Frank
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Posts posted by Frank
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21 hours ago, dream_weaver said:
By what measure(s) did you refer to the fundamental metaphysics and epistemology as being inescapably correct?
Rand broke down reality into inescapable points. Like existence exists. It's so simple, it cannot be avoided. And so on. As it gets more complex, it is harder to defend, and that's why I specified the fundamentals are what I find inescapable. The further delineations, like politics and such, I wouldn't make such a strong claim about.
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6 hours ago, Boydstun said:
Frank,
I'd take correctness as one thing and brilliance another. I'd take brilliance in this context as correctness that is not found elsewhere. Knowledge of the brilliance, then, would requiring knowing what is to be found elsewhere, i.e., in the history of philosophy to the present.
Finding out why so many professional philosophers would not consider Objectivism a valid philosophy would require getting hold of their specific criticisms and thinking them over. Unfortunately, I haven't seen any professional philosophers put their criticisms into writing, actually be competent in what the Objectivist view is in the major areas of philosophy, and be able to step out of, for a moment, the presumptions of their own philosophic school.
I'd say just keep on studying other philosophers until you can for yourself identify the ways in which they are different from Objectivism, and where they agree, and which, if any, of the positions (Objectivist or not) are correct by your lights.
That's certainly a fair assessment. I suppose I just don't understand all the hate. I've studied many other philosophies, from ancient Greek, to ancient Indian philosophy, as well as some more modern ones. I have come up with two possibilities, though:
1.) The hate is due to Rand's political stances, not her metaphysics, but the two generally run together, so people hate the whole thing.
2.) Objectivism affirms common sense, and most philosophers make their living, and relevance, by attacking common sense at every turn. They generally create the problems they only ostensibly solve. Someone solving their pseudo problems is bad for business.
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Looking around it's easy to see that most main stream philosphy classes, and people who study philosophy, and so on, don't consider Objectivism valid. Yet, I think it's brilliant, and find that its fundamental metaphysics and epistemology are insecapably correct. Thus, either I'm too dumb to understand why I'm wrong, and the academics are right, or something else is afoot.
By what measure might it be demonstrated that Objectivism is just as brilliant as I believe?
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Basically, it seems fundamentally flawed to claim objective reality doesn't exist, as this surely must refute mind as well. Any logic used to claim matter and objective reality are unreal can just as easily refute mind as well. However, I'm not the most articulate on these matters, and so I look to you fine people.
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15 hours ago, Eiuol said:
Yeah, I understand that they say this is what's going on. But I think the idea of "pure consciousness" already presumes a metaphysical stance about the nature of consciousness, so it would make sense that such a deep meditative state could only be described as pure consciousness. I mean, as far as I understand, attaining such a state they would claim is approaching or transcending our illusory notions of reality, therefore all that could remain is pure consciousness. And this would seem legitimate, because it involves a very "birdseye view" of one's thinking and one's place among all conscious entities. I don't deny that this experience is real, and is a type of experience I think is consistent with what the human brain can do. But since I have a totally different stance about the nature of consciousness, on a metaphysical level, my description is necessarily different from theirs. It's not that they are peeling away the illusions all around us, but that they are altering the way that they control conscious attention.
To be a little more clear, these meditative states don't prove that consciousness can in fact be conscious of nothing but itself. A metaphysical stance about consciousness comes first, or at least that's something Rand would agree with. Only later can we really get at discussing the scientific details of how the brain attains these states.
Interesting. I wonder how she would explain these states? In the Objectivist understanding, what is happening when people experience these things?
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On 3/23/2022 at 5:08 PM, KyaryPamyu said:
Proving, entirely from consciousness, that there is a world outside of consciousness, is not as straightforward as other philosophical issues. This is because the arguments for the primacy of consciousness do not always immediately strike rational people as unjustified, even if they hold the opposite view.
In such cases, analysing those claims can help us grasp exactly where the uncertainty about 'direct perception' comes from, and why it occurs.
In ITOE, Chapter 6, Rand mentions:
In other words, consciousness is a specific instance of seeing, tasting, feeling something. An awareness-as-such is the same as 'feeling without feeling'.
With that in mind, we can explore various statements that occur in arguments for the primacy of mind.
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Table of Contents:
1. Awareness of sense objects
2. I am the Seer
3. A consciousness independent of the brain
4. Why is there qualia?
5. I am consciousness
6. Reality is hallucinated
7. Consciousness is not a thing
8. Time is ideal, not real
9. Space is ideal, not real
10. Free will is an illusion
11. The self is an illusion
12. Matter must be formed by Universals
13. Hegelian coherentism
14. Mind-independent causality = no free will
15. Why are things the way they are?
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1. I am aware of sense objects.
Not true. The sensory field is not located outside of the sensory field, waving at us from the next room. Awareness is the sensory field.2. I am the Seer.
In eastern philosophy, this means: do not identify with what you perceive (the embodied person of a certain sex, age) and instead recognize yourself as the Eye who is seeing, perceiving that person from afar.Here, awareness (the Seer) and the sensory field (the seeing of an embodied man) are separated like previously. They are, in fact, not separate.
