The Case for Idealism

[Monistic Idealism]

What even is this post?

That's what I want to know. You're de-railing this thread with your petty bullshit, stick to the case for monistic idealism

Alright. I didn't see it in your opening post concerning premise three, so I suppose I'll browse the thread. Might take a while

suuuure

 

[Monistic Idealism]

And you haven't got an inch closer to any conclusion.

What are ya talking about, big guy? I've concluded idealism is true all the way from the OP. Been refuting weak objections from materialists this whole time.

 

[Greg the Grouper]

That's what I want to know.

But you were accusing me of using sockpuppets. And you accused me of running out on a conversation. I just wanted answers.

suuuure

Oh, I get it. You don't think I'm looking, cause I'm a super huge coward.

Would you mind just pointing it out, then? Where you explained why brain structure wasn't enough to explain conscious, orwhatever it is you said about it?

 

[Monistic Idealism]

b-but muh sockpuppets!

who gives a shit. This thread is about the case for idealism. If you can't hack it then start a new thread.

Would you mind just pointing it out, then? Where you explained why brain structure wasn't enough to explain conscious, orwhatever it is you said about it?

Try checking out the OP lmao

 

[Greg the Grouper]

who gives a shit.

Well that just hurts my feelings. I put so much effort into this sockpuppetry.

Try checking out the OP lmao

You mentioned neurons in your argument for premise 3, I'm asking about brain structure.

 

[Monistic Idealism]

You mentioned neurons in your argument for premise 3, I'm asking about brain structure.

Premise 3 is stated as such: "P3.) Mind cannot be reduced to non-mind (Hard Problem of Consciousness)."

I didn't limit my support for premise 3 to neurons. I brought up the hard problem of consciousness and an argument from Thomas Nagel.

 

[Greg the Grouper]

You mentioned neurons in your argument for premise 3, I'm asking about brain structure.

Premise 3 is stated as such: "P3.) Mind cannot be reduced to non-mind (Hard Problem of Consciousness)."

I didn't limit my support for premise 3 to neurons. I brought up the hard problem of consciousness and an argument from Thomas Nagel.

And which of these discusses brain structure?

 

[Monistic Idealism]

And which of these discusses brain structure?

They all do. Do you have any idea what entailment is...?

 

[Greg the Grouper]

They all do.

Your link suggests that a complete physical understanding of any given object wouldn't allow us to determine whether or not said object is actually conscious, yet the only reason that that would be the case is if we can't actually describe what it means to be conscious, ie if consciousness is a meaningless concept. Once you start getting into what does and does.'t constitute consciousness (does it react to its enironment, does it possess the capacity to learn and to apply newly gained knowledge, etc) determining whether or not something is conscious becomes a trivial matter. The reason I interpreted the text in this manner is because the texts reads "It appears that even a complete specification of a creature in physical terms leaves unanswered the question of whether or not the creature is conscious", which to me presumes total knowledge concerning the physical makeup and understanding of this creature while also asserting that said total knowledge is irrelevant.

A brain isn't simply a pile of neurons. To suggest that neurons are only capable of X in isolation is not the same as suggesting that they are only capable of X in tandem with one another, let alone in tandem with one anothr while acting as a specific single structure. You might as well argue that a pile of metal is the same thing as a bridge, and you can just drive over a pile of metal to cross a ravine in the same way that you do a ridge. This is specifically why I asked about brain structure.

I will have to spend more time looking into Thomas Nagel to better understand his particular issue here.

 

[Monistic Idealism]

They all do.

Your link suggests that a complete physical understanding of any given object wouldn't allow us to determine whether or not said object is actually conscious, yet the only reason that that would be the case is if we can't actually describe what it means to be conscious, ie if consciousness is a meaningless concept.

I'm not seeing how you arrive at this conclusion at all.

Once you start getting into what does and does.'t constitute consciousness (does it react to its enironment, does it possess the capacity to learn and to apply newly gained knowledge, etc) determining whether or not something is conscious becomes a trivial matter.

You're failing to grasp the distinction between the easy problems of consciousness and the hard problem of consciousness

A brain isn't simply a pile of neurons

And there's nothing magical about a brain or its structures. If consciousness were identical to such structures then identifying such structures should identify consciousness, but it clearly doesn't. We can do all sorts of observations regarding your brain but that never tells us what its like to be you. This means reductionism has to be false as Nagel laid out in that argument from him you didn't address.

