>You might also be wondering if this doesn’t amount to a kind of panpsychism. This is in my opinion largely just a semantic question. All things do have a world-in-relation-to them. But I do not think we should attribute “consciousness” to simple entities such as rocks or electrons, since they lack the kinds of reflection and representation that characterise “consciousness” in more advanced creatures, as well as our typical use of the word. We might speak of them as “experiencing” forces5, but there is no sign that they experience themselves experiencing them.
This is where the utility of the theory breaks down a little for me, but that’s likely due to a faulty reading. I’m selfishly most curious about the seeming difference between the rocks/electrons and my definitely conscious self/other seemingly conscious animals. When I think about the hard problem of consciousness, I think of it in terms of why I definitely experience things, and waterfalls seemingly don’t. You suggest that the waterfall doesn’t experience itself experiencing things, while I do, but then that’s the difference I want most to get to the bottom of. I’m stubbornly set on that being the distinction that matters when people talk about consciousness.
If all things experience things but only a handful of those things experience themselves experiencing things in some sense, that could be, but I think most of us are after the mechanism behind those exceptions when we scratch our heads over conscious experience.
That's a fair question and I suppose looking again I've left this aspect of the theory massively underdeveloped. The idea behind it is largely the same, but involving levels of integration and self-relation, which creates a world-in-relation-to a creature that kind of recursively includes the creature and their interactions. Possibly like Douglas Hofstadter's 'strange loop' idea (I've still yet to read his books...). That is a story that I think is already pretty well told by books about the evolution of minds and life and neuroscience, although it would be good to try to put it into the language and ideas I'm trying to work out here. It's kind of a matter of mapping out all the relations including how they integrate with one another and how a thing relates to itself and to its history.
As I've remarked elsewhere while discussing Thomas Nagel's _The View from Nowhere_: The real hard problem does not concern subjectivity, the view from somewhere, which for everyone is a given. The real hard problem concerns objectivity, the view from nowhere, which no one has or can possibly have. Yet so much do we take "objectivity" for granted that we are confused into thinking it's no problem at all, and we end up puzzling over exactly the wrong thing, namely how there can be subjectivity. The question for the next development in philosophy, I predict, is how there can be objectivity; and the leading minds are already on it (in their explorations of "intersubjectivity," "interspace," or "betweenness," for example).
As for the hard problem as identified by Chalmers: I've known all along that it's a problem only for the Metaphysics Formerly Known as Materialism. I feel like I'm watching patiently as, under cover of a name change, the adherents of said metaphysics gradually adjust their position, while trying to make it seem like they were right all along.
(Random thought re Footnote 1: it's interesting that brain neurons can directly experience the surgeon's scalpel, but the patient cannot.)
Yeah I think there's some really interesting work to be done to really figure out objectivity. I'm thinking it might be possible to give some kind of mathematical representation and show how for everything in relation to myself, I must also be in relation with everything they are in relation with, even if only indirectly, which already begins to form a shared world.
Materialism/physicalism is certainly evolving, and I hope in a pragmatist and pluralist direction, but that's a good thing imo.
Interesting point about the neurons! This is something I feel I still need to flesh out properly. There are some ways of relating to parts of a system that don't seem to be relating to the system as a whole. I think that may be the key thing even, that if the impact is localised then it is only experienced locally. Also experience might be incoherent or indirect. More work needed...
Interesting hypothesis Joseph. Although it's my first time sitting with it, so I'll probably need further articles fleshing it out to really start getting to grips with what you're saying.
Most people, it seems, try to hurdle the hard problem using complex thinking and metaphysics. I guess I'd put you into that bracket, with a whole new view of reality that feels mind boggling to say the least 😁
I guess I'm suspicious of any philosophical complexity as trying to play a bit of smoke and mirrors. Not that this is what you're doing. I'm just explaining my wariness to some thinking in this area.
Your idea reminds me of an argument I once had with a philosopher friend about whether words denote things or merely the relationships between things
Thanks! No worries, it's good to be wary with ideas like this. I will note that this position isn't invented purely for the sake of responding to the hard problem of consciousness though, and it actually follows from a lot of different things and is pretty powerful in a lot of different areas. This post is kind of me applying the more general metaphysical view I've been developing for a little while now to consciousness.
I agree with what you say about the “background assumption” (as you describe it) being incorrect in terms of the universe. There’s no absolute, “objective” reality or “non-relativistic existence” within the universe. We can’t remove ourselves from the universe in order to know it “objectively.” There is no “absolute point of view”, that’s a nonsensical idea.
But why assume that there’s no metaphysical, fundamental, or absolute reality?
People have NDE’s, spiritual experiences, spiritual awakenings, psychic and mediumistic abilities. When the infinite/ eternal (absolute) aspect of reality is experienced, it is self evident. It is known, not believed or assumed.
>But why assume that there’s no metaphysical, fundamental, or absolute reality?
I wouldn't say it's assumption, but rather I think the concepts don't make sense. Like, really, what do they actually mean for us? What difference do they make to anything? It seems to me like they are just telling us to privilege one point of view or conception of the world.
>People have NDE’s, spiritual experiences, spiritual awakenings, psychic and mediumistic abilities. When the infinite/ eternal (absolute) aspect of reality is experienced, it is self evident. It is known, not believed or assumed.
What I've said here and my rejection of absolute reality doesn't rule out NDEs or spiritual experiences of any kind. In fact it's very much influenced by the Madhyamaka Buddhist teachings on emptiness, and they believe in reincarnation and magic and all sorts of things. But I do think that where people think they've experienced absolute reality directly, they are mistaken, however convincing it may seem to them.
I disagree, I don't think there's any content to the idea of a referent taken in isolation from how it relates to things.
I'm agnostic/sceptical about them, but if they're real then I think it's just a further "physics" (as in a further aspect of nature), not anything ultimate.
Another thought: what are the implications of this for our understanding of generative AI, the possibility of its experience, and our interactions with it?
It's really interesting. I think there's definitely a world-in-relation-to a language model, so there's a kind of experience there, but it's radically different to ours because they're essentially limited to a world of text. And can they really "want" or "try" anything? I think it may be a very technical question and it's not obvious to me at all.
I've also been learning about AI agent teams, and I wonder if they might be much closer to our kind of consciousness than any individual LM could be.
You say "many different (and conflicting) ontologies may simultaneously be true" and that this is a non-foundationalist view... but if I am barred from having a non-relational view, then I'd say it is a foundationalist worldview in that it makes a universal inescapable rule that things must be relational. It's either not truly relational (in that non-relational ontologies can be true) or it's not truly non-foundationalist in that I'm never allow to do something no matter what, namely having a non-relational ontology... which just sounds like foundationalist question begging
I don't think it's contrary to non-foundationalism to have a universe rule of this sort. It can't be argued via a positive account, but if the non-relational account can be shown to be incoherent or meaningless, then it cannot be true, and so can be rejected.
If something is universally governing the whole web I don't take the distinction between foundationalism and non-foundationalism to be substantive anymore, more of a semantic distinction. I also don't accept that being incoherent or meaninglessness makes something untrue because the arguments against non-propositional theories of truth are very bad and all question begging, and those theories would allow something which is meaningless to be true, which again it seems like some form of foundationalist thing to say "Something meaningless and incoherent cannot be true" now maybe it's another non-foundational universal rule, but it strikes me as playing the same role as a foundation. To summarize: The epistemological theories that try to distinguish foundations from universal rules from my reading of the literature are an absolute disaster, and if incoherence and meaninglessness are the currency for discarding non-relational ontologies this is very bad news because the arguments against non-propositional truth are very bad arguments, and so it just seems like I'm completely free to have non-relational ontologies until those arguments become good and relational ontologies need to fix the symmetrical accusations of incoherence, since many have problems with vicious infinite regresses (labeled benign by supports) that many argue make relational views incoherent (now I don't strike that against the views, many Buddhists famously embrace their incoherence) but in Western philosophy incoherence is more famously and more widely thought to be a problem for relational views than it is for non-relational views.