Note that this applies even to states of consciousness where sensory awareness is suspended, or minimal. In such cases, the Yogic sense of 'I am' or 'am-ness' is the relevant instance of consciousness.
3. Why does consciousness need to be connected to a brain or a man? Can't instances of it simply exist independently of some other agent?
Whatever exists, is what it is (lawful). It doesn't matter whether it's made of matter, energy, or neither. Sensory experience is not less real than the brain's electric signals and synapse firing.
Normally, we can point out that actions are the actions of entities, such as the rolling of a ball, or the waving of a hand. But here, we are not connecting an object with its motions. We are linking two kinds of motion: the motions of the brain, and the motions of sense data (colors, tastes etc.)
However, consciousness cannot create an instance of seeing color, because consciousness is that instance of seeing color. A perception that already is, needs not create, because it is itself the product of some external condition.
4. Biological organisms can pick up data, and act on it, without an accompanying sensation, such as pain or sound (qualia). So what's the point of having any sensation at all?
Humans have a limited alphabet of sensations, which are arranged into various combinations to 'tag' received information, the same way concepts tag percepts, and letter-combinations tag concepts.
This allows the mind to store information, and locate it, by means of its specific 'qualia-combination'. It also enables it to link certain qualia-codes to other information, such as 'danger'.
Without memory, an organism cannot combine pieces of information to expand the range of its awareness.
5. I am consciousness
The argument states that a good life would be irrelevant if we didn't experience it. Therefore, we can say that we are not the material body, we are consciousness - the experiencing of this raspberry, or of this mountain hike.Except, 'I am the experiencing of this raspberry' is not true. The correct statement is: 'the experiencing of this raspberry, is the experiencing of this raspberry' (A=A)
Awareness is a specific instance of awareness, not an independent entity which takes the form of all experiences, like water takes the form of snow, vapor and ice.
The closest referent to a concept of 'awareness as such' is not an instance of experiencing, but the totality of existents and processes that lead to consciousness.
6. What if what we perceive is all a hallucination, like in the Matrix? Are we a brain in vat?
This argument assumes the existence of brains, vats, and Matrix techology, even though we got this belief from our (possibly hallucinatory) perception.
Philosophy can show that the base of cognition (sense perception and its corresponding axiomatic concepts) grounds all arguments - and so, no arguments can be made through cognition against cognition.
This puts the question outside of philosophy, and within the onus of proof.
7. Consciousness is not a thing; all things are its perceptions. It's not subject to time and space. Time and space are notions of consciousness.
Consciousness cannot create its own instances of sense perception, such as that of a color, thing, or space-time notion. Put differently, it can't create its own self. The reason is covered in point 3.
Note that 'consciousness is not a thing' assumes that it is, in fact, a thing: 'the identity of X is not this, but that'.
8. Motion is actually a sequential view of an unmoving thing, hence Time is an illusion.
No, relating a sequence of mental pictures mistakenly implies that the pictures are outside of awareness, and you are relating them from afar. We grasp motion directly. If you study a painting sequentially, it does not follow that you've seen a movie.
An unmoving consciousness is a consciousness that does not grasp (move), i.e. not consciousness.
9. Space is a perspective on a non-spacial thing. In awareness, separate perspectives on that thing, are spread out like photos in a collage, making it seem as if there are many things. Space is just a snapshot's position relative to the other within the totality of the sensory field.
We do not spacially relate the contents of perception, because that implies that the objects of perception are situated outside perception. We relate actual positions of objects, by means of direct perception.
10. If the source of consciousness is not within itself, how do you prove that your brain isn't tricking you into believing that your choices are free?
Proof means: 'self-verify the properness of your argumenting'. The ability to do so is presupposed by all proof demands, i.e. is already accepted by the question.
11. By introspection I only see various sense data, thoughts, feelings. I see no self. The self is a superstition. Various brain processes work in concert to give rise to the unitary experience of self, but that self has no referent in reality.
(An instance of seeing color, does not act. It is the act of some existent.)
The existent which performs judgements, chooses values, and is aware of doing it, is a self. Existents which perform action, but are not aware of it, are not a self.
Involuntary processes - such as sense data, feelings, and the sense of being/existing - are not a self.
If that which acts and is aware of it (the self), stops being aware that it is acting, then it is no longer a self.
12. Is something that is continually renewing itself, or changing, the same thing throughout? That's not possible unless that object is a concept whose elements self-organize to bring that concept into existence.
Changes are undergone by entities.
If a ship changes, e.g. gets slightly damaged, then it is the same ship. If the ship is completely pulverized, its components no longer form a ship, but a dust pile.
If part of a ship is changed, then the ship is partially not the same. If all of its parts are changed, then it is a completely different ship.
If a kidney is renewing itself, then it is the same kidney. If that kidney is replaced with another kidney, then it is obviously not the same kidney.
One can't describe reality in terms of disembodied universals. For example, If things are what they are because of an Universal of Identity, it means that the Universal in question can be what it is without the legislation of a second Universal of Identity. Platonic universals disprove themselves.
Universals are epistemological (see Rand's ITOE).
Natural laws, and categories such as 'potentiality', are not independent existents which legislate things. E.g. 'potentiality' is an identification of what things can do in a specific situation.
