will never know how to emulate consciousness.

I think I disagree with you because you are not clear about what your position is. But I admit it might be me having a bad understanding day. I cannot see how what you have said implies "computers will never be conscious because we will never know how to emulate consciousness."

Originally posted by confutatis
We may have some theories about it, but our theories will imply that consciousness must necessarily arises from an unconscious process - meaning must necessarily come from meaninglessness. Since we, the creators of computers, are already conscious, we're no longer capable of doing it. It's too late. . . . Notice that we have already built conscious computers: our brains! But it was a one-shot thing, no second chance at it, Dennett et al notwithstanding.

Bad understanding day or not, here I am pretty sure your reasoning doesn't follow. If consciousness does come from an unconscious process, it doesn't mean consciousness cannot now figure out what those unconscious processes were and replicate them (after all, consciousness is now smarter than the dumb unconscious processes we are speculating created it).

[zk4586]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
This experiment (http://journalofvision.org/3/9/712/) demonstrates that infants only 16 weeks old can discriminate between colors, long before linguistic capabilities begin to develop in the average child. Are these infants conscious? Well, we can't be sure. But what seems apparent is that however we go about dividing up and categorizing the world, it can occur without language (unless you believe that the mothers' baby talk was necessary for their ability to discriminate colors).

If newborn turtles have the wherewithal to discriminate ocean from non-ocean, I don't think it's unreasonable to suppose that human infants have a natural ability to discriminate red from blue, regardless of a linguistic understanding of those concepts. How does descrimination arise if the initial state is one marked by a complete lack of discrimination? A good question, perhaps impossible to answer. Perhaps the assumption that experience begins as a completely incomprehensible jumble is simply false.

But what if we assume that there are certain built-in features of language that allow for a kind of rough discrimination? Hmm, where'd I put my copy of Chomsky's, On Language?

[hypnagogue]

Originally posted by zk4586
But what if we assume that there are certain built-in features of language that allow for a kind of rough discrimination? Hmm, where'd I put my copy of Chomsky's, On Language?

Now you're talking about features of language and not language itself. I think Fliption was correct to say that you are thinking more in terms of the more basic functions of categorization and the like. If you are talking only of language, then your argument should not be able to generalize to animals that do not have advanced, abstract language. But it appears that they do.

[Fliption]

Originally posted by Canute
[B]I think you misinterpreted. I agree that experience is a different matter entirely. That was pretty much much what I was saying, that the experience of seeing preceeds the conceptualisation of the images.

Therefore if (as was being argued) we cannot see at all until we have learnt to conceptualise properly then one can feel the pain of stubbing one's toe while being unable to see what you stubbed it on. This assumes that pain is a direct experience and not a conception (or only a conception at a much deeper level), and on that we maybe disagree.


Actually, I knew what your opinion was I think. The first sentence was really the only one directed at you. I agree with where you were going. I just thought that the contant use of vision by confutatis and others as an example had trapped us into thinking that their claim of "concepts coming before experience" only applied to vision. When they actually mean ALL experience(including stubbing ones toe) does not exists until it is conceptualized. This view of theirs appears much more absurd to me when you leave the realm of vision and and start thinking about other experiences. I can only guess this is why my example of fire has not been directly responded to.



Some would find that self-contradictory. [:D]

Lol. Yep. I knew that when I wrote it. But I decided to stick with what is generally meant by the term god.

[confutatis]

Originally posted by LW Sleeth
I remember wondering when I first saw the handle you chose if it was a play on the name Confucious, or on the word confusion. [:D]

Sorry about the confusion. I should limit the size of my posts, but conciseness is not one of my virtues.

By the way, 'confutatis' is meant to tell an important fact about me: I'm nuts about a particular kind of music.

I think some of us are saying in this debate that you can have consciousness without thinking, but you cannot have consciousness without experience. Another little test: when we think, that necessarily is an experience, but when we experience, it isn't necessarily thinking.

All of that really depends on how you define "think" and "experience". But the central problem is that ultimately everything is defined in terms of everything else. There's no starting point.

The competition is which gets priority in a performance, feeling or technical performance. Which does the average listener prefer, and which is the most enjoyable to perform for the musician?

Ha! That's easy. A pianist who has technique but 0% feeling is not worth hearing. But a pianist who has feeling but 0% technique cannot be heard at all! He can only play in his head.

It's not a matter of competition, it's a matter of acknowledging that you can't give primacy to one over the other.

[/b]Here is that competition again. I am not trying to put down reason. I am asking which is more basic to the existence of consciousness, experience or reason.[/b]

I say neither and both. That probably confuses you, but I'm also confused by your assertion that you don't want a competition, you only want to know who comes first.

I admit it might be me having a bad understanding day.

It's more like both of us are having a bad understading life...

Bad understanding day or not, here I am pretty sure your reasoning doesn't follow. If consciousness does come from an unconscious process, it doesn't mean consciousness cannot now figure out what those unconscious processes were and replicate them (after all, consciousness is now smarter than the dumb unconscious processes we are speculating created it).

I rushed through my argument and I don't have time to elaborate for now. Sorry. But I'd like to point out that your "dumb unconscious processes" are not dumb at all. For one thing, they can play the piano far better than your "smart conscious processes". You look at a face and you instantly recognize it without even having to think about it. Try to do that consciously and tell me what "dumb" really means.

[Jeebus]

Originally posted by Canute
Hang on, where did 'truth' come from? You say here that first we experience, then we categorise, then we explain. It seems to follow that that experience is not semantics.

Some people (notably Wittgenstein) think language is crucual to consciousness but all we can say is that language is important to everyday human consciousness. There is no evidence that language is necessary for consciousness and, if it is, no explanation for how we became able to use language before we had an experience.

You mentioned truth being the opposite of what confutatis said. So, yeah, I got confused. Semantics is developed from experience after the 'experience' happened, that's what I said.

You are right. I went off on a tangent there. Just a mishap, that's all. Thanks for the reply.

[Les Sleeth]

Originally posted by zk4586
But what if we assume that there are certain built-in features of language that allow for a kind of rough discrimination? Hmm, where'd I put my copy of Chomsky's, On Language?

Actually, I don't see how language would be possible so soon and so readily unless there were built-in features. But there are a lot of things the body seem's designed to do, and which are undeveloped in the infant. We are not debating the predispositions of our physiology, but rather what is most basic about consciousness.

[zk4586]

Originally posted by hypnagogue
Now you're talking about features of language and not language itself. I think Fliption was correct to say that you are thinking more in terms of the more basic functions of categorization and the like. If you are talking only of language, then your argument should not be able to generalize to animals that do not have advanced, abstract language. But it appears that they do.

You said, "How does descrimination arise if the initial state is one marked by a complete lack of discrimination?" I simply suggested that built-in features of language could allow for rapid development of language, and thus we could do away with the idea that one begins in a state "marked by a complete lack of discrimination." I don't see how this really changes anything I've been saying.

[Les Sleeth]

Originally posted by confutatis
But the central problem is that ultimately everything is defined in terms of everything else. There's no starting point.

This an area of thought that is quite undecided. I am someone who can't agree with your overall statement.

What I could agree with is there is a whole class of things which are defined in terms of their relation to other things. That class gives us relative understanding, and in that class is included many things which are important to us, such as rational thought and language.

However, to say "there's no starting point" is only to say that you either haven't found one, can't imagine one, or see no need for one in order to understand the nature of reality. Personally, I cannot figure out how the relative aspects of existence ultimately make sense unless there is a starting point.

Actually, I think the two sides of the debate in this thread really boils down to the relativists and the "foundationalists." Dennett claims his model of consciousness gets around the problem of infinite regress that always plagues any relativist position attempting to circumvent an absolute principle (of course, the irony is that in the process any relativist position must eventually become the absolute!). The much simpler solution is to accept there is an absolute foundation at the base of all existence.

[Canute]

by LWSleeth - But your representation of the two sides as mentalists and materialistst doesn't represent the "side" I am on. To me, everyone who is trying to figure out existence relying primarily on the mind is a mentalist; and then there are materialistic-oriented mentalists, and idealistically-oriented mentalists. My "side" is the experientialist. I believe one can never know or understand the whole of reality very well until one gives top priority to personally experiencing that which one thinks might be true.

This raises one of the main points of misunderstanding. Many people treat 'consciousness' (experience) as synonymous with 'mind' (computation/thinking). This happens all the time in the literature. I sometimes wonder if we're all conscious in the same way given the arguments on this point. Perhaps one has to live in country with some space to expand into, some sense of nature and natural complexity, and star-lit nights to walk in to appreciate the difference, as you suggested.

[hypnagogue]

Originally posted by zk4586
You said, "How does descrimination arise if the initial state is one marked by a complete lack of discrimination?" I simply suggested that built-in features of language could allow for rapid development of language, and thus we could do away with the idea that one begins in a state "marked by a complete lack of discrimination." I don't see how this really changes anything I've been saying.

Why does it have to be linguistic in nature? I bet the same kind of color discrimination that can be done by a 16 week old infant could also be done by, say, a 16 week old cat. Language is a type of conceptual tool for categorization, but it's not the only one.

[Canute]

Originally posted by LW Sleeth
This an area of thought that is quite undecided. I am someone who can't agree with your overall statement.

What I could agree with is there is a whole class of things which are defined in terms of their relation to other things. That class gives us relative understanding, and in that class is included many things which are important to us, such as rational thought and language.

However, to say "there's no starting point" is only to say that you either haven't found one, can't imagine one, or see no need for one in order to understand the nature of reality. Personally, I cannot figure out how the relative aspects of existence ultimately make sense unless there is a starting point.

Actually, I think the two sides of the debate in this thread really boils down to the relativists and the "foundationalists." Dennett claims his model of consciousness gets around the problem of infinite regress that always plagues any relativist position attempting to circumvent an absolute principle (of course, the irony is that in the process any relativist position must eventually become the absolute!). The much simpler solution is to accept there is an absolute foundation at the base of all existence.
Great post. This is where the link is between epistemology and ontology. A priori the 'absolute' in ontological terms (what lies outside of Plato's cave) cannot be a relative phenomenon and cannot have a scientific existence (so we are chained to our benches). This seems to be generally accepted by philosphers.

But in an epistemological sense the 'absolute' is the starting point for discrimination (categorisation, defining, conceiving etc). This starting point, if all knowledge derives from experience, can only be an 'absolute' experience.

Hence in Advaita, Taoism etc. epistemology and ontology are the same thing in the end. All IMHO of course, but we seem to agree on this.

[Canute]

"By the way, 'confutatis' is meant to tell an important fact about me: I'm nuts about a particular kind of music."

Ok I'll have a stab. You like Bach and especially the 48 P's and F's. On the mechanics of playing the piano Rubenstein (I think) said - it's not the notes that are difficult to play, it's the silences between them.

[confutatis]

Originally posted by LW Sleeth
This an area of thought that is quite undecided. I am someone who can't agree with your overall statement.

That is only because you don't understand what I said. It's not easy to explain this, but it's quite clear once you understand it.

to say "there's no starting point" is only to say that you either haven't found one, can't imagine one, or see no need for one in order to understand the nature of reality.

It's neither. The issue is that knowledge, as a whole, does not have a starting point, a foundation, because such a foundation can't possibly exist.

Personally, I cannot figure out how the relative aspects of existence ultimately make sense unless there is a starting point.

Well, there was a time people could not understand why the world was not falling if it had no foundation. That left them confused, because they couldn't possibly imagine a foundation, other than an infinite chain of turtles. It was only when astronomy revealed that the world can't possibly fall, because there's nothing for it to fall into, that people understood how their intuition betrayed them.

Knowledge is no different. It has no foundation, no starting point, because such a foundation can't possibly exist. There's nothing outside what you know that can convince you that what you know to be true is actually false. (and notice that you can only be proven wrong on something because you accept that something else is true; there's no way to prove that everything you know to be true is false - some of it perhaps, but not everything)

The much simpler solution is to accept there is an absolute foundation at the base of all existence.

The "absolute foundation at the base of all existence" can't possibly exist. If it did, then it would need a foundation for itself. Turtles all the way...

[confutatis]

Originally posted by Canute
Ok I'll have a stab. You like Bach and especially the 48 P's and F's.

That too.

On the mechanics of playing the piano Rubenstein (I think) said - it's not the notes that are difficult to play, it's the silences between them.

Great quote. As for my experience, I found that playing what's written in the score is trivial, so trivial even a computer can do it. The real challenge is to play what is not written - that takes genius.

[hypnagogue]

Originally posted by confutatis
Great quote. As for my experience, I found that playing what's written in the score is trivial, so trivial even a computer can do it. The real challenge is to play what is not written - that takes genius.

This is somewhat of a tangent, but computer programs have been written to play musical scores taking things such as natural biological timing fluctuations and such into account, and the result is judged by experimentally blind human judges to sound decidedly emotive and 'human.' There's more to it than just the biological timing fluctuations but that's what I can remember off the top of my head.

[Les Sleeth]

Originally posted by Canute
This raises one of the main points of misunderstanding. Many people treat 'consciousness' (experience) as synonymous with 'mind' (computation/thinking). This happens all the time in the literature. I sometimes wonder if we're all conscious in the same way given the arguments on this point. Perhaps one has to live in country with some space to expand into, some sense of nature and natural complexity, and star-lit nights to walk in to appreciate the difference, as you suggested.

I am convinced we are not all conscious in the same way. Your comment about notes and the "silences" between notes is exactly the difference I see between the two main ways people are conscious. In this world, of course one needs to pay attention to thinking ("notes") as well as what might lie hidden in the silence. One extreme gives the computer mind, the other extreme leaves behind the spaced out mind. My goal is to develop both the ability to be silent inside, and develop my ability to reason.


I wanted to add that I've been working on a thread for the last few days to examine this contrast in types of consciousness. [a)]

[Les Sleeth]

Originally posted by confutatis
That is only because you don't understand what I said. It's not easy to explain this, but it's quite clear once you understand it. . . . The issue is that knowledge, as a whole, does not have a starting point, a foundation, because such a foundation can't possibly exist.

Just saying so doesn't make it so. I'll assume your next sentences are your arguments, so let's see if you have justified your statement "knowledge, as a whole, does not have a starting point, a foundation, because such a foundation can't possibly exist."