We've discussed this before, but I think the "view from nowhere" phrase is misleading. I do agree that the objective account is a construction, but it's one built from many many diverse first person perspectives, reconciling and correcting for their individual blind spots. As a result, it seems far more reliable than any one first person account. I'm a structural realist, but if radical relationism says there is no possible reconciliation in that sense, then I'm not convinced.
But as I noted on your previous post, I've never been bothered by what you call the problem of subjectivity. Although I'm curious how you see the account you present here as being that different from what I said in the last thread, that it's explained by the fact we exist in one time and place with a unique history, a relational account that seems resonant with what you present here. Unless I'm missing something?
What do you think of the idea of "reality in itself"? I think that gets at the idea I'm opposing a bit better, since it's not inherently concerned with a "view".
My point isn't that we can't construct a true account of our shared reality, but that's always still a relational account, not "reality in itself" or a "view from nowhere". Like, our shared idea of the world is relative to our shared concepts.
I think the scientific approach is kind of about finding new perspectives and integrating them so that we can relate to and participate in the world more deeply. So they are even still more true, in my "participatory theory" sense of "true".
It's not in disagreement with that, but I think more is needed, or at least needs to be made explicit. I agree that it's the fact that we have a particular existence and relational point of view, but I think if we still have the idea of reality-in-itself, then the mystery remains of how it should give rise to our relational experience. We need to address the ontological/metaphysical status of experience.
I'm definitely onboard that we never reach a non-relational account. If "reality in itself" is the non-relational, fundamentally intrinsic parts of reality that epistemic structural realists talk about, I do oppose that, since I'm not even clear what that's supposed to be. As far as I can tell, the only coherent account is a relational one. Even in the case of scientific unobservables, we're able to learn about them through their structural relations with what we can observe.
Right! Although where I'd call my position "radical" is that I think some with some positions like OSR, we might take for granted that all the structures of relations have existence in some kind of objective and universal way. Like if we imagine a kind of ESR where the intrinsic nature isn't entirely intrinsic, but small entirely enclosed and self referential relational structures. Like if fundamental reality were made of triangles, but those triangles didn't have any impact on anything else. The "radical" part is that I think there could be no fact of the matter about any such fundamental triangles if they are not at all in relation to the rest of the world. I think that otherwise, we've got an idea of reality-in-itself still.
Consider a galaxy hundreds of billions of light years away. In my mind, that galaxy has a relation to ours, even though they've never interacted and, if current cosmological models are correct, they never will.
There's Rovelli style relationism, which says there's no relation except during the interaction. That's a type of relationism I don't buy. We may not know the relation, but it should exist. If the galaxy is actually just outside our light cone, and the light is just now reaching us, does a relation suddenly snap into reality? For me that would require an explanation for how it does get set.
I actually think such a galaxy only has a kind of indeterminate existence in superposition relative to us (and our existence relative to them would be equally indeterminate). I went into it in this post - https://thinkstrangethoughts.substack.com/p/a-new-interpretation-of-quantum-mechanics?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1ackrk. Which is admittedly extreme and a bit crazy, but I think it's kind of the opposite kind of crazy to the MWI and block universe, being a kind of ontological minimalism as opposed to the maximalism of having everything exist.
I wasn't really thinking of the triangles as platonic entities, but that's a fair interpretation.
From Theodore Stcherbatsky, The Conception of Buddhist Nirvana (1989), page 49+ of the main body of the text (not the introduction), noting that the term 'real' differs from your usage:
Since we use the term "relative' to describe the fact that a thing can be identified only by mentioning its relations to something else, and becomes meaningless without these relations, implying at the same time that the thing in question is unreal, we safely, for want of a better solution, can translate the word Sunya by relativity or contingency. ... That the term Sunya is in Mahayana a synonym of dependent existence (pratityasamutpada) and means not something void, but something "devoid" of independent reality (svabhaava-sunya), with the implication that nothing short of the whole possesses independent reality, and with the further implication that the whole forbids every formulation by concept or speech (nisprapanea), since they can only bifurcate (vikalpa) reality and never directly seize it -- this is attested by an overwhelming mass of evidence in all the Mahayana literature. ...
The principle that nothing (in the universe) can disappear,
It's tricky, I think that's a good way of putting the typical philosophical use of the word, but I do think the everyday use is already so much more pragmatic and relative. You can end up seeming contradictory and saying things like "nothing is real and everything is".
Of course I endorse what you say. Reading this was uncanny and joyful for me, because your approach is in the same "family" as my own approach. I'm guessing that you had some of the same motivations as I did. I want to "save empirical objects" from "metaphysicians" in love with a fetish known as "reality in itself" or "objective reality." Which, when you step outside of it for a moment, becomes conspicuously "theological." The "metaphysician" demands "truthmakers" even at the cost of nonsense. "Reality-in-itself" whispers the promise of the possibility of an unmitigated correctitude. Heidegger critiques this tendency in Husserl in some of his earliest lectures. Husserl raged against historicism as the threat of relativism. But "anxiety in the face of relativism is anxiety in the face of philosophy." And anxiety in the face of existence itself.
On the issue of panpsychism, my own take is that consciousness does not exist. Consciousness is not a stuff in the world to be found "in" that world and "in" the brain of organisms. Instead the word "consciousness" is a synonym for "being" in the context of the ontological difference. I know that many will take this to indicate monistic idealism, but that would be a failure to grasp the difference between the "presence" of things and the things that are "present."
In your last reply, you emphasized your pluralism. I'm with you on that. Radical pluralism, ontological perspectivism. Or your phrase: " radical relationism." I don't want to presume too much, but from my POV we are both working in the same direction. The hard problem of consciousness is dissolved. To me this "specifies" the situation. The weird world is finally just here.
Thanks 🙂. Yeah we're definitely thinking along pretty crazily similar lines! It's a good sign I think.
That's really interesting about Heidegger and Husserl. What do you think of Heidegger? I'm thinking I may read him soon.
Could you expand on what you mean by "in the context of the ontological difference"? I think I'm onboard with what you're saying, but not sure I get this phrase. But I totally agree about consciousness not being a thing that exists, and being, in some sense, "being".
Early Heidegger is some of my favorite philosophy. I recommend the first draft of Being and Time if you can get it. It's a red and white continuum paperback titled The Concept of Time, translated by Ingo Farin. It's 100 pages and really just a beautiful little paperback with great footnotes.
There's even an earlier and shorter "ur-Being and TIme," which is a lecture Heidegger gave to some theologians. You can browse it here if you are curious:
I think you already know what I'm going to say here, but just in case I can be helpful ( and to put this out for other readers) I'll give you my take.
I approach the ontological difference this way. The word "being" is a noun, a thing, an entity. Of course. BUT some thinkers ( not only Heidegger ) have tried to use this noun-word-entity to point at the "being there" of entities in general. This "being there" is not a stuff.
I think the word "consciousness" is best understood as a pointer like "being" at the "presence" or "being" of the world FOR the organism we call "conscious."
When I talk to another person, I am not talking to a "stuff" in their brain. I am talking to "the entire world from another point of view." IMO, it's only this "strong" reading of the word "consciousness" that does justice to the way we LIVE. I mean we believe our friends share the world with us. And we call objects "physical" because they are also there for others.
Wolfgang Fasching is excellent on this specific point. He's at the intersection of phenomenology and the Vedantic tradition. There's a scholar named Blouin who wrote a killer paper on Husserl, and he interprets Husserl as presenting an "ontological phenomenalism."