13. Aren't the 'categories' (being, becoming, quality, quantity etc.) merely the same category viewed from less or more comprehensive viewpoints?
Knowledge is indeed hierarchical, since it is relational. Understanding the concept 'life', for instance, is rooted in concepts such as: existence, alternative, goal-directedness.
However, concepts condense percepts. When we think a concept, we involuntarily need to recall the percept for which it stands. This is especially true of abstract concepts, like 'relation', because one can only grasp them by observing things acting - using that as a 'perceptual aid' to hold the meaning of such abstractions in mind.
(Concepts, also, cannot be recalled without a concrete perceptual code, such as spoken or writen word.)
One can only go from categories like 'quality' to 'quantity' if he already holds perceptual knowledge. Considering concepts in their 'pure' form is akin to reaching 'xxq, from yqz, because qqw'.
14. Causality disproves free will. Freedom requires a mind-first universe.
Causality means that how a thing is, affects how it acts. Biological structures act in a goal-directed fashion. Rocks act with no goal directedness.
Goal-directed organisms are made out of particles which are not capable of goal-directedness. Consciousness is enabled by neurons which are not capable of consciousness. Free will results from structures of elements which are not capable of free will.
The cause of human action is motives. One's legs do not randomly start walking by themselves, without their owner's volition, i.e. without an intention motivated by a goal (such as reaching the refridgerator).
Man can question his motives. He is forced by nature to make a choice between grasping reality clearly (conceptually), in honest fashion, or not. He can choose either, but cannot choose not to choose. Free will, like everything, is an instance of the law of identity.
15. Why are emergent properties, as described in the previous point, possible?
This is akin to asking why the universe exists, or why do things move.
There is no why. Causes are rooted in entities. Entities are not rooted in disembodied causes. Philosophy describes what is. What is, is.
Well said. Interestingly, the historical Buddha (a realist btw, only later Mahayana stuff is idealist), taught similar. In his understanding, sight, for example, is the meeting of the eye and a physical object, only then can consciousness arise of that object. In other words: perception is consciousness of an object. It is not a consciousness looking out, then finding an object, then creating a conscious story of it for the self inside the brain.
Also:
"Why me?
That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?
Yes.
Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why."
Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five
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On 12/24/2022 at 11:16 PM, Eiuol said:
Would you truly say that when meditating, you are not conscious of anything but consciousness itself? Sure, you can say that you are focused on nothing but consciousness, yet at the same time, I would say that you are conscious of whatever is on the periphery. As far as I understand, even when you attain the friend of mine after a few hours of meditation, you are directing your attention in a way that physical sensations fall by the wayside. I think this can be demonstrated with fMRI research. But in a more philosophical way, consciousness is experienced in reality, on top of how consciousness is the unity of various contents; when consciousness is focused on itself, as a totality, consciousness still includes all the sensory experiences of the body. You couldn't scrub away everything underlying consciousness, even if you wanted to.
Deep jhana meditation is said to be literally nothing but a floating imaginary light, or nothingness, or pure consciousness (whatever that means), or neither perception nor non perception (again, whatever...), etc. Supposedly people in these states can't sense anything until they emerge.
It is an argument worth considering, as it's not just normal meditation where one still hears dogs bark, feels the wind, etc.
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On 12/24/2022 at 9:35 PM, Boydstun said:
Frank, on solipsism, some of my remarks in the immediately preceding post may help (my addition to Rand).
Concerning idealism, the burden should be on the idealist to show that the world is not as it is perceived to be, namely, as existing and in the ways it does exist and as independently of our discernment of it. That independence element is part of what is in our perceptions. We have ways of teasing out particular elements in our perceptions that depend upon our own location, state of motion, or perceptual system. Such would be the enlargement we have of the moon near the horizon in our perception of it. We take a photograph of the witnessed scene, and it shows no such enlargement. Similarly, with the Mach-band illusion we experience when we carefully cut out a particular chit of gray from a number of those color strips you can get at the paint store. Placing the chits of the same grey we have cut out side-touching-side snugly on a table before us, it will appear that the grey darkens near the abutting edges. And we know perfectly well that each of those chits was uniform in its grayness all over its surface. Unlike the moon illusion, science has identified how the Mach-band effect comes about: through the pattern of circuitry (lateral inhibition) of the receptor neurons of the retina. But when it comes to idealism, there has to be a general argument given for it, aiming to show that all percepts or fundamental facets of all percepts are in some systematic way contributed by the conscious subject. Then the work of the realist can begin, which is to show what error there is in that general argument. (I think Moore did this with Berkeley, and I presume an Objectivist refutation of the arguments Berkeley gave would differ somewhat from Moore's.)
That's a good point. And when we shift the burden of proof onto the idealists, we find they can only talk in looping, self referential, and ultimately, self refuting statements. If all is mind/unreal, nothing can be proven. Proving things to be unreal also disproves the proof, because they'd demonstrate that their proof is false, they merely imagined it lol! It cannot be done. Without "real," proof is impossible.
And I think Objectivism is a good argument against slipping from there into doubt about the burden on realism, into skepticism.
