/lit/ - Literature

>>17525266
Yes, materialism

>>17525266
Is Sam Harris proof that God has a sense of humor?

>>17525266
>Monism fails to explain the combination problem.
Only if you're adhering to Russell's autism. It's literally not a thing outside of that.

>>17525266
Aristotelian hylomorphism

>>17525276
Explain please?

>>17525266
Metaphysical realism.

>>17525289
That's just a formulation of dualism.

>>17525289
This, but it is rare that I see it mentioned.

741. The stronger you grow, the less real the world seems to be. Baudrillard suffered from this phenomenon as if from a disease; he was sufficiently strong to perceive the world losing its reality before his awesome analytical power, but not strong enough (which is to say not intelligent enough, since at this level of strength, power and intelligence are the same thing, as the rest of the body's contribution to the former, in the form of physical strength, becomes negligible) to analyze precisely this reality loss and understand it, and therefore see it as natural and necessary and good.
But let's analyze it now. Why does this phenomenon occur? Because reality=power, just as fantasy=weakness (the people who live most in their imagination are the insane). Therefore, the stronger you grow, the weaker the rest of the universe becomes (otherwise you wouldn't have grown stronger), and therefore the less real it seems to be because it is less real=less powerful compared to you, now that you've become stronger. The child takes the reality of the world as a given, because children are extremely weak, but for the genius life seems as "a dream within a dream", in Poe's words. As the world becomes ever weaker, in comparison to the genius's growing intelligence, it becomes so flimsy and ethereal as to be almost imaginary, at which point by a flick of a switch in his brain the genius can set off such a tremendous chain reaction of events as to reshape the world into whatever he wants by nothing more than... "mere" will.

http://orgyofthewill.net/

>>17525450
this sounds like fantasy

>>17525266
>Materialism fails to explain qualia
No it doesn't. That's just a mind of the gaps cope.

>>17525726
Materialism fails the hardest out of all of them

>>17525726
>It's not that I can't explain it, it's that I can't explain it yet
Cope

>>17525751
Yeah yeah we know aunt sally. Your healing crystals cured your depression.

>>17525266
First of all I don't know of any alternative way to for your brain to receive visual information, second of all if by qualia you mean there shouldn't be a you inside to receive this information, there isn't, it's just self-identification that evolved in tribal primates who had need of separating themselves from others to know where they stand.

>>17525834
That literally makes no sense at all. What do you mean by "just self-identification" you're just re-naming qualia and explaining it in evolutionary terms. You think you overcame the question of qualia, but instead you just revealed how retarded you are at understanding the problems being discussed.

>>17525834
Let it go man he just wants to insert religion somewhere

>>17525266
>Dualism fails to explain mental causation.
Consciousness is non-volitional, so it actually has no causal relational with the actions of the body and the mind, which are autonomous as they are until the control of the mind's volition (which is itself not conscious and which inheres in the physical brain) and so there is no need to explain mental causation. Willpower or volition is something observed in the mind by consciousness as something different from that consciousness, but consciousness doesn't control them.

>>17525908
I'm not religious.

>>17525930
This leads to more problems involve overdetermination etc

>>17525885
seethe more copecuck, qualia is literally the way your brain is processing incoming information, strip it away and you're left not with a philosophical zombie but a dead man

>>17525942
>This leads to more problems involve overdetermination etc
Why is that?

>>17525266
bros how the fuck is the consciousness possible? Is this some sort of elaborate joke? how can the brain give rise to conscious experience, if its just made of chemicals and electricity? even if the mind is not material, how the fuck is it caused by material conditions? What the fuck is going on I'm going fucking insane, god please give me the answers and stop playing jokes on us

>>17526075
there's nothing spooky about consciousness once you realize that a conscious state of phenomenal awareness is just a state of having access to the actual phenomenal properties of material objects proper. Read McDowell Mind & World and stop frogposting like a retard.

>the seething materialist bugmen itt
must suck to be a literal zombie
don't bother (you)ing me

>>17525943
Proof?

>>17526139
Does my Roomba have consciousness?