Originally posted by confutatis There's nothing outside what you know that can convince you that what you know to be true is actually false. (and notice that you can only be proven wrong on something because you accept that something else is true; there's no way to prove that everything you know to be true is false - some of it perhaps, but not everything)

I understand there are things which are better (or even only) understood by studying their relationships to other things. There is no argument about that. But you are describing the workings of what you believe from within the context of what you believe. It is not a proof to say there is nothing but relativeness because relative things always work in a relative way.

Originally posted by confutatis . . . there was a time people could not understand why the world was not falling if it had no foundation. That left them confused, because they couldn't possibly imagine a foundation, other than an infinite chain of turtles. . . .Knowledge is no different. It has no foundation, no starting point, because . . . the "absolute foundation at the base of all existence" can't possibly exist. If it did, then it would need a foundation for itself. Turtles all the way...

When you say there is no starting point, and then talk about "Turtles all the way," actually you are describing exactly what must happen if things are only relative. Nothing you say solves the problem of endless regress.

An absolute foundation, on the other hand, is the most basic principle/cause/existence possible. It needs nothing to hold it up, it is the basis of everything. If such a "ground state" exists, all beginings and regress start and end there respectively.


So, you have not yet made your case that all is relative because "knowledge, as a whole, does not have a starting point, a foundation, because such a foundation can't possibly exist." Instead you've given reason to suspect all is not relative.

[confutatis]

Originally posted by LW Sleeth
I understand there are things which are better (or even only) understood by studying their relationships to other things.

No, things can only be understood by studying their relationships to other things. That's what "understanding" means. You can't understand a thing if it relates to nothing else. That's why nobody understands "reality", "consciousness", "space", "time", "beauty", and so many other mysteries.

But once again you are describing the workings of what you believe from within the context of what you believe.

I'm describing things as I see them.

It is not a proof to say there is nothing but relativeness because relative things always work in a relative way.

What do you mean by proof? Philosophy is thousands of years old and, if you exclude mathematicians, no one was ever able to come with a philosophical proof of anything. You know why? Because language is to philosophers what wood is to a carpenter. Just like a carpenter's imagination must be restrained by the limitations of wood, a philosopher can only do what his language allows him to do. And "proof" is definitely not allowed.

When you say there is no starting point, and then talk about "Turtles all the way," actually you are describing exactly what must happen if things are only relative.

Nope.

Nothing you say solves the problem of endless regress.

Think of a dictionary. Anything you can possibly talk about is described there. How does the dictionary define words if not by describing one word in terms of others? Are you saying that can't be done? Nonsense!

Now does a dictionary really describe anything? Of course not. A dictionary only describes a language. But you are mistaken if you think any description of anything is fundamentally different from a dictionary. It isn't. It's exactly the same thing. All these posts, all those philosophy books, they are mere attempts at definitions of the way we talk. Watch it closely and you will see.

An absolute foundation, on the other hand, is the most basic principle/cause/existence possible.

Right there! You just described "an absolute foundation" in terms of something else! Your absolute foundation is anything but absolute!

It needs nothing to hold it up, it is the basis of everything. If such a "ground state" exists, all beginings and regress start and end there respectively.

So that's the (relative) definition of your absolute foundation? Thanks for making my point for me [a)]

[Les Sleeth]

Originally posted by confutatis
No, things can only be understood by studying their relationships to other things.

Are you going to be another one of those here who argues one's case by restating over and over again what one believes?

Originally posted by confutatis
I'm describing things as I see them.

Hmmmm, looks like it . . .

Originally posted by confutatis
That's what "understanding" means. You can't understand a thing if it relates to nothing else. That's why nobody understands "reality", "consciousness", "space", "time", "beauty", and so many other mysteries.

. . . .and again.

Originally posted by confutatis
What do you mean by proof? Philosophy is thousands of years old and, if you exclude mathematicians, no one was ever able to come with a philosophical proof of anything. You know why? Because language is to philosophers what wood is to a carpenter. Just like a carpenter's imagination must be restrained by the limitations of wood, a philosopher can only do what his language allows him to do. And "proof" is definitely not allowed.

Relax, I didn't mean a formal proof, I meant with evidence and reason to build a case that so thoroughly accounts for how reality works I must, if I am being reasonable, accede to your model. So far all you are doing is repeating what you believe, you are not addressing the exceptions and counterpoints I bring up other than to say "No, things can only be understood by studying their relationships to other things," as you are about to do again . . .

Originally posted by confutatis Think of a dictionary. Anything you can possibly talk about is described there. How does the dictionary define words if not by describing one word in terms of others?

[zz)]

Originally posted by confutatis Are you saying that can't be done? Nonsense!

The classic strawman . . . I have never once said any of the things are arguing against.

Originally posted by confutatis Now does a dictionary really describe anything? Of course not. A dictionary only describes a language. But you are mistaken if you think any description of anything is fundamentally different from a dictionary. It isn't. It's exactly the same thing. All these posts, all those philosophy books, they are mere attempts at definitions of the way we talk. Watch it closely and you will see.

Who's arguing? You are doing exactly what I said you were doing in my last post.

You are also doing what your above argument was supposed to refute about what I said, which was, ". . . you are describing the workings of what you believe from within the context of what you believe. It is not a proof [substitute: sound argument] to say there is nothing but relativeness because relative things always work in a relative way."

Originally posted by confutatis
Right there! You just described "an absolute foundation" in terms of something else! Your absolute foundation is anything but absolute! . . . So that's the (relative) definition of your absolute foundation? Thanks for making my point for me [a)]

We are using language to represent what we are talking about. Language and thought are exactly what you represent them to be: tools for communicating about what is relative. I have NEVER disputed that. If they are as such, and if there is something absolute, then tools which only operate in relative terms can never adequately express this absolute.

All that is understood by half-way informed philosophers when it comes this area of metaphysics. So being sarcastic about that rather elementary point doesn't tell us anything.

As an "experientialist" the only thing I consider a "proof" is that which has been experienced somewhere, at sometime, by someone (excluding tautalogies and such, of course). I have been telling you that your model of consciousness doesn't account for experiences I have had, and I believe others have had. I freely admit language cannot express that experience, but guess what, language can never be equivalent to any experience other than the experience of participating in language.

If you are hungry, will your hunger get satisfied by talking about eating, or do you need to experience eating? Obviously the language "food" is not the experience food. Period. You know that, I know that.

If that is the case, then the experience of the absolute (if possible) would also not be the language of the absolute. We know if it exits we can't get at it through the language of philosophy. What we are trying to do therefore is infer from the way reality "works" if an absolute is a logical hypothesis, or maybe even a necessary hypothesis.

That is why when you argue for the absoluteness of relativity [g)], I bring up logical problems I have with it, such as infinite regress. Your answer is to come back and tell me about all the relative stuff in the universe, which I already know and don't dispute. It seems more appropriate to first address people's counterarguments so that your answers reflect you have taken into account the points that have been made.

[hypnagogue]

LW, how exactly are you using the term 'experience'? From what I gather you have been using it primarily to mean conscious, subjective experience, but you've also used it a couple of times (or so it seems) to refer to objective actions/activities. For instance, you say the way to satisfy hunger is to experience eating. But if I were to have the conscious experience of eating induced in me by a mad scientist, I imagine it would not have a completely overriding effect on my hunger, which is ultimately satisfied by the ingestion of sugars and such by my objective body. (If you have ever been hooked up to one of those nutrtition transport systems in a hospital-- whatever they're called-- you'll find that you don't get terribly hungry despite not eating for long periods.)

[Les Sleeth]

LW, how exactly are you using the term 'experience'? From what I gather you have been using it primarily to mean conscious, subjective experience, but you've also used it a couple of times (or so it seems) to refer to objective actions/activities. For instance, you say the way to satisfy hunger is to experience eating. But if I were to have the conscious experience of eating induced in me by a mad scientist, I imagine it would not have a completely overriding effect on my hunger, which is ultimately satisfied by the ingestion of sugars and such by my objective body. (If you have ever been hooked up to one of those nutrtition transport systems in a hospital-- whatever they're called-- you'll find that you don't get terribly hungry despite not eating for long periods.)

I have been using the term "experience" to refer to that aspect of consciousness that is aware of what it senses. I use the word "senses" in the broadest possible way so that it includes the physical senses, intuition, or any other way we detect information. In other words, we sense/feel and we know we sense/feel; both aspects together is what I consider experience.

The hunger analogy probably wasn't the best, but it is one I like because we all know what it is like to be hungry. My point was that there is a big difference between thinking or talking about eating, and actually eating. For the general meaning of experience I do not distinguish between information that comes from the outside, or that which comes from within. So it wouldn't matter to the basic nature of experience if the information I become aware of is regarding my objective actions/activities. And if you were to have the conscious experience of eating induced by a mad scientist, that would be the experience of eating induced by a mad scientist, and not the experience of eating. You might not be able to properly interpret the situation until you were starving to death, but that doesn't change the nature of experience, which is really my overall point. Experience is one thing, thinking and language are another.

[Canute]

No, things can only be understood by studying their relationships to other things. That's what "understanding" means. You can't understand a thing if it relates to nothing else. That's why nobody understands "reality", "consciousness", "space", "time", "beauty", and so many other mysteries. SNIP

What do you mean by proof? Philosophy is thousands of years old and, if you exclude mathematicians, no one was ever able to come with a philosophical proof of anything. You know why? Because language is to philosophers what wood is to a carpenter. Just like a carpenter's imagination must be restrained by the limitations of wood, a philosopher can only do what his language allows him to do. And "proof" is definitely not allowed.
All this seems pretty much true, but only in a way.

You are right that science and 'analytical' philososophy is restricted to the study of relative phenomena, and that neither is capable of absolute proofs. However experience is not reasoning. Reasoning has limits (Plato's cave again) but experience transcends those limits. We know this from mathematics among other things.

Experience must preceed perceptual or conceptual knowledge. Therefore experience (or not all experience) is not this kind of knowledge. This is why direct knowledge (apperception) can, in theory at least, bring certain knowledge but reasoning, as you say, cannot.

You can't say that nobody understands ultimate reality and so on, because there are many people who claim they do. They may be wrong but you'd have to show this.

Think of a dictionary. Anything you can possibly talk about is described there. How does the dictionary define words if not by describing one word in terms of others? Are you saying that can't be done? Nonsense!
Words in dictionaries are relative phenomena as you say. However dictionaries exist so clearly not all the words in a dictionary are relative, otherwise they could not exist. There is at least one undefined term in every dictionary and in every mathematical theory and in any 'theory of everything'.

The universe consists entirely of relative phenomona. There is therefore soemthing that is not relative that underlies these phenomena, and on which all these relative phenomena are epiphenomenal. This must be something absolute.

Now does a dictionary really describe anything? Of course not. A dictionary only describes a language. But you are mistaken if you think any description of anything is fundamentally different from a dictionary. It isn't. It's exactly the same thing. All these posts, all those philosophy books, they are mere attempts at definitions of the way we talk. Watch it closely and you will see.
Half right again I'd say. Sleeth was not talking about 'describing'. He was talking about experiencing. Experiencing, at the limit, does not require words, categories, conceptions, perceptions, sensory data, or relative phenomena of any kind. For the reasons you give this must be the case since realtive phenomena cannot exist unless something that is not relative underlies them.

Right there! You just described "an absolute foundation" in terms of something else! Your absolute foundation is anything but absolute!
It is not possible to describe something that is absolute except in relative terms. This is why in non-dual cosmologies it is asserted that nothing true can be said about the absolute. To describe it is to 'relativise' it. Hence it is not correct to say that the absolute exists or not-exists, they are incorrect terms. However luckily to have an experience it is not necessary to describe it so absolute knowledge is theoretically possible.

It is the experience that Sleeth is talking about, and the words are necessary. "The Tao must be talked" in Chuang Tsu's words. However the experience is not the words.

BTW this is worth reading in this context
from ( http://www.dieoff.org/page126.htm)

Your point about philosophy is a good one. Analytical philosophy hasn't made any progress in two thousand years. The reason is that this tradition of philosophy does not acknowledge the limits to reasoning, even though we know what they are. Martin Heidegger is brilliant on this issue. Here's an extract from 'What is Metaphysics', his inaugural lecture at U of Frieberg. The whole text is worth reading. The guy is my all time hero-genius.


"Metaphysics, however, speaks continually and in the most various ways of Being. Metaphysics gives, and seems to confirm, the appearance that it asks and answers the question concerning Being. In fact, metaphysics never answers the question concerning the truth of Being, for it never asks this question. Metaphysics does not ask this question because it thinks of Being only by representing beings as beings. It means all beings as a whole, although it speaks of Being. It refers to Being and means beings as beings. From its beginning to its completion, the propositions of metaphysics have been strangely involved in a persistent confusion of beings and Being. This confusion, to be sure, must be considered an event and not a mere mistake. It cannot by any means be charged to a mere negligence of thought or a carelessness of expression. Owing to this persistent confusion, the claim that metaphysics poses the question of Being lands us in utter error."

[zk4586]

...if I were to have the conscious experience of eating induced in me by a mad scientist, I imagine it would not have a completely overriding effect on my hunger, which is ultimately satisfied by the ingestion of sugars and such by my objective body.

Geez, you have a real hypothetical-scenario-involving-a-mad-scientist fetish, don't you?

[hypnagogue]

Geez, you have a real hypothetical-scenario-involving-a-mad-scientist fetish, don't you?

No more than you have a fetish for language. [6)] I just think the mad scientist thing is a useful device to demonstrate a realistically plausible scenario where experience is shown to be dissociated from the objective referrents to which it usually is taken to refer. This is an important distinction to make.

[hypnagogue]

And if you were to have the conscious experience of eating induced by a mad scientist, that would be the experience of eating induced by a mad scientist, and not the experience of eating. You might not be able to properly interpret the situation until you were starving to death, but that doesn't change the nature of experience, which is really my overall point.

I agree with your second statement here, which is why I think you shouldn't make the distinction that you make in the first. From the 1st person perspective, for at least some nonnegligible duration of time, the experience of eating is identical whether it arises from actually eating, or from being fooled into thinking that you are eating by proper stimulation of your brain. The upshot of this is that there is no direct tie from subjective experience to objective referrents. Your distinction between the two arises from a 3rd person perspective, but is not apparent from the 1st person. So, in fact, I would say that it is more proper to say that experientially the two are identical. If we do not say this then we introduce an objective term into our notion of experience and so we are no longer referring exclusively to subjective experience, or 'awareness of sensation' as you put it.