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On 12/25/2022 at 10:27 AM, Easy Truth said:
So consciousness is not defined as awareness. Meaning awareness of awareness is the indicator of consciousness in the context of this thread? Where does existence and the awareness of it fall in? Meaning without awareness of self? It seems that consciousness is being defined at a certain level of awareness. As in a bacteria is not conscious because it is not aware of itself. Perhaps a certain level of ability to identify is necessary.
A lawnmower is not conscious, not because it is not aware of itself, it simply is not aware/conscious. To say a clock is aware of time is a metaphor. Or a car being aware that there is not enough gas.
Sometimes consciousness is shown to be a chemical reaction. Sometimes it an awareness of awareness. Sometimes awareness of self as apposed to other consciousness or possible consciousnesses (plural). And sometimes as having freewill.
I suspect this is at the core of your question/interest. You are trying to disprove something. I would like to know what are you trying to disprove to "them"? And what is it that "they" believe?
The what I'm trying to disprove is idealism. The "them" is all idealists, generally, but only hypothetically. I've had a lot of Yogacara idealists in my life, and read a lot of ancient works on the topic. Ditto for Madhyamaka, and theres a lot of overlap. I don't talk to any of "them" any longer, as I left Mahayana Buddhism awhile ago. So, I'm trying to defeat arguments I'm aware of, rather than any tangible person.
Perhaps the "them" is, in the end, me lol! I used to be an idealist, I woke up from that asinine worldview, argued against it with other idealists for awhile, realized they are hopeless, and only speak in self refutation they are incapable of comprehending, and moved on. Now I'm tying up loose ends, and jettisoning the last of a broken philosophy from my conclusions on reality. But I don't accept things without logical reasoning, nor do I want to ever backslide, hence, I'm trying to truly defeat these ideas, rather than merely moving on, with the shadow of hubris on me, only assuming they're false.
Specifically, the "them" in your quote of me was about a conversation discussing yogis who think they are conscious eternally, including while asleep, even before they were born, and after death.
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On 12/24/2022 at 5:46 PM, DavidOdden said:
I can’t say that I understand what subjective idealism “really” says, because I don’t know how many brands of subjective idealism there are. It appear, for example, that there are competing claims that Advaita Vedānta is and is not an example of that approach, though I don’t think there is much controvery over there fact that it reduces the universe to the fundamental reality Brahman. Let’s assume that the claim is that “only minds and content of minds exists”. There would be “competing” claims – that there is only The Mind and Its Content (a single mind), also that there are only minds (no content), or that there is only The Mind. Your question about “refutation” presupposes “mental content”, insofar as it makes no sense to “refute” unless you have an arsenal of mental existents, such as logic (which itself is a very complex existent). The question presupposes that more than mind exists. I have never encountered anyone (past my undergraduate days) who posited that there exists only “mind” (singular or plural).
My view is that Western attempts to devise a “minds and contents only” theory as promulgated by Berkeley has not been as intellectually successful, compared to Ādi Śaṅkara’s philosophizing (to the extent that this is one individual), which I think I understand slightly better. The difference between Śaṅkara and Berkeley, as I understand it, is that Śaṅkara does not deny the existence of the physical, instead he unifies the physical and the mental into a single reality: in essence, “there is a universe, there exists nothing outside the universe”. My mind, and my body, are aspects of that unified reality. An attack on Śaṅkara requires a fairly focused study of what Brahman is (I have better fish to fry). Berkeley seems to deny the existence of my foot or a rock, except insofar as they might be a mental construct in a mind. I suppose that Rand might refute that position the same way that Samuel Johnson did, with a mighty kick (though such an outburst would be out of character for her).
The most important ingredient for a refutation of Berkeley is an understanding of “refutation”. A claim is refuted when it is shown that the claim does not describe (correspond to) reality. “Reality” is not the same thing as “the claim”. On the one hand, you must presuppose “reality” to engage in the act of refutation, on the other hand, the claim being subject to refutation denies that there is “reality”. The subjective idealist therefore has to lapse into the behavior of the 5 year old who answers every statement with “I know you are but what am I?”, or else has to assimilate realist aspects of Vedantic philosophizing and say that there are levels of awareness where “reality” is just a subjective mental construct and we aren’t even aware of the details of that construct, which soon leads to the “I know you are but what am I?” mode of “reasoning”. Ultimately, Berkleyan “consciousness” isn’t even the same kind of thing as normal-people consciousness.
I recommend Stove’s award-winning argument (admittedly not made by Rand, who died 13 years earlier), if you have doubts about reality and the extent to which Berkeley’s argument was the world’s worst argument.
In other words: subjective idealism is based on stolen concepts that presuppose a mind/matter dichotomy. No arguments here. Wittgenstein demonstrated similar, in that solipsism is incoherent due to roughly similar points. Any idealism that denies all of reality, declaring all to be mind, arguably leads to solipsism, so this refutes much of idealism, as well.
Further, Berkeley and Shankara (some versions of his ideas are seen as pure idealism) both mitigated their own idealism into realism by accident:
1.) All is mind.
2.) This "all" is god's mind.
3.) God is real, eternal, and ultimately existent.
They stop here, thinking, inexplicably, that they've defeated realism.