The phrase "ontological difference" is not always aimed at the consciousness issue. Fair warning ! And lots of people who like Heidegger don't like the word "consciousness. " I'd prefer to reclaim it, because it's so important in English. "Dasein" or "existence" is the "situated disclosure" or "presence-ing" of world-from-POV. For early Heidegger, a huge part of this is how signs "signify" for us depending on our entire personal and cultural history. So time is central theme.
Thanks! Yeah, it's kind of pulling together everything again because I feel like I haven't directly addressed consciousness for a while, and I think my views have been subtly shifting and maturing. Like back in this post - https://thinkstrangethoughts.substack.com/p/the-view-from-somewhere-reframing - I didn't really have much of an idea of what was doing the relating, so it was kind of implicitly thought of as some kind of tiny points.
There was a moment there where I was reminded of a chapter in Merleau Pontys phenomenology of perception where he starts describing Husserls relational framework. I’ll have to look it up. Maybe I dreamt it, but I swear he talks about the different objects in the room constituting each other from various perspectives. It’s really vivid. Yeah I’ll look it up first and let you know if it’s worth checking out or if I’m just making things up. That’s what I get for reading at bedtime. 🤣
I found it! And I reread it—it is indeed as awesome as I remembered.
Here's a PDF of the entire book. I don't know whether it'll open automatically to the right chapter or not, but in case it doesn't, the chapter title is: EXPERIENCE AND OBJECTIVE THOUGHT: The problem of the body. It begins on page 77 in the book, page 102 in the PDF file.
The chapter is fairly short. It begins with:
"Our perception ends in objects, and the object once constituted, appears as the reason for all the experiences of it which we have had or could have. For example, I see the next-door house from a certain angle, but it would be seen differently from the right bank of the Seine, or from the inside, or again from an aeroplane: the house itself is none of these appearances: it is, as Leibnitz said, the geometrized projection of these perspectives and of all possible perspectives, that is, the perspectiveless position from which all can be derived, the house seen from nowhere. But what do these words mean? Is not to see always to see from somewhere? To say that the house itself is seen from nowhere is surely to say that it is invisible!"
Oh, I should say "horizon" is a term Husserl uses. It's a bit tough to define, but I just think of it as a context or background of possible experiences. The sense that you get even while preoccupied with some particular object or thought that the rest of the world is in the background, available for you to turn your attention to. It's kind of an indefinite idea of some totality like the world, but it can also be about the indefinite other side of an object that's currently out of view. This invisible aspect or "horizon" isn't simply not experienced, but instead the idea of it's unseen side shapes the experience of the side that's currently in view. If that makes sense.
Well, you are not the first philosopher who tries to make relationalism work as an alternate approach to metaphysics. Whitehead is the most famous of these. I have, at this point, read partway into several books on Whitehead's relationalist metaphysics -- and with them the number of apparent incoherencies I encountered multiplied exponentially the deeper I read into the work.
One of the problems I think I was encountering with Whitehead was that he was still in a primarily Humean/Positivist "confirmation" approach to science, and his modern interpreters didn't seem to have read Popper, so their approach to science they got from Whitehead. Falsifications, and doing test cases, then tuning up the metaphysics to correct any such failings -- I got the feeling this had never been done by the Relational community. When, 3 chapters into an 11 chapter book and I already am carrying several dozen apparent contradictions in my head I am looking for the author to answer -- but its an author who only cites SUPPORTS -- I have just given up.
The several relational books seem to follow Whitehead in accepting abstractions, consciousness, and macro objects -- but somehow all of these reduce to fundamental relational units.
Whitehead, however, was assuming a "real world" of relations -- and you have gone a step further, by denying such a possibility.
With what I consider to be Whitehead's failure --you have a major question mark as to whether this ontology can be even remotely applicable to our World. AND -- how to test it? why has this not been discovered before? What is the future structure and programme of science under this very different ontological paradigm? What will be the advances it opens up? IF you claim to have solved the hard problem of consciousness, what is the experimental approach that will demonstrate this? What does this theory predict about consciousness, and can we test it?
I am not seeing any of this in your brief post.
What I think I DO see -- is a misunderstanding of the Hard Problem. Science does empiricism. We confirm that "X causes Y" by empirical testing. Having a theory of the causal mechanism is very useful, but not necessary (see Newton and Gravity). Similarly for identity claims, such as "X IS Y". No we do not have to be able to show reduction identity -- a predictive correlation to an assumed identity is all that is needed. You seem to think that the hard problem is that we don't have the explanation for how the reductive identity works, and that's the problem. But that's NOT the hard problem.
The hard problem is that all the identity claims proposed by physicalists, fail identity tests. Consciousness shows up where the identity doesn't happen, or doesn't show up when it does. For example -- Neural identity -- one would expect thoughts to be different when the neural structure changes. And our neural structure changes all the time, but are thoughts are pretty stable. Also -- we can transfer a thought between neural structures. This problem -- that multiple realizability violates the identity claim, is why most physicalists today are functionalists, not neural reductionists. Also, of course -- our consciousness behaves like a turing machine, but we are not wired anything line a Turing machine ....
There are similar problems for functionalism. We do a LOT of functions. And 99.99% of the are unconscious. So ... functions in general are not identical to consciousness. Also for functions done by feed forward recursive neural nets, or functions that use a global workspace, or functions that operate on a substrate with a high Phi, etc. Every one fails multiple test cases.
The problem for physicalist thinking, is they are proposing an intuitively unlikely claim, and the proof for intuitive unlikeliness has to be high predictive power -- but these models all fail drastically with their very first order predictions. THIS is the "hard problem of consciousness".
AND -- I don't think your relational metaphysics s going to do any better with the hard problem. At first read, it looks like you are predicting that EVERYTHING should be conscious, given the intrinsically conscious first person feature of relationality, and certainty most of what our brains do would be. BUT -- again, 99.99% of what brains do is UNCONSCIOUS! This looks like of zero use to address the hard problem, and in addition, being in a massive hole relative to ontic coherence.
Right, not the first relationalist and not the last :)
Whitehead is great, but I found in the end that he made things too complicated imo. He's a really "fertile" thinker though I'd say, full of insight and inspiration and ways of rethinking old problems.
> With what I consider to be Whitehead's failure --you have a major question mark as to whether this ontology can be even remotely applicable to our World. AND -- how to test it?
I wouldn't describe the general view I'm putting forward here as an ontology of its own. The point is actually to deny that there is any absolute ontology, and to say that every ontology is always relative.
One big way that it's applicable to the world is in our thinking about scientific theories and philosophy of science and the relations between the different sciences, and their relation to "reality". One concrete thing it offers, is that different sciences do not need to justify themselves to any others sciences, or to metaphysics.
As for how to test it, we cannot test it. At least not empirically. But then we also could not empirically test the opposing position that there is a non-relation absolute reality-in-itself. But given the irrelevance of that concept for all empirical and pragmatic purposes, I think we are better off without it. Plus it is still not clear what it is supposed to mean.
> why has this not been discovered before?
It's very close to Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka philosophy, and pretty close in a lot of ways to ontic structural realism, perspectivism, and possibly other views like irrealism. Others have made pretty similar theories regarding consciousness specifically too. I'm not sure anyone has spelled out exactly the picture I'm giving here, but there's a lot of commonality across a lot of views.
> What is the future structure and programme of science under this very different ontological paradigm?
Largely, it would be for scientists to stop worrying about metaphysics and ultimate reality. Which they mostly have already, but you still see some getting caught up in such ideas, including in consciousness studies and in ideas about physical reductionism. Instead, scientists should work within their own scientific frameworks, including adjusting them as they go to find what works best.
> IF you claim to have solved the hard problem of consciousness, what is the experimental approach that will demonstrate this? What does this theory predict about consciousness, and can we test it?
