Eliminating Qualia

[Subsymbolic]

Language. Wittgenstein sorted this out in the fifties. A private language is logically impossible. Ergo solipsism is a forteori logically impossible too. Even if that wasn't so, and it is, the fact is that this particular flourish of global scepticism always relies on starting with an epistemic claim and ending with an ontological one. Which is, technically speaking, naughty. I could go on.

Why take this to solipsism? I just meant that everything I know is done in my mind, uses my mind, is through my mind. I can infer or imagine what happens outside of my mind, but I can't eliminate my mind nor can I go outside of it.

Questioning the existence of your mind before everything else seems insane! You can't find your flashlight with your flashlight.

Fortunately brains are not like flashlights and, just possibly, our folk intuitions are terribly misleading. I’m not a dualist and so I’m free to avoid the user illusions and get down to the emergent processes and mechanisms of the brain. It’s that approach that has, in the last few decades, delivered more progress than in the previous rest of time. So sure you can can carry on doubting that you have a brain or the existence of an outside world, but that makes typing away on a forum look pretty irrational.

 

[untermensche]

language is a public phenomenon while one”s mental life is private.

There is no such thing as a public phenomena. And I know you will not give an argument to show there is.

There is personal subjective experience and nothing else.

Hearing a language is experiencing it. Reading words is experiencing representations created by the brain.

There is nothing you can talk about that is not some experience.

You remind me of the most deluded religious adherent.

You say zombie, zombie, zombie.

And think you have said something.

Asking for evidence is asking for something to experience.

It is admitting experience exists.

End of it.

You have nothing.

If you keep asking for something to experience you are not showing how experience is a fable.

 

[Subsymbolic]

Just more delusions.



All you have are your experiences.

You have nothing else to work with.

What do you think you have access to besides some experience?

You can't trust memory

Nobody can really fully trust their memories. Memories are faulty things.

or any cognitive functions

Absolute nonsense.

I trust the shovel because I can work with it.

I trust the cognitive functions of my mind because I can use them to see how lost you are.

You want evidence and have no clue what evidence is.

All evidence is something a human experiences and reports. There is no other kind of evidence.

If you disagree feel free to make your first argument about something.

How do you know what zombies will say?

We listen to you.

I thought as much.

Your zombie stupidity is only worth such a pitiful display.

Come back when you can explain why you want something to experience from me when you can just look outside your window.

And because you have an experience you know beyond doubt you are something capable of having an experience.

I am Diogenes.

If the people I deal with are not honest then I cannot help them.

So, now we discover that you don’t even know what the word “cognitive” means. As in cognitive, conative and affect. Just look it up. How the hell do you maintain the delusion that you are remotely competent in the face of utter ignorance of all but a few videos? It’s just embarrassing.

 

[untermensche]

Fortunately brains are not like flashlights and, just possibly, our folk intuitions are terribly misleading. I’m not a dualist and so I’m free to avoid the user illusions and get down to the emergent processes and mechanisms of the brain. It’s that approach that has, in the last few decades, delivered more progress than in the previous rest of time. So sure you can can carry on doubting that you have a brain or the existence of an outside world, but that makes typing away on a forum look pretty irrational.

What is a dualist?

What is a body?

Not what does a quark behave like. What is it?

What is a mind?

There is no way to know if you talk of one thing or two if you have no idea what either thing you talk about is.

- - - Updated - - -

So, now we discover that you don’t even know what the word “cognitive” means. As in cognitive, conative and affect. Just look it up. How the hell do you maintain the delusion that you are remotely competent in the face of utter ignorance of all but a few videos? It’s just embarrassing.

Absolute drivel.

You have not one idea.

You are asking over and over for evidence.

What is evidence?

 

[untermensche]

Some dislike the mind because they have tuned themselves into parrots without ideas.

 

[ryan]

Language. Wittgenstein sorted this out in the fifties. A private language is logically impossible. Ergo solipsism is a forteori logically impossible too. Even if that wasn't so, and it is, the fact is that this particular flourish of global scepticism always relies on starting with an epistemic claim and ending with an ontological one. Which is, technically speaking, naughty. I could go on.

Why take this to solipsism? I just meant that everything I know is done in my mind, uses my mind, is through my mind. I can infer or imagine what happens outside of my mind, but I can't eliminate my mind nor can I go outside of it.

Questioning the existence of your mind before everything else seems insane! You can't find your flashlight with your flashlight.

Fortunately brains are not like flashlights and, just possibly, our folk intuitions are terribly misleading. I’m not a dualist and so I’m free to avoid the user illusions and get down to the emergent processes and mechanisms of the brain. It’s that approach that has, in the last few decades, delivered more progress than in the previous rest of time. So sure you can can carry on doubting that you have a brain or the existence of an outside world, but that makes typing away on a forum look pretty irrational.

Again, why box my argument into solipsism? Everything I know is done in my mind, uses my mind, and is through my mind. Everything else is inferred.

 

[untermensche]

Everything I know is done in my mind, uses my mind, and is through my mind. Everything else is inferred.

You know what your mind experiences. And what your mind can do.

You know nothing else.

That is all any human knows.

 

[Subsymbolic]

Fortunately brains are not like flashlights and, just possibly, our folk intuitions are terribly misleading. I’m not a dualist and so I’m free to avoid the user illusions and get down to the emergent processes and mechanisms of the brain. It’s that approach that has, in the last few decades, delivered more progress than in the previous rest of time. So sure you can can carry on doubting that you have a brain or the existence of an outside world, but that makes typing away on a forum look pretty irrational.

Again, why box my argument into solipsism? Everything I know is done in my mind, uses my mind, and is through my mind. Everything else is inferred.

Only if you start with an assumption of substance dualism. You might want to consider what you mean by knowledge and if that’s really the word you want to use.