But, naturally, we now arrive at,
4.) All is real, even more real than we normally consider things to be. Every single thing is ultimately existent, and eternal, because every single thing is god. This realism is much more extreme than any other realism I know of. No other versions make literally everything real and eternal.
On the other hand, if "mind" means "unreal" or similar, like it does for the Madhyamaka and some Yogacara, that's a different issue, but still self refuting, as it means they aren't presenting a position, at all. It also is a stolen concept issue, as, the idea of "real" is meaningless if all is unreal, and then, so is "unreal" meaningless, with no "real." "All is mind," in this formulation, means "All is unreal" including the idea that "all is unreal." It is, quite literally, nonsense. Madhyamaka and Yogacara self refute into incoherent babble. I'm indebted to the writings of Ramanuja, Kumarila Bhatta, and Stafford L. Betty for helping me out with that bit.
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On 12/24/2022 at 5:28 PM, KyaryPamyu said:
Simple, I just need to rehash the standard O'ist argument:
Q: Why can't the mind be aware only of itself?
A: Well, refer to the axioms, which boil down to: 'there is something of which I'm aware'.Q: Can the something of which I'm aware be produced by my mind?
A: No, you must first go through many experiences before you can have an inner world.Q: But why aren't those formative experiences self-produced?
A: Because I don't feel that I produce them.Q: What if you do it unconsciously?
A: Hm? How could that happen?Q: [Describe Hegel's position, or similar]
A: So, who are you guys voting for in the next election?---
(Here's my attempt to disprove idealism on O'ist grounds, although I don't personaly subscribe to either realism or idealism).I see. If we assume tabula rasa, then the very idea of subjective idealism is impossible, because the mind cannot function without content. I'll be reading your refutation soon. Thanks.
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8 hours ago, Boydstun said:
Those are all serious-thinking good points in this discussion.
I'd like to add that when Rand introduced her axiom that consciousness is identification, one function it filled was to say which meaning of consciousness she meant. She took that one to be the most fundamental and took all others, such as in dreams or hallucinations, as dependent on consciousness in her fundamental sense of it: identification. Although it came up as a side point, in her Objectivist epistemology treatise, she indicated that she thought even a honeybee has some consciousness. I imagine that wherever there is an animal with a nervous system and some encephalization, she'd be thinking that that animal had some amount of consciousness. (A sponge is an animal, but without a nervous system.) She was in step with Aristotle in thinking that only some higher animals have powers of memory and of perception to perceive existence in terms of entities. Her definition of consciousness as identification contains 'entity' and is introduced in the duo: Existence is identity, consciousness is identification. That is perfectly fitting with the idea that fundamental consciousness is consciousness of existence.
She had some trouble understanding earliest infant development in terms of this metaphysics, including the casting of consciousness in it. As here:
To say to someone that consciousness is consciousness of existence, I have noticed, is not something that could be grasped by someone who did not have such an experience in their repertoire already. Like talking to a person blind from birth about the colors on the clouds in this morning’s sunrise.
In connection with setting meditation in the context of the Randian setting of consciousness of existence as the primary and focal sense of consciousness, we might add the challenge of setting the awareness of such things as coldness, breathing, and other bodily conditions, which one had inarticulately from day of birth and retains to now.
I should mention that recognitions of thinking existence could not happen without such priors as breathing giving sense of self-existence. The cognitive self of I think emerging in the second year (said as “I know,” meaning “I know how to do it”) joins preexisting awareness of bodily and situational self, affective and interpersonal self, and agency self. There is, moreover, no ontological priority of thinking-being over breathing-being in a human being, notwithstanding the greater activeness, facility, and deliciousness of thinking-being.
Sidebar on intellectual history I have accumulated for “A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms: before it could identify itself as consciousness, it had to be conscious of something”, the following:
Theaetetus 160b, in Plato; Categories 7b29–30, De Anima 427a20–22, Metaphysics 1010b30–1011a2, 1072b20–22, 1074b35–36, in Aristotle; Ennead V.1.6.46–50, in Plotinus; Abelard ca. 1119 (commentary on Aristotle’s Categories), quoted in Jacobi 2004, 139; Summa Theologica I Q14 A2, Obj. 3 and Reply Obj. 3, in Aquinas; Wolff 1752, quoted in Kitcher 2011, 58; Herbart 1824, quoted in Heidelberger 2004, 32–33; Ortega y Gassett [1928] 1964, 198–99; Sartre [1937] 1957, 40; [1943] 1953, 21–22; 1948; Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, 395–96; Edelman 1989, 159. Rand’s talk here of “a contradiction in terms” is effective for directing attention to the meaning of consciousness. In the old technical vocabulary, the contradiction she exposes is not contradictio in terminis, but contradictio in adjecto. More specifically, it is the self-contradiction Rand housed under the rubric “stolen concept fallacy.” See Rand 1957, 1039–40; Branden 1963; Salmieri 2016, 298–99.
Jacobi, Klaus. 2004. Abelard’s philosophy of language. In Brower and Guilfoy 2004, 126–57.
Brower, Jeffrey E. and Kevin Guilfoy, eds. 2004. The Cambridge Companion to Abelard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kitcher, Patricia. 2011. Kant’s Thinker. New York: Oxford University Press.