>>17525773
your antidepressants cured your depression

>>17526167
Proof of what? That there's no such condition as loss of qualia? It's yet another unfalsifiable refuge for anti-materialists.

>>17526139
panpsychism is dumb

>>17526243
I didn't say anything about pansychism retard
>>17526190
no because your Roomba has no discursive capacities and therefore no faculties of spontaneity.

>>17525266
>Monism fails to explain the combination problem.
Somebody needs to read the Eleatics!

>>17525274
FPBP
/thread

>>17525274
Very based

>>17525274
Fpbp

>>17526162
I have been on /lit/ since the beginning and everyone keeps insulting materialist without ever saying why
>bugmen
You're about 5 years later with that insult, incel

>>17526162
yeah whatever Danny phantom

>>17525266
>Phenomenology fails to explain anything.

Kek you just have too low an IQ to read and understand Husserl.

>>17526714
Probably because a lot of them are retarded and annoying like sam harris. obviously if we accept that the world is material then consciousness is material but being a snobby autistic anti-religious pretentious cunt that believes they are intelligent is going to rub people the wrong way.

>>17526714
>everyone keeps insulting materialist without ever saying why
because they are oblivious about the sublime

>>17525396
Maybe, but it has none of the dualist problems

>>17527533
I don't think 99% of people who criticise materialism have actually bothered to read any of the arguments. The fact that they call it materialism and not physicalism says it all.

>>17527498
>Husserl
refuted

>X doesn’t explain something
>therefore magic will

>>17527587
>X explains something
>therefore magic can't

>>17525266
>qualia

>>17525266
You forgot idealism

>>17527498
How does phenomenology solve the hard problem?

>>17527599
>X explains something
>nahh brutha imma stick with magik nn shiieeet

>>17527627
Idealism suffers from the other problem of not explaining the physical ("doesn't exist" is not convincing)

>>17526162
>>17527607

>>17525266
>>17525274
>>17526497
>>17526638
>>17526528

>>17527673
Dual aspect theory and neutral monism are essentially the same.

>>17527660
>the technocrat paradigm is better because bro

>>17527645

By dissolving the biases given to either interiority or externality during the phenomenological reduction.

>>17527845
Sounds like monism, buddy

>>17528266

Would be if it was about making metaphysics, buddy, point is, it isn't.

>>17525266
The term "qualia" makes me cringe every time I read it. Anglophone philosophy is so damn cringe.

>>17525274
It fails to explain qualia. Are you an eliminativist?

>>17525726
Read Chalmers and Kripke
If you want I can give you the gist of modal arguments against monist physicalism

>>17525266
Mental causation is a non problem, it's literally only a problem for people with materialist conceptions of causation.

>>17528449
This. Stop using this reddit term.

>>17528449
It means the same thing as consciousness as far as I can tell

>>17528449
Does the term "quantum" make you cringe? Idiot. Quanta and qualia (singular: quantum and quale) are just technical terms.
>>17528543
No not quite. It specifically refers to phenomenal qualities, stuff akin to the "secondary qualities" of Locke's time that are only mentally grasped and not in the material world, stuff like mental color.

>>17528655
>that are only mentally grasped and not in the material world, stuff like mental color.
Do you not get that literally everything is 'only mentally grasped' lol

>>17528449
Qualia (s. Quale) is a latin term

>>17528666
Yeah, no shit. The problem is that physicalist monism csnnot account for qualia. Eliminativists like Dennett and Churchland opted out of the whole consciousness rwcket, and now claim that we have no phenomenical, qualitative consciousness, as in, we don't really see anything, hear anything, etc., we just have the illusion of seeing/hearing, and this illusion does NOT constitute phenomenical consciousness.
Basically, they're desperate.

>>17528694
are you agreeing with me then that consciousness and qualia mean the same thing?