This is a side-issue to your main point, but I think it is important to talk about it so we remain as precise as possible on what we mean by 'experience.'


Experience is one thing, thinking and language are another.

Absolutely agree.

[confutatis]

All this seems pretty much true, but only in a way.

Yes, but in a very interesting way.

Reasoning has limits (Plato's cave again) but experience transcends those limits. We know this from mathematics among other things.

It works both ways. Reason can transcend experience, experience can transcend reasoning, and the interplay between the two is what allows us to acquire knowledge. As a result of that, the way you reason shapes the way you experience, and vice-versa. Then, talking about "reason" is equivalent to talking about "experience". They are two sides of the same coin.

You can't say that nobody understands ultimate reality and so on, because there are many people who claim they do. They may be wrong but you'd have to show this.

I mean "understand" in a rational way, in the sense of being able to describe it to others.

Sleeth was not talking about 'describing'. He was talking about experiencing.

To talk about experience is to describe experience. You can't talk about anything without describing that thing.

Experiencing, at the limit, does not require words, categories, conceptions, perceptions, sensory data, or relative phenomena of any kind.

Sure, but that kind of experience can't be understood or talked about, except in extremely elusive terms.

It is not possible to describe something that is absolute except in relative terms. This is why in non-dual cosmologies it is asserted that nothing true can be said about the absolute.

Why is it that you can't see that the statement "nothing true can be said about the absolute" is nonsense? For one thing, it can't possibly be true as it is a statement about the absolute.

To describe it is to 'relativise' it. Hence it is not correct to say that the absolute exists or not-exists, they are incorrect terms.

Exactly! We can't think of reality as being a "thing", and we can't think of consciousness as being a "process". Thinking about things that way lead to all sorts of nonsense.

Analytical philosophy hasn't made any progress in two thousand years.

Actually they did, they achieved quite a progress, only not in the area where they expected it. The greatest contribution of philosophy to mankind is an elaborate vocabulary. This discussion about 'consciousness' would not be possible if philosophers had not invented the concept. The mistake is to think that any philosophical discussion about 'consciousness' consists of anything other than an attempt to define what the word 'consciousness' means. That's what I think some people don't get, but it's not their fault, it's not easy to see through the deceptive aspects of language.

That applies to all my posts, by the way. I'm not trying to prove or demonstrate anything about consciousness, philosophy is not capable of that. All I'm saying is that the concept 'experience' does not need to be invoked in order to provide a clear definition of the concept 'consciousness', except perhaps in a tautological way.

[Canute]

It works both ways. Reason can transcend experience, experience can transcend reasoning, and the interplay between the two is what allows us to acquire knowledge. As a result of that, the way you reason shapes the way you experience, and vice-versa. Then, talking about "reason" is equivalent to talking about "experience". They are two sides of the same coin.
This is not the case. Try reading Russell or Popper for instance.

I mean "understand" in a rational way, in the sense of being able to describe it to others.
Understanding has got nothing to with describing to others. Experiences are indescribable in principle. In philophy this is known as 'incommensurability.

To talk about experience is to describe experience. You can't talk about anything without describing that thing.
Ok

Sure, but that kind of experience can't be understood or talked about, except in extremely elusive terms.
No kind of experience can be talked about except in 'elusive terms'.

Why is it that you can't see that the statement "nothing true can be said about the absolute" is nonsense? For one thing, it can't possibly be true as it is a statement about the absolute.
That isn't quite right. The statement is saying that 'the absolute' (let's say 'essence or 'ultimate reality') has no attributes. Therefore any statement like 'it exists' is untrue, but not entirely untrue.

Depending on how much philosophy you know you may find this a strange claim. However it can be shown logically.

Exactly! We can't think of reality as being a "thing", and we can't think of consciousness as being a "process". Thinking about things that way lead to all sorts of nonsense.
Hmm. Don't know what you mean there.

Actually they did, they achieved quite a progress, only not in the area where they expected it. The greatest contribution of philosophy to mankind is an elaborate vocabulary. This discussion about 'consciousness' would not be possible if philosophers had not invented the concept. The mistake is to think that any philosophical discussion about 'consciousness' consists of anything other than an attempt to define what the word 'consciousness' means. That's what I think some people don't get, but it's not their fault, it's not easy to see through the deceptive aspects of language.
Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest that philosophy was a waste of time. I meant that the questions which were unanswerable to Plato are still unanswerable today. That is why one philosopher (can't remember but could check) remarked that Western philosophy 'consists of a series of footnotes to Plato'. In this context it's intersting that you cite 'an elaborate vocabulary' as a success.

That applies to all my posts, by the way. I'm not trying to prove or demonstrate anything about consciousness, philosophy is not capable of that. All I'm saying is that the concept 'experience' does not need to be invoked in order to provide a clear definition of the concept 'consciousness', except perhaps in a tautological way.
The only agreed defintion of consciousness is 'what it is like'. Whether that invokes the concept of consciousness depends on whether you think the words are the thing, or the thing is something that the words point at.

[Les Sleeth]

It works both ways. Reason can transcend experience, experience can transcend reasoning, and the interplay between the two is what allows us to acquire knowledge. As a result of that, the way you reason shapes the way you experience, and vice-versa. Then, talking about "reason" is equivalent to talking about "experience". They are two sides of the same coin.

Sometimes it seems like you believe arbitrariness is a compelling line of reasoning. Why don't you feel the need to justify statements you offer that are in dispute among us? Just saying things are true without logical and/or evidential support gives me no way to either accept your point, or understand how you came to your conclusion.

For example, you say "the interplay between the two [reason and experience] is what allows us to acquire knowledge." If that is so, then how do you explain rats that can learn how to negotiate a maze or feed themselves from a mechanical feeding device? Did they require reason to know, or was experience enough to give them knowledge?

When you debate, mostly what I see you do is state your point of view; you don't adequately respond to others' legitimate counterpoints, and you don't seem particularly bothered by exceptions to your statements. Are you trading ideas with an openness to learn, or are you lecturing?

That applies to all my posts, by the way. I'm not trying to prove or demonstrate anything about consciousness, philosophy is not capable of that. All I'm saying is that the concept 'experience' does not need to be invoked in order to provide a clear definition of the concept 'consciousness', except perhaps in a tautological way.

First you say you aren't trying to prove anything about consciousness, and then you say " 'experience' does not need to be invoked in order to provide a clear definition of the concept 'consciousness'." You might not have noticed but you are participating in a discussion about the nature of consciousness. Some of us disagreed with a basic assumption of Rorty (and Dennett) that language and thought are the defining aspects of consciousness. We are not talking about "defining" consciousness as a dictionary would! But in any case, I'd love to see how you get rid of experience in your definition. Are you going to show us that, are or you going to just keep making arbitrary statements.

Exactly! We can't think of reality as being a "thing", and we can't think of consciousness as being a "process". Thinking about things that way lead to all sorts of nonsense. . . .

. . . The mistake is to think that any philosophical discussion about 'consciousness' consists of anything other than an attempt to define what the word 'consciousness' means. That's what I think some people don't get, but it's not their fault, it's not easy to see through the deceptive aspects of language.

I say, you are the one who doesn't get it. You don't even know what discusssion you are in. Here's how I see what you are saying in relation to what the rest of us are talking about.

I say the word "green" represents a certain wavelength of light. You say, green is only a word. I say, I know green is a word, but what does that have to do with whether or not there is a certain EM wavelength? You say, even EM and wavelengths are just words. I say, yes but so what, who said they weren't words? Well, you say, even a word is just a word. I say, the discussion is not about words, we are trying to talk about what a certain words represent in objective reality. You say, there is nothing but words, and, and all else is nonesense!!!!!!!!! Okay, I say, if that is so, then make your case. You say, I just state the obvious facts, it's up to you to figure out what I'm talking about, although its not your fault you don't understand me 'cause what I'm talking about is over most people's heads.

[Les Sleeth]

I agree with your second statement here, which is why I think you shouldn't make the distinction that you make in the first. From the 1st person perspective, for at least some nonnegligible duration of time, the experience of eating is identical whether it arises from actually eating, or from being fooled into thinking that you are eating by proper stimulation of your brain. The upshot of this is that there is no direct tie from subjective experience to objective referrents. Your distinction between the two arises from a 3rd person perspective, but is not apparent from the 1st person. So, in fact, I would say that it is more proper to say that experientially the two are identical. If we do not say this then we introduce an objective term into our notion of experience and so we are no longer referring exclusively to subjective experience, or 'awareness of sensation' as you put it.

This is a side-issue to your main point, but I think it is important to talk about it so we remain as precise as possible on what we mean by 'experience.'

Yep, you caught me there. As I generalized about experience, I knew something was inaccurate about lumping internal and external experience together. Let me see if I can say it better.

That experience which comes from within my consciousness has only me as its source. If there is anything truly unique about consciousness, then I don't see how anything "outer" can indentically simulate an experience of that uniqueness. But that which comes from without is usually information reaching me from my senses and brain. There's no reason I can think of that outer information, registering mostly as vibratory analogs of physical events in my consciousness, couldn't (in theory) be simulated perfectly. So I agree, with the right tools a mad scientist could give me the "experience" of eating. However, I do not think he could give me an experience of the most basic nature of consciousness since (I believe) that can only come from within consciousness itself. [a)]

[confutatis]

I meant that the questions which were unanswerable to Plato are still unanswerable today.

We don't have more answers than Plato, but we do have a lot more questions. That was my point. Philosophy gives us something to talk about. Without philosophy we could not have cocktail parties. Or this forum, for that matter.

The only agreed defintion of consciousness is 'what it is like'. Whether that invokes the concept of consciousness depends on whether you think the words are the thing, or the thing is something that the words point at.

That can't possibly be an agreed definition of consciousness because I don't agree with it :)

I was actually wondering about that this morning. According to that line of thinking, there must be something that "it is like" to be a woman which only women know, right? After all, you have to be a woman to know what it is like to be a woman. Even though I kind of grasp the idea behind the argument, I think putting things that way is silly. The idea may be valid, but the expression of it is pure nonsense. Let's see if I can explain it.

What is a woman? A woman is certainly not defined by "what it feels like to be a woman"; if things were that way no one could know that something as "being a woman" existed, for no one can know what a person feels inside. So a woman must be defined in a different way. Let's say we define a woman by her appearance. So as far as everyone is concerned, if it looks like a woman then it is a woman. That sounds like a more sensible definition. But what about the "what it feels..." stuff? Can someone have the appearance of a woman and "feel like" a man? And here's where the nonsense becomes clear, at least for me.

If "looking like a woman" and "feeling like a woman" are exactly the same thing, then no one who "looks like a woman" could possibly "feel like" anything except a woman. Any difference between "how it looks like" and "how it feels like" would be simply a matter of perspective, different language to describe the same phenomenon. But people are saying this is wrong, there is a difference, so let's examine it.

Someone named 'JS' claims to "feel like" a woman. Even though JS looks like a man, behaves exactly as a man, is sexually attracted to women, and exhibits any known characteristic of a man, JS insists the "feeling inside" is that of a woman. What do we make of JS? We are tempted to call him a fool, right? But the problem is, how can we be sure that JS doesn't really feel like a woman? After all, only JS knows about his/her subjective feelings, so we have to give JS the benefit of the doubt, right? Wrong! Just as we don't know "what it feels like to be JS", likewise JS doesn't know "what it feels like to be a woman". His claim is bogus, he's a man, period.

If you understood that, you should be able to see what's wrong with the "what it feels like" argument. The reason we know we are conscious is not because we "feel" anything, it's simply because we notice that our appearnce and behaviour is very similar to other people who claim to be conscious, just like women know they are women because they notice their similarity to other people known as "women". Subjective experience has nothing to do with it.

[Fliption]

If you understood that, you should be able to see what's wrong with the "what it feels like" argument. The reason we know we are conscious is not because we "feel" anything, it's simply because we notice that our appearnce and behaviour is very similar to other people who claim to be conscious, just like women know they are women because they notice their similarity to other people known as "women". Subjective experience has nothing to do with it.


It appears to me that you are trapped in a box and can't get out. You're turning everything into a semantic game. Who cares what it feels like to be a "woman"? That's just an arbitrary distinction with a word assigned to it. It doesn't have anything to do with consciousness. Consciousness is "what it's like to be". Not be "something", necessarily. Just "to be".

[confutatis]

It appears to me that you are trapped in a box and can't get out. You're turning everything into a semantic game.

My goodness, that's the point! We are all trapped in a box called "the subjective world" and everything anyone says IS a semantic game. The only alternative to communication is reading people's minds. I cannot do that.

Consciousness is "what it's like to be". Not be "something", necessarily. Just "to be".

So, are you?

[Canute]

We don't have more answers than Plato, but we do have a lot more questions. That was my point. Philosophy gives us something to talk about. Without philosophy we could not have cocktail parties. Or this forum, for that matter.
Very true. However think we should take this as a sign that our phiolosophising has gone wrong somewhere.

That can't possibly be an agreed definition of consciousness because I don't agree with it :)
No you're right. Not everyone agrees. However this is the common definition within consciousness studies, after a well known papar by Thomas Nagel which asked what it would be like to be a bat. It isn't a scientific definition of course, but it's the only one on which there is any concensus.

If you understood that, you should be able to see what's wrong with the "what it feels like" argument. The reason we know we are conscious is not because we "feel" anything, it's simply because we notice that our appearnce and behaviour is very similar to other people who claim to be conscious, just like women know they are women because they notice their similarity to other people known as "women". Subjective experience has nothing to do with it.
No offense (really) these are difficult issues. However this is nonsense. If we do not feel anything we are not conscious. How you can say that subjective experience has nothing to do with consciousness defeats me completely. There is no answer to it.

Also every shred of evidence suggests that what it is like to be a woman is unlike what it is like to be a man, thank goodness. Imagine feeling like you can't park. [:D]

[hypnagogue]

I was actually wondering about that this morning. According to that line of thinking, there must be something that "it is like" to be a woman which only women know, right? After all, you have to be a woman to know what it is like to be a woman.

'What it is like to be' refers to one's direct subjective experience. It does not follow from this that any linguistic dividing line we can come up with entails a totally unique and unknowable set of subjective experiences. For instance, the totality of what it is like to be me is certainly distinct from the totality of what it is like to be you. However, this does not imply that there is no overlap. If we were to look upon the same sunset from the same vantage point, our subjective experiences would still not be identical, but to a large extent they would contain the same phenomenological content-- assuming that your 'red' is the same as my 'red,' and so on.