 

[Greg the Grouper]

I'm not seeing how you arrive at this conclusion at all.

Once you start explaining what consciousness is, it quickly becomes apparent whether or not any given organism can be considered conscious. For example, if I'm not mistaken, earlier in the thread you suggested that conscience could be described as first-person subjective awareness. Well, now we just need to ask a few questions about the creature in question:

Is the creature in question capable of sensing the environment(does there exist some apparatus by which the creature can obtain information about its environment)?
Is the creature in question capable of perception(does there exist some apparatus by which the creature can interpret any information it has obtained concerning its environment)?

If the answer to both of those questions are yes, then we can consider the creature to be aware. The rest follows from there: the creature is itself, and as such approaches this awareness from a 'first-person' perspective, and by virtue of possessing this perspective its awareness is 'subject' to it. This creature is conscious.

You're failing to grasp the distinction between the easy problems of consciousness and the hard problem of consciousness.

The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why any physical state is conscious rather than nonconscious. It is the problem of explaining why there is “something it is like” for a subject in conscious experience, why conscious mental states “light up” and directly appear to the subject. The usual methods of science involve explanation of functional, dynamical, and structural properties—explanation of what a thing does, how it changes over time, and how it is put together. But even after we have explained the functional, dynamical, and structural properties of the conscious mind, we can still meaningfully ask the question, Why is it conscious? This suggests that an explanation of consciousness will have to go beyond the usual methods of science. Consciousness therefore presents a hard problem for science, or perhaps it marks the limits of what science can explain. Explaining why consciousness occurs at all can be contrasted with so-called “easy problems” of consciousness: the problems of explaining the function, dynamics, and structure of consciousness. These features can be explained using the usual methods of science. But that leaves the question of why there is something it is like for the subject when these functions, dynamics, and structures are present. This is the hard problem.

If the question is "Why is creature X conscious?": natural processes are occurring in creature X which result in it being conscious.
If the question is "Why is this group of creatures conscious?": there were no environmental pressures which selected against the natural changes which resulted in consciousness, which allowed these changes to become more prominent in the local gene pool.

Seriously? What could you possibly be looking for when you ask this question?

And there's nothing magical about a brain or its structures. If consciousness were identical to such structures then identifying such structures should identify consciousness, but it clearly doesn't. We can do all sorts of observations regarding your brain but that never tells us what its like to be you. This means reductionism has to be false as Nagel laid out in that argument from him you didn't address.

Really? Last I checked, it was entirely possible to see how I reacted to certain things without even being in any sort of structured environment suited for some kind of experiment. It should be pretty simple to derive what it's like to be me just by observing me for a while, investigating my past, and checking my medical records.

Again, what could you possibly be looking for here? I'm not even trying to be dense, these criticisms simply don't make the slightest bit of sense to me. I don't even know what you could possibly mean by "Why is this creature conscious?". I don't even know what you could possibly mean by "We can do all sorts of observations...but that never tells us what its like to be you.".

 

[Monistic Idealism]

Is the creature in question capable of sensing the environment(does there exist some apparatus by which the creature can obtain information about its environment)?
Is the creature in question capable of perception(does there exist some apparatus by which the creature can interpret any information it has obtained concerning its environment)?

You're still not grasping this distinction between the easy problems and the hard problem:

The easy problems we can solve by classical means of observation but mental states are known directly by subjects:

So, the asymmetry that generates the epistemological problem of other minds is that each of us sometimes knows directly that we are in the mental state we are in and we never know directly that someone other than ourself is in the mental state they are in.

Source: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/other-minds/#1.1

The fact that consciousness is first-person subjective awareness as we established before then means identifying mere behaviors cannot capture the whole picture. I believe in other minds, but there's an asymmetry there when it comes to other minds and that shouldn't be true if physicalism were true and that means we can't quite reduce our knowledge of the mind to non-mind.

natural processes are occurring in creature X which result in it being conscious.