>>17528655
no it doesn't, qualia is the quanta of quality, it is the irreducible qualitative component of experience. They're not "mentally grasped", they are the palette that paints the totality of human experience. If anything, some underlying "matter" is "mentally grasped", but then again you can have science work exactly the same without this abstraction called matter, and I'd say for the sake of parsimony you should do away with it. Also, if anything, the quanta would be "mentally grasped" as all numbers and assorted symbols are purely semantic, ultimately boiling down to qualia present in the inner life of consciousness. Read Bernardo Kastrup's thoughts on the subject

>>17528666
Consciousness is the grasping, phenomenal qualities are what's grasped only on one interpretation. Many people feel consciousness grasps what's out beyond us, the intentional objects like the physical tables and chairs. These people often are the same ones who think we can eliminate phenomenality. Also, intentionality itself is a separate axis of mentality than phenomenality. Intentionality is oriented at things, and like I said, consciousness is usually conceived in terms of the grasping.
>>17528708
Don't pull this kind of shit. Even if one agrees that the phenomenal is real, talk of consciousness can be orthogonal. And that's precisely why many people for years (til the 80s and 90s) talked so much about beliefs and desires and such intentional attitudes while not talking about qualia at all til Jackson and Chalmers.

>>17528708
I wouldn't agree with that (at best qualia are contents of consciousness - I think this distinction is to be made), I just wanted to point out to other anons that modern physicalist are trying to drop qualia out of their theories because they cannot account for them anymore

>>17528746
See >>17528776, I know that people take the view that what is grasped is not the phenomenal. I specified Locke's time for a reason anon.

>>17528787
>>17528776
I guess, but then what we arrive at is basically 'consciousness is what experiences qualia' and 'qualia are what consciousness experiences' right? The C here is just a little bonhomme who has no content himself but the qualia?

>>17525266
But representationalism explains qualia, so materialism succeeds.

>>17528839
Pretty much, that's my current view (feel free not to take it seriously). Consciousness is different from qualia, insofar as qualianare just its contents; and without qualia, consciousness would not be, insofar as it would be contentless (in other terms, without qualia we would have something that is unconscious).

>>17526190
yeah

>>17525274
Based

>>17528992
and why is it that you assume that Consciousness must be initially a Nothing that is "filled" positively with qualia, and not an Everything in its original state, that is divided infinitesimally into points of perspective (and therefore has qualia subtracted from it)?
I'd say it makes much more sense that individuals (who are after all points of perspective) are as Kastrup says, points where an All-Consciousness assumes form, as his proverbial whirlpool

>>17528537
>redditor complain about reddit
It's used in literally any modern book on philosophy.

>>17528708
is a leaf and a tree the same thing anon?

>>17528694
>Eliminativists like Dennett and Churchland opted out of the whole consciousness rwcket, and now claim that we have no phenomenical, qualitative consciousness, as in, we don't really see anything, hear anything, etc., we just have the illusion of seeing/hearing, and this illusion does NOT constitute phenomenical consciousness.
I don't think you understand eliminativism. Your description is a basic misconception

>>17528841
It would help if you explained why

>>17529121
Not the person you are responding to, but I would contend that eliminativism is rather incoherent in the first place. Elimnativists often claim that we are conscious "in a way" or that we "sort of" have phenomenal experiences. Rather than talking about properties that they feel are emergent, eliminativists should try to attack qualia directly. Dennet does this sometimes (about the experience of pain and dreams for example), and in my opinion the arguments are usually unconvincing. However, this does really help clarify what the differences between the two systems are.

>>17527661
Your “problem” assumes the existence of the physical, which idealism denies, and thus begs the question.

>>17525266
>There are no good theories to explain the mind, are there?
Yeah, will to power.

>>17527498
want to play cs?

>>17525266
Idealism?

Check out the work of Bernardo Kastrup

>>17529121
Read Dennett's "Illusionism as the Obvious Default Theory of Consciousness", which has been endorsed by other famous eliminativists like Churchland and Frankish. In it he makes explicitly this point: there is no phenomenicsl consciousness, and Searle's objection for which "appearance constitutes reality when it comes to consciousness" is completely unfounded and unjustified.
Don't worry, it's a common misreading.
>>17529071
I'm not sure it is a nothing, it could also be an activity, and a lack of qualia could relate to the absence of said activity. I meant that post in a very general sense.
I'm open to idealists conceptions, but so fsr I have found none that convinced me.

>>17525274
>Yes, materialism

>>17527541
Physicalism is just materialist cope.
>well uh I guess somethings arent material but they are still physical we just dont understand it yet!