 

[ryan]

Everything I know is done in my mind, uses my mind, and is through my mind. Everything else is inferred.

You know what your mind experiences. And what your mind can do.

You know nothing else.

That is all any human knows.

Yes, I agree. That's what I am trying to say.

 

[ryan]

Fortunately brains are not like flashlights and, just possibly, our folk intuitions are terribly misleading. I’m not a dualist and so I’m free to avoid the user illusions and get down to the emergent processes and mechanisms of the brain. It’s that approach that has, in the last few decades, delivered more progress than in the previous rest of time. So sure you can can carry on doubting that you have a brain or the existence of an outside world, but that makes typing away on a forum look pretty irrational.

Again, why box my argument into solipsism? Everything I know is done in my mind, uses my mind, and is through my mind. Everything else is inferred.

Only if you start with an assumption of substance dualism.

Why not property dualism? I could also be an idealist, but I lean towards dualism.

You might want to consider what you mean by knowledge and if that’s really the word you want to use.

Then perceived knowledge? Or what do you mean?

 

[ruby sparks]

You know what your mind experiences.

So how do you know that then, if you can't even experience your own mind in the first place?

 

[ruby sparks]

Everything I know is done in my mind, uses my mind, and is through my mind. Everything else is inferred.

You know what your mind experiences. And what your mind can do.

You know nothing else.

That is all any human knows.

Yes, I agree. That's what I am trying to say.

I hope not, because imo it's ropey. Especially the 'you know what your mind can do' part.

Every normal, developed human (human system to be precise) knows it experiences mind, at least some of the time. Mind is probably created by brain activity. I'm not sure how we can go beyond that. In that sense, mind is real, or to be precise again, the experience is real. What it is and what it does and can do are riddled with potential illusions. Autonomy for the mind, for example, is particularly unlikely, because it's dependent, not independent.

 

[untermensche]

You know what your mind experiences.

So how do you know that then, if you can't even experience your own mind in the first place?

If you are experiencing "red" how is it possible to not know you are experiencing "red"?

"Experience" entails knowing you are having it.

If you don't know it is there you are not experiencing it.

 

[untermensche]

Yes, I agree. That's what I am trying to say.

I hope not, because imo it's ropey. Especially the 'you know what your mind can do' part.

Every normal, developed human (human system to be precise) knows it experiences mind, at least some of the time. I'm not sure how we can go beyond that. In that sense, mind is real, or to be precise again, the experience is real. What it is and what it does and can do are riddled with potential illusions.

All your mind can do is experience something that is not itself.

It is that which experiences.

What color is your mind since you think you can experience it? What does it look like?

 

[ruby sparks]

You know what your mind experiences.

So how do you know that then, if you can't even experience your own mind in the first place?

If you are experiencing "red" how is it possible to not know you are experiencing "red"?

"Experience" entails knowing you are having it.

If you don't know it is there you are not experiencing it.

I think you're missing my point. I'm not denying that there is experience. But earlier you said mind could not be experienced. So, specifically, how then do 'you' (whatever that 'thing' is meant to be) know anything about it, or even know you have a mind at all? This is basic epistemology.

 

[untermensche]

If you are experiencing "red" how is it possible to not know you are experiencing "red"?

"Experience" entails knowing you are having it.

If you don't know it is there you are not experiencing it.

I think you're missing my point. I'm not denying that there is experience. But earlier you said mind could not be experienced. So, specifically, how then do 'you' (whatever that 'thing' is meant to be) know anything about it?

"Mind" is just a very nonspecific word that means "that which experiences" and "that which moves the arm".

It is not something that can be observed.

It is that which observes.

What color is your mind?

 

[ruby sparks]

What color is your mind since you think you can experience it? What does it look like?

I wouldn't say it has a colour. I'd say that it has thoughts though. Wouldn't you? Or do you not know that?

 

[untermensche]

What color is your mind since you think you can experience it? What does it look like?

I wouldn't say it has a colour. I'd say that it has thoughts though. Wouldn't you?

It experiences thoughts and experiences being able to move thoughts around like it moves the arm.

But a lot of thoughts just come to the mind randomly.

There must be subconscious processes that continually have products that bubble up into awareness.

Again more evidence the brain and the mind are distinct.

I see, so whjen you said you know what your mind experiences you didn't actually mean that or hadn't thought it through.

To experience is to know you are experiencing.

It is how a mind experiences. When it does so it knows it is experiencing.

Do you not know you are experiencing something when you experience it?

That is what the phenomena of experience is all about. Knowing it is happening.

Everybody does. It could hardly be simpler and more obvious.

What shape is your mind?

What does it sound like?

What does it smell like?

What is its texture?

 

[ruby sparks]

It experiences thoughts and experiences being able to move thoughts around like it moves the arm.

But a lot of thoughts just come to the mind randomly.

There must be subconscious processes that continually have products that bubble up into awareness.

Again more evidence the brain and the mind are distinct.

I see, so whjen you said you know what your mind experiences you didn't actually mean that or hadn't thought it through.

To experience is to know you are experiencing.

It is how a mind experiences. When it does so it knows it is experiencing.

Do you not know you are experiencing something when you experience it?

That is what the phenomena of experience is all about. Knowing it is happening.

Sorry, but if you just want to avoid the question, I'm not interested in detours. The question was not whether it has thoughts, but specifically how do you know this is the case if you do not experience your mind at all.

 

[untermensche]

Do you not know you are experiencing something when you experience it?

Yes, because I experience it. Unlike you, apparently.

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

The "self" is a collection of memories and opinions and associations that form over a lifetime into an amorphous somewhat stable experience.

You are not just a thing that experiences.

You are a thing that experienced specific things.