Eliminating Qualia

[ruby sparks]

So you know something about the content of your mind. Everyone does. Right? As you said yourself, 'you know what your mind experiences'. That's an epistemological claim. I'm just asking you how it works. You can't 'know' anything about something without ever experiencing it, right?

So you experience your mind. Everybody does. It could hardly be simpler and more obvious.

But of course, you now have to deny that because your ontology has painted you into that corner and tied you up in knots.

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If you are talking about the "self" that is not the mind.

I didn't say what the self was. Can you just answer the question? How do you know what the mind experiences? How could it possibly be that you do know about that?

 

[untermensche]

So you know something about the content of your mind. Everyone does. Right? As you said yourself, 'you know what your mind experiences'.

That is the nature of the phenomena of experience.

When you have an experience you know it.

That is not knowing something about the mind.

It is just knowing something beyond doubt. What Descartes talked about a while ago.

 

[ruby sparks]

So you know something about the content of your mind. Everyone does. Right? As you said yourself, 'you know what your mind experiences'.

That is the nature of the phenomena of experience.

When you have an experience you know it.

That is not knowing something about the mind.

It is just knowing something beyond doubt.

Sorry. Not only is 'you know what your mind experiences' an epistemological claim that you are not explaining or justifying (quelle surprise, again) it also invokes a 'you' that you say does not exist. Your ontology is a shredded muddle.

What Descartes talked about a while ago.

Please stop name-dropping god-botherers.

 

[untermensche]

So you know something about the content of your mind. Everyone does. Right? As you said yourself, 'you know what your mind experiences'.

That is the nature of the phenomena of experience.

When you have an experience you know it.

That is not knowing something about the mind.

It is just knowing something beyond doubt. What Descartes talked about a while ago.

Sorry. Not only is 'you know what your mind experiences' an epistemological claim that you are not explaining or justifying (quelle surprise, again) it also invokes a 'you' that you say does not exist. Your ontology is a shredded muddle.

"You" is not an experience.

It is the label for "that which experiences" in another person.

That which experiences knows it is experiencing.

That is the nature of the phenomena of human experience.

 

[ruby sparks]

That which experiences knows it is experiencing.

But how can it possibly know? According to your ontology it can't, because mind cannot be experienced, even by itself. Especially by itself in fact. Therefore mind, and/or what goes on in it, simply cannot be known, even subjectively (let's agree that objectively is not even an option). According to you, there is simply no way that you could possibly know what is going on in your mind.

Like it or not, this is currently a big hole in your ontology, and now in your epistemology too.

 

[ruby sparks]

(you) is the label for "that which experiences" in another person.

And so, 'I' is the label for 'that which experiences' for me (my system), is that it?

I thought you said the mind experiences?

So now you are saying that an 'I' experiences.

Or, you are saying that 'I' and 'mind' are the same thing or that the former is only a label for the latter. In which case mind/I is experiencing itself, which you say is impossible and which if it were possible would screw up your 'separate things, experiencer thing and experienced thing' ontology.

It's a mess.

 

[ruby sparks]

Look at it another way. I don't know what's going on in your mind. Right? It's effectively a private 'black box', the contents of which I cannot possibly know or experience.

And you're saying you don't either.

So when you say anything about it (eg 'my mind can move my arm at will') there is no way you could possibly know if this is what is going on or not. Apart from anything else, you don't experience will either. You are completely uninformed and in the dark about it and everything else going on in your mind, apparently, as much as I am about it in you. That is what you are saying amounts to.

There is a reason I don't know what's going on in your mind just as there is a reason that you do know. Access.

 

[ruby sparks]

The other big problems for your ontology are, 'if the mind experiences, how, and what with? What's it even made of? Does it have any 'experience sensors', or what?' How do the experienced things communicate their existence to the mind? Using qualia waves? And if it has autonomy, what does it use to supposedly go about exercising that with? What is the mechanism? And how does it manage to be both dependent and independent at the same time?

I'm just glad I don't have to even try to answer those questions. But you do. And they are some of the reasons why virtually nobody other than woo-mongers takes cartesian duality very seriously these days. Because it's a mess, one which throws up more scientific and philosophical problems than it solves.

It's true that there are things we don't know, such as how brain activity creates mind and if it affects the brain in return, how this happens. But you have so many extra questions, because your explanation is cluttered with separate 'things' all interacting. Iow, on top of everything else, it's also unparsimonious.

As an ontology and indeed an epistemology, its chief basis, what it boils down to, is 'it's true becos it feelz like it'. Whoopety-do. Forget rigorous philosophical issues and clinical science and just have an unreliable intuition banana instead. Next up, god, becos it feelz like it.

 

[untermensche]

That which experiences knows it is experiencing.

But how can it possibly know?

It is embedded in the concept of experience.

If there is no knowledge that the experience is before you then you are not experiencing it.

According to your ontology it can't, because mind cannot be experienced, even by itself.

Mind knowing it is experiencing does not equate to mind knowing mind.

It just means the mind can know things.

 

[ruby sparks]

It just means the mind can know things.

But how? How can I know if the third sheep from the left in a field in Northern Australia is chewing grass if I have no access to anything about that event? I cannot know anything about anything unless I have access to it.