There is certainly something it is like to be a normally functioning human woman, but it is a further, non-trivial question whether or not it is possible in principle for a man to have a good grasp of this 'what it is like-ness.' The question to ask is, to what extent do the typical subjective experiences of a man overlap with that of a woman? Although differences undoubtedly exist, there is also undoubtedly a great deal of overlap. For a man to have no comprehension of what it is like to be a woman, there would have to be some sort of subjective experience that woman encounter for which a man has no adequate analog in his own repertoire of subjective experience. This may or may not be the case, but we certainly can't assume as you have that it must be the case.

For instance, a man does not undergo menstruation, but a typical man probably experiences cramps at some point in his life, and probably experiences some form of mood swing as well. While still not identical in every detail to the woman's experience, the man can probably imagine a reasonable facsimile of a menstruating woman's experience by way of comparison to his own past experiences. (This claim would be bolstered considerably if the typical woman claims that subjective feeling of menstrual cramps is not qualitatively different in a fundamental way from the feeling of 'normal' cramps, and so on.) Contrast this with a blind man, who will never even be able to construct a reasonable facsimile of what it is like to experience visual consciousness, since he has no adequate experiential analogs through which to attain an understanding.

Can someone have the appearance of a woman and "feel like" a man? And here's where the nonsense becomes clear, at least for me.

We can guess at the answer using a linguistic interchange between men and women on their subjective experiences, but we cannot be sure. So in some respect it may be a nonsensical question to ask, but the nonsense belongs to the way the question has been framed, not to the underlying concept of 'what it is like.'

If "looking like a woman" and "feeling like a woman" are exactly the same thing, then no one who "looks like a woman" could possibly "feel like" anything except a woman.

I honestly don't know what justification you have for tying together appearances and subjective experience in this way. You'd be better served to talk about neurobiology. If there were some neural correlates of consciousness that were scientifically shown to correspond to 'feeling like a woman,' and if your JS character was then shown to possess these neural correlates, then we would have a high degree of confidence that his claim is justified.

Of course, the problem here is that 'feeling like a woman,' if there truly is such a thing, would probably be exceedingly subtle, vague, and complex. It is not nearly so easy to pick out such a thing as it is to pick out, say, visually 'feeling' redness.

His claim is bogus, he's a man, period.

There seems to be some confusion here. JS is obviously a man, since manhood is defined physiologically. That does not preclude him from feeling like a woman, just like an adult is not precluded from the possibility of feeling like a child under the proper circumstances.

The reason we know we are conscious is not because we "feel" anything, it's simply because we notice that our appearnce and behaviour is very similar to other people who claim to be conscious, just like women know they are women because they notice their similarity to other people known as "women". Subjective experience has nothing to do with it.

Subjective experience has everything to do with it. You are speaking of a mechanism by which one concludes that other people possess the same type of subjective experiences that one encounters directly. One does not need this process to know one's own subjective experience-- obviously not, since the only way one can observe the appearance and behavior of others in the first place is through the medium of their own subjective experience.

[Les Sleeth]

If you understood that, you should be able to see what's wrong with the "what it feels like" argument. The reason we know we are conscious is not because we "feel" anything, it's simply because we notice that our appearnce and behaviour is very similar to other people who claim to be conscious, just like women know they are women because they notice their similarity to other people known as "women". Subjective experience has nothing to do with it.

I am becoming infatuated with your vision for humanity. Music without feeling, relationships without feeling, life without feeling . . . very efficient. I just hope that what creates everything from dull pianists to mass murderers isn't the lack of feeling.

[confutatis]

I am becoming infatuated with your vision for humanity. Music without feeling, relationships without feeling, life without feeling . . . very efficient. I just hope that what creates everything from dull pianists to mass murderers isn't the lack of feeling.
My piano playing is rather dull, and I killed four people yesterday. Are you happy to hear that?

Now if you'd excuse me, I have to think about a reply to hypnagogue's thoughtful post.

[confutatis]

For a man to have no comprehension of what it is like to be a woman, there would have to be some sort of subjective experience that woman encounter for which a man has no adequate analog in his own repertoire of subjective experience. This may or may not be the case, but we certainly can't assume as you have that it must be the case.

That is way beside my point. All I said was that we can assume for sure that if there is something about yourself which you think only you have, then you have no word for it. As a consequence, everything you talk about, absolutely everything, must consist of concepts that are shared. Applied to my example, all that is possible for women to talk about themselves are those things that are common to all people who are defined as women.

You seem to be getting the wrong impression that language controls what you are. I never said that. All I said was that language controls what you think you are. You must agree with me that there's far more to you than what you think you are.

For instance, a man does not undergo menstruation, but a typical man probably experiences cramps at some point in his life, and probably experiences some form of mood swing as well. While still not identical in every detail to the woman's experience, the man can probably imagine a reasonable facsimile of a menstruating woman's experience by way of comparison to his own past experiences.

Men have noses and women also have noses. Whatever it is that men share with women, I can assure you it is not part of what makes women "women", if you think of "women" as oppose to "men".

Contrast this with a blind man, who will never even be able to construct a reasonable facsimile of what it is like to experience visual consciousness, since he has no adequate experiential analogs through which to attain an understanding.

Listen to yourself! Are you able to construct a reasonable facsimile of what it is like to experience visual consciousness? Are you saying a blind man cannot know he is blind? It seems so, as one needs to understand what vision is before one knows one doesn't have it.

I honestly don't know what justification you have for tying together appearances and subjective experience in this way.

I'm not "tying together appearances and subjective experience". Read my post. I said "subjective experience has nothing to do with it".

You'd be better served to talk about neurobiology. If there were some neural correlates of consciousness that were scientifically shown to correspond to 'feeling like a woman,' and if your JS character was then shown to possess these neural correlates, then we would have a high degree of confidence that his claim is justified.

If I could get you to understand the point I'm trying to make, you would see that this idea of "neural correlates" those materialists love to talk about is nonsense. But we have to save that discussion for a later time.

There seems to be some confusion here. JS is obviously a man, since manhood is defined physiologically. That does not preclude him from feeling like a woman

No, it does not. That's not what I said. What I said is that if JS does feel like a woman, he has absolutely no way to know it.

just like an adult is not precluded from the possibility of feeling like a child under the proper circumstances.

That's not a correct analogy. Adults know how it feels to be a child. It's perfectly correct for an adult to say "I'm feeling like a child today". I certainly feel like a child when I'm completely free of worries and just enjoying myself. But the reverse is not true; no child can claim to feel like an adult because a child doesn't know how an adult feels. As a child I often felt adult-like feelings, but I never thought of them as "adult-like feelings" until I grew up and learned what an "adult-like feeling" is.

Do you understand what I'm trying to say?

Subjective experience has everything to do with it. You are speaking of a mechanism by which one concludes that other people possess the same type of subjective experiences that one encounters directly. One does not need this process to know one's own subjective experience

That's not what I said. What I said is that you need this "process" in order to describe you own subjective experience in linguistic terms, to others and even to yourself.

For instane, I have never felt "enlightened". Maybe I did a few moments in my life, I have recollections of experiences which I could not understand at the time they happened. So those experiences happened, I'm not questioning that. But I don't think I can call those experiences "enlightenment", because I don't know what "enlightenment" means.

Now you tell me: how do I know if I ever experienced "enlightenment"? Is it enough for me to look at people who did? Certainly not, as according to them you can't tell the difference from the outside. Is it enough for me to listen to people explaining what "enlightenment" is? Again not, for they all tell me that "enlightenment" can't be explained. Now that leads me to conclude, from my perspective, that "enlightenment" can't be experienced, and that people who claim to have experienced it don't know what they are talking about.

Please don't get me wrong about that. The fact that you don't know what you are talking about doesn't diminish it. I certainly feel profound love for many things, but I don't know what "love" is. I know what loving behaviour is, but "love" completely eludes me. When I use the word "love", it's always in a poetical way. I'm quite OK with the fact that I don't know what "love" is, for the thing I feel when I use the word is far more important, far more meaningful than any word can possibly convey.

[Fliption]

Please don't get me wrong about that. The fact that you don't know what you are talking about doesn't diminish it. I certainly feel profound love for many things, but I don't know what "love" is. I know what loving behaviour is, but "love" completely eludes me. When I use the word "love", it's always in a poetical way. I'm quite OK with the fact that I don't know what "love" is, for the thing I feel when I use the word is far more important, far more meaningful than any word can possibly convey.


Confutatis, not only do I understand what you're saying here, I can agree with it too. But what you're describing is no different than the situation with color that everyone here has already acknowledged. None of us know whether our experience of "blueness" is really the same. But you have to be careful when you make statements like "You have no idea what blue is." As you did with enlightenment. You can experience anything. You just can't know whether what you're experiencing would be considered the same thing by another. This doesn't mean that the subjective experience cannot exists.

And while I understand your point in the last post, it is not at all what was being said earlier. Earlier, the view was that experience cannot exists without some conceptual understanding. This is what I've disagreed with from the start. I'm still not sure how to relate this latest view with those "the physical world is just a blur until you learn some words" posts.

[zk4586]

The real issue that divides us is this: Is subjective experience important?

Some of us say yes, some of us say no.

We should just agree to disagree. :cool:

[Fliption]

The real issue that divides us is this: Is subjective experience important?

Some of us say yes, some of us say no.

We should just agree to disagree. :cool:

Important for what?

[zk4586]

Important for what?

I give up.

[Fliption]

I give up.

Generally when you say something is unimportant, you are referring to something as it relates to something else or to some goal/objective. For example, if you need an automobile to get you from point A to point B, then it isn't important what color the automobile is. You are claiming subjective experience isn't important. It isn't important for what? I don't understand the context of this statement.

[zk4586]

Generally when you say something is unimportant, you are referring to something as it relates to something else or to some goal/objective. For example, if you need an automobile to get you from point A to point B, then it isn't important what color the automobile is.

Try telling that to my girlfriend.

You are claiming subjective experience isn't important. It isn't important for what? I don't understand the context of this statement.

Essentially, unimportant when it comes to understanding (or constructing a theory of) consciousness. Isn't that what we've been arguing about for seven pages worth of posts now?

[confutatis]

Confutatis, not only do I understand what you're saying here, I can agree with it too. But what you're describing is no different than the situation with color that everyone here has already acknowledged. None of us know whether our experience of "blueness" is really the same. But you have to be careful when you make statements like "You have no idea what blue is."

But I made no such statement. Of course a lot of people have a pretty good idea what blue is. I'm fully aware of why I'm not being understood, but I don't know how to explain it. I'll try once more.

Imagine a word, any word. Let's choose 'cat'. So there is the word 'cat', which is made of the letters 'c', 'a', 't', and there is something which the word is supposed to invoke in your mind when it's being used. Now how do you call that something which the word 'cat' invokes in your mind when you read or hear it? I bet you call it... 'cat'!

Now leave aside the fact that you know there's a difference between 'cat' and 'cat', and think of how nonsensical it seems to say that 'cat' and 'cat' are not the same thing. It is nonsense, but you have to understand why I'm saying it's nonsense. The fact of the matter is that human beings have an awesome ability: we have the ability to understand nonsense. And that is nothing short of a miracle.

People who claim computers will one day be conscious don't understand that fact; they don't understand that it's impossible to build a machine that makes sense of nonsense, a machine that doesn't do what it would be logical for it to do.

You can experience anything. You just can't know whether what you're experiencing would be considered the same thing by another.

Exactly. But if you don't know if your experience would be considered the same thing by another, then you don't know what you're experiencing. No man is an island, knowledge does not belong to an individual alone but to the whole human race. Knowledge can be shared, subjective experience cannot.

From that perspective, it's clear to me you can't know if you ever experienced blue if you don't know what the word 'blue' means. But what does 'blue' really mean? What if what I see as 'blue' is what the rest of the world sees as 'yellow'? Clearly I have no way to know if I ever experienced 'blue', yet that fact doesn't prevent me from talking about 'blue'. And that means whatever it is that I mean when I talk about 'blue', it can't possibly be my subjective experience of it.

At this point I know why you still don't understand the argument, so let me introduce you another question: do you think I'm conscious? I hope you do. Why is that? Is it because you think I know, for instance, what the subjective experience of 'blue' is? I clearly don't, I just stated that. The reason you think I'm conscious is far more trivial: I talk as if I'm conscious. So your subjective knowledge of my subjective consciousness is all based on my ability to talk in a particular way. From your perspective, whether I have subjective experiences or not is completely beside the point, so long as I act as if I do.

This doesn't mean that the subjective experience cannot exist.

I hope I was able to show that whether subjective experience exists or not is completely irrelevant to understand consciousness. That's what I'm trying to say.

And while I understand your point in the last post, it is not at all what was being said earlier. Earlier, the view was that experience cannot exists without some conceptual understanding. This is what I've disagreed with from the start. I'm still not sure how to relate this latest view with those "the physical world is just a blur until you learn some words" posts.

I'm talking nonsense, which is a good sign I'm conscious. Since you're conscious too, you can make sense of the nonsense. All you have to do is try, but don't try too hard if it's not worth it.

[Fliption]

Try telling that to my girlfriend.


Ok, give me her number and I'll give it a try. :smile:



Essentially, unimportant when it comes to understanding (or constructing a theory of) consciousness. Isn't that what we've been arguing about for seven pages worth of posts now?

Sorry I made you restate it. I just want to be clear. What you're saying clearly depends on how you define consciousness. If you define it the way it is defined in philosophical discussions, then obviously what you're saying isn't true.

[Fliption]

But I made no such statement. Of course a lot of people have a pretty good idea what blue is. I'm fully aware of why I'm not being understood, but I don't know how to explain it. I'll try once more.


But you did make this statement. You said...

"But I don't think I can call those experiences "enlightenment", because I don't know what "enlightenment" means."

This is the exact same situation with color and not knowing what blue is. As a matter of fact, you say the very same thing about "blue" later in this last post.

I have to admit, I've read this last post of yours at least 5 times and some sentences more than than that. And I still don't have a clue what you're talking about. It seems as if you really think you have a legitimate view so I am trying very hard to understand it. I thought I had it but now I'm not so sure.


