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bluegill
intergalactic toejam



Registered: 11/05/13
Posts: 489
Last seen: 2 years, 11 months
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What about the things that are there that you can't perceive? Divide by 0 hahaha
-------------------- "Psychedelics are like carnival tickets, you buy the ticket and take the ride, then you get off and go home. What your talking about is physical death. That's when you're pulled into the carnival against your will and your stuck there for eternity."
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mikeisapro
Pro
Registered: 12/04/08
Posts: 3,206
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Re: Can you actually know? [Re: bluegill]
#22044429 - 08/04/15 08:40 PM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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-------------------- Life without drugs lacks substance(s).
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mikeisapro
Pro
Registered: 12/04/08
Posts: 3,206
Last seen: 6 years, 10 months
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Re: Can you actually know? [Re: mikeisapro]
#22044444 - 08/04/15 08:44 PM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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and may I also quote OC from that second thread:
Quote:
I also hate objective or ultimate reality discussions.
"Dude, we can only know what's out there because of our senses and our senses are limited. We don't know what is really there!"
So what?
-------------------- Life without drugs lacks substance(s).
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circastes
Big Questions Small Head



Registered: 01/14/10
Posts: 8,781
Loc: straya
Last seen: 7 years, 8 months
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Re: Can you actually know? [Re: DieCommie]
#22044839 - 08/04/15 10:04 PM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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Quote:
DieCommie said:
Quote:
ExperimentalCat said: The room you're in exists in your mind in the form of perception. Your mind exists within the room you are perceiving.
With both these premises in mind, how do you know there is anything outside the room?
Previous perceptions recorded as memories, of course...
Don't make the mistake of thinking perception is reality - it isnt. That cute phrase is a kind of metaphor, not a truism. What you think is reality is actually your perceptions. Reality, that which exists regardless of perception, is ultimately and forever unknowable.
I don't know about this. I think the mind co-creates reality. I really don't know if it undergoes the formality of existing without a mind. Something is 'real' amidst all this, but that something is a strange something, a mental construct of some kind, perhaps purposeless, perhaps not.
-------------------- My solitude... My shield... My armour... TESTED WITH FULL FORCE
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MarkostheGnostic
Elder



Registered: 12/09/99
Posts: 14,279
Loc: South Florida
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Your mind exists within the room you are perceiving.
This is not substantially true. Your body certainly "exists" within space-time parameters, but mind is not the same thing as brain. Mind remains a mystery, but whatever it is, it does not have extension in space-time. It does not have mass. Strictly speaking, it does not "exist," as an object among objects. Mind may be the essential matrix from which existence derives. The body certainly 'interfaces' with Mind, and our limited sense organs receive impressions which the ego-mind registers within the limitations of our embodied sensory organs. It might be better to say that our embodied selves 'participate' in Mind. Most everyone has faith in the senses and rational mind, but few consider "Mind-at-Large" (A. Huxley), which like Saint Paul's reference to the Logos is the Reality in which "we live and move and have our being."
The room is co-extensive with everything else in space-time, including your physical body and the atmosphere which surrounds and interpenetrates one's lungs, bloodstream, and every cell in the body. Densities of matter vary, but space-time is the fabric of existence even in the vacuum of deep space. Mind, an apparently dualistic Reality which interpenetrates space-time more profoundly than the atmospheric oxygen in our cells, interpenetrates on a metaphysical level - prior to physics. Your question is based on the assumption that 'you' are only your existential, physical being, and defined by the boundary of your skin. If you are Being first, a human being second, then your essential identity is prior to your existential identity. Mind is prior to body, your body is an extension of Mind, and the sense of ownership ('my' mind) is a grand illusion.
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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Cognitive_Shift
CS actual




Registered: 12/11/07
Posts: 29,591
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Define "the mind" and then define "exist." I think you guys are getting ahead of our seleves here with out addressing the still unanswered more fundamental philosophical questions.
-------------------- L'enfer est plein de bonnes volontés et désirs
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xFrockx


Registered: 09/17/06
Posts: 10,455
Loc: Northeast
Last seen: 12 days, 4 hours
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Quote:
Cognitive_Shift said: Define "the mind" and then define "exist." I think you guys are getting ahead of our seleves here with out addressing the still unanswered more fundamental philosophical questions.
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Marihuana
Stranger


Registered: 08/29/14
Posts: 86
Loc: Midwest
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what do you mean DEFINE?
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xFrockx


Registered: 09/17/06
Posts: 10,455
Loc: Northeast
Last seen: 12 days, 4 hours
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Re: Can you actually know? [Re: Marihuana]
#22054953 - 08/06/15 06:33 PM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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Mean? Hey now, lets be nice.
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RennHuhn
Stranger

Registered: 03/12/15
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I know I am real. Because I think so therefore I am. I know other people are real because they behave in ways that I cant predict. I know that there is a world outside of my mind because I dont know everything about the world.
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Kurt
Thinker, blinker, writer, typer.