The hard problem of consciousness is not an empirical problem and cannot be empirically tested. That's a big part of the point of the zombie idea and the "hardness" of the problem. It's basically designed to be empirically untouchable. So the hard problem has to be addressed by conceptual and philosophical argumentation, like what I've done somewhat here.
> The hard problem is that all the identity claims proposed by physicalists, fail identity tests.
That's not the hard problem... Chalmers' paper where he coined the term puts it this way:
>>It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.
>>If any problem qualifies as the problem of consciousness, it is this one.
That's the hard problem I'm talking about.
> At first read, it looks like you are predicting that EVERYTHING should be conscious, given the intrinsically conscious first person feature of relationality, and certainty most of what our brains do would be.
I did specifically say I don't think everything is conscious. I think there is a world-in-relation-to everything, and we might use the word "experience" for this (as physicists already do, eg when talking about electrons "experiencing" a force), but I think "consciousness" is something more advanced and complex involving self-relation and reflection.
I enjoyed this but am slightly torn! I think you're right to want to de-privilege the third-person point of view, along with the attempt to incorporate experience within that view, but I think this is quite similar to Ryle's criticism of dualism as making a category error and I wonder what you gain by raising a flag for a particular alternative metaphysics?
This may just be because of my own habits of thought, but I felt that your argument was most successful when tidying up confused ways of describing experience, and more inconclusive when trying to justify that tidying up in relationalism as a kind of foundation (I sense a slightly self-contradicting spirit here, as if looking for an ontological foundation for epistemic anti-foundationalisn). Perhaps relationalism helped convince you of the conclusion, but it might be a bitterer pill than is necessary to treat the problem.
I kind of think metaphysics is unavoidable, and if we try to avoid it we are likely to have an implicit metaphysics which is problematic and unquestioned. I think it's better to have a positively "anti-metaphysics metaphysics", where we are not given any new metaphysical foundation, but we do not leave the assumption of there being one we can't speak about hanging in the background.
I wouldn't describe relationalism as a kind of foundation. In a similar way to the Madhyamaka idea that even emptiness is empty, I'd say even relationalism is not ultimate reality. That's maybe a slight contradiction, but I think it's an acceptable one, like "the only rule is, there are no rules". Undermining itself isn't a bad thing.
"""""" I think it's better to have a positively "anti-metaphysics metaphysics", where we are not given any new metaphysical foundation, but we do not leave the assumption of there being one we can't speak about hanging in the background.""""
I have to chime in here, because I'm with you. My take : (1) We aren't doing science, offering quasi-empirical theses. That's the "metaphysics" appropriately abandoned by positivism at its best. (2) We are just "explicating" the basic human situation and getting a better grip on our fundamental terms. (3) We can safely "fish out" and explicitly adopt the presuppositions that are tacit in the postulation of the possibility of science. If we don't share objects through a shared language, there is no science or philosophy, so we can all go home.
So I think one task for philosophers to try to "specify" this "forum" --- which is something that happens within that same forum, because it's just conversation with other people. If there is a philosophy in the first place, then the world is fundamentally a "space of assembly." That's my claim. Largely inspired by Apel.
He's obscure in English, so I provide a nice link which you might find relevant to your work.
I'm not so much saying that we must avoid metaphysics as that it's not clear that the hard problem particularly benefits from an analysis of competing metaphysics. The worry is similar to Woolery's, that, to the extent the analysis is meta-, it only changes the vocabulary in which the problem will be stated.
The criticisms that have bite rather seem to be the ones which say (implicitly or explicitly) that the hard problem arises from a description of experience which is inconsistent with other commitments we cannot give up (I would say: our account of knowledge), so that it doesn't actually matter what one's metaphysics is, the problem is ruled out on pain of contradiction and our task is to understand why we're inclined to make an error here.
When you say, for example, that qualia are not intrinsic properties but relational ones, I think the second part of the sentence just isn't needed (even if it's true) because an intrinsic property is already a self-defeating nonsense concept. It might be too bold to say that that's a purely logical issue, maybe it's a more complex empirical one, but the hardist's retreat into metaphysics is basically a sly attempt to hide their inconsistency in a gap that's generated by all transcendental arguments.
"Suppose now that these interactions and relationships are themselves the stuff of “consciousness”—by which I mean not ordinary waking consciousness, or dreaming consciousness, or even the cryptic form of consciousness that has been called the subconscious or the unconscious, but the fundamental awareness suggested by all these things. To the extent that one entity interacts with another, each necessarily has a consciousness of the other. The consciousness is not a property of either entity; neither is it a new entity in its own right. It is that which is fundamental to the possibility of relationship. The relationship is necessarily conscious, for all relationship, as we are now considering it, is consciousness."
No need to worry about self-promotion! I'll try to check it out soon. I like the quote a lot. I shy away from some of the phrasing because I'm wary of it seeming like the word "consciousness" is adding anything to the relationships, which I don't think is necessary. Also "consciousness" feels like too loaded a term, although I think it makes sense to use "experience" much more broadly.
I agree, the term "consciousness" isn't helpful, and I've since tried to find other words. "Fundamental awareness"came up in the post. "Experience" is good. Whitehead favoured "feeling." In the same vein, some academics are using "affect."
I'm a big fan of using Whitehead's "prehension". It's close enough to familiar words that you get a feel for it, and different enough that you don't simply conflate it.
> Which relations are physically realizable, and why these rather than infinitely many other logically conceivable relations?
It seems like you still think I'm saying the physical is fundamental, but that's exactly what I've just been denying. I do think that the relations in our brains can be viewed through physics though, and that in that way we can understand the processes and relations that make up our minds.
> Saying
> “Experience is the world-in-relation-to the organism”
>changes the vocabulary but doesn’t derive anything. It tells you what consciousness is being identified with, but not why a particular relational structure gives rise to one unified subject instead of many, or none.
I covered this in the post, whatever relates as one thing is one thing. If it functions as one, it is one. Actually I could go further and say that if A relates *as if* it is one to B, then it is one, relative to B. It's also not a relational structure "giving rise" to a unified subject, as if there's a new entity or substance being added to the picture.
>The same issue appears with the zombie argument. It says zombies cannot exist because a perfect physical duplicate would have identical relations. But that’s only true if you already assume that identical relational structure entails identical experience.
> That assumption is precisely what the hard problem is asking to justify.
I just did justify it. Once you have the relational view, there's no mystery in getting from that world-in-relation-to to experience, because there's no clear difference between the two. If you think there is a difference or a gap, feel free to point it out.
> So the argument becomes circular:
> 1. Consciousness is relational.
> 2. The zombie has the same relations.
> 3. Therefore the zombie is conscious.
That's not circular. Every valid argument has its conclusion follows from its premises.
Fun post and well written.
>You might also be wondering if this doesn’t amount to a kind of panpsychism. This is in my opinion largely just a semantic question. All things do have a world-in-relation-to them. But I do not think we should attribute “consciousness” to simple entities such as rocks or electrons, since they lack the kinds of reflection and representation that characterise “consciousness” in more advanced creatures, as well as our typical use of the word. We might speak of them as “experiencing” forces5, but there is no sign that they experience themselves experiencing them.
This is where the utility of the theory breaks down a little for me, but that’s likely due to a faulty reading. I’m selfishly most curious about the seeming difference between the rocks/electrons and my definitely conscious self/other seemingly conscious animals. When I think about the hard problem of consciousness, I think of it in terms of why I definitely experience things, and waterfalls seemingly don’t. You suggest that the waterfall doesn’t experience itself experiencing things, while I do, but then that’s the difference I want most to get to the bottom of. I’m stubbornly set on that being the distinction that matters when people talk about consciousness.
If all things experience things but only a handful of those things experience themselves experiencing things in some sense, that could be, but I think most of us are after the mechanism behind those exceptions when we scratch our heads over conscious experience.