Your knowledge model is flawed now too. Whether you admit it or not, you effectively have the mind knowing itself, by experiencing itself, 'knowing what it is doing'. There is no other way for it to know, other than some sort of direct experience, is there? Otherwise, what my mind got up to would be just as much a 'black box' to me as it is to you and just like whether that sheep is or isn't chewing grass to both of us. No access.

 

[ruby sparks]

Look, if you want to say that for experience there has to be both an experienced thing and an experiencing thing, then there's no reason not to also say on an equal basis that for knowledge there has to be a thing to be known and a knowing thing. So, you say you know stuff about your mind. So what's the knower in that case? The mind itself? That's not going to work for you, because if the mind in that case is the 'thing known' it can't according to you' be the 'knowing thing' as well.

So now you also have a paradox, and possibly yet another contradiction, to add to all the other problems with your model.

None of which you will admit, of course, because you cling to certainty about your 'becos it feelz like it' model with such fervour and dogma. To you it feels like teflon. To everyone else it looks like swiss cheese.

 

[untermensche]

It just means the mind can know things.

But how? How can I know if the third sheep from the left in a field in Northern Australia is chewing grass if I have no access to anything about that event?

To experience anything is not to experience the mind.

You experience grass in many ways.

You can see it or smell it or touch it.

The mind is that which experiences vision and smells and the sensations associated with touch.

 

[ruby sparks]

Evasion of several issues and questions noted.

 

[untermensche]

Look, if you want to say that for experience there has to be both an experienced thing and an experiencing thing, then there's no reason not to also say on an equal basis that for knowledge there has to be a thing to be known and a knowing thing.

If there is something that knows it is experiencing there is the thing that knows it is experiencing and the things it is experiencing.

To know you are experiencing is to know something you are doing not something you are.

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Evasion of several issues and questions noted.

You address absolute nothing I say.

 

[ruby sparks]

To know you are experiencing is to know something you are doing not something you are.

Doesn't even matter. It still begs the questions, 'how do you know' and 'what is the knower of the mind?' in any case.

And lots of other related questions. Which you have skipped over. As per usual.

 

[untermensche]

To know you are experiencing is to know something you are doing not something you are.

Doesn't even matter. It still begs the questions, 'how do you know' and 'what is the knower of the mind?' in any case.

And lots of other related questions. Which you have skipped over. As per usual.

Something that knows does not mean it knows the mind.

I do not agree I am skipping over anything of importance.

If it is important don't cry about it repeat it. Quote it. It takes two seconds.

 

[ruby sparks]

Something that knows does not mean it knows the mind.

Repeating yourself after I have explained why it doesn't matter to my questions is not getting you anywhere and especially it's not answering those questions.

I do not agree I am skipping over anything of importance.

Of course you don't. Sadly, the questions repeatedly appear in print and your responses to them repeatedly don't.

 

[ruby sparks]

"You know what your mind experiences" is gobbledygook, for your model. Not only does it invoke a 'you' that you have to discredit, even while using it, in order to salvage your ontology, but it also clearly says that you know you have a mind (otherwise you could not even say you know what your mind experiences, could you) even though you say that the mind cannot be experienced and now, in the quote above, you try to distinguish between knowings (as if it made a difference to anything I asked) and have been inadvertently forced to imply that the knowledge is not knowledge that there is a mind. It's contradiction-spaghetti junction. And all because 'it feelz like it' has to trump everything, no matter what, no matter how unparsimonious, paradoxical, contradictory, lacking in explanatory power, and contrary to counter-evidence from clinical science it is, according to your dogma. Not to mention unaccepted by almost every single modern expert from any sphere of human enquiry except woo.

 

[ruby sparks]

The other option, of course, the one you dogmatically refuse to even consider, is that brain experiences mind. You have no detailed argument against this (widely accepted) possibility other than a mere counter-declaration that it doesn't pertain.

It has several philosophical and scientific advantages nevertheless. We agree that nothing experiences or 'knows' the brain, so a lot of the recursive questions stop. Also, the brain is at least quite well understood, it has trillions and trillions of parts (compare that to 'what does a mind consist of?'), furthermore it has a hugely complicated, inter-connected architecture (unlike the mind?) that clearly enables it to process stuff, and has a vast number of sensors to potentially detect stuff with (unlike the mind). Also, it's alive. Its mechanisms can be studied, especially by reduction and correlation (including with properties of mind), and with at least some objectivity, even if certain questions are as yet unanswered. And demonstrably, its activity is not dependent on mind the way that mind is demonstrably dependent on brain activity. In other words, we can say 'no mind , but still brain activity' whereas we can't say 'no brain activity, but still mind'.

It is the better 'experiencer' candidate of the two for those and several other reasons. All you have, in the end, is 'it dusen't feelz like that' and 'Descartes and untermensche sez no'.

 

[untermensche]

Something that knows does not mean it knows the mind.

Repeating yourself after I have explained why it doesn't matter to my questions is not getting you anywhere and especially it's not answering those questions.

You have explained nothing.

You have imagined you have explained something.

I do not agree I am skipping over anything of importance.

Of course you don't. Sadly, the questions repeatedly appear in print and your responses to them repeatedly don't.

How many of your questions have I answered?