Physicalism Redux

The point really is based on a distinction between an experience itself and the contents of that experience. When, then, you telepathically experience "the direct, full range of experience from the memories of [your] loong and tiger spirits", you are still having a distinct experience uniquely associated with your person even though it has the same contents as another's experience which likewise is uniquely associated with their person.

The point is that I am able to directly experience everything in their minds as if I was that mind, even our cores of perception differ.

It is why we are able to achieve states where we cannot tell where one ends and the other begins.

In the end, this just boils down more and more to a totally meaningless argument over definitions of words, because you are sadly somehow unable to accept definitions different from yours, simply because I am trying to describe a rather inexplicable set of experiences I previously couldn't imagine as being conceptually possible.

[Laird]

The point is that I am able to directly experience everything in their minds as if I was that mind, even our cores of perception differ.

Dude, you don't get to tell me what my own point is. This exchange started when Sci affirmed that he didn't understand my argument against pluralistic idealism, so I embarked on a systematic approach to help him to understand, starting by making a point of the one-to-one correspondence between experiencer and experience.

You then butted in with an attempt to challenge my point, an attempt that failed because you did not understand it, whereas Sci did.

You now presumptuously proclaim what "the" point is, even though the point is mine, and you continue to fail to understand it even as you tell me what you think it is.

In the end, this just boils down more and more to a totally meaningless argument over definitions of words

No, it boils down to your failure to understand my point.

because you are sadly somehow unable to accept definitions different from yours

What's sad is your need to mischaracterise me in such a demeaning way just because you disagree with me and misunderstand what I'm saying.

simply because I am trying to describe a rather inexplicable set of experiences I previously couldn't imagine as being conceptually possible.

To be totally clear: your experiences, which I assume you've reported faithfully, do not falsify my point, nor are they incomprehensible on my definitions, which are standard.

Dude, you don't get to tell me what my own point is.

I was responding to your interpretation of my reply...?

This exchange started when Sci affirmed that he didn't understand my argument against pluralistic idealism, so I embarked on a systematic approach to help him to understand, starting by making a point of the one-to-one correspondence between experiencer and experience.

But, as Pluralistic Idealism doesn't exist as a branch recognized by any Idealist, you're not arguing against anything but your misunderstanding of Idealism.

You then butted in with an attempt to challenge my point, an attempt that failed because you did not understand it, whereas Sci did.

I didn't "butt in" ~ I even qualified with "I'm not Sciborg"...

Nothing "failed" ~ you just didn't comprehend my statements. You didn't even try to understand it. You just redefined it as something else, because you think what I experienced isn't possible ~ a flaw in your model that you do not wish to accept.

You now presumptuously proclaim what "the" point is, even though the point is mine, and you continue to fail to understand it even as you tell me what you think it is.

We both have points ~ and you won't even listen to mine. You won't even try to understand it, even if I try to understand yours.

No, it boils down to your failure to understand my point.

Just as you don't even seem to try and understand mine ~ you just redefine it...

What's sad is your need to mischaracterise me in such a demeaning way just because you disagree with me and misunderstand what I'm saying.

But that's how it seems to me thus far ~ perhaps I am simply rather very frustrated that we seem to just be talking past each other, and I'm not even actually sure how or why we got to this point.

To be totally clear: your experiences, which I assume you've reported faithfully, do not falsify my point, nor are they incomprehensible on my definitions, which are standard.

"Standard"? How?

Why is it like anything? Why is it like this?

Emerson Green

Before I got into philosophy of mind, I did not realize anyone even tried to deny the privacy of experience. But privacy poses various problems for physicalism, which is why physicalists often dispute it, or say they just don’t know what privacy means, or something. For me, this is non-negotiable. Not because I’m a non-physicalist partisan – I also believed this was certain when I was a physicalist. I didn’t realize it was in tension with physicalism. But once I did come to see it, I became a lot more confident that physicalism was not true. It’s plain obvious that there is something about my conscious states that nobody else can know about in the same direct way that I know about them. To me, the task is to develop a theory that accounts for this fact. If you can’t adequately explain the privacy of experience, then you at least have to explain why phenomenal consciousness seems private, why it gives us the impression of being private, etc. It won’t suffice to simply deny privacy, burden-shift, or pretend to not understand what’s being discussed. 

It might have slipped by without much notice, but the concept of phenomenal consciousness we’ve been discussing involves more than subjective what-it’s-like-ness. Subjectivity also seems intimately connected to the notion of privacy. I also mentioned ineffability in passing earlier (there’s nothing one could communicate to a neuroscientist to fully convey the knowledge of what it’s like to see a color the scientist has never seen). Further, conscious experience is something we’re directly, immediately acquainted with. We’re honing in on what philosophers of mind sometimes call qualia, which is generally taken as a synonym for phenomenal consciousness.

That’s what we non-physicalists think is non-physical. That’s what the zombie is missing.

Admittedly this was posted a few years ago, but germane to this thread in particular...

...
Admittedly this was posted a few years ago, but germane to this thread in particular...