Thank you!
That's a fair question and I suppose looking again I've left this aspect of the theory massively underdeveloped. The idea behind it is largely the same, but involving levels of integration and self-relation, which creates a world-in-relation-to a creature that kind of recursively includes the creature and their interactions. Possibly like Douglas Hofstadter's 'strange loop' idea (I've still yet to read his books...). That is a story that I think is already pretty well told by books about the evolution of minds and life and neuroscience, although it would be good to try to put it into the language and ideas I'm trying to work out here. It's kind of a matter of mapping out all the relations including how they integrate with one another and how a thing relates to itself and to its history.
Amen to that. This is the true root of it all 👍
As I've remarked elsewhere while discussing Thomas Nagel's _The View from Nowhere_: The real hard problem does not concern subjectivity, the view from somewhere, which for everyone is a given. The real hard problem concerns objectivity, the view from nowhere, which no one has or can possibly have. Yet so much do we take "objectivity" for granted that we are confused into thinking it's no problem at all, and we end up puzzling over exactly the wrong thing, namely how there can be subjectivity. The question for the next development in philosophy, I predict, is how there can be objectivity; and the leading minds are already on it (in their explorations of "intersubjectivity," "interspace," or "betweenness," for example).
As for the hard problem as identified by Chalmers: I've known all along that it's a problem only for the Metaphysics Formerly Known as Materialism. I feel like I'm watching patiently as, under cover of a name change, the adherents of said metaphysics gradually adjust their position, while trying to make it seem like they were right all along.
(Random thought re Footnote 1: it's interesting that brain neurons can directly experience the surgeon's scalpel, but the patient cannot.)
Yeah I think there's some really interesting work to be done to really figure out objectivity. I'm thinking it might be possible to give some kind of mathematical representation and show how for everything in relation to myself, I must also be in relation with everything they are in relation with, even if only indirectly, which already begins to form a shared world.
Materialism/physicalism is certainly evolving, and I hope in a pragmatist and pluralist direction, but that's a good thing imo.
Interesting point about the neurons! This is something I feel I still need to flesh out properly. There are some ways of relating to parts of a system that don't seem to be relating to the system as a whole. I think that may be the key thing even, that if the impact is localised then it is only experienced locally. Also experience might be incoherent or indirect. More work needed...
Interesting hypothesis Joseph. Although it's my first time sitting with it, so I'll probably need further articles fleshing it out to really start getting to grips with what you're saying.
Most people, it seems, try to hurdle the hard problem using complex thinking and metaphysics. I guess I'd put you into that bracket, with a whole new view of reality that feels mind boggling to say the least 😁
I guess I'm suspicious of any philosophical complexity as trying to play a bit of smoke and mirrors. Not that this is what you're doing. I'm just explaining my wariness to some thinking in this area.
Your idea reminds me of an argument I once had with a philosopher friend about whether words denote things or merely the relationships between things
Thanks! No worries, it's good to be wary with ideas like this. I will note that this position isn't invented purely for the sake of responding to the hard problem of consciousness though, and it actually follows from a lot of different things and is pretty powerful in a lot of different areas. This post is kind of me applying the more general metaphysical view I've been developing for a little while now to consciousness.
I agree with what you say about the “background assumption” (as you describe it) being incorrect in terms of the universe. There’s no absolute, “objective” reality or “non-relativistic existence” within the universe. We can’t remove ourselves from the universe in order to know it “objectively.” There is no “absolute point of view”, that’s a nonsensical idea.
But why assume that there’s no metaphysical, fundamental, or absolute reality?
People have NDE’s, spiritual experiences, spiritual awakenings, psychic and mediumistic abilities. When the infinite/ eternal (absolute) aspect of reality is experienced, it is self evident. It is known, not believed or assumed.
>But why assume that there’s no metaphysical, fundamental, or absolute reality?
I wouldn't say it's assumption, but rather I think the concepts don't make sense. Like, really, what do they actually mean for us? What difference do they make to anything? It seems to me like they are just telling us to privilege one point of view or conception of the world.
>People have NDE’s, spiritual experiences, spiritual awakenings, psychic and mediumistic abilities. When the infinite/ eternal (absolute) aspect of reality is experienced, it is self evident. It is known, not believed or assumed.
What I've said here and my rejection of absolute reality doesn't rule out NDEs or spiritual experiences of any kind. In fact it's very much influenced by the Madhyamaka Buddhist teachings on emptiness, and they believe in reincarnation and magic and all sorts of things. But I do think that where people think they've experienced absolute reality directly, they are mistaken, however convincing it may seem to them.
My point is that an absolute/ fundamental/ metaphysical reality (pick your word) is ontologically true, it’s not a concept, there’s a referent.
I’m talking about ontology, not pragmatics or meaning making.
For most people it probably doesn’t make a difference. For me, I’m compelled to share.
How do NDE’s and spiritual experiences etc. fit into your philosophy if they are not metaphysical?
I disagree, I don't think there's any content to the idea of a referent taken in isolation from how it relates to things.
I'm agnostic/sceptical about them, but if they're real then I think it's just a further "physics" (as in a further aspect of nature), not anything ultimate.
Have you ever had any spiritual, absolute, or magical experiences?
Makes sense. And yes, super interesting!
This makes a lot of sense to me. Also, "Lois and Clark" was a great show. 😉
Thanks! It was so good!!!
Another thought: what are the implications of this for our understanding of generative AI, the possibility of its experience, and our interactions with it?
It's really interesting. I think there's definitely a world-in-relation-to a language model, so there's a kind of experience there, but it's radically different to ours because they're essentially limited to a world of text. And can they really "want" or "try" anything? I think it may be a very technical question and it's not obvious to me at all.
I've also been learning about AI agent teams, and I wonder if they might be much closer to our kind of consciousness than any individual LM could be.
You say "many different (and conflicting) ontologies may simultaneously be true" and that this is a non-foundationalist view... but if I am barred from having a non-relational view, then I'd say it is a foundationalist worldview in that it makes a universal inescapable rule that things must be relational. It's either not truly relational (in that non-relational ontologies can be true) or it's not truly non-foundationalist in that I'm never allow to do something no matter what, namely having a non-relational ontology... which just sounds like foundationalist question begging
I don't think it's contrary to non-foundationalism to have a universe rule of this sort. It can't be argued via a positive account, but if the non-relational account can be shown to be incoherent or meaningless, then it cannot be true, and so can be rejected.
If something is universally governing the whole web I don't take the distinction between foundationalism and non-foundationalism to be substantive anymore, more of a semantic distinction. I also don't accept that being incoherent or meaninglessness makes something untrue because the arguments against non-propositional theories of truth are very bad and all question begging, and those theories would allow something which is meaningless to be true, which again it seems like some form of foundationalist thing to say "Something meaningless and incoherent cannot be true" now maybe it's another non-foundational universal rule, but it strikes me as playing the same role as a foundation. To summarize: The epistemological theories that try to distinguish foundations from universal rules from my reading of the literature are an absolute disaster, and if incoherence and meaninglessness are the currency for discarding non-relational ontologies this is very bad news because the arguments against non-propositional truth are very bad arguments, and so it just seems like I'm completely free to have non-relational ontologies until those arguments become good and relational ontologies need to fix the symmetrical accusations of incoherence, since many have problems with vicious infinite regresses (labeled benign by supports) that many argue make relational views incoherent (now I don't strike that against the views, many Buddhists famously embrace their incoherence) but in Western philosophy incoherence is more famously and more widely thought to be a problem for relational views than it is for non-relational views.
We've discussed this before, but I think the "view from nowhere" phrase is misleading. I do agree that the objective account is a construction, but it's one built from many many diverse first person perspectives, reconciling and correcting for their individual blind spots. As a result, it seems far more reliable than any one first person account. I'm a structural realist, but if radical relationism says there is no possible reconciliation in that sense, then I'm not convinced.