Consciousness is irreducible, so to keep it you'd have to affirm strong emergence but that's just magic:

“[strong emergence]is uncomfortably like magic. How does an irreducible but supervenient downward causal power arise, since by definition it cannot be due to the aggregation of the micro-level potentialities? Such causal powers would be quite unlike anything within our scientific ken. This not only indicates how they will discomfort reasonable forms of materialism. Their mysteriousness will only heighten the traditional worry that emergence entails illegitimately getting something from nothing.”

Source: Bedau, Mark A. (1997). Weak Emergence. Philosophical Perspectives 11 (s11):375-399.

Again, what could you possibly be looking for here? I'm not even trying to be dense, these criticisms simply don't make the slightest bit of sense to me. I don't even know what you could possibly mean by "Why is this creature conscious?". I don't even know what you could possibly mean by "We can do all sorts of observations...but that never tells us what its like to be you.".

What you're not understanding here is this concept of "what it is like" to have an experience. What is mean by this is how it feels like from the first-person perspective to see color, smell a rose, hear music etc. 2 people can experience the same thing but there's what it is like for me to experience the music vs. what it is like for you to experience the music. We can describe the phenomenon (music and our brains, bodies etc.) but that doesn't eve tell us what it is like for the subject to have such an experience. If you want more detail check out this clip from Dr. David Chalmers, I have the relevant part time stamped already in the link: https://youtu.be/hTIk9MN3T6w?t=5m37s

 

[Steelmage99]

Only now do I have something to say. That must mean I am a bot account specifically set up some time ago - simply to support myself (in another guise), right?

Yup, what you're doing right now is super sketchy. If you were just another user responding to the OP i wouldn't suspect a thing, but here you are getting all defensive of other users, referencing a specific conversation buried deep in this thread, and all of a sudden you just give a shit. Yeah, this doesn't look sketch at all lol

Would you please point out where I defend other users?
Please, be really specific.

 

[Monistic Idealism]

Would you please point out where I defend other users?
Please, be really specific.

Don't play dumb, it's disingenuous. You and I both know your comment was a reference to something I said to Akamia about how he's all of a sudden got something to say all this time. You were branching off what I said to him in defense of him. Funny how emotionally charged your comment was too, interesting how emotionally invested you are in a conversation that's not even yours...

 

[momo666]

I just quoted directly admitting you were not addressing it because you were enjoying the situation. No idea how you find joy in that but glad you've finally stopped ignoring my paragraph after I had to call you out several times on it...

And where does that supposed situation match your baseless accusations ? Anyhow, as I've shown earlier, that paragraph contained nothing useful.

Naw, you just fail to grasp this idea of direct knowledge/knowledge by acquaintance. You're the only one failing to get this.

The very concept of "direct knowledge/knowledge by acquaintance" requires that which you are supposed to explain. Unless you can explain what does the knowing, you don't even have a point.

Not at all. Everyone understands them perfectly fine. You're literally the only person who fails to comprehend. Dr. David Chalmers, a world renowned philosopher of mind, and every single user in here but you grasps it. This is a personal problem for you.

I don't care how many people assert to understand your assertions. I am under no obligation to blindly follow their beliefs. This is a problem with your terms. You simply can not explain what "mind" is.

Yes I did, you just fail to grasp it. You've admitted I've given a definition, and you try to criticize it with this disingenuous lack of comprehension disguised as skepticism .

Where you have attempted to give a definition, you have merely taken that which you are supposed to explain for granted; which is why I say you have attempted to define your terms but have been unable to. There is nothing to comprehend in your definitions because they utterly fail at explaining this "I".

Well would you look at that. So you're saying there's this "I" that notices things. You're literally talking about self-awareness right now and you just refuse to admit it. You're literally talking about this self that has perceptions and thoughts yet you're pretending you have not even a slight clue as to what this means. You've been caught red handed affirming this "I" that has perceptions, you know damn well what the average joe means when they say "I".

You are confused. This "I", this "self" is what you are supposed to explain. I do not know what it is, so talking about larger frames of reference without first explaining what this "I" is, is bound to be a pointless exercise. The average joe better admit that he doesn't have the slightest clue as to what this "I" is.

You can't squirm out of this because you just said that you would notice a physical object, and you are not identifying this with the self given your answer, so you're assuming a dualism between the body and the self. Support your dualist assumptions...