Imagine a word, any word. Let's choose 'cat'. So there is the word 'cat', which is made of the letters 'c', 'a', 't', and there is something which the word is supposed to invoke in your mind when it's being used. Now how do you call that something which the word 'cat' invokes in your mind when you read or hear it? I bet you call it... 'cat'!

Now leave aside the fact that you know there's a difference between 'cat' and 'cat', and think of how nonsensical it seems to say that 'cat' and 'cat' are not the same thing. It is nonsense, but you have to understand why I'm saying it's nonsense. The fact of the matter is that human beings have an awesome ability: we have the ability to understand nonsense. And that is nothing short of a miracle.


This cat example did nothing to help. I still don't have a clue what your point is.


People who claim computers will one day be conscious don't understand that fact; they don't understand that it's impossible to build a machine that makes sense of nonsense, a machine that doesn't do what it would be logical for it to do.


If I had to bet money on it, I bet money you're right about computers in general but that doesn't help me understand you're reasoning. I don't understand any of this "nonsense" stuff.


Exactly. But if you don't know if your experience would be considered the same thing by another, then you don't know what you're experiencing. No man is an island, knowledge does not belong to an individual alone but to the whole human race. Knowledge can be shared, subjective experience cannot.


Now here, you are acknowleding what I said as if I understood you. And you say "then you don't know what you're experiencing". But I say to this "who cares?" You seem to be defining "knowledge" as something that I can effectively communicate. And since I can't communicate subjective experiences then it has nothing to do with knowledge. Who cares if I know what to call something and communicate it to others? All that matters is that I experience it and I can distinguish that experience from other experiences. Knowledge can belong to an individual.


From that perspective, it's clear to me you can't know if you ever experienced blue if you don't know what the word 'blue' means. But what does 'blue' really mean? What if what I see as 'blue' is what the rest of the world sees as 'yellow'? Clearly I have no way to know if I ever experienced 'blue', yet that fact doesn't prevent me from talking about 'blue'.


All of this is true, but none of it precludes me from subjectively experiencing color.

And that means whatever it is that I mean when I talk about 'blue', it can't possibly be my subjective experience of it.


And this sentence doesn't make sense to me. Whenever I talk about blue it means exactly my subjective experience of it. Someone listening to my words and not relating those words to the same experience is irrelevant.


At this point I know why you still don't understand the argument, so let me introduce you another question: do you think I'm conscious? I hope you do. Why is that? Is it because you think I know, for instance, what the subjective experience of 'blue' is? I clearly don't, I just stated that. The reason you think I'm conscious is far more trivial: I talk as if I'm conscious. So your subjective knowledge of my subjective consciousness is all based on my ability to talk in a particular way. From your perspective, whether I have subjective experiences or not is completely beside the point, so long as I act as if I do.


Again, this analogy doesn't help. I don't understand how it relates to what you're saying.


I hope I was able to show that whether subjective experience exists or not is completely irrelevant to understand consciousness. That's what I'm trying to say.

Then you aren't defining consciousness the way many people involved in this discussion do. Consciousness is subjective experience. If you leave that out then you aren't understanding consciousness.




I'm talking nonsense, which is a good sign I'm conscious. Since you're conscious too, you can make sense of the nonsense. All you have to do is try, but don't try too hard if it's not worth it.

Don't understand any of this "nonsense" stuff. I don't even know why you think it is nonsense. You just said it was. You didn't really explain why.

[hypnagogue]

That is way beside my point. All I said was that we can assume for sure that if there is something about yourself which you think only you have, then you have no word for it. As a consequence, everything you talk about, absolutely everything, must consist of concepts that are shared.

Let me get your position straight before I share my view of it. You seem to be advocating the position that words, as shared concepts, must necessarily address the same referrents, and therefore the idea that the same word (eg, green) can refer to two different things (eg, this color as experienced by A and that color as experienced by B) is nonsense. Therefore, 'green' cannot possibly refer to a subjective experience of this color or that color, but must refer to something else which is shown to be a common, consistent referrent across different people. Correct?

Men have noses and women also have noses. Whatever it is that men share with women, I can assure you it is not part of what makes women "women", if you think of "women" as oppose to "men".

Womanhood vis a vis manhood is defined on an objective, physiological level, and therefore need not have any direct ties with subjective experience. In particular, the fact that women demonstrably have a different physiology than men does not in itself imply that women subjectively experience something which men cannot experience even in principle.

Listen to yourself! Are you able to construct a reasonable facsimile of what it is like to experience visual consciousness? Are you saying a blind man cannot know he is blind? It seems so, as one needs to understand what vision is before one knows one doesn't have it.

I don't have to construct a reasonable facsimile of visual consciousness to try to understand what it is like to experience it, since I already experience it directly.

A man blind from birth can know he is blind in an abstract sense, in virtue of what is communicated to him by other people, but he cannot know precisely what it is that he is lacking that constitutes this blindness. He could probably construct a nice analogy for himself, however, by imagining that a man deaf from birth faces a similar sort of predicament.

No, it does not. That's not what I said. What I said is that if JS does feel like a woman, he has absolutely no way to know it.

And I would agree with you. But we must be careful here. What JS cannot know is if what he thinks of as 'feeling like a woman' is the same sort of experience that other women call 'feeling like a woman.' This does not imply that JS does not have or cannot know that feeling that he describes as 'feeling like a woman.' He has perfect knowledge of the feeling as it exists in himself; what he cannot know is if others feel the same sort of thing when they use the same language. The problem is of one of other minds, and it does not apply to JS's own mind.

That's not a correct analogy. Adults know how it feels to be a child. It's perfectly correct for an adult to say "I'm feeling like a child today". I certainly feel like a child when I'm completely free of worries and just enjoying myself. But the reverse is not true; no child can claim to feel like an adult because a child doesn't know how an adult feels. As a child I often felt adult-like feelings, but I never thought of them as "adult-like feelings" until I grew up and learned what an "adult-like feeling" is.

Do you understand what I'm trying to say?

Yes, and I agree, at least with this little piece of text taken on its own. I find some of your other claims dubious though.

That's not what I said. What I said is that you need this "process" in order to describe you own subjective experience in linguistic terms, to others and even to yourself.

That's fine, but again, what that implies is not knowing if one's own subjective experience is shared by others. It does not raise any doubt as to the existence or nature of one's subjective experience, taken on its own terms.

For instane, I have never felt "enlightened". Maybe I did a few moments in my life, I have recollections of experiences which I could not understand at the time they happened. So those experiences happened, I'm not questioning that. But I don't think I can call those experiences "enlightenment", because I don't know what "enlightenment" means.

Now you tell me: how do I know if I ever experienced "enlightenment"? Is it enough for me to look at people who did? Certainly not, as according to them you can't tell the difference from the outside. Is it enough for me to listen to people explaining what "enlightenment" is? Again not, for they all tell me that "enlightenment" can't be explained. Now that leads me to conclude, from my perspective, that "enlightenment" can't be experienced, and that people who claim to have experienced it don't know what they are talking about.

I think you are confusing linguistic representations of phenomena with the phenomena themselves.

Say for argument's sake that Harry was the first guy to ever experience a peculiar set of feelings, and that Harry decided to call this set of feelings 'enlightenment.' How can others be sure that they are experiencing the same set of feelings that Harry was when they are tempted to describe their experience as 'enlightened'? Well, they can't be sure. But this epistemic doubt in the linguistic labeling of their experience is not relevant to their ability to actually have this experience. It could be the case Jane experiences the same thing as Harry, but doubts that this is so, or that John is convinced that he has experienced the same thing as Harry when in fact he hasn't.

[hypnagogue]

Essentially, [subjective experience is] unimportant when it comes to understanding (or constructing a theory of) consciousness. Isn't that what we've been arguing about for seven pages worth of posts now?

What is there left to understand after ignoring subjective experience? Unconscious mental processes. So you are a proponent of a theory of consciousness that describes unconscious mental processes. Sounds good. :tongue:

I honestly don't see how you could hold this position. To understand consciousness, we need to understand subjective experience; not to mention that in order to come to a full understanding of reality (something that could reasonably called a 'theory of everything'), we need to understand subjective experience.

[confutatis]

But you did make this statement. You said...

"But I don't think I can call those experiences "enlightenment", because I don't know what "enlightenment" means."

This is the exact same situation with color and not knowing what blue is.

Not for me. I have an experience I can correlate with 'blue', even though I have no way to know the kind of experience they correlate with 'blue'. But in the case of 'enlightenment', I have no experience that I can correlate with the word, for the simple reason that I don't know what the word means.

This cat example did nothing to help. I still don't have a clue what your point is.

And I thought it was the best example I have come up with so far...

I don't understand any of this "nonsense" stuff.

Different people have different experiences, and as a consequence come to see things in different ways. I once came across a person who told me something like this (speaking of himself):

"Whenever I hear people talking, it seems to me most of what they talk about makes no sense; they speak in ambiguous terms, contradict themselves all the time, and apparently see nothing wrong with it. But when I try to talk to them that way, they complain to me that what I'm saying makes no sense! How can I possibly deal with a situation like that?"

This was of course not an ordinary guy, but by no means was he stupid or crazy. He was in fact quite intelligent, far above the average, with an awesome understanding of logic, mathematics, and physics.

Nevermind what I said about "nonsense", I was speaking in terms of what I learned from this person. I learned a lot, and I can't possibly explain all of it in a few posts.

Whenever I talk about blue it means exactly my subjective experience of it. Someone listening to my words and not relating those words to the same experience is irrelevant.

Sure, so why not take the next natural step and apply the same reasoning for 'consciousness'? Isn't 'consciousness' as subjective as 'blue'? Isn't it irrelevant what other people relate to when they hear you talk about it?

Think about that for a while.

Then you aren't defining consciousness the way many people involved in this discussion do. Consciousness is subjective experience. If you leave that out then you aren't understanding consciousness.

At a minimum, I think you should be able to see that even though you think of consciousness as something completely subjective, you also think other people are conscious the same way you are. Can you see the contradiction? If there's nothing to consciousness but subjective experience, then you can't tell whether other people are conscious or not. Since you know other people are conscious, then there must be more to consciousness than subjective experience.

If you understand that, then there's just one more step to see what ZK and I are saying. I'll save that for later.

[confutatis]

Let me get your position straight before I share my view of it. You seem to be advocating the position that words, as shared concepts, must necessarily address the same referrents, and therefore the idea that the same word (eg, green) can refer to two different things (eg, this color as experienced by A and that color as experienced by B) is nonsense. Therefore, 'green' cannot possibly refer to a subjective experience of this color or that color, but must refer to something else which is shown to be a common, consistent referrent across different people. Correct?

Almost. What I think is nonsense is the idea that you can understand consciousness to the point where you can discover that what A sees as this color is experienced by B as that color. Anyone pursuing to understand consciousness from that perspective is wasting his time.

All the same, it's not correct to say we don't understand consciousness at all. We do enough to come to a judgement of whether people are conscious or not. And that judgement, you must agree, is arrived at through observation of the physical world, not through magically peeking into their subjectivity.

So it's not only perfectly possible to understand consciousness from a purely objective standpoint, but we actually do it all the time. What you said above, I take it to mean we can't do what we've been doing quite successfully for quite some time.

I don't have to construct a reasonable facsimile of visual consciousness to try to understand what it is like to experience it, since I already experience it directly.

Sure, but do you really understand how it is you 'see' things? I for one don't.

A man blind from birth can know he is blind in an abstract sense, in virtue of what is communicated to him by other people, but he cannot know precisely what it is that he is lacking that constitutes this blindness. He could probably construct a nice analogy for himself, however, by imagining that a man deaf from birth faces a similar sort of predicament.

So how would a man unconscious from birth knows what he lacks? Can he construct a nice analogy to understand his predicament?

Notice you didn't know you could see until you learned what vision is. And you certainly don't learn what vision is by experiencing vision, you learn it by communicating with other people. Likewise, you can't know if you're conscious until you learn, from other people, what consciousness is. Which means all you know and understand about vision and consciousness is what you learn from other people. Subjective experience plays no role in gathering knowledge, just as knowledge plays no role in gathering facts about the world.

(I'll leave that last sentence unexplained)

I find some of your other claims dubious though.

I'm not preaching here, I'd like to hear different views and learn from them, but I can only take criticism from people with whom I share some common ground. Sleeth, for instance, does not understand my perspective, so even though I acknowledge his skepticism I can't possibly refute it until we learn more about each other.

That's fine, but again, what that implies is not knowing if one's own subjective experience is shared by others. It does not raise any doubt as to the existence or nature of one's subjective experience, taken on its own terms.

The doubts are not regarding the existence of subjective experience, but with claims made about it. You must agree with me that even something as subjective as "subjective experience" must have an objective counterpart, otherwise we would never know it exists for we would not be able to talk about it. The point that is difficult to get across is that when we talk about "subjective experience", we are actually talking about something quite objective. There's nothing subjective to "subjective experience" that can be talked about, the best we can do is discuss its objective aspects.

I can understand why someone would be tricked into thinking that "subjective experience" is not objective. Language is very deceptive in that sense, because it allows us to talk about the subjective in a purely objective way. But it's easy to become confused in the process, and I'm sure I'm not immune to confusion myself. All I know is that I'm less confused than I used to be before I understood some things, but I don't know if I'm less confused than you or anyone else.

I think you are confusing linguistic representations of phenomena with the phenomena themselves.

There you go :)

Say for argument's sake that Harry was the first guy to ever experience a peculiar set of feelings, and that Harry decided to call this set of feelings 'enlightenment.' How can others be sure that they are experiencing the same set of feelings that Harry was when they are tempted to describe their experience as 'enlightened'? Well, they can't be sure.

Actually, they can. We do that all the time. All Harry has to do is find physical correlates of 'enlightenment' in his body or his behaviour.

However, I dispute the notion that anyone can have a new experience and come up with a new word for our vocabulary. Experiences are not so neatly categorized; in a sense each experience is new and unique. We can only label experiences because we learn a way to ignore the differences between them. That subjective way of ignoring differences between experiences has an objective counterpart - it's called language.

Perhaps this would make sense, perhaps not: the reason language is important for experience is that without language you can't experience the same thing twice. Moreover, if you can't experience the same "thing" twice, then the only "thing" in your universe that you can possibly experience is a meaningless mess of something we don't have a word for.