But as I noted on your previous post, I've never been bothered by what you call the problem of subjectivity. Although I'm curious how you see the account you present here as being that different from what I said in the last thread, that it's explained by the fact we exist in one time and place with a unique history, a relational account that seems resonant with what you present here. Unless I'm missing something?
What do you think of the idea of "reality in itself"? I think that gets at the idea I'm opposing a bit better, since it's not inherently concerned with a "view".
My point isn't that we can't construct a true account of our shared reality, but that's always still a relational account, not "reality in itself" or a "view from nowhere". Like, our shared idea of the world is relative to our shared concepts.
I think the scientific approach is kind of about finding new perspectives and integrating them so that we can relate to and participate in the world more deeply. So they are even still more true, in my "participatory theory" sense of "true".
It's not in disagreement with that, but I think more is needed, or at least needs to be made explicit. I agree that it's the fact that we have a particular existence and relational point of view, but I think if we still have the idea of reality-in-itself, then the mystery remains of how it should give rise to our relational experience. We need to address the ontological/metaphysical status of experience.
I'm definitely onboard that we never reach a non-relational account. If "reality in itself" is the non-relational, fundamentally intrinsic parts of reality that epistemic structural realists talk about, I do oppose that, since I'm not even clear what that's supposed to be. As far as I can tell, the only coherent account is a relational one. Even in the case of scientific unobservables, we're able to learn about them through their structural relations with what we can observe.
Right! Although where I'd call my position "radical" is that I think some with some positions like OSR, we might take for granted that all the structures of relations have existence in some kind of objective and universal way. Like if we imagine a kind of ESR where the intrinsic nature isn't entirely intrinsic, but small entirely enclosed and self referential relational structures. Like if fundamental reality were made of triangles, but those triangles didn't have any impact on anything else. The "radical" part is that I think there could be no fact of the matter about any such fundamental triangles if they are not at all in relation to the rest of the world. I think that otherwise, we've got an idea of reality-in-itself still.
Consider a galaxy hundreds of billions of light years away. In my mind, that galaxy has a relation to ours, even though they've never interacted and, if current cosmological models are correct, they never will.
There's Rovelli style relationism, which says there's no relation except during the interaction. That's a type of relationism I don't buy. We may not know the relation, but it should exist. If the galaxy is actually just outside our light cone, and the light is just now reaching us, does a relation suddenly snap into reality? For me that would require an explanation for how it does get set.
Although you mentioned triangles. I will note that my attitude toward contemporary platonism is bascially non-factualism. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism/#NonFact
I actually think such a galaxy only has a kind of indeterminate existence in superposition relative to us (and our existence relative to them would be equally indeterminate). I went into it in this post - https://thinkstrangethoughts.substack.com/p/a-new-interpretation-of-quantum-mechanics?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1ackrk. Which is admittedly extreme and a bit crazy, but I think it's kind of the opposite kind of crazy to the MWI and block universe, being a kind of ontological minimalism as opposed to the maximalism of having everything exist.
I wasn't really thinking of the triangles as platonic entities, but that's a fair interpretation.
From Theodore Stcherbatsky, The Conception of Buddhist Nirvana (1989), page 49+ of the main body of the text (not the introduction), noting that the term 'real' differs from your usage:
Since we use the term "relative' to describe the fact that a thing can be identified only by mentioning its relations to something else, and becomes meaningless without these relations, implying at the same time that the thing in question is unreal, we safely, for want of a better solution, can translate the word Sunya by relativity or contingency. ... That the term Sunya is in Mahayana a synonym of dependent existence (pratityasamutpada) and means not something void, but something "devoid" of independent reality (svabhaava-sunya), with the implication that nothing short of the whole possesses independent reality, and with the further implication that the whole forbids every formulation by concept or speech (nisprapanea), since they can only bifurcate (vikalpa) reality and never directly seize it -- this is attested by an overwhelming mass of evidence in all the Mahayana literature. ...
The principle that nothing (in the universe) can disappear,
Nor can anything new appear,
Nothing has an end,
Nor is there anything eternal,
Nothing is identical (with itself),
Nor is there anything differentiated,
Nothing moves, neither hither nor thither,
It is (Nirvana), the blissful quiescence,
Of every (possible) plurality.
-- https://archive.org/details/DqZZ_the-conception-of-buddhist-nirvana-by-theodore-stcherbatsky/page/49/mode/1up
It's tricky, I think that's a good way of putting the typical philosophical use of the word, but I do think the everyday use is already so much more pragmatic and relative. You can end up seeming contradictory and saying things like "nothing is real and everything is".
I hope it's cool with you that I quoted a couple of passages from the post above.
You can see the post here : https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/a-synopsis-and-discussion-of-ontocubism/1651/110
I can remove the quote if you have any objections.
Thanks for sharing! It's definitely cool with me 🙂
"Radical relationism" is a great name.
Of course I endorse what you say. Reading this was uncanny and joyful for me, because your approach is in the same "family" as my own approach. I'm guessing that you had some of the same motivations as I did. I want to "save empirical objects" from "metaphysicians" in love with a fetish known as "reality in itself" or "objective reality." Which, when you step outside of it for a moment, becomes conspicuously "theological." The "metaphysician" demands "truthmakers" even at the cost of nonsense. "Reality-in-itself" whispers the promise of the possibility of an unmitigated correctitude. Heidegger critiques this tendency in Husserl in some of his earliest lectures. Husserl raged against historicism as the threat of relativism. But "anxiety in the face of relativism is anxiety in the face of philosophy." And anxiety in the face of existence itself.
On the issue of panpsychism, my own take is that consciousness does not exist. Consciousness is not a stuff in the world to be found "in" that world and "in" the brain of organisms. Instead the word "consciousness" is a synonym for "being" in the context of the ontological difference. I know that many will take this to indicate monistic idealism, but that would be a failure to grasp the difference between the "presence" of things and the things that are "present."
In your last reply, you emphasized your pluralism. I'm with you on that. Radical pluralism, ontological perspectivism. Or your phrase: " radical relationism." I don't want to presume too much, but from my POV we are both working in the same direction. The hard problem of consciousness is dissolved. To me this "specifies" the situation. The weird world is finally just here.
Thanks 🙂. Yeah we're definitely thinking along pretty crazily similar lines! It's a good sign I think.
That's really interesting about Heidegger and Husserl. What do you think of Heidegger? I'm thinking I may read him soon.
Could you expand on what you mean by "in the context of the ontological difference"? I think I'm onboard with what you're saying, but not sure I get this phrase. But I totally agree about consciousness not being a thing that exists, and being, in some sense, "being".
Early Heidegger is some of my favorite philosophy. I recommend the first draft of Being and Time if you can get it. It's a red and white continuum paperback titled The Concept of Time, translated by Ingo Farin. It's 100 pages and really just a beautiful little paperback with great footnotes.
There's even an earlier and shorter "ur-Being and TIme," which is a lecture Heidegger gave to some theologians. You can browse it here if you are curious:
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e265eb50aee2d7e8a81ae69/t/604048dd0effa45fa4895746/1614825697925/The+Concept+of+Time.pdf
I think you already know what I'm going to say here, but just in case I can be helpful ( and to put this out for other readers) I'll give you my take.
I approach the ontological difference this way. The word "being" is a noun, a thing, an entity. Of course. BUT some thinkers ( not only Heidegger ) have tried to use this noun-word-entity to point at the "being there" of entities in general. This "being there" is not a stuff.
I think the word "consciousness" is best understood as a pointer like "being" at the "presence" or "being" of the world FOR the organism we call "conscious."