Registered: 11/26/14
Posts: 1,688
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Re: Can you actually know? [Re: xFrockx]
#22055114 - 08/06/15 07:10 PM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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From what I gathered Markos was mostly deconstructing. He said mind or consciousness is not a substance, or thing, but it is some-thing... or tending towards nothing.
I think in terms of definitions, we all kind of fall into a similar consideration probably.
John Searle (a philosopher of mind's) "definition" is pretty much patently vested in what we take for granted:
Quote:
By "consciousness" I mean those states of sentience or awareness that typically begin when we wake up in the morning from a dreamless sleep and continue throughout the day until we fall asleep again.
The criteria of intentionality grounds phenomenologist's consideration: "consciousness is always directed toward an object". Clearly this is deferring the referent, but representing something close (which is what phenomenologists incidentally tend to do). Is consciousness reflecting that being directed towards an object, as a thing itself? I like Markos' take in that sense; it is not apparently thing, but the referent from which the apparent structure of existence derives.
In practicality, no-mind or the formlessness is a lot harder to find than getting out of the maze of reified consciousness. Deconstructions would maybe assist.
Then there is Dan Dennett...
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Cognitive_Shift
CS actual




Registered: 12/11/07
Posts: 29,591
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Re: Can you actually know? [Re: Kurt] 1
#22056058 - 08/06/15 11:07 PM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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I don't think consciousness is any single thing, I think it's an emergent property of many things happening all at once. It's like you don't have a car unless all the pieces are put together in the right way. You don't have consciousness unless you have all parts of the brain operating together as one cohesive unit. Consciousness is simply deciding what to do with awareness.
-------------------- L'enfer est plein de bonnes volontés et désirs
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circastes
Big Questions Small Head



Registered: 01/14/10
Posts: 8,781
Loc: straya
Last seen: 7 years, 8 months
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Re: Can you actually know? [Re: RennHuhn]
#22056702 - 08/07/15 05:10 AM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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Quote:
RennHuhn said: I know I am real. Because I think so therefore I am. I know other people are real because they behave in ways that I cant predict. I know that there is a world outside of my mind because I dont know everything about the world.
That's not bad.
-------------------- My solitude... My shield... My armour... TESTED WITH FULL FORCE
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Kurt
Thinker, blinker, writer, typer.

Registered: 11/26/14
Posts: 1,688
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Quote:
Cognitive_Shift said: I don't think consciousness is any single thing, I think it's an emergent property of many things happening all at once. It's like you don't have a car unless all the pieces are put together in the right way. You don't have consciousness unless you have all parts of the brain operating together as one cohesive unit. Consciousness is simply deciding what to do with awareness.
Emergence is a broad term. Meaning probably depends on how you are referring to it as supervening on physical world... Seems like "consciousness" and "awareness" are things you distinguish in a technical sense, and are meaning something by that?
John Searle writes on consciousness as a biological process, and offers a straight forward critique of strict epiphenomenalism: Quote:
"It would be miraculous, unlike anything that ever occurred in biological history, if something in biology as elaborate, rich, and structured as human and animal consciousness made no causal difference to the real world. From what we know about evolution, it is unlikely that epiphenommenalism could be right."
Thomas Nagel is pretty commonly cited too. He suggests qualitative criteria in his essay "What is it like to be a Bat?". Consciousness, (being whatever it is) is what we talk about according to unity of analogy. I think we probably heed this conventional basis, more than anything else.
I am more on the phenomenologist's side of things, which is a formal difference. I think meditation can be useful to demarcate certain points of conjecture. For instance, there are always emerging studies on measurable states of consciousness, and determining correspondence to subjective experiences, which are perhaps less measurable. But don't forget consciousness as a practice.
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Astral Pain
Strange

Registered: 11/10/14
Posts: 2,923
Loc: Chicago
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There's no way to tell if anything exists without the act of observing, and it has been shown that matter behaves differently when it is not being observed. If you're not viewing something you can observe it by touch, and even the act of recording is a form of observance. This phenomenon of contrasting behavior is demonstrated with what is referred to as the "Double Slit Experiment". There are various diagrams and texts to explain this experiment, but this short video sums it up quite nicely.
There's no telling if anything exists or what form it takes on unless it is observed.
-------------------- "I don't mean to sound bitter, cold, or cruel, but I am, so that's how it comes out" -Bill Hicks-
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DividedQuantum
Outer Head


