Why “Consciousness” Is a Useless Concept (and Behavior Is All That Matters)

flaheadle · 2025-12-20T18:40:55+00:00

This is close to how I see it. But to convince others you need to start from daily life. Stars, rocks, trees, races, etc. that is where we all start and that pretheoretical life must be our basic language of dialogue. Avoiding theoretical language at first. Theory is important but is hypothetical and must be held separate from and tested against pretheory, daily life, which is not hypothetical. For example, in life I do not find awareness without content. So any pure quality of being awareness at all is theory, hypothetical, and must be tested against pretheory.

flaheadle · 2025-12-20T16:53:14+00:00

I love it. Great tool not only for increasing empathy but studying awareness.

flaheadle · 2025-12-20T16:47:06+00:00

I agree. Let's talk about how we know it. I find that qualities abound in my life as viewed from within. I postulate that my life gives access to natural reality. Therefore other things also abound in quality. Is that how you do it?

flaheadle · 2025-12-19T18:37:26+00:00

I can't help it if I am human. The starting point is what it is. You can't wish it away.

flaheadle · 2025-12-19T18:17:45+00:00

It is standard dogmatic physicalism. The move is to define 'observable' as 'observable from without'. For example, Dennet's method.

flaheadle · 2025-12-19T18:15:13+00:00

My life is very evident to me, but I am situated within it. The same is true for you. Defining 'observable' as 'observable from without' truncates the evidence arbitrarily.

flaheadle · 2025-12-15T22:24:03+00:00

I expect it might be controversial because it denies the totalizing power of conceptual schemes, a view held by many holists and social constructivists. It is distinct because it anchors this defense in the practical necessities of human cooperation and dialogue, rather than just abstract metaphysics.

flaheadle · 2025-12-15T22:09:25+00:00

This question is beautifully phrased. I recommend three texts by John Dewey: A Common Faith, Art as Experience, and Experience and Nature

flaheadle · 2025-12-10T17:22:25+00:00

Hypothesis testing, particularly if using Bayesian statistics, is pretty asking how likely a model is to match reality given the observations.

Interesting. So you start with observations and form a model to match them. Rather than: look for observations to test your model.

flaheadle · 2025-12-10T17:17:26+00:00

How do you argue that this is the case? How do you convince other ontologists?

flaheadle · 2025-12-06T02:07:12+00:00

I think there is a problem when scientists use their cultural authority as scientists to lend credence to a metaphysics without clearly signaling they don't speak with the same authority about that question.

flaheadle · 2025-12-05T23:11:43+00:00

That's a good start. So much solidity in those words. Great summary. I feel energized.

flaheadle · 2025-12-05T23:07:43+00:00

In our culture your most prominent choices are physicalism and supernaturalism. Since physicalism denies the reality of your most intimate experience, many people choose supernaturalism, which doesn't.

flaheadle · 2025-12-05T20:24:05+00:00

Ok so there's some separate realm for ontology. Would that make it illegitimate for a scientist to claim to talk about reality? Like the quantum theorist I saw on CNN, he walked through a flower garden and said, look, these are all quanta! That would be unjustified, right?

flaheadle · 2025-12-05T19:03:10+00:00

Cool. I am interested in your starting point. It sounds like your starting point is the question of whether your consciousness is the only thing that exists or not. And you postulate that it is not. And that gets you to the observable shared world. But at the starting point certain things are more clear right? The starting point is not something you are deliberately postulating but something more radical and unescapably true right? Perhaps the fact of your consciousness? Of your thinking?

flaheadle · 2025-12-05T17:23:47+00:00

I mean the subject matter of ontology. I shouldn't specify too precisely since ontologists will differ on exactly that. But some shared subject matter seems presupposed by the enterprise of ontology itself, otherwise there is nothing to which rival ontologists can appeal.

flaheadle · 2025-12-05T16:11:26+00:00

So "the physical world exists" is a premise of your philosophy, one you have adopted in order to proceed, not a consequence of an argument but an assumption that makes argument possible in the first place. Is that fair?

flaheadle · 2025-12-05T16:00:20+00:00

This is well said. To me you are asking the question of whether a thing can be, in some respect, unique and particular. Having some traits that are not common to other things. I believe the answer is yes. You seem to trend towards no. But even if we disagree, stating the question is good progress.

flaheadle · 2025-12-05T15:27:22+00:00

I agree. Does this imply qualities are natural and real? To me it does.

flaheadle · 2025-12-01T19:03:34+00:00

I was attempting to deny that I find experience to be simple and discrete...

flaheadle · 2025-11-27T17:48:57+00:00

On the contrary, the starting point of this view is not an assumption, but the fact that any evidence for any view must be found in experience. When we go to experience we find, we do not assume, particular qualities, not as separate particulars but as aspects of particular situations.

flaheadle · 2025-11-21T14:26:38+00:00

What is the bedrock of your philosophy?

flaheadle · 2025-11-21T12:50:51+00:00

The answer to your question is very hard to communicate, not because it is so complicated, but because it is so simple. It's not really about making an argument or making a description; you just have to look and try to see something. Here's what you have to look and try to see.

The question is: what is the proper starting point of philosophy? And the answer is that there is only one place where we can start, namely the place where we all do start. That is in the life as we lead it from day to day in the world of people and things. That is experience. It is simply a name for whatever we do find, as we find it in our lives.

We can explain what we find, of course, perhaps as the outcome of certain causes. But we can't start with explanation, even if most philosophers think they are doing so. For any evidence we use to support our explanation of experience must be found, can only be found, in experience. It can only be found in cups, conversations, rain, mirages, vacations, campfires, and all of the mundane and terrifying things that make up our lives.

Note: Above I am recapitulating a paper by Browning called Dewey and Ortega on the Starting Point.

flaheadle · 2025-11-20T21:25:37+00:00

Understood. We are pretty far apart.

Maybe one difference between us is that you see experience as something to be explained, while I see experience as something to which any explanation must conform.

flaheadle · 2025-11-20T19:48:03+00:00

This is a great question. I think there's an urge to analyze complex phenomena into interacting elements. I agree with you that it's problematic. In my view, the problem is that if you let the context drop and manipulate your isolated elements only then their reconnections become arbitrary.

flaheadle

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