Soupie
Paranormal Adept
If you are Real Physicalist then yes, youre mind just is green (among other things).
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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 8
- Thread starter Gene Steinberg
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Soupie
Paranormal Adept
Right. Im not arguing against Strawson here. Strawson makes a lot of sense imho. He is essentially a neutral monist (as am I) and his DR is essentially (exactly) how I have always conceived of perception. (But I always assumed my conception of perception was IR, even though i could never conceive of a more direct form.)
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
I know, smcder. You are a dualist, even though profess not to be. Youve expressed an affinity for the idea that minds/POV's are fundamental.
Thus, when it comes to perception, you have the quadrupal distinction phenomenon going on.
You have:
(1) The fundamental pov
(2) Its content "green"
(3) Physiological brain state G
(4) External EM waves G
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
Whereas a SRP would just have:
(1) physiological brain state G/experience green
(2) External EM waves G
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
No, I'm not calling you a liar but if anyone in this thread has defended, and/or has an affinity for, dualism, it's you.
When you say your mind isn't green, then that "makes you" a dualist, at least when it comes to mind and mental content.
So you'll have to accuse me if I think of you as a dualist. I'm not sure how else to think of you. Certainly not as a monist.
When you say your mind isn't green, then that "makes you" a dualist, at least when it comes to mind and mental content.
So you'll have to accuse me if I think of you as a dualist. I'm not sure how else to think of you. Certainly not as a monist.
Ditto.
I think that to understand many of the arguments between 'direct realists' and 'indirect realists' we are going to have to explore the history of the linguistic turn in 20th century philosophy and its relation to representationalism in modern philosophy and science. I've found several papers I'll link that are helpful in this regard. Also, the Rorty's introduction to The Linguistic Turn in the amazon sample of that book is immensely helpful. I don't seem to be able to link directly to amazon pages (some computer glitch), so if the following link does not appear just go to the amazon page re the book for access to the sample.
https://www.amazon.com/Linguistic-Turn-Essays-Philosophical-Method/dp/0226725693/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1484424410&sr=1-1&keywords=rorty%2C+the+linguistic+turn
Where in all this do you locate your frequent claim over the last few years that "the mind is green"?
I take it that the second paragraph in the above post is a quotation from Strawson. Where can I find it in the paper or its notes?
?? I have never read/understood Steve as a 'dualist'. At the same time I have long sensed that your own favored approaches in consciousness studies have remained tethered to dualism. It would help, @Soupie, if you would try to clarify the basis on which you claim Steve to be a dualist. I also recall several places in this two-year-long thread where you expressed frustration over your inability to determine whether I was a monist or a dualist.
Further note: it seems that you and Steve have had an energetic discussion this afternoon, but the only traces of it come up in one another's statements carried with the links to posts to which you are responding. Have you both decided to delete some of your posts? The result is what the postmodernists refer to as 'slippage of the text', which leaves me with no texts to respond to in some cases.
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ETA to my paragraph above: I think that, while all three of us enjoy Strawson's conversational style, we are placed at a disadvantage by it in understanding all that he is saying in this paper because we have not read the specific philosophers that Strawson engages in his arguments. For the most part we only glimpse traces and shadows of their ideas in the footnotes. Are we all going to be willing to read the works of others that Strawson is responding to, or is there perhaps another way to understand the primary issues in his disagreement with Indirect Realism? The core issue is the ambiguity involved in varying philosophical understandings of what is and what can be understood concerning 'representation', an inescapable category in thought but not necessarily in experience, as Strawson shows. Can thought capture and express the nature of experience, which is the ground of perception even before consciousness becomes reflective? Can perception, no matter how we approach it, exhaust the actual depth and complexity of experience in and of the environing world? Why don't we explore the ways in which 'representation' is defined and understood by analytical, phenomenological, and pragmatist philosophers? We might well benefit by beginning with Rorty's introduction to the volume The Linguistic Turn, which I linked above. I've come across some additional papers that might also be helpful, including the SEP article entitled "Representational Theories of Consciousness," which begins with these two paragraphs:
"The idea of representation has been central in discussions of intentionality for many years. But only more recently has it begun playing a wider role in the philosophy of mind, particularly in theories of consciousness. Indeed, there are now multiple representational theories of consciousness, corresponding to different uses of the term “conscious,” each attempting to explain the corresponding phenomenon in terms of representation. More cautiously, each theory attempts to explain its target phenomenon in terms of intentionality, and assumes that intentionality is representation.