What is there left to understand after ignoring subjective experience? Unconscious mental processes. So you are a proponent of a theory of consciousness that describes unconscious mental processes

What's unconscious about a smile? :smile:

[Canute]

Almost. What I think is nonsense is the idea that you can understand consciousness to the point where you can discover that what A sees as this color is experienced by B as that color. Anyone pursuing to understand consciousness from that perspective is wasting his time.
Half right - but colour blindness can be diagnosed.

All the same, it's not correct to say we don't understand consciousness at all. We do enough to come to a judgement of whether people are conscious or not. And that judgement, you must agree, is arrived at through observation of the physical world, not through magically peeking into their subjectivity.
Not right at all. There is no possible way of knowing whether someone else is conscious. We just assume it.

So it's not only perfectly possible to understand consciousness from a purely objective standpoint, but we actually do it all the time.
The 'other minds' problem cannot be solved. Therefore we cannot know if someone else is conscious. Therefore we cannot study experiences objectively. We have to rely on first-person reports, which originate in subjective experience. All these arguments were settled a long time ago.

So how would a man unconscious from birth knows what he lacks? Can he construct a nice analogy to understand his predicament?
Someone who is unconscious cannot know anything.

Notice you didn't know you could see until you learned what vision is. And you certainly don't learn what vision is by experiencing vision, you learn it by communicating with other people.
Oh c'mon, this is getting silly. It must be completely obvious to you that this cannot possibly be true.

Likewise, you can't know if you're conscious until you learn, from other people, what consciousness is.
LoL

Which means all you know and understand about vision and consciousness is what you learn from other people. Subjective experience plays no role in gathering knowledge, just as knowledge plays no role in gathering facts about the world.
Every philosopher who ever lived, as far as I'm aware, agrees that allknowledge derives ultimately from experience.

The doubts are not regarding the existence of subjective experience, but with claims made about it. You must agree with me that even something as subjective as "subjective experience" must have an objective counterpart, otherwise we would never know it exists for we would not be able to talk about it.
So when you are not talking you are unconscious I suppose. We talk about 'nothing', 'electrons', superstrings', 'pain', etc. None of these have 'objective counterparts'. These terms are all theoretical, theories of things and not things in themselves. Words point at things, they are not replacements for them.

The point that is difficult to get across is that when we talk about "subjective experience", we are actually talking about something quite objective.
We might as well scrub the term 'subjective' from the dictionary then.

There's nothing subjective to "subjective experience" that can be talked about, the best we can do is discuss its objective aspects.
No, the best we can do is assume that the other person feels 'pain' and 'heat' and 'colour' and so on and talk about it as best we can. How can we talk about rainbows? They don't exist outside of conscious experience.

I can understand why someone would be tricked into thinking that "subjective experience" is not objective.
So can I. It's probably because it isn't. I think you're just having us on. You can't really believe what you're saying. Why do you suppose that the term 'subjective experience' is used by people when they might as well say 'objective non-experience'.

Language is very deceptive in that sense, because it allows us to talk about the subjective in a purely objective way.
That's very true, and I would say it's the source of your confusion. Heidegger felt it was the problem at the root of western metaphysics.

But it's easy to become confused in the process, and I'm sure I'm not immune to confusion myself. All I know is that I'm less confused than I used to be before I understood some things, but I don't know if I'm less confused than you or anyone else.
If you do not have subjective experiences that are incommunicable to other people then you are not confused, you are just not a normal human being.

Actually, they can. We do that all the time. All Harry has to do is find physical correlates of 'enlightenment' in his body or his behaviour.
A correlate is a correlate, not the thing itself. This is why it's called a correlate.

However, I dispute the notion that anyone can have a new experience and come up with a new word for our vocabulary.
That's odd, I just had an experience that was truly uncespenarious.

Experiences are not so neatly categorized; in a sense each experience is new and unique. We can only label experiences because we learn a way to ignore the differences between them.
Agreed. Ignoring differences is what makes categorisation (of anything) possible.

Perhaps this would make sense, perhaps not: the reason language is important for experience is that without language you can't experience the same thing twice.
You cannot experience the same thing twice full stop. Some details will always be different, as you said above.

Moreover, if you can't experience the same "thing" twice, then the only "thing" in your universe that you can possibly experience is a meaningless mess of something we don't have a word for.
Yes. This is known as the 'incommenurability' of experiences. They cannot be communicated. Therefore a priori they cannot be caused by the means of communicating them.

[confutatis]

Half right - but colour blindness can be diagnosed.

That's only because there's something objective about color-blindness. If there weren't, you would never know such a thing as color-blindness existed. As far as I know, we know a person is color-blind by the way they talk, not by the way they experience the world. Color-blindness - the concept, not the experience - can only exist because we can talk about it.

Not right at all. There is no possible way of knowing whether someone else is conscious. We just assume it.

This is a misconception. Believe me, I used to think the same way myself.

Oh c'mon, this is getting silly. It must be completely obvious to you that this cannot possibly be true.

It's not silly, but I know why you think it is. You are looking at things from a certain perspective, I'm looking at the same things using a mirror. I know that what you see is the reverse of what I see, but I can also see things the way you see if I want it. You think I'm trying to convince you that the mirrored image is what matters, and you think you have to convince me to look at things directly rather than through the mirror. But that is not what I'm talking about. What I'm trying to explain is this: "look, you see things one way, and you think I see things the wrong way, but that is only because there is a mirror in the room". Ultimately I don't want you to understand what you think is my perspective, I want you to see the mirror. Then it will all make as much sense for you as it does for me, and it's not silly at all, it's quite interesting.

I say a word, and that word conjures up hundreds, perhaps thousands of ideas in my mind. I'm often tempted to think the word itself carries with it all the ideas it conjures in my mind, but when I seriously think about it I realize that is far from being the case. When the word leaves my mouth, or my keyboard, all that enormous wealth of ideas is gone and reduced to a small set of sounds or images.The ideas have to be reconstructed on the other side, on the mind of the person I'm talking to. I have no control over that process, the person will make of my words whatever it is that sounds more sensible to them. Some might interpret what I say as great wisdom, others may interpret it as silliness. I have no control over that process.

That's one side of the story, but there's another side we seldom look at: you can put yourself on the reverse side of the process; you can use a mirror to see something about yourself that is otherwise completely invisible to you. When I use that mirror, I can clearly see that what I have in mind when people say the things they say is not necessarily what they have in mind. I have to reconstruct the meaning of words and sentences just like everyone else, and the speaker's mind is not something I can use to do that job. Let's call that reconstruction process "language", for lack of a better word. It turns out then that all I know about the world and about other people are things that can be expressed through language. And that knowledge includes the knowledge that I am conscious!

Now some people will insist that what "consciousness" really is cannot be expressed through language. But if that were really the case, then it would be as impossible to know if I am conscious as they say it's impossible to know if other people are conscious, for the simple reason that I don't know what the word "conscious" really means.

Tell me, how do you know you are conscious? Forget about all those ideas and feelings the word "conscious" conjures in your mind when you think of it - I have no way to know if those ideas and feelings of yours are the same as mine. To put it another way, can you know if you are conscious according to everybody else's understanding of consciousness?

I think you're just having us on. You can't really believe what you're saying.

I'm sorry you feel that way, it was not my intention. I'm trying to see if I can get other people to contemplate things from an original, and just as valid perspective.

[Fliption]

Not for me. I have an experience I can correlate with 'blue', even though I have no way to know the kind of experience they correlate with 'blue'. But in the case of 'enlightenment', I have no experience that I can correlate with the word, for the simple reason that I don't know what the word means.


But you don't have an experience that correlates with blue. All you have is an object that someone else has told you is blue and you therefore assume that you are experiencing blue when you see the object. Enlightenment isn't much different. If you perform and practice all the functions of meditation then you can assume the distinctive feeling that arises is what others call "enlightenment" when they perform those same things. I don't see the difference at all. You have no more knowledge in one than you do in the other.



And I thought it was the best example I have come up with so far...


Just so you know how far off I am.....I don't even see what the cat example has to do with the topic.


This was of course not an ordinary guy, but by no means was he stupid or crazy. He was in fact quite intelligent, far above the average, with an awesome understanding of logic, mathematics, and physics.


Maybe he was just socially disfunctional and ackward. :biggrin:



Sure, so why not take the next natural step and apply the same reasoning for 'consciousness'? Isn't 'consciousness' as subjective as 'blue'? Isn't it irrelevant what other people relate to when they hear you talk about it?

Think about that for a while.


Ok. I thought about it. So what?


At a minimum, I think you should be able to see that even though you think of consciousness as something completely subjective, you also think other people are conscious the same way you are. Can you see the contradiction? If there's nothing to consciousness but subjective experience, then you can't tell whether other people are conscious or not. Since you know other people are conscious, then there must be more to consciousness than subjective experience.


But I don't know that other people are conscious. This is a known philosophical issue called the other minds problem. I just assume you're conscious.


If you understand that, then there's just one more step to see what ZK and I are saying. I'll save that for later.

Not sure what this last step is but I'm not sure it matters because I don't believe I know anything about other people being conscious.

[Fliption]

After reading the last few response from you Confutatis, it seems where our views diverge are that you seem to think that we cannot "know" anything unless we have a word to assign to it. And I don't believe this to be the case at all.

From my perspective, this semantic web that you are tangling yourself up in is the type of thing that philosophers have to be very careful of doing. Many were unsuccessful. I remember going over the established criticisms of these semantic mistakes back when I studied different philosophers. Even in this forum I see it all the time. People fool themselves into thinking they have a legitmate view when all they really have is equivocation and circular definitions.

[Canute]

Confutatis - I'm carrying on only because you play the piano, which means you deserve the benefit of the doubt. :smile:

That's only because there's something objective about color-blindness. If there weren't, you would never know such a thing as color-blindness existed.
Absolutely right. However because other people talk about colour someone who is colour blind can know that they are not experiencing something that they are.

As far as I know, we know a person is color-blind by the way they talk, not by the way they experience the world. Color-blindness - the concept, not the experience - can only exist because we can talk about it.
So we can banish colour blindness to medical history by not talking about it? I think not. Some people do not experience all colours as 'normal'. Talking about it or not doesn't change a thing.

This is a misconception. Believe me, I used to think the same way myself.
Argh. Please read some philosophy. This is basic stuff.

It turns out then that all I know about the world and about other people are things that can be expressed through language. And that knowledge includes the knowledge that I am conscious!
You're lucky someone told you that you're conscious then, otherwise you would never have been able to enjoy music. Language lets you know that there is common term for consciousness. But consciousness is a term not a thing, the thing existed before there was a word for it, otherwise we wouldn't have a word for it, which must be obvious.

Now some people will insist that what "consciousness" really is cannot be expressed through language.
We can easily agree what consciousness is, in fact peple generally do (outside of internet fora anyway). What we cannot do is convey what it feels like to someone else, or vice versa.

But if that were really the case, then it would be as impossible to know if I am conscious as they say it's impossible to know if other people are conscious, for the simple reason that I don't know what the word "conscious" really means.
You are confusing 'consciousness', a generic term for 'what it is like' with things that are only contingent ststaes of it, like colour and so on. It is SELF-EVIDENT (sorry to raise my voice) to you that you are conscious, as it is to me, but I cannot prove it to someone else and neither can you. You seem to be confusing knowledge with proof. There are loads of things that we can know but cannot prove. Just as well since we cannot prove anything.

, how do you know you are conscious?
By noticing that I feel annoyed on being asked daft questions.

Forget about all those ideas and feelings the word "conscious" conjures in your mind when you think of it - I have no way to know if those ideas and feelings of yours are the same as mine. To put it another way, can you know if you are conscious according to everybody else's understanding of consciousness?
It doesn't matter how you feel or I feel, whether red is blue or pain is pleasure. If you feel anything at all then you are conscious. That's all there is to it. You don't even have to tell anybody.

I'm sorry you feel that way, it was not my intention. I'm trying to see if I can get other people to contemplate things from an original, and just as valid perspective.
I'm all for exploring different perspectives, but only valid ones. I'm going to try to make this my last post on this issue. You are in disagreement with everybody who has ever expressed an opinion on this issue.

[confutatis]

But you don't have an experience that correlates with blue. All you have is an object that someone else has told you is blue and you therefore assume that you are experiencing blue when you see the object. Enlightenment isn't much different. If you perform and practice all the functions of meditation then you can assume the distinctive feeling that arises is what others call "enlightenment" when they perform those same things. I don't see the difference at all. You have no more knowledge in one than you do in the other.

Good point. But can't we say the same thing about consciousness? That is, as individuals we have no more knowledge of what being conscious is, other than the fact that a conscious person talks and behaves in a certain way. Therefore, the knowledge that I am conscious derives from my observation that I talk and behave as if I'm conscious, therefore I must be. The problem of knowing if I'm conscious is exactly the same as the problem of knowing if I'm enlightened.

Just so you know how far off I am.....I don't even see what the cat example has to do with the topic.

The point was that there is a high degree of isomorphism between reality and language, between 'cat' the animal and 'cat' the word. If there were not, the word would be useless. Likewise the word 'conscious' must have a counterpart in objective reality for it to have meaning.

This is a known philosophical issue called the other minds problem. I just assume you're conscious.

And then...

From my perspective, this semantic web that you are tangling yourself up in is the type of thing that philosophers have to be very careful of doing.

The problem here is that it's all semantics and nothing else. If the "other minds" problem were anything but a problem of semantics, then it could be solved with some observation of the world, which is not the case.

People fool themselves into thinking they have a legitmate view when all they really have is equivocation and circular definitions.

So do you know if the "other minds" problem comes from a legitimate view or is it the result of equivocations and circular definitions? How do you tell one kind of scenario from the other?

[confutatis]

Confutatis - I'm carrying on only because you play the piano, which means you deserve the benefit of the doubt.

I think we've covered as much as can be covered for now. It's been fun but I think it's time to change channels.

There are loads of things that we can know but cannot prove. Just as well since we cannot prove anything.

And since we cannot prove anything, "the problem of consciousness" is as impossible as any other. Nothing special about it.

You are in disagreement with everybody who has ever expressed an opinion on this issue.

I believe I'm in agreement with zk4586. It was he in fact who made me understand this. I was on your side before, but now I see where I was wrong. Which doesn't mean you're wrong, because for all I know you may be talking about something entirely different. You may be talking about blue while I'm talking about blue, and we'll never understand why we can't agree.

