Analytic Idealism

[bilby]

he notes that while physicalists reject dualism, they reintroduce it through the back door by positing a distinction between the physical and the mental. Of course, they say there is no such real distinction, but at the same time they offer no solution to the hard problem except eliminativism.

I reject dualism (because it's demonstrably false); But I don't posit a distinction between the physical and the mental.

The vast majority of mental activity is subconscious, so the "hard problem" doesn't even arise; It's the "hard problem of consciousness", not the "hard problem of thought".

And having noted that thought is not subject to the hard problem, I see that the hard problem vanishes - thinking is a purely physical process that occurs in brains, and consciousness is just recursion in thinking - when a brain starts thinking about thinking, and about the thoughts it is thinking about, it is said to be "conscious".

That may be no less hard to grasp; But it's no longer a problem.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

The main thing I don't get is what is insufficient about the explanation that there is an external reality not created by the mind?

 

[pood]

he notes that while physicalists reject dualism, they reintroduce it through the back door by positing a distinction between the physical and the mental. Of course, they say there is no such real distinction, but at the same time they offer no solution to the hard problem except eliminativism.

I reject dualism (because it's demonstrably false); But I don't posit a distinction between the physical and the mental.

The vast majority of mental activity is subconscious, so the "hard problem" doesn't even arise; It's the "hard problem of consciousness", not the "hard problem of thought".

And having noted that thought is not subject to the hard problem, I see that the hard problem vanishes - thinking is a purely physical process that occurs in brains, and consciousness is just recursion in thinking - when a brain starts thinking about thinking, and about the thoughts it is thinking about, it is said to be "conscious".

That may be no less hard to grasp; But it's no longer a problem.

The hard problem is about qualia.

I’d further add that the linked paper is valuable because it specifically focuses on rebuttals of critiques of idealism. He calls them refutations, but I will stick with “rebuttals.” If for no other reason, the paper is valuable for those physicalists who might seek to rebut rebuttals of their critiques of idealism.

 

[pood]

The main thing I don't get is what is insufficient about the explanation that there is an external reality not created by the mind?

He addresses this in the paper and other works.

 

[bilby]

The hard problem is about qualia.

Qualia are just the detailed subunits of consciousness. The hard problem is about all qualia, not just some, or one; And the phrase "all qualia" is synonymous with "consciousness". Thinking that does not involve qualia is "subconscious", and therefore not subject to the hard problem.

 

[Elixir]

Pockets of low entropy manifest an apparently universal tendency toward self-organization.

Low entropy is self-organization by definition.

My point is that is a regional thing, descriptive of local conditions rather than a universal, evenly distributed, ubiquitous characteristic of the universe, which the tendency may well be.
My understanding may be totally flawed - I’m just an undereducated layperson trying to wrap my head around the nature of the universe without resorting to superstition.

 

[Jarhyn]

Of course this will sound like standard woo to the materialist

Not to me.

It sounds like pointless, drug induced woo to me.

Of course, one might, in certain philosophical circles, consider the use of psychadelics to be 'standard'; But I would like to see a great deal more evidence that a "universal consciousness" is an actual thing than is found in some drugged up navel gazer saying "Wow, man, it's all just one universal consciousness!"

That taking certain drugs makes people feel as though they have an insight of this nature is old hat; It might help to provide an insight into why some people have irrational beliefs about gods, universal connectedness, and other woo, even in the absence of drugs - but even that stretch requires a lot more research before being taken too seriously.

Remind me again why we should care about anyone's solipsistic meanderings, particularly if those are reinforced by a drug-induced hallucination about an unevidenced feeling of interrelationship between everything.

Hi ow did you like MY pointless drug-induced woo? You know, I worked very hard on that woo and used a lot of drug to induce it!

 

[Jarhyn]

Admittedly, if you're willing to admit it is rather drug induced and entirely woo, it's really fun to spout it off. I'm just not sure what kind of value it has to make it about a story like that.

Really, we don't know what triggered the epoch before our universe's rules seemed to come about, but it seems for all intents and purposes to be solid, now, with rules around 4d vector spaces and laws presented by a fixed speed of light and fixed laws over the vector space.

There is all kinds of duality in the universe, driven, I think, from the fundamental duality of "fields" and "laws", where field interactions can happen such that they create new secondary laws owing to the primary ones, like laws of strategy and 'meta' project from the fixed move laws within chess, and like there are mathematical laws that determine which lines will not follow from which positions in situations with fixed deterministic play.