Deconstructing the intuitions underlying Physicalism and Illusionism

Arthur Haswell

...while they claim that mental content is illusory and non-existent, they also assert it isn’t illusory and is existent. For example, the illusionist Keith Frankish is happy to affirm that consciousness exists, but on the other hand he suggests that consciousness doesn’t afford us a direct understanding of its own reality, and this leads to it creating an illusion of its own existence, when in fact it doesn’t really exist [3]. The claim that we can’t know the ‘true’ nature of mental content, such as pain, is vulnerable to Descartes’ evil demon argument: even if an evil demon or neural processes create all our experiences, we remain stuck with their presence. When confronted with this point, the illusionist can claim that they are not denying that there are experiences; it’s just that we don’t have direct access to their true reality. But then, of course, whatever it is that is obscuring this reality must have some form of existence too, in order for it to be an obstruction, and it can’t itself be the reality it is obscuring, as then we would be accessing this reality directly by simply feeling pain. For the physicalist, reality is physical, so whatever is obstructing us from accessing reality mustn’t itself be physical, or it wouldn’t be an obstruction and we would simply be accessing reality by accessing the ‘obstruction.’ It is also strange that, while the illusionist does not have access to the true nature of her own pain, she does have access to a non-arbitrary, non-illusory, seemingly transcendental criteria that allows her to evaluate veridically what is deserving of being valued as ‘real’ and what is deserving of being valued as ‘illusory.’

In fact, yet another assessment of illusionism’s contradictions is pointless, as at heart it is just a motte-and-bailey argument. When attacking, the illusionist may claim that there is no hard problem of consciousness, that consciousness is just neural activity, or that qualia don’t exist and that this entails that experience doesn’t exist. When defending, the illusionist may claim that illusionism isn’t even about the hard problem, that illusionism isn’t physicalist, that they don’t deny experience (they just think the concept of qualia is faulty), or that, in fact, illusionism doesn’t really make any ontological or metaphysical claims at all...

... The style of this article is polemical, because I am not attempting to analytically prove the falseness of physicalism (for a book that does just that, I recommend Daniel Stoljar’s Physicalism), but to bring to light its extraordinary strangeness...

Deconstructing the intuitions underlying Physicalism and Illusionism

Arthur Haswell

Excellent takedown! It reminds me far too much of Zen Buddhism and Nagarjuna's philosophy ~ it basically reads like Illusionism, along with every one of its flaws. Especially where the concept of the Skandhas is concerned, which are themselves considered illusions ~ basically something from nothing.

Excellent takedown! It reminds me far too much of Zen Buddhism and Nagarjuna's philosophy ~ it basically reads like Illusionism, along with every one of its flaws. Especially where the concept of the Skandhas is concerned, which are themselves considered illusions ~ basically something from nothing.

Could you go into the issues of Zen Buddhism & Nagarjuna? Thanks! 

I'm in agreement with you, but I suspect the author actually may not be given their Idealist leanings. Of course there are many types of Idealism, but it does feel at times that a certain, reductive Idealist is more than willing to attack Physicalism without realizing their own attempts to reduce Persons fail for similar reasons.

I'm in agreement with you, but I suspect the author actually may not be given their Idealist leanings. Of course there are many types of Idealism, but it does feel at times that a certain, reductive Idealist is more than willing to attack Physicalism without realizing their own attempts to reduce Persons fail for similar reasons.

I should have clarified that I was agreeing with the article about the self-contradictions of Illusionism, and that Zen Buddhism and Nagarjuna's philosophy can be criticized the same way, as they boil down essentially to a form of religious Illusionism, where the self is an illusion.

Could you go into the issues of Zen Buddhism & Nagarjuna? Thanks! 

Zen Buddhism has a tendency to denounce the self as an illusion that is composed of the five Skandhas, which oddly enough are also considered illusions. The individual doesn't really exist, yet there are still individuals suffering... for some reason. A contradiction that is never explained. Namely, why do illusions just... pop into existence for no apparent reason.

As for Nagarjuna, Avi Sion has done a great breakdown here: https://philarchive.org/archive/SIOLCO

The Indian Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna (c. 113-213
CE), who founded the Madhyamika (Middle Way) school,
one of the Mahayana streams, which strongly influenced
Chinese (Ch’an), Korean (Sôn) and Japanese (Zen)
Buddhism, as well as Tibetan Buddhism, is often touted by
Buddhists as one of the greatest philosophers of Buddhism.
It is claimed that he was a master logician, who managed
to show the illogic of logic. But in truth, his discourse is
merely a malicious parody of logic; it is shameless
sophistry. The present chapter contains a few extracts from
Buddhist Illogic, the book in which I analyze Nagarjuna’s
main arguments1.

I should have clarified that I was agreeing with the article about the self-contradictions of Illusionism, and that Zen Buddhism and Nagarjuna's philosophy can be criticized the same way, as they boil down essentially to a form of religious Illusionism, where the self is an illusion.


Zen Buddhism has a tendency to denounce the self as an illusion that is composed of the five Skandhas, which oddly enough are also considered illusions. The individual doesn't really exist, yet there are still individuals suffering... for some reason. A contradiction that is never explained. Namely, why do illusions just... pop into existence for no apparent reason.

As for Nagarjuna, Avi Sion has done a great breakdown here: https://philarchive.org/archive/SIOLCO

I would agree that the idea that the self is illusory is problematic, for some of the same reasons, in certain Buddhisms as it is in Physicalism.

But a quick glance at the Sion book I have to admit I have some doubts there. I don't think the Tetralemma is by necessity bad logic - I think it applies quite well to Time as demonstrated by Scott Roberts.

That said, I do think - again only after a quick look - that the criticisms he gives regarding the supposed illusory nature of the Self seem akin to the ones we've made on this forum.