Heidelberger, Michael. 2004. Nature from Within – Gustav Theodor Fechner and His Psychophysical Worldview. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Edelman, Gerald M. 1989. The Remembered Present – A Biological Theory of Consciousness. New York: Basic Books.
Thanks for the incredibly well researched, and sourced response! It cleared some things up, and I learned a lot, but I've still got a question.
What if we reformulate the question more narrowly: how does Rand's statement refute subjective idealism (or solipsism, and similar)?
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3 hours ago, DavidOdden said:
I have just a few elementary suggestions, which might be useful. First, could you please divide the universe into two sets, thing that have consciousness and things that don’t? Easy cases are that rocks have no consciousness, men do. Find where you would draw the line, saying for example that ‘a leech is conscious; a sponge is not’. I expect that you will puzzle over tardigrades. The point of this exercise is to understand the definition of ‘consciousness’, and to make explicit what the alternative(s) is/are. There may be a tendency to focus on non-essential characteristics of live on earth, for example to bring in facts of earthly organisms (proteins, brain structure), so to correct for that you should spend some time in the world of (decent) science fiction, in order to strip your definition of consciousness down to the essentials that unify leeches, humans, and the cheela (Dragon’s Egg).
Thought exercises with humans (for example “meditation where one experiences nothing but consciousness”) are not going to clarify the matter. I claim that it is not true that a human meditating experiences nothing but consciousness: instead, a meditating person experiences everything that a normal person experiences, but focuses on… well, I don’t know since I don’t meditate. Human are axiomatically conscious, and even when deprived of external stimuli at a particular moment, there is a vast amount of ‘data’ already in the mind to work on. The two-cell version of a future human has no consciousness, and it develops a consciousness before it is born. At what point (in general conceptual terms, not days) does the embryo have consciousness?
The Rand quote is a bit more complicated than is probably obvious, where she says “before it could identify itself as consciousness”. If a tardigrade is conscious, or a leech, does it also make identifications? Is “identifying” a defining property of a “consciousness”. Obviously, this question also calls for you to unpack the concept of “identifying” – is there a difference between “responding to external stimuli” and “identifying”? Sodium “responds” to certain external stimuli by burning, and we cannot degrade the concept of consciousness to say that sodium has a kind of consciousness. Being explicit about what it means to be “conscious of” something is going to be difficult, since bugs have consciousness but not a conceptual consciousness.
I agree with you, this makes sense. It's entirely probable that no meditator is aware of anything special, but rather may just be focused on something we normally notice less, or they're dreaming and half asleep. That said, what about the question, forgetting yogis; how does Rand's position refute subjective idealism successfully?
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12 hours ago, KyaryPamyu said:
It takes awhile for a child to graduate from the level of 'this object, that object' to the realization that 'this is my perception of this object and that object'. He learns that people in his environment do not see, hear etc. the same things as he does, so he needs to distinguish between different minds, of which one of them is 'his'. This is why self-consciousness is inseparable from the discovery of consciousness itself. Galt's argument is probably in this line, that consciousness of consciousness (self-consciousness) depends on perceiving a world of objects and people first.
Pure self-consciousness, in the context of Yoga, is a physiological state achieved by entering a very low metabolic state, where the five senses and the thinking faculties (citta) are temporarily suspended. It's like dreamless sleep, except the meditator maintains awareness in the midst of it. The goal is to shift the attention toward the subtler, quieter levels of the mind, which normally go unnoticed because the attention is too engrossed in objects, thoughts and feelings to notice what's underneath them: the sense of observer-hood, of being a witness to such and such object, thought and feeling.
The meditator's argument is that self-consciousness is always 'on', underneath every object of experience, from babyhood to old age. This includes underneath the dreaming state and even (!) underneath dreamless sleep; a sign of enlightenment is said to be when the Yogi becomes aware during sleep, and realizes that even unconsciousness is, paradoxically, an object presenting itself to consciousness.
Rand's philosophy does not mention or discuss the idea that sense perception might be influenced by unconsciously performed mental acts. This is a consequence of her theory that every concept, without exception, is derived from the conscious level, including the concepts used in arguing for a pre-conscious activity. Yoga is an interesting challenge to this theory, because it's based on bringing the unnoticed, unconscious levels of the mind into conscious awareness. Experienced Yogis claim to directly perceive the mechanism by which the mind generates the phenomenal world, and have meticulously documented it.
You seem to understand my difficulty! Do you have a solution? On the basic level, I'd challenge any yogi to go under total anesthesia, and pass rigorous, well controlled tests to prove they were conscious throughout. I think they would fail, miserably. Sure, they can keep themselves semi awake during normal sleep, but this demonstrates a neat trick of their practiced skill. It does not prove consciousness is always on and observing, because it is god, as they believe. The only reason these myths exist is because they come from a time before anesthetic was common and measurable. Sure they had drugs, but not the ability to put someone under as deep as we do today. If they did back then, the person would die. Also, since they couldn't measure it well, and controls on experiments were lacking or non existent, a yogi proving consciousness during a drug induced sleep proves nothing, since no one could say how under they actually were.