Now let's talk about something else.

[hypnagogue]

I still find myself in disagreement with your position, though I am content to leave the main line of discussion alone for now. However I would like to remark on one outstanding claim you made in response to Canute:

Not right at all. There is no possible way of knowing whether someone else is conscious. We just assume it.

This is a misconception. Believe me, I used to think the same way myself.

If you truly have solved the problem of other minds, you should publish a paper right now, because you have made one of the momentous discoveries in the history of humanity. As it stands, though, I think your position here only serves to discredit the rest of your reasoning (assuming this statement is tied into your other positions on language and such). If someone on an internet forum has devised a new way of thinking about physics such that his theory unifies gravity and the other forces-- well, the burden of proof lays squarely on him and in all probability he is wrong. Likewise, if your position leads you to make a statement to the effect that you have solved the problem of other minds-- well, in all probability your position is wrong. This is not a trivial criterion. You have the entire history of philosophy going against you now.

[Fliption]

Good point. But can't we say the same thing about consciousness? That is, as individuals we have no more knowledge of what being conscious is, other than the fact that a conscious person talks and behaves in a certain way. Therefore, the knowledge that I am conscious derives from my observation that I talk and behave as if I'm conscious, therefore I must be. The problem of knowing if I'm conscious is exactly the same as the problem of knowing if I'm enlightened.



I don't think consciousness is the same thing. If you think it is then you can demonstrate it and I'll try to understand. But here's why I think it's different. The words "blue" and "enlightenment" are like this because they are assigned to subjective experiences. And since we cannot experience each other's subjective experiences then obviously there is a possibility that we aren't on the same page when we speak of blue and enlightenment. But consciousness is not assigned to a specific subjective experience. To be conscious is to have subjective experiences. It's not a question of a color gradient. It is yes or no. It is on or off. If there is anything I am certain of, it is that I have experiences. Of course, your view can simply continue to ask this "how do I know" question about every word I continue to use, picking apart the fact that I have to use language to communicate to you but the fact is I know I have something that I will never find an explanation for in the current scientific paradigm. Whether anyone else knows what it is or not isn't relevant.


Likewise the word 'conscious' must have a counterpart in objective reality for it to have meaning.


Perhaps the counterpart begins in the unquestionable assumption "something exists"? We know this is true. I also know that I am aware of this assumption. And I'm aware that I'm aware of this assumption leading to......self awareness. This is consciousness.

Of course you can continue your fun and ask me about the word "awareness". At some point, the game gets to be unreasonable and non-productive. The materialists started to ask the same sort of "dumb" questions in another thread and I eventaully left that one. Eventually it became obvious their agenda was dictating the dialogue and not their reasoning ability.



The problem here is that it's all semantics and nothing else. If the "other minds" problem were anything but a problem of semantics, then it could be solved with some observation of the world, which is not the case.


The only reason I can think of why you have this view is because you haven't defined the problem for yourself. There is nothing about your own existence that requires explanation to you. It sounds as if all problems have to be dictated to you by someone else. And of course you can always blame the language for those problems.


So do you know if the "other minds" problem comes from a legitimate view or is it the result of equivocations and circular definitions? How do you tell one kind of scenario from the other?

I can tell using logic. I don't believe all words carry the same problem as blue and enlightenment. And good arguments shouldn't be based on subjective statements. Here's a good example for you. A materialist claims that nothing non-material can exists. When asked what being material means he says "having the abilty to exists". You don't even have to know what the words mean to be able to build a logical construct of this view and see that it assumes it's conclusion and is circular. And believe it or not, this very example did and does happen in this forum.

[confutatis]

I still find myself in disagreement with your position, though I am content to leave the main line of discussion alone for now.

Well, I just want to drop the subject because I'm afraid of being misinterpreted as an arrogant fool insisting on the same idea over and over, completely deaf to criticism. But I'll be glad to repeat myself over and over until someone understands, if it's OK with everyone else.

If you truly have solved the problem of other minds, you should publish a paper right now, because you have made one of the momentous discoveries in the history of humanity.

No. If I were claiming to have solved the problem of other minds, this thread should be moved to... what's the name of that 'crackpot ideas' forum again?

What I'm saying is that the 'other minds' problem is unsolvable. And if it is unsolvable, let's not waste time trying to solve it. Furthermore, if the problem is unsolvable, that means nothing we can possibly know about anything depends on that problem being solved. So, besides being unsolvable, the problem is irrelevant to solving 'solvable' problems.

Is that really hard to understand? I'm afraid it is.

Let me show you an unsolvable problem. I will give you a fact and a problem:

fact: a + b = 5

problem: determine the values of 'a' and 'b'

You must agree with me that proposing a solution to such a problem is nonsense, right? There just aren't enough facts to solve it. Yet that doesn't prevent anyone from learning a lot more facts about 'a' and 'b' without ever knowing what their values are. For instance:

fact: a = 5 - b
fact: b = 5 - a
fact: a + b - 5 = 0
fact: (a + b)/5 = 1

And so on and on and on.

But please, don't try to relate that to anything I said about consciousness, unless the relationship becomes as clear to you as it is to me. All I expect is that you understand what makes a problem unsolvable, and what can be done about it.

[hypnagogue]

Well I'm glad you do not pretend to have solved the problem of other minds. Still, I'm not sure how one should read the following interchange without presuming that you think the problem has been solved:

Canute: Not right at all. There is no possible way of knowing whether someone else is conscious. We just assume it.

confutatis: This is a misconception. Believe me, I used to think the same way myself.

It has happened several other times in this thread where you retreat from a position implicated by the phrasings you have used. Nothing wrong with changing your position of course, and not to sound as if I'm lecturing, but if anything you should try to be more careful about what wordings you use.

[Fliption]

I have found myself getting confused as to exactly what it is we are disagreeing on. So in fairness to confutatis I did go back and re-read this entire thread so that I can put the current conversation back in the proper context. What I found is that the positions have shifted several times. The overall conclusion seems to have drifted. I actually think I do understand the examples and problems about words being discussed here. But my question remains "So what?". I can't connect these issues to any conclusion. Perhaps it is because the conclusion has shifted. We know that confutatis' view has changed on this since the thead started. It is likely that his view continues to evolve as we discuss it.

Confutatis, I would suggest taking a little more time to get your thoughts together and come back and present your view from start to finish. If you can do this in a logical way it would be very helpful. Start with assumptions and then one by one build on your arguments and then finally to a conclusion. None of this has been real clear to me. I do not feel that you have an agenda your trying to push (which is rare in these forums). I think you actually have a reasoned view and I would like to understand it. Once I understand the form of the argument I may still disagree but I don't know if I disagree with you right now because I'm not clear on exactly what the conclusion is and how it connects to any of the issues we've discussed.

It also doesn't help that you have been abandoned :frown: by the original proponents of this idea. I haven't seen them comment on whether what you are saying makes sense to them either.

[confutatis]

I don't think consciousness is the same thing. If you think it is then you can demonstrate it and I'll try to understand. But here's why I think it's different. The words "blue" and "enlightenment" are like this because they are assigned to subjective experiences. And since we cannot experience each other's subjective experiences then obviously there is a possibility that we aren't on the same page when we speak of blue and enlightenment. But consciousness is not assigned to a specific subjective experience. To be conscious is to have subjective experiences. It's not a question of a color gradient. It is yes or no. It is on or off.

What you are proposing above is a definition of consciousness. All I can say is that, if you define consciousness that way, then you will never be able to say anything at all about consciousness. So tell me, why should we define a thing in a way that prevents us from saying anything at all about that thing, other than tautological restatements of the definition?

If there is anything I am certain of, it is that I have experiences.

That is not true since you can't prove that you have experiences, not even to yourself. But I know everytime I say that, people interpret the opposite of what I actually mean. They think the impossibility of proving that one has experiences has tremendous philosophical consequences and implies a pessimistic, ugly "vision for humanity", as someone put it. All I can say is that it's a mistake to think that way.

Of course, your view can simply continue to ask this "how do I know" question about every word I continue to use, picking apart the fact that I have to use language to communicate to you but the fact is I know I have something that I will never find an explanation for in the current scientific paradigm.

Do not try to change the scientific paradigm, try to understand why any paradigm, scientific or otherwise, is irrelevant for the issue you have in mind.

Perhaps the counterpart begins in the unquestionable assumption "something exists"? We know this is true.

I don't know that "something exists". I only know that, if "something exists", then a lot of stuff can be said about "something", and a lot of stuff can be said about "exists". That's the best you can possibly get.

Stop trying to find the foundation of your knowledge because you won't find it and you don't need it.

The materialists started to ask the same sort of "dumb" questions in another thread and I eventaully left that one. Eventually it became obvious their agenda was dictating the dialogue and not their reasoning ability.

If that helps anything, I'm not a materialist. I'm something of a Catholic mystic, that's the best way I can put it. The only difference, perhaps, is that I don't think materialists are intellectually inferior to me. I'm sure we can learn from them just as they could learn from us.

There is nothing about your own existence that requires explanation to you. It sounds as if all problems have to be dictated to you by someone else. And of course you can always blame the language for those problems.

That is exactly the case. Notice how children are not bothered by those existential questions. Also, notice how most posters on this forum are male.

Have you ever tried to have these kinds of discussion with a woman? I'm always impressed as they so quickly write me off as a fool with nothing better to worry about. My wife is specially good at making me feel like an idiot.

Here's a good example for you. A materialist claims that nothing non-material can exists. When asked what being material means he says "having the abilty to exists". You don't even have to know what the words mean to be able to build a logical construct of this view and see that it assumes it's conclusion and is circular.

Actually, the main reason why you would build a logical construct of any view is if you don't understand what the words mean. Don't you think it's likely the materialists don't see the circularity in their view precisely because they see meaning to it which eludes you? That is, when they try to explain the rich ideas they have in their minds, all that gets to you are logical relationships between words. No wonder you don't like it, but that's only because you don't understand it.

There's another side to it. Instead of being circular, a certain view can be criticized for not being consistent, for implying contradictions. Even though the symptoms are different, the cause is exactly the same: the listener does not fully understand the meaning of the words, reduces everything to a chain of logical relationships, and finds missing links in the chain. Again, it's nothing but a problem of communication, it has nothing to do with the truth or falsehood of a certain view.

If you knew everything the materialists know, you would agree with their views as much as they agree amongst themselves. Likewise, if materialists knew everything non-materialists know, they would agree with them. But more important, if everyone knew everything everyone else knows, we would never disagree, yet even then it would still be just a view.

Deep, eh? :confused:


(PS: I haven't read the last two posts by Fliption and Hypnagogue before I wrote this. I wish I had, but now it's too late, so I'll just leave these ideas for the record. Fliption is right, I did change my mind on a few things since the beginning. If I don't do that, people call me close-minded, if I do, people get confused. Oh well...)

[Fliption]

What you are proposing above is a definition of consciousness. All I can say is that, if you define consciousness that way, then you will never be able to say anything at all about consciousness. So tell me, why should we define a thing in a way that prevents us from saying anything at all about that thing, other than tautological restatements of the definition?

Please explain what you mean. You've just stated that it is tautological and that nothing can be said about it. But you haven't explained why.


That is not true since you can't prove that you have experiences, not even to yourself. But I know everytime I say that, people interpret the opposite of what I actually mean. They think the impossibility of proving that one has experiences has tremendous philosophical consequences and implies a pessimistic, ugly "vision for humanity", as someone put it. All I can say is that it's a mistake to think that way.


You will need to define what you think proof is. If I cannot know that I have experiences, then nothing can be known (or proven)and both terms become useless concepts. Which means this thread is a useless thread.


Do not try to change the scientific paradigm, try to understand why any paradigm, scientific or otherwise, is irrelevant for the issue you have in mind.

Too broad. Don't know what this means.


I don't know that "something exists". I only know that, if "something exists", then a lot of stuff can be said about "something", and a lot of stuff can be said about "exists". That's the best you can possibly get.


It's hard to argue against "something exists". No one else in this forum has ever bothered to try.


Stop trying to find the foundation of your knowledge because you won't find it and you don't need it.


I'm not looking for this foundation. I mentioned this because you insisted that there needed to be one. So who is looking for a foundation? I was only trying to show that you don't need to re-invent common sense to find the thing you're looking for.


If that helps anything, I'm not a materialist. I'm something of a Catholic mystic, that's the best way I can put it. The only difference, perhaps, is that I don't think materialists are intellectually inferior to me. I'm sure we can learn from them just as they could learn from us.


I don't believe I am intellectually superior to materialists. Far from it. But it has become obvious to me that my goals(to learn) in particpating in this forum is different from many of their goals.


That is exactly the case. Notice how children are not bothered by those existential questions. Also, notice how most posters on this forum are male.


Children also run out in the street without looking both ways. Does that imply that it is a worthless endeaver to look both ways? Children don't do the things they do because of a lack of language or conceptual ability. The lack of language abilties in children is present for the same reason they don't look both ways before crossing the street. Thought development produces the ability to do things like look both ways and use concepts. It isn't the other way around. You seem to be claiming that the ability to use concepts facilitates the ability to think about the concepts.



Have you ever tried to have these kinds of discussion with a woman? I'm always impressed as they so quickly write me off as a fool with nothing better to worry about. My wife is specially good at making me feel like an idiot.


Yes I have. I've also tried having these discussions with men as well. Honestly, most people give the same reaction. The reaction you mentioned is pretty standard. It's a lonely world for those of us tortured to understand. :frown:



Actually, the main reason why you would build a logical construct of any view is if you don't understand what the words mean. Don't you think it's likely the materialists don't see the circularity in their view precisely because they see meaning to it which eludes you? That is, when they try to explain the rich ideas they have in their minds, all that gets to you are logical relationships between words. No wonder you don't like it, but that's only because you don't understand it.


Well all that may be valid in some cases but in the case I mentioned, the materialists openly admitted it was circular and thought that materialism was the exception to logic because it was obviously the correct view. LOL! I understand your point about confusion and semantics but it's hard not to see the circularity in this case. No matter what planet your from.


There's another side to it. Instead of being circular, a certain view can be criticized for not being consistent, for implying contradictions. Even though the symptoms are different, the cause is exactly the same: the listener does not fully understand the meaning of the words, reduces everything to a chain of logical relationships, and finds missing links in the chain. Again, it's nothing but a problem of communication, it has nothing to do with the truth or falsehood of a certain view.