>>17525266
What is "the combination problem"?

>>17527673
Final galaxy brain should just be reductive materialism again

>>17526465
A sufficiently advanced AI could impose concepts on the world as it processes sensory input. Even a Roomba has rudimentary discursive capacities, as in detecting edges.

It seems like these capacities don't imply the presence of phenomenal consciousness. Plus there are conscious states where these capacities aren't present.

Excuse my limited understanding, but is even talking about qualia reasonable? If it's essentially a "private" experience, how can it even be talked about sufficiently?

>>17530925
Not reductive materialism, pragmatism - because fuck metaphysics. When it comes to metaphysics, nobody really knows what they're talking about, and in the end it doesn't really matter.

>>17530865

Panpsychism solves all problems of consciousness.

>>17525266
Why do jews all have ears that flay out like that

>>17525274
Based
>>17530865
Cope

>>17525266
Panpsychism

>>17525274
fpbp

>>17530903
Sounds pretty honest to me. We don't pretend to be omniscient, but the fact remains that everything we observe is physical and we don't even know what it would mean for something to be 'non-physical'. Non-physicality is never defined or described, it's just left as this vague negative concept and mysticists seem fine with that (not surpising, I suppose).

>>17530991
The problems with the notion of 'qualia' is
that a) it assumes a universal component to any given experience, when our observations could also be explained by close similarity and b) it assumes a gap between experience and biological processes. A less assumptive explanation is that we are not tuning into universal 'essences', but rather that 'qualia' are just similar instances of quanta (trope theory).

>>17525266
Combination problem is obviated by language

Neutral monism is the best

I think qualia is essentially nothing and is why you can't describe it using language. I think what it is is the direct parsing of information into your brain, I don't think there is anything in your brain which creates the color green for example, it's just that green is not red and it's not blue and it's not yellow and it's not any of these other wavelengths but it exists in the hierarchy of wavelengths of light at this exact placement so in the spectrum of wavelengths it has to look like this in comparison to other wavelengths. It's as if all the information in your brain is holding all the other information at gunpoint and demanding they show themselves as different than each other, "well if you're red and you're higher up in the spectrum than me then I must look like this"

It's basically forced into submission, by comparison, by contrast, by all its relations to the other information, to be "green". I think, and I extend this logic to existence itself a bowl is only a bowl because it's not a "not bowl"(everything else that isn't a bowl) I think all is emptiness. I could easily be wrong but that's my guess, and I believe it because language is basically the same thing, when you learn another language what used to be nonsense sounds begins to be this whole universe full of its own character but all that changed is how you relate the information, words begin to "feel" like something.

>>17530925
Infinite universal brain - pre-established harmony, unironically

>>17530991
By assuming that whoever we talk to has qualia too (in other terms, by assuming that our conversants have too an intuitive access to qualia; and if it doesn't have such an access (and we cannot know if it does have it until we solve the problem of other minds), then it won't be capable of understanding in the first place, so the point is moot.
>>17531615
>>17531692
How would you solve the combination problem? To me it seems that it just transpose the problem in another context.

>>17531882
>Sounds pretty honest to me. We don't pretend to be omniscient, but the fact remains that everything we observe is physical and we don't even know what it would mean for something to be 'non-physical'. Non-physicality is never defined or described, it's just left as this vague negative concept and mysticists seem fine with that (not surpising, I suppose).
The hard problem is grounded at such a basic level that it avoids all the pitfall of potential ignorance. It basically proves that no amount of observation from the third-person point of view can ever confirm wether a body is conscious.
So, even if non-physicality is left vague (is it?), this would still be irrelevant, since we are still sure of a fact that cannot be accounted for by physicalist theories. To use Chalmers' expression, consciousness is to be explained, not explained away.

Could you expand on your second paragraph?
>>17532185
Sounds like Wittgenstein, although he would have said that qualia are not something, but they're not a nothing either.

>>17532293
>are not something, but they're not a nothing either

I agree with this, it's why I use the term "emptiness" like buddha rather than "nothingness".