An intentional state represents an object, real or unreal (say, I’ll Have Another or Pegasus), and typically represents a whole state of affairs, one which may or may not actually obtain (say, that I’ll Have Another becomes America’s 12th Triple Crown winner in the Belmont Stakes in June, 2012). Like public, social cases of representation such as writing or mapmaking, intentional states such as beliefs have truth-value; they entail or imply other beliefs; they are (it seems) composed of concepts and depend for their truth on a match between their internal structures and the way the world is; and so it is natural to regard their aboutness as a matter of mental referring or designation. Sellars (1956, 1967) and Fodor (1975) argue that intentional states are states of a subject that have semantical properties, and the existent-or-nonexistent states of affairs that are their objects are just representational contents. . . . ."
Representational Theories of Consciousness (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
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Soupie
Paranormal Adept
The claim "the mind is green" is the claim that the sense of self is a property of a minds in the same sense as others qualities.
That is, the self is not something that exists independently of organisms and which perceives such things as "green."
Because if that's the case, we've got three ontologies to deal with: selves, experiences such as green, and physical objects.
One additional paper and a book clarifying the uses and mis-uses of the term/concept 'representation':
http://lnx.journalofpragmatism.eu/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Capps.pdf ... “Price’s case for global expressivism has two sides. The first is negative: like Rorty, Price claims that the arguments for representationalism are weak, riddled with unjustified assumptions, and generally unconvincing. In short, there are serious difficulties in getting a representational account off the ground, regardless of the area of discourse7. The second side is positive: Price argues that global expressivism can do a better job than either global representationalism or local expressivism at explaining our linguistic practices. In other words, he claims that global expressivism has the conceptual resources for us to discard representationalism and never look back.” (p. 129)
HILARY PUTNAM, REPRESENTATION AND REALITY
http://lnx.journalofpragmatism.eu/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Capps.pdf ... “Price’s case for global expressivism has two sides. The first is negative: like Rorty, Price claims that the arguments for representationalism are weak, riddled with unjustified assumptions, and generally unconvincing. In short, there are serious difficulties in getting a representational account off the ground, regardless of the area of discourse7. The second side is positive: Price argues that global expressivism can do a better job than either global representationalism or local expressivism at explaining our linguistic practices. In other words, he claims that global expressivism has the conceptual resources for us to discard representationalism and never look back.” (p. 129)
HILARY PUTNAM, REPRESENTATION AND REALITY
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I don't think so. These three topics of philosophical discourse -- selves, experiences, and physical objects -- are integrated in the phenomenological ontology expressed in MP's later works, concerning which I've linked a number of helpful papers in this part 8 of our thread, and in past parts of this thread as well. I do think that comprehending MP's phenomenological and ontological thought would give you what you have long sought -- an overcoming of the mind-body problem and indeed all dualistic thinking.
smcder
Paranormal Adept
I have to start very simply.
Strawson
Direct Realism
Our senses provide us with direct awareness of the world:
"Direct Realists deny that the perception of these physical objects
or events requires a prior awareness of some tertium quid (e.g., a reified appearance, sense-datum, sensum, idea, quality-instance, species) mediating between the mind and
external physical objects or events."
Pierre Le Morvan
Note too:
"If the reasoning of this paper is sound, the eight main arguments against Direct Realism fail to defeat it. Hence, insofar as Indirect Realism, Idealism, Phenomenalism, and even External-World Skepticism are motivated, whether implicitly or explicitly, by the presumed untenability of Direct Realism, the defeat of these putative defeaters undercuts an important motivation for each of these views. Worth noting as well is that contemporary resurgence of Direct Realism represents, in an important sense, a return to, and vindication of, tenets espoused by the scholastic Perceptionists centuries ago."
Is Conscious Realism an Idealist view?
Strawson
Direct Realism
Our senses provide us with direct awareness of the world:
- mental representations and the means of perception not withstanding
"Direct Realists deny that the perception of these physical objects
or events requires a prior awareness of some tertium quid (e.g., a reified appearance, sense-datum, sensum, idea, quality-instance, species) mediating between the mind and
external physical objects or events."
Pierre Le Morvan
Note too:
"If the reasoning of this paper is sound, the eight main arguments against Direct Realism fail to defeat it. Hence, insofar as Indirect Realism, Idealism, Phenomenalism, and even External-World Skepticism are motivated, whether implicitly or explicitly, by the presumed untenability of Direct Realism, the defeat of these putative defeaters undercuts an important motivation for each of these views. Worth noting as well is that contemporary resurgence of Direct Realism represents, in an important sense, a return to, and vindication of, tenets espoused by the scholastic Perceptionists centuries ago."
Is Conscious Realism an Idealist view?
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