And you can't squirm out of your repeated misreading of my comment by insisting to impose on me your caricature view. Notice that I have asked you to explain this "self" and as such until you do that I can not even say if me identifying with "my body" is a proper question to begin with.

You just went in another circle. That's just a synonym, not a definition. That's like you asking for a definition of "I" and I just said "self" (which I didn't by the way, this is purely an example obviously). Give me a definition of what you mean by physical/matter. Define your terms.

Physical is not a synonym to matter. Matter "is any substance that has mass and takes up space by having volume." Physics is MUCH more broad than that. So when I said this thing we call "our body" is a physical object, I was pointing out to the fact that it is composed of atoms.

Except you keep pressing for descriptions like you're literally doing right now...

Except that your very distinction rests upon that which you are supposed to explain in the first place and as such you don't have a point to begin with.

No you're not actually. You're not dealing with the form of the argument or the truth or falsity of any premise, you're just deviating into this word game that's all about your failure to comprehend basic English...

As long as your argument relies on this concept of "mind", my line of inquiry is perfectly fine. The reason you don't like it is because it reveals you really don't even have a case, let alone a good case.

Apparently you're only as developed as a 17-month old child so you won't understand until you grow up... If everyone understands but you, the problem is you...

Hurl as many baseless insults as you like, it will not change the fact that you don't have the slightest idea what a key term of your supposed argument stands for. What exactly does everyone understand ?

 

[Monistic Idealism]

You are confused. This "I", this "self" is what you are supposed to explain. I do not know what it is, so talking about larger frames of reference without first explaining what this "I" is, is bound to be a pointless exercise. The average joe better admit that he doesn't have the slightest clue as to what this "I" is.

I'm going to have to zero in on this because this is where your disingenuous pseudoskepticism really falls apart. In one sentence you claim to have absolutely 0 understanding of this term "I" in any shape or form, yet when asked whether you would pass the rouge-test you say "I would notice x". This is an admission of self-awareness. You're aware of this "I" that notices things. This is not a confusion on my part, you literally admitted this yourself and I can quote you directly... You better admit that you have a clue as to what this "I" is as you're clearly comfortable admitting that you notice and understand things. Perhaps you have a hard time putting this into a description, but that doesn't matter since this is by acquaintance anyway which is independent of any description.

 

[momo666]

In one sentence you claim to have absolutely 0 understanding of this term "I" in any shape or form, yet when asked whether you would pass the rouge-test you say "I would notice x". This is an admission of self-awareness. You're aware of this "I" that notices things.... You better admit that you have a clue as to what this "I" is as you're clearly comfortable admitting that you notice and understand things.

I also say that which does the noticing has not been explained, which is the whole point of this discussion. What exactly is aware here ? What does the noticing and understanding ?

Perhaps you have a hard time putting this into a description, but that doesn't matter since this is by acquaintance anyway which is independent of any description.

This can not be a proper defense because the very concept of "knowledge by acquaintance" requires that which you are supposed to explain. What does the knowing ?

 

[Monistic Idealism]

>I notice x
>I don't understand the meaning of "I"
Pick one, momo...

It is contradictory for you to say you're not aware of this "I" yet you claim that there is in fact this "I" that notices things.

This can not be a proper defense because the very concept of "knowledge by acquaintance"

Yes actually, it can. You clearly didn't read that article I linked you on knowledge by acquaintance: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-acquaindescrip/

 

[momo666]

It is contradictory for you to say you're not aware of this "I" yet you claim that there is in fact this "I" that notices things.

It's not, because what is that which notices things is what you should explain.

Yes actually, it can. You clearly didn't read that article I linked you on knowledge by acquaintance

I did, but maybe I have missed something. Care to quote where exactly in there does it explain what does the knowing ?

 

[Monistic Idealism]

It's not

Actually it is. You're claiming there is this "I" that notices. That is just a synonym for self-awareness, self-consciousness.

Definition of notice: attention; observation.
Synonymous with: awareness, consciousness, perception.

It's check mate, bro...

I did, but maybe I have missed something. Care to quote where exactly in there does it explain what does the knowing

you clearly didn't because this is all spelled out in the article.