>>17525276
>You should know implicitly what I'm talking about
/lit/ should be better than this

>>17525771
The question itself is retarded. The answer is already known and you're just asking for more to justify your own answer and the question you pose is simply to presume there is more to consciousness than there is.

>if you can't make 2+2 = 9 then 2+2 doesn't equal 4
>why
>because I want 2+2 to equal 9 so until you can make it equal 9 I wont accept that it equals 4
This is how people sound when they reject the materialism view.

>>17532926
To put it differently the argument that the anti-materialism people come up with is just an illustration of a lack of understanding of how conscious experience can manifest out of billions of moving objects.
Instead, they invent conjectured axioms upon which to mount their metaphysical system. This gives them the illusion of a deeper understanding of the phenomenon but it's effectively, functionally useless at understanding how the brain works. They can't do anything with their answers.
The materialism view however smacks you in the face when you take a psychedelic or any mind altering chemical. It becomes strikingly apparent that a few objects manipulating the "ordered" pattern of the billions of neurons that make up your sober conscious experience can make you experience completely different things.
It also becomes apparent that materialism is the answer when we do tests using brain/machine interfaces. There's no need for metaphysics or anything that sways from materialism when trying to understand consciousness. Assuming there's more to it is just a massive cope because the answer is boring/scary to some.

>>17525266
>Dualism fails to explain mental causation.
That's substance dualism

>>17532957
The anti-materialist argument is this:
1.The mind seems to exist
2.There are no good reductionist accounts of the mind
3.The mind is ontologically primitive

>>17527667
I'm a brainlet what does this mean

>>17533078
dunno he lost me when he started talking about meteors or some shit

>>17532957
Link me to the person who has that understanding rather than a promise that we will have it

>>17533024
2 is more like "No possible third personal physicalist theory can account for the first-personal point of view" (and this point is to be qualified with a modal argoment, like the ones of Kripke or Chalmers).

>>17525274
Spastic

tell me how non-reductive materialism isn't just dualism? Anyways the mind-body problem = Dualism

>>17533161
non-reductive physicalism* I hate these fucking terms

>>17533078
Ignore it, it's a very stupid paper which uses improperly technical terms. The author clearly does not know what a philosophical zombie is.

>>17532957
This is just an uncharitable reading of dualism, honestly. I don't think that (putside of religious colleges) there is any relevant amount of dualists willing to deny that changes in brain states will not lead to changes in mind states. That's just a strawman, and pretty much every dualist will accept that the example you've mentioned can be dealt with as an easy problem of consciousness. Chances are that you are running on some radical misunderstanding of what the hard problem is about.

I don't like materialists in general because they tend to go full retard by assuming we've discovered most of what there is to know about reality and that therefore all of reality should conform to our current established models
I prefer monism/nondualism

>>17533185
Physicalists are monists...

>>17533211
I just think it's disingenuous to say "it's all physical phenomena" since you have really no way to be certain physicality is not just part of a larger principle or "substance"

>>17533219
Oh yeah, they would totally deny that. Anyway what do you have in mind? Spinoza? Schelling? Davidson?

>>17531432
How does materialism explain qualia?

>>17533229
Nobody in particular, I'm a retard with no actual background in philosophy. I'm basically just talking out of my ass but I don't think my intuition is wrong
If you have any recommendations I'd appreciate it actually, since this idea of "there is no way to know if the physical isn't an aspect of a larger unknown principle" interests me but I haven't fleshed it out

>>17531882
>Sounds pretty honest to me. We don't pretend to be omniscient, but the fact remains that everything we observe is physical and we don't even know what it would mean for something to be 'non-physical'. Non-physicality is never defined or described, it's just left as this vague negative concept and mysticists seem fine with that (not surpising, I suppose).
lol what a cope, as soon as psy phenomena are widely accepted as real we'll see physicalism transmute itself into "naturalism" (everything is natural bro, even the paranormal bro, there is no supernatural bro) or "realism" (both natural and supernatural are real bro)

>>17533265
based parapsychology anon

>>17533248
The 3 ones I've mentioned are the only authors I know who expressed similar theories, but they're all pretty hard to read with someone with no background in philosophy. A textbook on ontology or phil of mind (just google these courses as they are offered by ivy leagues unis, check their syllabi and read what they're reading) would be much more helpful for a beginner

>>17533334
Thanks

>>17525751
Materialism is nonsense and we see the horrific results of this worldview in the decadence of the modern world.

