I was brought up in an atheist household but I found the explanations lacking, it is not a prejudice, a belief or religious conviction of any kind. I am then suspicious when people round up the mind as a few electrons bobbing about and chemical interactions [no offence meant, I am speaking generally], these are clearly the mechanistic side of the explanation and nothing more.
Everything we experience of the world may be fed by senses connection to the world, yet they do not describe what mind and senses are. Information only exists in the mind it is not a physical thing but we know it exists [to us anyhow], same goes with the qualia of colour, love, pain and every subjective element of mind.
don’t you all find it at least a bit suspicious that we are all fed the materialistic bullshit even when everything else is in plain sight. Indeed the very fact that we can describe the physical processes as well as we can, highlights the fact that there is something left and that is the greater part of our experience of the world!
I wish. I do drafts. That’s about it. I once asked my mentor why I couldn’t really do a novel. Her response: “You’re too busy living them.” The only one I submitted to an agent was declared “too literary!”
John,
I don’t understand why you would not respond to legitimate questions. If this has anything to do with rhe dark forum, I apologize for anything said about you there. In a swamp, one is expected to slither or croak.
Reality confined to the agent is solypsism, pure and simple; and, in dicussions of any take on reality, that confinement smacks of an isolated mental matrix wherein the sense of reality exists. Not many current philosophers or neuroscientists believe that. Now about the word “irrelevant”–Dennett (2007) writes that when he and Hofstadter countered Searle’s ideas, the latter could only say that their criticisms were irrelevant. That’s a weak response, but it does beg consideration of clarified objections in the place of instant dismissal. I’m sure Dennett presented clear objections to Searle’s arguments, as I am attempting to do here.
John, John,
Can you attend to one thread without spreading yourself thin on a dozen others?
Repeating myself for your sake–That the “agent” somehow experiences a singular, isolated sense of reality as its only reality was clearly articulated by Thomas Nagel in “What It’s Like To Be A Bat” (1971, if I remember correctly). According to Nagel, we’ll never know what bat reality entails. Since the publication of Nagel’s essay, which caused many philosophers to try to be “politically correct” by asserting “this is what it is like to be. . .” , many thinkers much more intelligent than I smelled “something rotten in the state of Denmark”. I can supply you with a list; but your hit and run threads suggest you would not take time to consider it.
Nagel’s essay fails to convince on at least three levels of understanding.
biological–epigenetic inclusion of common (ours and the bat’s) experiences in developmental process and organism/environment interactions not considered.
technological–we humans can duplicate and experience echolocation. Some of us even eat insects, facts Nagel ignores.
philosophical–information that constitutes consciousness includes the physical precedents of consciousness, not just the “I” narrative that appears localized in a single human brain.
I don’t see where that fits in. I don’t suppose an inner and an outer, not now or ever. As for neuroscience, its claims are largely bogus and incoherent.
Those 3 critricisms weren’t really criticisms, but elaborations on Nagels mistake. Apart from the fact that being aware of other beings can include identification with them according to many reports, Nagel’s bat comment doesn’t pose a distinction between one experiencer and another. It distinguishes between one experience and another - bats and humans have nothing to do with it.
If philosophy’s goal is really to destroy the scientific movement, I would have to say that it’s losing . . . badly.
When it comes to the Philosophy of Science, I see the role (if any) as one of qualifying the scientific movement. By qualifying I mean to both identify its value but also clarify its limits - and I mean limits in the Scientific Method for discovering what is knowable and even what is useful and practical. The questions in this area abound, such as:
Is the infusion of societal and psychological influence of the scientific community a “pollution” of true science or a necessary adjunct to its achievements? After all, how “scientific” is the origin of the hypothesis in the scheintific method? How do culturual trends affect the acceptance of a scientific model?
The distinction between the Scientific Method of inducing from correlation to causation in a particular proposition, and the modeling aspect of taking several propositions to explain how something works generally? Is evolution fact or model? Is it both? Is Relativity Theory fact or model? To what extent is theoretical physics philosophy and to what extent is it scientific modeling?
Is the goal of the Scientific Method, which in part is to acheive explanation devoid of any subjective influence, inherently absurd if our only understanding of reality is in subjective perception itself? Is science a set of objective explanations or inter-subjective ones?