As such, fields and laws together, when the fields have particular properties in their interactions (and the interaction between the electric and magnetic fields is apparently really important to that completion), they can emulate any other field/law combination within that class of numbers. If I understand this properly, it happens in the same way that systems with particular binary fields and binary laws can emulate other such systems of fields and laws in the binary domain.

There may be some kinds of systems that our universe can support theory about, but can't actually implement in any way. This may abut against inaccessible numbers, as a concept, in the same way there are machines Turing machines cannot emulate, there may be machines of whole varieties that our universe cannot contain, but which are understood under the metaphysics of math to have rules that may support them even if they cannot be expressed here, but rather by even weirder stuff than exists here.

 

[Jarhyn]

TikTok - Make Your Day

: conjoined twin's at the brain.

So, this is an interesting case study on how it IS possible to physically dissolve the disconnections between individuals, but well explained by IIT rather than Analytical Idealism.

The video actually discusses many aspects of consciousness and how minds DO integrate, particularly when there is no insulative layer.

It also supports the "homunculus node" theory in that there are two homunculi in there, distinct and separate despite being in the same neural mass: that the ego itself is a distinct organ of the brain and serves an oversight function, and that the only thing for it to dissolve into is the brain, not 'the universe'.

 

[abaddon]

Or why I wouldn't be able to control stuff with my mind if the world is mental.

The world is mental even under physicalist metaphysics. "The world" is the simulation our brains make from whatever it is that's "out there" stimulating our senses.

Your eyes aren't window panes that you look out of at "things" beyond them. And, again, I am STILL not talking about idealism yet... We're still straightening out the misconceptions about physicalism. It's interesting that people who want to dismiss idealism rely on naive realism and betray they don't even understand anything about physicalism either.

We do control things with our minds. I conjure memories with it. My thoughts influence my feelings. I can change 'the feel' of the world using spiritual exercises like meditation, et al.

Mistakes to avoid when trying to understand idealism:

1. Naive realism is false. Nobody has any experience at all of a nonmental world, that's impossible no matter what. ALL experiencing is done within your mental simulation of "the world".
2. Physicalism isn't science. You can call it a "science-based" metaphysics if you like, but the same applies to metaphysical idealism. So nobody's defending science against "woo" by arguing for naive realism against metaphysical idealism. Anyone who thinks so has conflated science and metaphysics and needs to sort that out.
3. "Mental" and "soft" are not synonyms.

About #3... A couple centuries back, a fellow named Johnson tried to refute Berkeley's idealism by kicking a rock. "I refute him thus!" he exclaimed and kicked a rock. So, he used a mental experience called "a foot" to kick a mental experience called "a rock" and that resulted in a mental experience of *pain*. What he successfully refuted is the dumb idea that if the world is "mind" (aka, experiences) then it should be "soft" (a trait that can exist nowhere but in experience).

Don't just think about it. LOOK too. Look around at the room you're in. Name ONE thing that isn't "mental"... iow, that isn't a feature of your brain's simulation of "the world".

Here's one of the biggest differences between physicalism and idealism:

Physicalists think their soft, mental, interior world ends somewhere on 'this' side of their eyeballs and skin (their senses). Beyond that is a universe UTTERLY DIFFERENT. It's external to their bodies and so it's "physical" and "hard". Which is a pretty unparsimonious (and dualistic despite physicalism's pretense at being monistic) way of seeing things.

It's like someone standing on a tall hill, looking out to the horizon, and assuming that whatever's past the horizon is utterly different to everything within the horizon.

Idealists don't do that. They assume whatever's past the horizon of what we're able to experience (ie, to know) is more of the same. More "mental stuff".

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Or why I wouldn't be able to control stuff with my mind if the world is mental.

We do control things with our minds.

Yeah, to a limited degree. Great. I can't be a superhero with it. We can't break physical laws with our minds.

 

[Elixir]

The world is mental even under physicalist metaphysics. "The world" is the simulation our brains make from whatever it is that's "out there" stimulating our senses.

I'd say the universe includes that simulation rather than consists of it. The presumption of the existence of an external reality about which it is possible to learn, is foundational to primal survival, let alone to the development of modern technology (lethal though that may turn out to be).

We do control things with our minds.

I almost made breakfast today. Decided to postpone consuming the $9.50 dozen eggs I bought

 

[Elixir]

Name ONE thing that isn't "mental"

Whatever is still here after I die.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Name ONE thing that isn't "mental"

Whatever is still here after I die.

I can't stop the neighbor's dog from barking with my mind. Though I wish I could.