>>17533716
Plus inability to explain weird stuff like paranormal experiences, reports, cults, religion, etc.


UFOs disclosures and the list goes on

>>17525943
So close but, as we always knew, the brainlets can't see what the adults are talking about. Just because qualia and the physical brain are entangled does not in any refute the hard problem of consciousness, because even you can't describe what qualia is, you just say it's the brain processing information but why then are some thoughts conscious? Why are we conscious? You don't know & haven't even thought to ask because you are ensnared in your own retarded mind trap

Situate yourself comfortably in front of a mirror. Carefully remove the cap your skull. Some assistance may be required. Maintain visual attention on your brain. Proceed with inserting various objects. Report results.

>>17525274
Fuck you you stupid retard

>>17533716
>>17533777
Schizo

>>17534045
Why does materialism bother you so much bro/#

>>17525266
BASED

>>17534024
>it's another "imbecile conflates the easy problems of consciousness with the hard problem of consciousness" episode
every time

>>17534045
Dilate nigger

>>17534489
Is "why is there something rather than nothing?" the 'hard problem' of physics?

>>17533024
1. the mind obvious exist.
2. soup of atoms
3. what you SEEM to be talking about, there is no reductionist account for the existence and that existence is "ontological primitive"

>>17534690
This is bait, right? No one is actually this much of a brainlet.

>>17533982
>wooah man look at my hands how is this possible
That's as superficial as you can get, your problem is thinking others, materialists included, haven't thought about these same things, and assuming that consciousness is some unnecessary quality on top of experience, when they're one and the same thing. Do you think animals don't have visual information displayed in the same way we do? They just lack a developed self-identity and metacognition to think about the fact that they are receiving this information.

>>17527547

Who the fuck is this supposed to be?

>>17532248
Based spinozist

>>17525274
>we are all robots
Base npc

>>17530925
Retard

>>17531651
For the purpose of heat dissipation caused by excessive neural activity.

>>17525266
Every faggot who need explanation deserve a rope. Why the fuck we delude ourselves with these abstractions? We should rather analyse the effects of consciousness on to human animal and I agree with Zapffe.

>Whatever happened? A breach in the very unity of life, a biological paradox, an abomination, an absurdity, an exaggeration of disastrous nature. Life had overshot its target, blowing itself apart. A species had been armed too heavily – by spirit made almighty without, but equally a menace to its own well-being. Its weapon was like a sword without hilt or plate, a two-edged blade cleaving everything; but he who is to wield it must grasp the blade and turn the one edge toward himself.

>Despite his new eyes, man was still rooted in matter, his soul spun into it and subordinated to its blind laws. And yet he could see matter as a stranger, compare himself to all phenomena, see through and locate his vital processes. He comes to nature as an unbidden guest, in vain extending his arms to beg conciliation with his maker: Nature answers no more, it performed a miracle with man, but later did not know him. He has lost his right of residence in the universe, has eaten from the Tree of Knowledge and been expelled from Paradise. He is mighty in the near world, but curses his might as purchased with his harmony of soul, his innocence, his inner peace in life’s embrace.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/45/The_Last_Messiah

>>17535339
>>17535339
the fuck are you even trying to say

>>17525274

>>17533161
>>17533167
most non-reductive physicalists in the phil of mind are property dualists. so they wanna say that there's only one kind of stuff - physical stuff - but physical stuff can possess non-physical properties. runs into the same problem (mental causation) but in a different way. instead of the problem of how non-physical stuff can causally interact with a causally-closed physical system. they have the problem of how positing mental properties doesn't just overdetermine mental phenomena (because if the physical processes are sufficient to explain the phenomena, the "mental" properties seem to just be free-riding, which is not how we usually talk about mental properties).

>>17535803
exactly. any sort of dualism inherently suffers from mental causation.

however, mental causation is easier to deal with than qualia (intentionality isn't a problem).

>>17525266
IIT