To what extent does scientific inquiry create or is instead indebted to technoloical innovation? Do we discover first then innovate, or innovate first and then discover, or both?
Can and should Science be destroyed in the same way that religious orthodoxy was “destroyed”? I don’t think religious orthodoxy was destroyed but put in it’s place. Just from looking at history, I would not presuppose to say that we are finally the human society that has the perfect map or GPS to knowledge through embracing almost completely the all-powerful Scientific Method as the winning horse. But destroy it? As with any construct, it is too darn beneficial to give up, too ingrained to ignore, and produces a fair amount of evil to make it difficult to oppose. But maybe it too will be put in its proper place in the sphere of thought as new ways of reaching knowledge are discovered to complement it.
Oh yes, if destruction is measured in numbers then destruction has the biggest pot. But it doesn’t have the best cards.
But my point was that science, as it is promoted, it’s image, really isn’t scientific. Extravagent, irrelevant, images have been used to directly persuade the public and academic alike. There is a science, but ours is presented to the yahoos.
I typically don’t understand 98% of what you say, but this sounds kind of true to me. Why not systematically make a case for it using examples from the media?
My take on Nagel comes from Rorty (After Philosophy: End Or Transformation), Wilson (Consilience) and Dennett (Sweet Dreams.) Where this is relevant here is that since the Enlightenment much philosophy has been an attempt to rescue subjective takes on reality from objective understandings of informational interactions (nature and nurture, gene and environment, etc.) Since I’m in favor of complementation as opposed to spurious polarizations, it is difficult for me to see science as in opposition to anything humans are capable of imagining, other than a desire for your own reality.
That’s fine of course, but I’m just wondering where Nagel says what others, including you, claim he says. I’ve read the essay and either he doesn’t claim such a thing (“that the ‘agent’ somehow experiences a singular, isolated sense of reality as its only reality”), or my reading skills need improvement.
Anon,
Please check out critiques of Nagel’s essay.
The very idea that we can have no knowledge of bat subjectivity has been challenged by those who allow evolving information to consist of more than what is available to consciousness. Nagel cannot admit of physical precedents for a sense of reality that we and bats share in common.
The science the essay should have acknowledged is secondary to a philosophy of subjective isolationism.
Guns don’t kill; people using guns kill. Likewise, science is not averse to anything creative or spiritual; only a limited view of science admits that. The objective vs subjective argument such essays as Nagel’s presents place on the physical sciences poses limitations that have never been proved to exist.
As far as I can tell, based on having read Nagel’s essay, some Dennett, etc., all of these claims (by others as well as by yourself) regarding Nagel’s supposed philosophy of “subjective isolationism” are flat-out wrong. But feel free to show me how I’m in error about this. I’ve suspected before that perhaps people read into Nagel’s essay what they’ve seen him state elsewhere - that they’ve seen evidence of some hidden belief of Nagel’s that I’m not privy to. Because there’s no other way I can explain the extreme reactions I’ve seen to his essay. That’s why, if you haven’t read the essay yourself, I strongly encourage you to do so. Anyway, I’m sitting here browsing the Wikipedia article on Nagel, and it doesn’t sound to me like he has any such hidden beliefs. His beliefs seem pretty straightforward and clear. He’s anti-reductionist, in contexts where misplaced reductionism proves an extreme liability - where its usefulness as a tool fails.
Thanks, Anon, for sensible rigor. First, how are noting that objections to Nagel’s mistake, as you posted earlier, not criticism? Second, hoping not to sound like some intellectual elitist, I do not regard Wiki as a source for rigorous objections to philosophical ideas. It is more like a decent encyclopedia that references primary sources, prompting us to consider the primary sources. But, that’s just me. Third, I realize Nagel’s assurance that something exists outside individual human takes on reality. Can you see how “What It’s Like To Be a Bat” can be seen as contradictory to that assurance? Once we accept the notion of closed and inaccessible to others subjective realities, we cannot at the same time assert the objectivity of science. Many threads here, including this one, IMHO, depend on seeing an objective/subjective polarity that simply does not exist. The real problem is seeing science as in enmity with religion or creativity. But, threads like this won’t go there.