When I talk to another person, I am not talking to a "stuff" in their brain. I am talking to "the entire world from another point of view." IMO, it's only this "strong" reading of the word "consciousness" that does justice to the way we LIVE. I mean we believe our friends share the world with us. And we call objects "physical" because they are also there for others.
Wolfgang Fasching is excellent on this specific point. He's at the intersection of phenomenology and the Vedantic tradition. There's a scholar named Blouin who wrote a killer paper on Husserl, and he interprets Husserl as presenting an "ontological phenomenalism."
The phrase "ontological difference" is not always aimed at the consciousness issue. Fair warning ! And lots of people who like Heidegger don't like the word "consciousness. " I'd prefer to reclaim it, because it's so important in English. "Dasein" or "existence" is the "situated disclosure" or "presence-ing" of world-from-POV. For early Heidegger, a huge part of this is how signs "signify" for us depending on our entire personal and cultural history. So time is central theme.
I think I've known your views for a while now, but it's nice to hear them again!
Thanks! Yeah, it's kind of pulling together everything again because I feel like I haven't directly addressed consciousness for a while, and I think my views have been subtly shifting and maturing. Like back in this post - https://thinkstrangethoughts.substack.com/p/the-view-from-somewhere-reframing - I didn't really have much of an idea of what was doing the relating, so it was kind of implicitly thought of as some kind of tiny points.
There was a moment there where I was reminded of a chapter in Merleau Pontys phenomenology of perception where he starts describing Husserls relational framework. I’ll have to look it up. Maybe I dreamt it, but I swear he talks about the different objects in the room constituting each other from various perspectives. It’s really vivid. Yeah I’ll look it up first and let you know if it’s worth checking out or if I’m just making things up. That’s what I get for reading at bedtime. 🤣
😂 Oh wow that would be awesome. Let me know if you find it!
I found it! And I reread it—it is indeed as awesome as I remembered.
Here's a PDF of the entire book. I don't know whether it'll open automatically to the right chapter or not, but in case it doesn't, the chapter title is: EXPERIENCE AND OBJECTIVE THOUGHT: The problem of the body. It begins on page 77 in the book, page 102 in the PDF file.
The chapter is fairly short. It begins with:
"Our perception ends in objects, and the object once constituted, appears as the reason for all the experiences of it which we have had or could have. For example, I see the next-door house from a certain angle, but it would be seen differently from the right bank of the Seine, or from the inside, or again from an aeroplane: the house itself is none of these appearances: it is, as Leibnitz said, the geometrized projection of these perspectives and of all possible perspectives, that is, the perspectiveless position from which all can be derived, the house seen from nowhere. But what do these words mean? Is not to see always to see from somewhere? To say that the house itself is seen from nowhere is surely to say that it is invisible!"
https://voidnetwork.gr/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Phenomenology-of-Perception-by-Maurice-Merleau-Ponty.pdf
Oh, I should say "horizon" is a term Husserl uses. It's a bit tough to define, but I just think of it as a context or background of possible experiences. The sense that you get even while preoccupied with some particular object or thought that the rest of the world is in the background, available for you to turn your attention to. It's kind of an indefinite idea of some totality like the world, but it can also be about the indefinite other side of an object that's currently out of view. This invisible aspect or "horizon" isn't simply not experienced, but instead the idea of it's unseen side shapes the experience of the side that's currently in view. If that makes sense.
Amazing, thank you!
You're welcome!
Well, you are not the first philosopher who tries to make relationalism work as an alternate approach to metaphysics. Whitehead is the most famous of these. I have, at this point, read partway into several books on Whitehead's relationalist metaphysics -- and with them the number of apparent incoherencies I encountered multiplied exponentially the deeper I read into the work.
One of the problems I think I was encountering with Whitehead was that he was still in a primarily Humean/Positivist "confirmation" approach to science, and his modern interpreters didn't seem to have read Popper, so their approach to science they got from Whitehead. Falsifications, and doing test cases, then tuning up the metaphysics to correct any such failings -- I got the feeling this had never been done by the Relational community. When, 3 chapters into an 11 chapter book and I already am carrying several dozen apparent contradictions in my head I am looking for the author to answer -- but its an author who only cites SUPPORTS -- I have just given up.
The several relational books seem to follow Whitehead in accepting abstractions, consciousness, and macro objects -- but somehow all of these reduce to fundamental relational units.
Whitehead, however, was assuming a "real world" of relations -- and you have gone a step further, by denying such a possibility.
With what I consider to be Whitehead's failure --you have a major question mark as to whether this ontology can be even remotely applicable to our World. AND -- how to test it? why has this not been discovered before? What is the future structure and programme of science under this very different ontological paradigm? What will be the advances it opens up? IF you claim to have solved the hard problem of consciousness, what is the experimental approach that will demonstrate this? What does this theory predict about consciousness, and can we test it?
I am not seeing any of this in your brief post.
What I think I DO see -- is a misunderstanding of the Hard Problem. Science does empiricism. We confirm that "X causes Y" by empirical testing. Having a theory of the causal mechanism is very useful, but not necessary (see Newton and Gravity). Similarly for identity claims, such as "X IS Y". No we do not have to be able to show reduction identity -- a predictive correlation to an assumed identity is all that is needed. You seem to think that the hard problem is that we don't have the explanation for how the reductive identity works, and that's the problem. But that's NOT the hard problem.
The hard problem is that all the identity claims proposed by physicalists, fail identity tests. Consciousness shows up where the identity doesn't happen, or doesn't show up when it does. For example -- Neural identity -- one would expect thoughts to be different when the neural structure changes. And our neural structure changes all the time, but are thoughts are pretty stable. Also -- we can transfer a thought between neural structures. This problem -- that multiple realizability violates the identity claim, is why most physicalists today are functionalists, not neural reductionists. Also, of course -- our consciousness behaves like a turing machine, but we are not wired anything line a Turing machine ....
There are similar problems for functionalism. We do a LOT of functions. And 99.99% of the are unconscious. So ... functions in general are not identical to consciousness. Also for functions done by feed forward recursive neural nets, or functions that use a global workspace, or functions that operate on a substrate with a high Phi, etc. Every one fails multiple test cases.
The problem for physicalist thinking, is they are proposing an intuitively unlikely claim, and the proof for intuitive unlikeliness has to be high predictive power -- but these models all fail drastically with their very first order predictions. THIS is the "hard problem of consciousness".
AND -- I don't think your relational metaphysics s going to do any better with the hard problem. At first read, it looks like you are predicting that EVERYTHING should be conscious, given the intrinsically conscious first person feature of relationality, and certainty most of what our brains do would be. BUT -- again, 99.99% of what brains do is UNCONSCIOUS! This looks like of zero use to address the hard problem, and in addition, being in a massive hole relative to ontic coherence.
Right, not the first relationalist and not the last :)
Whitehead is great, but I found in the end that he made things too complicated imo. He's a really "fertile" thinker though I'd say, full of insight and inspiration and ways of rethinking old problems.
> With what I consider to be Whitehead's failure --you have a major question mark as to whether this ontology can be even remotely applicable to our World. AND -- how to test it?
I wouldn't describe the general view I'm putting forward here as an ontology of its own. The point is actually to deny that there is any absolute ontology, and to say that every ontology is always relative.
One big way that it's applicable to the world is in our thinking about scientific theories and philosophy of science and the relations between the different sciences, and their relation to "reality". One concrete thing it offers, is that different sciences do not need to justify themselves to any others sciences, or to metaphysics.
As for how to test it, we cannot test it. At least not empirically. But then we also could not empirically test the opposing position that there is a non-relation absolute reality-in-itself. But given the irrelevance of that concept for all empirical and pragmatic purposes, I think we are better off without it. Plus it is still not clear what it is supposed to mean.
> why has this not been discovered before?