Registered: 12/06/13
Posts: 9,819
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Re: Can you actually know? [Re: Kurt]
#22058930 - 08/07/15 02:26 PM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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Quote:
Kurt said:
Quote:
Cognitive_Shift said: I don't think consciousness is any single thing, I think it's an emergent property of many things happening all at once. It's like you don't have a car unless all the pieces are put together in the right way. You don't have consciousness unless you have all parts of the brain operating together as one cohesive unit. Consciousness is simply deciding what to do with awareness.
Emergence is a broad term. Meaning probably depends on how you are referring to it as supervening on physical world... Seems like "consciousness" and "awareness" are things you distinguish in a technical sense, and are meaning something by that?
John Searle writes on consciousness as a biological process, and offers a straight forward critique of strict epiphenomenalism: Quote:
"It would be miraculous, unlike anything that ever occurred in biological history, if something in biology as elaborate, rich, and structured as human and animal consciousness made no causal difference to the real world. From what we know about evolution, it is unlikely that epiphenommenalism could be right."
Thomas Nagel is pretty commonly cited too. He suggests qualitative criteria in his essay "What is it like to be a Bat?". Consciousness, (being whatever it is) is what we talk about according to unity of analogy. I think we probably heed this conventional basis, more than anything else.
I am more on the phenomenologist's side of things, which is a formal difference. I think meditation can be useful to demarcate certain points of conjecture. For instance, there are always emerging studies on measurable states of consciousness, and determining correspondence to subjective experiences, which are perhaps less measurable. But don't forget consciousness as a practice.
Yes Kurt, I like your quotation of Searle here, and I agree with him. An in depth conversation about epiphenomenalism would be out of place here, but suffice it to say that evolution deals in what is necessary, and what is just enough for survival. It seems, as Searle notes, quite implausible that something so central as consciousness would be unnecessary. The logical inference there, of course, is that it has causal efficacy, on some level.
-------------------- Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici
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Kurt
Thinker, blinker, writer, typer.

Registered: 11/26/14
Posts: 1,688
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Well put.
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DieCommie

Registered: 12/11/03
Posts: 29,258
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Quote:
DividedQuantum said: It seems, as Searle notes, quite implausible that something so central as consciousness would be unnecessary. The logical inference there, of course, is that it has causal efficacy, on some level.
Why are those the only two options? Its either unnecessary or has a causal effect and there is no other possibility? Can't it necessarily exist as a product of genes which have been selected? Its not necessary in its own right and is not causally linked to any effect.
Its hard for me to take causality seriously. It seems superfluous in nearly every case I can think of.
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Kurt
Thinker, blinker, writer, typer.

Registered: 11/26/14
Posts: 1,688
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Re: Can you actually know? [Re: DieCommie]
#22060270 - 08/07/15 07:40 PM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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Causality is speculative in any case. I think DQ was fairly circumspect of that.
The significance of an ontologically subjective position is what Searle implied. Maybe it would be appropriate to say the biological naturalism reflects (albeit in an inherently speculative consideration) consciousness being somehow found in a causal matrix we take for granted. That doesn't determine the relationship.
In his essay "Mental Events", Donald Davidson describes a generality of mind body matrix that is perhaps more palatable to modern speculation in general:
"Autonomy (freedom, self rule) may or may not clash with determinism; anomaly (failure to fall under a law) seems to be another matter."
You've got to love this stuff. It is not a bad essay, actually.
Full context here
Of course hopefully someone may mention that the idea of will is something broader than its typically circumspective consideration as some jewel of Post Cartesian epistemology. Dancing around consciousness in the way we are supposed to (or "not" ) does seem kind of silly.
Finding describably qualitative expressions of "will" or "willfullness" (say in the Nietzschean sense), or how later phenomenologists described "intentionality" implying consciousness (consciousness is what is directed towards an referent object) would be a different story.
That's where I put my chips. In Nietzsche's consideration (somewhat impressed by Schopenhauer) will is not something we want to find - it is something we are squeamish about, so we relagate its role to the abnegations of philosophy, politics, physics, metaphysics, psychology - anywhere but in oneself, or self responsibility. We enlightened modern people are always looking for that level egalitarian representation: Truth; or at least, we have the will to truth!
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DividedQuantum
Outer Head


Registered: 12/06/13
Posts: 9,819
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Re: Can you actually know? [Re: DieCommie] 2
#22060416 - 08/07/15 08:15 PM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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Quote:
DieCommie said:
Quote:
DividedQuantum said: It seems, as Searle notes, quite implausible that something so central as consciousness would be unnecessary. The logical inference there, of course, is that it has causal efficacy, on some level.
Why are those the only two options? Its either unnecessary or has a causal effect and there is no other possibility? Can't it necessarily exist as a product of genes which have been selected? Its not necessary in its own right and is not causally linked to any effect.
Its hard for me to take causality seriously. It seems superfluous in nearly every case I can think of.
I echo Kurt's words, and I would say that causality is not at all the point of focus here. I think, to focus on Searle's comments, the point is that evolution does not tend to produce traits that do not have some proximate purpose, or serve a function. (There are, of course, some exceptions). It is then natural to conclude, purely in the light of this reasonable premise, that it is extremely unlikely that consciousness is epiphenomenal. That's all I was really commenting on.
-------------------- Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici
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