If you knew everything the materialists know, you would agree with their views as much as they agree amongst themselves. Likewise, if materialists knew everything non-materialists know, they would agree with them. But more important, if everyone knew everything everyone else knows, we would never disagree, yet even then it would still be just a view.

Deep, eh? :confused:


You can't possibly know just how much I understand and agree with everything you've said above. If you were following me around in various discussions in PF you would see just how many times I have boiled a disagreement down to a problem of semantics. People think they are involved in a discussion of substance, but they are really just talking past one another due to semantic differences. I've said it so many times I'm sure some people are tired of reading it. As a matter of fact, you have only reinforced what my original point was. The only difference I think we have is that I do think that a productive conversation can be had. In some cases, the lack of logic is obvious (like in example above). I do not believe in this semantic anarchy you seem to be proposing.

Also,a side note. I understood the point of saying that If everyone knew everything we would all agree. But saying this seems deterministic and may leave something out that cannot be easily identified in a world where we do have semantic differences.


(PS: I haven't read the last two posts by Fliption and Hypnagogue before I wrote this. I wish I had, but now it's too late, so I'll just leave these ideas for the record. Fliption is right, I did change my mind on a few things since the beginning. If I don't do that, people call me close-minded, if I do, people get confused. Oh well...)

I think it's great to develop your view as you participate. If you are here to learn then that's what happens. It happens to me all the time. But since it can be confusing I try to acknowledge where I have shifted and why. Otherwise people will think the inconsistent statements are supposed to be consistent.

[confutatis]

Please explain what you mean. You've just stated that it is tautological and that nothing can be said about it. But you haven't explained why.

I was in the middle of a reply to this post, when I realized we are getting off topic. Even though you pose interesting questions, I've had trouble enough with what I consider one simple issue. I hope we can come back to those later, for now I need to get some stuff done.

What caught my attention on this thread was this comment, way back close to the beginning:

Even hypnagogue would have to admit that we could never describe “what it is like” to see the color blue. He believes that seeing blue is intrinsic and ineffable. This is why we holists view hypnagogue and those who side with him as mystics tilting at windmills.

When I read that I couldn't make much sense of it; now it makes perfect sense, and it was quite a thrill to discover why. And it's not difficult at all, it's almost trivial. Anyone who wants can easily understand it, but those who don't want to understand can't be forced to see it. They have to see it for themselves.

[Fliption]

What caught my attention on this thread was this comment, way back close to the beginning:

Even hypnagogue would have to admit that we could never describe “what it is like” to see the color blue. He believes that seeing blue is intrinsic and ineffable. This is why we holists view hypnagogue and those who side with him as mystics tilting at windmills.

When I read that I couldn't make much sense of it; now it makes perfect sense, and it was quite a thrill to discover why. And it's not difficult at all, it's almost trivial. Anyone who wants can easily understand it, but those who don't want to understand can't be forced to see it. They have to see it for themselves.

You realize that you can say this about anything don't you? I hope you aren't implying that anyone here doesn't want to understand. Because I think there has certainly been an effort to. It could be that what you are talking about is indeed so trivial, as you say, that not only do I understand it but I don't see it as the impacting revelation that you do. I won't have a chance to prove that to anyone because I can't be certain I understand the position. There are too many disconnected dots and, as you noted, remarks that are off topic. But I can't be certain what exactly is and what isn't on topic.

I actually do understand the quote you pulled out. I just don't think it's all that relevant to the philosphical issues of consciousness. The only thing mysterious about that quote is when he calls himself a holist. Now there's some semantic confusion!

[confutatis]

You realize that you can say this about anything don't you? I hope you aren't implying that anyone here doesn't want to understand.

No, I think it's rather that some people can't see any relevance to it. You even stated that in your reply.

It could be that what you are talking about is indeed so trivial, as you say, that not only do I understand it but I don't see it as the impacting revelation that you do.

That is because we have different interests. You seem to be trying to understand consciousness; I'm just trying to understand what the word 'consciousness' means. I can't understand a thing before I understand what the word used to represent the thing means, and I haven't reached that stage yet.

I actually do understand the quote you pulled out. I just don't think it's all that relevant to the philosphical issues of consciousness.

I consider it extremely relevant, since I can't understand what the philosophical issues of consciousness are before I understand what the word 'consciousness' means. But if you already know what the word means, then you really have nothing to learn.

However, I have a strong suspicion that nobody really understands what the word means. That would explain my difficulty figuring it out for myself.

The only thing mysterious about that quote is when he calls himself a holist. Now there's some semantic confusion!

I suppose he doesn't fully understand what 'consciousness' means. I can sympathize with that.

[Canute]

“The fish trap exists because of the fish; once you've gotten the fish, you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit; once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning; once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. When can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can have a word with him? “

Chuang Tsu.

[Fliption]

But if you already know what the word means, then you really have nothing to learn.


As I said before. I don't care what anyone else means by the word consciousness. All that matters is that I know I have a very specific trait that I am calling consciousness. In my attempt to understand how such a feature can come from a box full of rocks, I have stumbled on all the philosophical evidence that suggest it indeed does not originate from a box full of rocks. The box needs more ingredients. It is not necessary for me to communicate with anyone to go through this process.

I just don't understand it when someone claims that they don't know what consciousness is. All you're saying is that you don't know what other people mean when they use the word. But I can't believe that you have no problem explaining every feature of your existence with known scientific principles. Forget about calling it consciousness. Forget about attaching any word to it. Can you scientifically explain every feature of your existence? To say you don't know which feature of your own existence we are referring to when we talk of all the philosophical issues, leads me to believe you are either being difficult or you are a zombie.

Read Canute's last post carefully. It is a very important message. So many people get lost in their egocentric, linguistic world that they need to hear that quote over and over. People participating in philosophy especially are at risk of losing the forest for all the trees.

[confutatis]

As I said before. I don't care what anyone else means by the word consciousness.

So many people get lost in their egocentric, linguistic world ...

Wait a minute! Who's being egocentric here? How can I decide to attach some private meaning to a word, disregard what other people think of my decision, and then not see myself as egocentric?

We are really looking at the same problem from opposite angles.

All that matters is that I know I have a very specific trait that I am calling consciousness.

Whatever that specific trait is, nobody cares what you say about it if you don't care to express your ideas in terms that other people can understand. If you're just talking to yourself, why should anyone listen?

I just don't understand it when someone claims that they don't know what consciousness is. All you're saying is that you don't know what other people mean when they use the word.

What is the difference? Do you understand what supercalifragialisticexpialiadocious is? If you don't care what anyone else means by the word supercalifragialisticexpialiadocious how can you understand anything about it?

People participating in philosophy especially are at risk of losing the forest for all the trees.

Nobody can see a forest if they can't see the trees. First you must understand what a word means, then you can find out what is true about it. Canute's quote is right, once you grasp the meaning you can do away with words. But not before.

-----------------

I will start another thread called The Problem of Other Minds. It will hopefully help elucidate my main point.

[Fliption]

Wait a minute! Who's being egocentric here? How can I decide to attach some private meaning to a word, disregard what other people think of my decision, and then not see myself as egocentric?


Egocentric does not mean "only concerning the self". It's meaning implies that you are leaving out relevant points because they aren't on your radar screen due to being self focused or dwelling only on you're own experiences. If there is nothing beyond yourself that is relevant then it isn't egocentric to only focus on those relevant things. This is my point. What someone else thinks a word means isn't relevant to establishe the existence of distinctions and issues about those distinctions.

But this view of yours I think is egocentric because language is the way you now distinguish your experiences. You cannot think about anything without thinking about words. But it could have been very different. An egocentric view naturally thinks it's own experience is the only possible way for things to be. Resulting in this view of semantic problems being the root of all evil.


Whatever that specific trait is, nobody cares what you say about it if you don't care to express your ideas in terms that other people can understand. If you're just talking to yourself, why should anyone listen?


You aren't following me. I'm not suggesting that communication isn't important. What I am trying to do is show that you don't need communication to establish the existence and issues of some feature of your existence. Call this feature whatever you want for now. Of course, if we then want to communicate about this thing, we now have all the semantic issues you are bringing up. But you can't then use these semantic issues to suggest that there is no philosophical problem to begin with other than the communication /semantic issues. I am trying to show that the problem is not semantic because you don't need anyone else to establish that you have features of your existence that you cannot find a scientific explanation for.


What is the difference? Do you understand what supercalifragialisticexpialiadocious is? If you don't care what anyone else means by the word supercalifragialisticexpialiadocious how can you understand anything about it?


You are really confusing yourself with words. There is way too much emphasis on them.


Nobody can see a forest if they can't see the trees. First you must understand what a word means, then you can find out what is true about it. Canute's quote is right, once you grasp the meaning you can do away with words. But not before.

It is true a forest is made up of trees. But concepts and problems are not made up of words. Words are labels we attach to distinctions that have developed through experience, for the purposes of communication. You have meaning first, THEN you attach a word to it.

[confutatis]

Egocentric does not mean "only concerning the self". It's meaning implies that you are leaving out relevant points because they aren't on your radar screen due to being self focused or dwelling only on you're own experiences. If there is nothing beyond yourself that is relevant then it isn't egocentric to only focus on those relevant things. This is my point. What someone else thinks a word means isn't relevant to establishe the existence of distinctions and issues about those distinctions.

If definitions are not important, why are you trying to define "egocentric"? Why not accept that "you are egocentric" is true from my perspective, because I don't care what anyone else thinks "egocentric" means?

But this view of yours I think is egocentric because language is the way you now distinguish your experiences.

You may well be right, but I am not sure. Since I already understand this view of mine, I can only say for sure if it's egocentric if I understand what you mean by egocentric. Because, from my personal understanding, it's not egocentric at all.

You cannot think about anything without thinking about words.

I can think about a lot of things, but I can only understand relationships, between words or anything else. Something that does not relate to something else lies beyond my ability to understand. But I don't have words for those things, for if I did I would know a relationship. So I can't talk about them, and neither can anyone else.

But it could have been very different. An egocentric view naturally thinks it's own experience is the only possible way for things to be. Resulting in this view of semantic problems being the root of all evil.

I find it really amusing when people start seeing things in my statements which simply are not there. I'm not proposing a worldview, and I certainly don't understand what the root of all evil is. To the best of my knowledge, it all comes from the devil, who is an inferior being who considers himself the equal of God. But don't ask me to explain that.

What I am trying to do is show that you don't need communication to establish the existence and issues of some feature of your existence. Call this feature whatever you want for now. Of course, if we then want to communicate about this thing, we now have all the semantic issues you are bringing up. But you can't then use these semantic issues to suggest that there is no philosophical problem to begin with other than the communication /semantic issues. I am trying to show that the problem is not semantic because you don't need anyone else to establish that you have features of your existence that you cannot find a scientific explanation for.

I'm sorry, I don't know how to explain myself better. I have tried and failed. All I can say is that the comment above is a huge misinterpretation of what I said.

Hopefully the new thread will improve things.

[Fliption]

If definitions are not important, why are you trying to define "egocentric"? Why not accept that "you are egocentric" is true from my perspective, because I don't care what anyone else thinks "egocentric" means?


We have acknowledged and discussed all the problems with language. To follow this thinking to an extreme, we could say that language is pretty much useless. But in order for us to have this discussion we have to make an assumption not to go to that extreme. Otherwise there is no need for us to even have this discussion. You let me know what you want to do.


Because, from my personal understanding, it's not egocentric at all.


I'm pretty sure my cat would disagree. Because he doesn't know a single word and yet it is reasonable to assume that he isn't a zombie cat.


I can think about a lot of things, but I can only understand relationships, between words or anything else. Something that does not relate to something else lies beyond my ability to understand. But I don't have words for those things, for if I did I would know a relationship. So I can't talk about them, and neither can anyone else.

Not sure how this is relevant. All I'm saying is that you and I don't have to understand a word to be the same thing in order for us to legitimately experience the things we do.


I find it really amusing when people start seeing things in my statements which simply are not there. I'm not proposing a worldview, and I certainly don't understand what the root of all evil is. To the best of my knowledge, it all comes from the devil, who is an inferior being who considers himself the equal of God. But don't ask me to explain that.

Root of all evil is just an expression. In a previous thread, you clearly claimed that all the issues of consciousness were semantic. So my claim that you are blaming semantics for all the philsophical issues of consciousness is not so far off.


I'm sorry, I don't know how to explain myself better. I have tried and failed. All I can say is that the comment above is a huge misinterpretation of what I said.

Hopefully the new thread will improve things.

I will concede that I may not be clear on what your conclusion is. The reasons for that have already been stated. Also, I've read your new thread. I haven't responded because I don't know how to respond. I'm not sure how it relates to this.

[confutatis]

To follow this thinking to an extreme, we could say that language is pretty much useless.

Language is not useless! Whenever I go to McDonald's and ask for a Big Mac, small fries, and a Coke, I get exactly what I ask. Philosophical problems notwithstanding.

But in order for us to have this discussion we have to make an assumption not to go to that extreme. Otherwise there is no need for us to even have this discussion. You let me know what you want to do.

I want you to try to answer the challenge I posed on the other thread.

I've read your new thread. I haven't responded because I don't know how to respond. I'm not sure how it relates to this.

I've said too much on this thread and I'm not sure everything is true, but I'm sure a small portion of it is absolutely correct. If you understand that small portion then we can discusss what follows from it and what doesn't.

Do you at least understand the argument? I think it's pretty logical, and to me it implies that the position that it is not possible to know if other people have visual experiences cannot be defended. You may find that trivial, but I don't think so.

[Fliption]

Language is not useless! Whenever I go to McDonald's and ask for a Big Mac, small fries, and a Coke, I get exactly what I ask. Philosophical problems notwithstanding.


But we aren't ordering dinner here. We're talking philosophy. So either it is worth talking about or it isn't.


Do you at least understand the argument? I think it's pretty logical, and to me it implies that the position that it is not possible to know if other people have visual experiences cannot be defended. You may find that trivial, but I don't think so.

Yes, I understand it. But what does it have to do with language? I'm more interested in what your conclusion is. (I no longer think it resembles anything that this thread started out talking about, btw.) That other thread doesn't lay out the main point or conclusion. It's just asking a leading hypothetical question. I'm usually careful about jumping into things like that because I can't keep my answer from be used out of context to contnue the argument. But I will try to participate.