 

[pood]

The world is mental even under physicalist metaphysics. "The world" is the simulation our brains make from whatever it is that's "out there" stimulating our senses.

I'd say the universe includes that simulation rather than consists of it. The presumption of the existence of an external reality about which it is possible to learn, is foundational to primal survival, let alone to the development of modern technology (lethal though that may turn out to be).

We do control things with our minds.

I almost made breakfast today. Decided to postpone consuming the $9.50 dozen eggs I bought

Experts recommend using hunger as egg substitute.

 

[lostone]

Or why I wouldn't be able to control stuff with my mind if the world is mental.

The world is mental even under physicalist metaphysics. "The world" is the simulation our brains make from whatever it is that's "out there" stimulating our senses.

Your eyes aren't window panes that you look out of at "things" beyond them. And, again, I am STILL not talking about idealism yet... We're still straightening out the misconceptions about physicalism. It's interesting that people who want to dismiss idealism rely on naive realism and betray they don't even understand anything about physicalism either.

We do control things with our minds. I conjure memories with it. My thoughts influence my feelings. I can change 'the feel' of the world using spiritual exercises like meditation, et al.

Mistakes to avoid when trying to understand idealism:

1. Naive realism is false. Nobody has any experience at all of a nonmental world, that's impossible no matter what. ALL experiencing is done within your mental simulation of "the world".
2. Physicalism isn't science. You can call it a "science-based" metaphysics if you like, but the same applies to metaphysical idealism. So nobody's defending science against "woo" by arguing for naive realism against metaphysical idealism. Anyone who thinks so has conflated science and metaphysics and needs to sort that out.
3. "Mental" and "soft" are not synonyms.

About #3... A couple centuries back, a fellow named Johnson tried to refute Berkeley's idealism by kicking a rock. "I refute him thus!" he exclaimed and kicked a rock. So, he used a mental experience called "a foot" to kick a mental experience called "a rock" and that resulted in a mental experience of *pain*. What he successfully refuted is the dumb idea that if the world is "mind" (aka, experiences) then it should be "soft" (a trait that can exist nowhere but in experience).

Don't just think about it. LOOK too. Look around at the room you're in. Name ONE thing that isn't "mental"... iow, that isn't a feature of your brain's simulation of "the world".

Here's one of the biggest differences between physicalism and idealism:

Physicalists think their soft, mental, interior world ends somewhere on 'this' side of their eyeballs and skin (their senses). Beyond that is a universe UTTERLY DIFFERENT. It's external to their bodies and so it's "physical" and "hard". Which is a pretty unparsimonious (and dualistic despite physicalism's pretense at being monistic) way of seeing things.

It's like someone standing on a tall hill, looking out to the horizon, and assuming that whatever's past the horizon is utterly different to everything within the horizon.

Idealists don't do that. They assume whatever's past the horizon of what we're able to experience (ie, to know) is more of the same. More "mental stuff".

Most people, most of the time, assume that the physical world exists. If we did not assume that, most people would also assume that we would starve and die. Even The existence of other people is dubious from a strict idealistic viewpoint. The consequences of assuming that the external world exists only in our imagination would be severe. Albeit, as you say, our observation of that would also be entirely in our minds. OTOH, If we make that assumption that the physical world is all that exists, we can function quite well, even if that assumption is not correct, in the strictest sense.

 

[Elixir]

Name ONE thing that isn't "mental"

Whatever is still here after I die.

I can't stop the neighbor's dog from barking with my mind. Though I wish I could.

You can tell your mind to tell your hand to pick up your phone, tell your mouth to tell the phone to call the police, then tell your mouth to tell the police that the neighbor is harboring dangerous Gazans.
Problem solved!

 

[unapologetic]

The external world we perceive on this account is also mental, and our perceptions of it are mere representations of what is, the way that an airplane dashboard represents external reality in condensed form but is not the reality itself.

I have often thought that how physics, and especially quantum physics, is described, is not what is really going on. But merely the only way they can think of to describe it.

Neat. I still can't control everything with my mind alone.

Sure you can.
You just need to induce what we call a 'mental break' with what we call 'reality'.
Then you can re-construct 'reality' any way you want.
There are 'retreats' for people who have done this.
And a whole industry geared to prevent you from achieving it.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

And a whole industry geared to prevent you from achieving it.

I wouldn't call a psychotic break an achievement.

 

[Elixir]

There are 'retreats' for people who have done this.

Yeah, for instance Mag-a Lardo.