That said, the point remains: how does Rand disprove the idea that consciousness can observe only itself? In the ultimate sense, not in this outrageous and easily disproven yogi scenario.
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On 12/23/2022 at 3:15 PM, Jon Letendre said:
Frank,
"A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself" does not argue against a meditating consciousness that previously matured in the context of a physical world. Rather, it argues against the sensibility of proposing consciousness in the absence of any physical existence, without any exposure to physical existence, ever.
Your consciousness matured in a physical world, was previously exposed to rich physical experience, and thereby can now "spin its wheels" so to say, experience itself without any particular focus, in a meditative state.
I agree, but how does this successfully refute the counter position of the subjective idealists, who claim the opposite?
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On 12/23/2022 at 2:52 PM, Easy Truth said:
I assume you are asking "did I (you) create your environment". As in being in a dream, which is your creation. But that is a state of consciousness in the context of psychology.
This is to deal with the question of "do I create existence".
Essentially I'm looking for how this Randian position refutes the idea of subjective idealism that we create existence. I used meditation as an example only, but the core question is about idealism.
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15 minutes ago, Easy Truth said:
"Conscious of" has to mean conscious of something that exists beyond/outside itself. Otherwise it is conscious of being conscious of "being conscious of" nothing in particular but of being "conscious of". Conscious of what?
Of being "conscious of".
What about meditation, where one experiences nothing but consciousness?
The vicious infinite regression works for all 5 senses, because seeing seeing is nonsense, and so on. But how does this apply to mind? Can't the mind experience, and be aware only of itself? I'm not arguing, to be clear! I just want to understand, and be convinced entirely, rather than just agree with something I like, but don't fully understand.
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3 minutes ago, RationalEgoist said:
Objectivism is founded upon three fundamental axioms; existence, consciousness, identity. Axioms, as such, require no proof since they serve as a starting point for all subsequent knowledge. I believe the idea that consciousness must be conscious of something is perceptually self-evident. As a thought experiment, just try to perceive literally nothing. You can't, can you?
Perhaps you should purchase a copy of Dr. Leonard Peikoff's book, Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand, and read the chapters on epistemology. The 12-part lecture series which proceeded the book, The Philosophy of Objectivism, is also worthwhile. It can be found on ARI Campus for free.
I have read and reread that section. That is a great book! Really changed my life. My understanding of reality was so screwed up due to subjective idealism and other similar garbage ideas, and those first chapters got me back to Earth.
But, obviously, I've also read a lot of idealism and related drivel in the past, and am stuck on this point. I can't think of nothing, but I can mentally experience only consciousness. Meditation is an example, I may be deeply meditative and experiencing nothing but consciousness. Is that not consciousness experiencing nothing but itself?
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On 2/19/2022 at 5:40 PM, Eiuol said:
I would say that if we are just blobs of matter, epiphenomenalism would be possible, which leaves room for indirect realism. When you throw in the Theravada idea that there is no do-er or experience-er, not even epiphenomenalism is possible, so neither direct realism nor realism would be possible. That is, since either view is about perceptual content in some way or another, the absence of any kind of perceptual content precludes either view.
So if you want better arguments for direct realism, you need some sort of do-er, and perceptual experience or content needs to make a meaningful causal difference for action. That's on top of the rest about making sure you are directly connected to reality.
I would say that is because it goes back to a more ancient Greek and Roman way of doing philosophy, mixed in with observations from some very modern developments in biology, psychology, and technology. Aristotle is especially helpful regarding perception, because he never was working with all the philosophers alive since Galileo. Yes, Galileo was an astronomer/physicist, but that's when people started to think of the human mind like a machine, and indirect realism is a way to describe how a machine comes up with experiences. Not that people thought the mind was literally machine, but it helped bring about ways of thinking that lends itself more to indirect realism. Of course, there is something more than mere machinery or electrical impulses going on. I can expand a lot more on that if you want. What is more than mere machinery could be described as the soul, in the Aristotelian sense, which can be described as (very roughly and coarsely) a power of life or life force.
Evidence of the Senses by David Kelley is a book worth reading as well, which is specifically about the Oist position on perception, and consciousness as well by implication.
On 4/8/2022 at 8:47 PM, Grames said:Dr. David Kelley's thesis was a defense of his theory of perception which he described as direct realism. That any version of representationalism requires an homonculus inside to do the real perceiving is a critique that he made there. His book "The Evidence of the Senses: A Realist Theory of Perception" is an overview of the topic of perception in philosophy and a presentation of his defense of direct realism.
Dr. Kelley was tutored in Objectivism at the feet of Rand herself (figuratively speaking, mostly) and is most definitely to be counted among "Objectivist philosophers". He completed this work while he was in her social circle. Rand had no interest in doing the kind of dry scholarly writing that Kelley did here, so this treatment of the subject is as good as it may ever get as far as an Objectivist theory of perception.
I'm fairly disappointed no one else here remembered Kelley.
The Evidence of the Senses: A Realist Theory of Perception at Amazon.com.
How would you both compare this book by Kelley to Michael Huemer's "The Veil of Perception"? Does it add anything new?
