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Consciousness

Mike, address this:

They are only "subjective" so long as they are only accessible to you. As soon as that's no longer true they become objective. In other words the very same thing can be subjective and objective... and therefore subjectivity is not a distinct category.
 
Mike Helland said:
Screwdrivers, cows, and cups of coffee can have velocity.

They can be categorized that way.

Does mind have velocity?
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The very form of that question denies what the statement was about, assuming that "mind" (which I presume you are introducing as a substitute word for consciousness, which was once the subject of this thread) is an entity. Can velocity have velocity? Can imagination, art, ignorance? They're all real, but they're not things in the same way those other things are things.

There's an old statement that turns up on this forum as an example of silliness from time to time, "what does a meme weigh?" One might have thought it obvious that the reason this is silly is not because a meme is some kind of special and transcendent thing; this despite the temptation to play with language and consider the vague overlaps of meaning. Back when I was a kid, when we were driving around in rural New England, we'd occasionally see a sign saying "SLOW CHILDREN," and my parents would always nod their heads and say something like "Yeah, right," or "Welcome to Massachusetts."

Welcome to Philosophy 101
 
Mike Helland said:
Aphantasia has to do with what you see when your eyes are closed (or lack thereof).

P-zombies and the hard problem of consciousness are not about that.

If anything, having aphantasia, as I suppose I do, means you're probably more literal than those without it.

When I close my eyes I see black but changing values of gray in it.
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Well, it's either about memory, or else it is about ...this. (Unless it is a third something that I haven't been able to think of.)

Darat rules out memory. Probably basis the research. Which leaves ...what, unless this?
 
Mike Helland said:
Make a list of all the things that exist.

Most of them you can put into some type of category with other things.

Helium and oxygen for example. Liebniz and Newton. Dolphins and humans.

Most things fit into objective reality. They have measurable magnitudes like position and energy.

The subjective experience doesn't fit into that category.

It doesn't fit into any category.
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It fits into the category of advantageous capabilities for adapting to a complex and changeable environment, along with mobility, vision, immune systems, homeostasis, grasping, object recognition, learning, and inference.
 
Belz... said:
Mike, address this:

They are only "subjective" so long as they are only accessible to you. As soon as that's no longer true they become objective. In other words the very same thing can be subjective and objective... and therefore subjectivity is not a distinct category.
Click to expand...

Subjective and objective seem mutually exclusive to me.

Do you have a counter example?
 
Mike Helland said:
Subjective and objective seem mutually exclusive to me.
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Yeah, well, that's where you go wrong. Did you even read the post you responded to? Here it is again:

They are only "subjective" so long as they are only accessible to you. As soon as that's no longer true they become objective. In other words the very same thing can be subjective and objective... and therefore subjectivity is not a distinct category.

No one said anything about them being subjective and objective at the same time.
 
Belz... said:
Yeah, well, that's where you go wrong. Did you even read the post you responded to? Here it is again:

They are only "subjective" so long as they are only accessible to you. As soon as that's no longer true they become objective. In other words the very same thing can be subjective and objective... and therefore subjectivity is not a distinct category.

No one said anything about them being subjective and objective at the same time.
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Can you give an example?
 
Belz... said:
Yeah, well, that's where you go wrong. Did you even read the post you responded to? Here it is again:

They are only "subjective" so long as they are only accessible to you. As soon as that's no longer true they become objective. In other words the very same thing can be subjective and objective... and therefore subjectivity is not a distinct category.

No one said anything about them being subjective and objective at the same time.
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Belz..., if I whip out my junk and drop it in the ketchup bottle, and no one else had access to that information, I would submit that my junk was nonetheless objectively in that evening's dinner condiment.
 
Mike Helland said:
Subjective and objective seem mutually exclusive to me.

Do you have a counter example?
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I hit you over the head with a shovel in public on film. A solid object known to exist hits flesh and bone. What you feel is subjective, and what the onlookers feel about it is subjective, but is it not also an objective event that really actually occurs in a way that can be quantified?
 
The hard problem of consciousness is not a scientific problem, it's a metaphysical philosophical question whether there is something else alongside to plain physical processes, perhaps being dependent from them. It's a question whether our subjective reality (feelings, thoughts, experiences, etc) is an abstract thing (just a label for a combination of molecules) or something that really exists in some dimension (perhaps even independent) of the reality. It's somewhat similar to the simulation problem, where we can't be 100% certain that the world around us is a simulation or not.

So there is no "explanation" for it, since it's not a phenomena that can be displayed. However this is a question that plenty of people care of because it has a significant overlap with ethical questions.

Some philosophers think that the reality might be neither mental nor physical but instead there is one substance where the mental and the physical are parts of it, aka neutral monism.
 
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Mike Helland said:
An example would help me understand.
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I'm asking you if you understand the principle. Stop stalling.

Thermal said:
Belz..., if I whip out my junk and drop it in the ketchup bottle, and no one else had access to that information, I would submit that my junk was nonetheless objectively in that evening's dinner condiment.
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Absolutely. What does that have to do with anything?
 
suren said:
The hard problem of consciousness is not a scientific problem, it's a metaphysical philosophical question whether there is something else alongside to the plain physical processes, perhaps being dependent from it. It's a question whether our subjective reality (feelings, thoughts, experiences, etc) is an abstract thing (just a label for a combination of molecules) or something that really exists in some dimension (perhaps even independent) of the reality. It's somewhat similar to the simulation problem, where we can't be 100% certain that the world we around us is a simulation or not.
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Yeah it's similar in the sense that you can make up any **** you want and declare it outside of possible knowledge. It's not clever or deep or meaningful. It's just gibberish.
 
Belz... said:
Yeah it's similar in the sense that you can make up any **** you want and declare it outside of possible knowledge. It's not clever or deep or meaningful. It's just gibberish.
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While I agree that many scientifically unfalsifiable ideas even in a form of "non overlapping magisteria" are pointless, I think that the problem of consciousness is not one of them, since it overlaps with many ethical questions that we can face in real life.
 
suren said:
While I agree that many scientifically unfalsifiable ideas even in a form of "non overlapping magisteria" are pointless, I think that the problem of consciousness is not one of them, since it overlaps with many ethical questions that we can face in real life.
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I have no idea what the hell any of that means.
 
bruto said:
I hit you over the head with a shovel in public on film. A solid object known to exist hits flesh and bone. What you feel is subjective, and what the onlookers feel about it is subjective, but is it not also an objective event that really actually occurs in a way that can be quantified?
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Indeed it is.

If I said "That's big"

And you said "how big?"

And I said "10 meters tall"

My first claim is subjective, it's just an opinion.

My second claim is objective, it's a reproducible measurement.
 
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