It's very close to Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka philosophy, and pretty close in a lot of ways to ontic structural realism, perspectivism, and possibly other views like irrealism. Others have made pretty similar theories regarding consciousness specifically too. I'm not sure anyone has spelled out exactly the picture I'm giving here, but there's a lot of commonality across a lot of views.
> What is the future structure and programme of science under this very different ontological paradigm?
Largely, it would be for scientists to stop worrying about metaphysics and ultimate reality. Which they mostly have already, but you still see some getting caught up in such ideas, including in consciousness studies and in ideas about physical reductionism. Instead, scientists should work within their own scientific frameworks, including adjusting them as they go to find what works best.
> IF you claim to have solved the hard problem of consciousness, what is the experimental approach that will demonstrate this? What does this theory predict about consciousness, and can we test it?
The hard problem of consciousness is not an empirical problem and cannot be empirically tested. That's a big part of the point of the zombie idea and the "hardness" of the problem. It's basically designed to be empirically untouchable. So the hard problem has to be addressed by conceptual and philosophical argumentation, like what I've done somewhat here.
> The hard problem is that all the identity claims proposed by physicalists, fail identity tests.
That's not the hard problem... Chalmers' paper where he coined the term puts it this way:
>>It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.
>>If any problem qualifies as the problem of consciousness, it is this one.
That's the hard problem I'm talking about.
> At first read, it looks like you are predicting that EVERYTHING should be conscious, given the intrinsically conscious first person feature of relationality, and certainty most of what our brains do would be.
I did specifically say I don't think everything is conscious. I think there is a world-in-relation-to everything, and we might use the word "experience" for this (as physicists already do, eg when talking about electrons "experiencing" a force), but I think "consciousness" is something more advanced and complex involving self-relation and reflection.
I enjoyed this but am slightly torn! I think you're right to want to de-privilege the third-person point of view, along with the attempt to incorporate experience within that view, but I think this is quite similar to Ryle's criticism of dualism as making a category error and I wonder what you gain by raising a flag for a particular alternative metaphysics?
This may just be because of my own habits of thought, but I felt that your argument was most successful when tidying up confused ways of describing experience, and more inconclusive when trying to justify that tidying up in relationalism as a kind of foundation (I sense a slightly self-contradicting spirit here, as if looking for an ontological foundation for epistemic anti-foundationalisn). Perhaps relationalism helped convince you of the conclusion, but it might be a bitterer pill than is necessary to treat the problem.
Thanks!
I kind of think metaphysics is unavoidable, and if we try to avoid it we are likely to have an implicit metaphysics which is problematic and unquestioned. I think it's better to have a positively "anti-metaphysics metaphysics", where we are not given any new metaphysical foundation, but we do not leave the assumption of there being one we can't speak about hanging in the background.
I wouldn't describe relationalism as a kind of foundation. In a similar way to the Madhyamaka idea that even emptiness is empty, I'd say even relationalism is not ultimate reality. That's maybe a slight contradiction, but I think it's an acceptable one, like "the only rule is, there are no rules". Undermining itself isn't a bad thing.
"""""" I think it's better to have a positively "anti-metaphysics metaphysics", where we are not given any new metaphysical foundation, but we do not leave the assumption of there being one we can't speak about hanging in the background.""""
I have to chime in here, because I'm with you. My take : (1) We aren't doing science, offering quasi-empirical theses. That's the "metaphysics" appropriately abandoned by positivism at its best. (2) We are just "explicating" the basic human situation and getting a better grip on our fundamental terms. (3) We can safely "fish out" and explicitly adopt the presuppositions that are tacit in the postulation of the possibility of science. If we don't share objects through a shared language, there is no science or philosophy, so we can all go home.
So I think one task for philosophers to try to "specify" this "forum" --- which is something that happens within that same forum, because it's just conversation with other people. If there is a philosophy in the first place, then the world is fundamentally a "space of assembly." That's my claim. Largely inspired by Apel.
He's obscure in English, so I provide a nice link which you might find relevant to your work.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/apel-karl-otto-1922
I'm not so much saying that we must avoid metaphysics as that it's not clear that the hard problem particularly benefits from an analysis of competing metaphysics. The worry is similar to Woolery's, that, to the extent the analysis is meta-, it only changes the vocabulary in which the problem will be stated.
The criticisms that have bite rather seem to be the ones which say (implicitly or explicitly) that the hard problem arises from a description of experience which is inconsistent with other commitments we cannot give up (I would say: our account of knowledge), so that it doesn't actually matter what one's metaphysics is, the problem is ruled out on pain of contradiction and our task is to understand why we're inclined to make an error here.
When you say, for example, that qualia are not intrinsic properties but relational ones, I think the second part of the sentence just isn't needed (even if it's true) because an intrinsic property is already a self-defeating nonsense concept. It might be too bold to say that that's a purely logical issue, maybe it's a more complex empirical one, but the hardist's retreat into metaphysics is basically a sly attempt to hide their inconsistency in a gap that's generated by all transcendental arguments.
An afterthought: While trying not to promote myself, I do wonder what you'd make of my WordPress post on "Panpsychism and Interspace" (https://staggeringimplications.wordpress.com/2024/07/04/panpsychism-and-interspace/).
"Suppose now that these interactions and relationships are themselves the stuff of “consciousness”—by which I mean not ordinary waking consciousness, or dreaming consciousness, or even the cryptic form of consciousness that has been called the subconscious or the unconscious, but the fundamental awareness suggested by all these things. To the extent that one entity interacts with another, each necessarily has a consciousness of the other. The consciousness is not a property of either entity; neither is it a new entity in its own right. It is that which is fundamental to the possibility of relationship. The relationship is necessarily conscious, for all relationship, as we are now considering it, is consciousness."
No need to worry about self-promotion! I'll try to check it out soon. I like the quote a lot. I shy away from some of the phrasing because I'm wary of it seeming like the word "consciousness" is adding anything to the relationships, which I don't think is necessary. Also "consciousness" feels like too loaded a term, although I think it makes sense to use "experience" much more broadly.
I agree, the term "consciousness" isn't helpful, and I've since tried to find other words. "Fundamental awareness"came up in the post. "Experience" is good. Whitehead favoured "feeling." In the same vein, some academics are using "affect."
I'm a big fan of using Whitehead's "prehension". It's close enough to familiar words that you get a feel for it, and different enough that you don't simply conflate it.
> Which relations are physically realizable, and why these rather than infinitely many other logically conceivable relations?
It seems like you still think I'm saying the physical is fundamental, but that's exactly what I've just been denying. I do think that the relations in our brains can be viewed through physics though, and that in that way we can understand the processes and relations that make up our minds.
> Saying
> “Experience is the world-in-relation-to the organism”
>changes the vocabulary but doesn’t derive anything. It tells you what consciousness is being identified with, but not why a particular relational structure gives rise to one unified subject instead of many, or none.
I covered this in the post, whatever relates as one thing is one thing. If it functions as one, it is one. Actually I could go further and say that if A relates *as if* it is one to B, then it is one, relative to B. It's also not a relational structure "giving rise" to a unified subject, as if there's a new entity or substance being added to the picture.
>The same issue appears with the zombie argument. It says zombies cannot exist because a perfect physical duplicate would have identical relations. But that’s only true if you already assume that identical relational structure entails identical experience.
> That assumption is precisely what the hard problem is asking to justify.
I just did justify it. Once you have the relational view, there's no mystery in getting from that world-in-relation-to to experience, because there's no clear difference between the two. If you think there is a difference or a gap, feel free to point it out.
> So the argument becomes circular:
> 1. Consciousness is relational.
> 2. The zombie has the same relations.
> 3. Therefore the zombie is conscious.
That's not circular. Every valid argument has its conclusion follows from its premises.
> No.
> And you don’t get it or want to get it so it’s ok.
This is bad manners. You are banned for a month.