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I certainly don't want the statement to be false, and I'm in no way arguing against it. I'm much more comfortable with Rand's position than the idealist lunacy alternatives. However, I'm not clear on why it would be impossible for a consciousness to be aware only of itself. And I don't want to just acdept her position out of desire to be comfortable. I want to accept it because it is unavoidably true. Could people please clarify?
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On 2/11/2022 at 7:48 AM, Doug Morris said:
We don't debate whether an electronic camera really experiences the outside world, because we know cameras are not conscious and therefore do not experience anything.
Yeah, after reading some more replies, I realized my position is too influenced by Theravada Buddhism, which, opposite of Mahayana, is strictly realist, and denies any and all agent in being. There is no experiencer in this understanding, hence, indirect realism is impossible. I understand, now, that this view is incompatible with Objectivism, which seems to hold consciousness a lot higher than Theravada Buddhism (not saying much, since Theravada breaks it down entirely to entirely empty phenomena with no doer even involved [Visuddhimagga XIX.20]), but a lot less than your average eternal soul believing religion. I need to read more about Objectivism. I realize now, that I was unconsciously, and wrongly, equating atheism with reductionism/mechanism thusly: If there is no soul, then there is no such thing as an experiencer.
Thank you for your mature, well written, and polite critique.
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24 minutes ago, Boydstun said:
I have Prof. Huemer's book you are considering, Frank. It's great. Go for it. -S
Awesome! Thanks for the tip! I'm buying it!
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On 2/13/2022 at 7:12 PM, Eiuol said:
That's basically just reductionism.
But in any case, your reasoning doesn't really get at defeating indirect realism. If the mystical version of the soul did exist, that doesn't necessarily exclude realism, and even if were just bags of meat (which sounds like your position) that doesn't necessarily exclude indirect realism.
This would be something like indirect realism in terms of an analogy. If this image were presented to consciousness (to make the analogy work for conscious entities), that would mean that there is another layer of perception or interpretation between reality and consciousness. Direct realism would be like saying that there is no image in between, just going straight from reality to consciousness. There would be no need to create the photograph of reality.
Yes, there is a biological process of perception that results in awareness of reality in a specific form. But if an image or form is constructed, then interpreted, then brought to awareness, you would have indirect realism.
I Studied Buddhism for 20 years lol! That's probably why I sound the way I do. Traditional Theravada Buddhism (what I preferred, Mahayana, which I studied but then rejected entirely, is almost entirely subjective idealism, extreme nihilism, or relativism, or all three mixed up) teaches that we are utterly devoid of anything even resembling a soul, even going so far as to say humans are no different than marionettes, and that there is no doer (see Visuddhimagga, VIII.31, XIX.20). It is vehemently atheistic, and opposed to all possible versions of anything even resembling a soul. It even rejects the use of the phrase "I am" as a conceit to be eliminated (Visuddhimagga III.122). In such a world, the very idea of indirect realism is nonsense, as every formulation involves someone seeing a representation of reality, but from this perspective, there is no one to see this representation, but rather there are just inanimate objects interacting with each other. Hence, you wouldn't say a rock that rolls down a hill didn't really experience the hill directly, because what in the world would that even mean? Likewise, if we are merely meat animated by electricity, it is nonsense to say we experience things indirectly. There are meaty blobs of matter animated by electricity who have sensors that are affected by other matter. Ditto for cameras, and any and everything else. From this perspective, talking about indirect realism is completely irrational, as we would be ultimately inanimate objects.
That said, I am realizing this is not the Objectivist way, and that this philosophy involves a very different understanding of consciousness. My mistake! I guess I need to read more about it! I really wasn't trying to say that my understanding was right. I was actually hoping for exactly what Boydstun provided: lots of quotes and references defending direct realism! I only submitted my own ideas as a side note, and merely as musings, in order to contribute, even in a small way, to the defense of direct realism generally. I seem to have failed, and have zero problem with this. I don't see myself as an expert on these matters. I'm responding to you because your critique was respectful, mature, and politely written, and I sincerely thank you for that.
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On 2/11/2022 at 12:55 PM, Boydstun said:
What has contemporary philosophy done for us lately concerning the nature of perception?
Well, this month Tyler Burge gives us his Perception: First Form of Mind.
I'll have to see what is the sense in which "representational" is employed in this much-anticipated work.
Thank you so much for all the info! A work I'm considering buying that defends direct realism: Skepticism and the Veil of Perception, by Michael Huemer.
Hypothetically, if scientific consensus became that objects do not exist independent of consciousness, could Objectivism stand?
in Metaphysics and Epistemology
Posted · Edited by Frank
In Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, Peikoff implied that challenges from science could not necessarily refute Objectivism, because even if science found something outlandish, like all things are puffs of meta energy, we still would be perceiving things made of this energy, and we're made of it, too. So, nothing changes for Objectivism.
What about a more daunting challenge, like that scientific consensus becomes that objects do not exist independent of consciousness?
This is a regular claim that pops up every few years. Below are a couple examples. I don't think they actually prove this point, but clearly this is something people think about as potentially possible.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a40460495/objective-reality-may-not-exist/
https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/03/12/136684/a-quantum-experiment-suggests-theres-no-such-thing-as-objective-reality/