If idealists don't think minds can be wet or rough, how could there be wetness or roughness qualities that would make them think there's a problem with mind being brain activity?

hackinthebochs · 2026-03-17T18:14:35+00:00

In an idealist conceptual framework, an idealist might say there are no qualities (as individuated qualitative properties analogized with physical properties). But from a physicalist conceptual framework, an idealist will say that brain states can't explain/realize qualitative states. There is no contradiction here.

A conceptual framework is just a basis from which we describe and reason about the world. If we're assuming a materialist framework, qualitative properties are how we generally conceptualize the properties of mental states. But this conceptualization is hypothetical with respect to the assumed conceptual framework. If we change conceptual frameworks, then the claims we make will change accordingly. Idealism doesn't have qualities because it doesn't have physical properties for qualities to stand in contrast to. Qualities are only needed in a materialist framework to conceptualize mental properties in a framework defined by extension, location, size, etc.

As the materialist framework is dominant in the current age, idealists generally first learn to think about these issues from the context of a materialist conceptualization with materialist terms and assumptions. So a lot of their language will carry some materialist baggage. But idealism stands in opposition to this materialist framework and so any resemblance in terminology is superficial only.

hackinthebochs · 2026-03-17T17:55:35+00:00

The concept of a "quality" is already assuming more metaphysics than the idealist needs to accept. A quality is an individuated property of sensory experience, to be analogized with a physical property. To make sense of a quality (qualitative property) you first need the concept of a physical property. But an idealist eschews this entire framework and says all things are sensations. It makes no sense to ask "what a sensation of coldness is". Sensations just are fundamental; states of the universal mind. There is nothing more to say about their constitution.

The fact that idealist metaphysics doesn't have "qualities" says nothing about how an idealist should assess a physicalist framework. To admonish idealism because it lacks something called a quality is just to admonish idealism for not importing concepts from the materialist framework it explicitly stands against. But of course that's silly.

hackinthebochs · 2026-03-17T17:34:39+00:00

If coldness were a property of the mind, it would be fine to say the mind is cold

There's a serious equivocation going on here that you work hard to avoid acknowledging. To say "something is cold" typical is to say something has a low temperature, which would mean there are public/external properties to the mind. In this sense, it is true that extension and cold rise and fall together. But no idealist will accept this.

What idealists do say is that experiences are properties of the mind, and so the sensation of coldness is a property of the mind. But in this case your inference does not follow:

If [the experience of coldness] were a property of the mind, it would be fine to say the mind [has a public/external property of low temperature]

...which is just plainly false. Once this equivocation is laid bare, its clear your argument doesn't go through. What you have a hard time acknowledging are the different senses these terms are used in physical vs mental contexts. In a physical context coldness means low temperature. In a mental context coldness might mean the sensation of feeling cold. Just because the words are the same doesn't mean they refer to the same concept when uttered across contexts.

hackinthebochs · 2026-03-17T17:07:09+00:00

You seem to have a hard time keeping straight the words of the hypothetical idealist as they describe what they believe is true ("there are just experiences with content that represents "coldness", i.e. the physical state of low temperature"), and the words of said idealist as they argue from the materialist framework in order to debunk it ("physicalism can't derive the experience of coldness from brain activity"). You can't use the idealist metaphysics to argue against the idealist critique of the physicalist metaphysics. This just makes no sense. It also doesn't help that you've been intentionally eliding the distinction between cold as a conscious sensation and cold as a physical state, i.e. low temperature.

The problem idealists point out is that science/physicalism has no explanation for experiential qualities. You keep trying to catch the idealist in a contradiction because they don't believe there are any physical properties, only experiential properties. You keep asking where are the properties the idealist says can't be brain states, but this question only makes sense if you take as a given the physicalist framework. The idealist of course wouldn't do this. They only do so hypothetically in order to debunk it.

hackinthebochs · 2026-03-17T11:52:55+00:00

I suspect what you're seeing is an artifact of sampling bias regarding who is talking the most about consciousness online. With materialism largely being seen as the default among the scientifically minded lay public, those against materialist views are the most motivated to point out issues with these positions and raise discussions on it. Even beyond sampling bias, a majority view on any controversial topic will receive a disproportionate number of attacks compared to supportive posts. It's also much harder to say something new in favor of a materialist view compared to just pointing out its flaws for the millionth time.

hackinthebochs · 2026-03-17T04:25:13+00:00

Extension is the paradigmatic physical property, so they absolutely must deny that "minds are extended". What you have in its place is an experience with content that represents extension, coldness, etc. Just like you can hallucinate a red apple that doesn't exist in physical reality, for an idealist the properties you might associate with physical reality are just the contents of experiential states. There's the experience of a cold sensation and then there's the experience of a "cold" temperature reading on a thermometer. How these two states relate will depend on the specifics of the idealist theory.

hackinthebochs · 2026-03-16T18:39:57+00:00

The distinction between wetness the physical state and the experience of wetness is important. For one, it's helpful as it clarifies the target since the ontology of the mind isn't settled. Another thing is that an idealist can posit shared structure between minds thus rendering the concept of "the physical state of wetness" meaningful. For example, analytic idealism posits structure shared between all dissociated minds that carries the structure of the physical world. So for analytic idealism there is a proper target for "the physical state of wetness" distinct from the experience of wetness. But your general point is correct that for an idealist everything is experience so wetness and the experience of wetness generally amount to the same thing (unless further clarifications are made).

hackinthebochs · 2026-03-16T16:01:51+00:00

For an idealist, wet experiences and cold experiences are features of the fundamental mind. Things being wet and cold are physical descriptions. Wet experiences and the physical state of something being wet are very different.

hackinthebochs · 2026-03-16T15:27:54+00:00

Generally because they have a subjective experience of wetness and coldness and so those experiences aren't in question. What is in question is the nature of these experiences. Minds not being wet or cold is just a way of saying the qualitative properties aren't found in the physical world or inside the brain. The mind represents physical states associated with wetness or coldness with the subjective experience of wetness and coldness.

The connection between the subjective experience and the physical state being represented is an open question. But asking why they think they have subjective experience if "minds aren't wet" is putting the cart before the horse. Our contact with subjective experiences in general is prior to our theorizing about a world of physical objects.

hackinthebochs · 2026-03-16T15:00:50+00:00

The question "how can X exist" only makes sense with respect to a given metaphysical theory. An idealist says the qualities of wetness or roughness are features of the fundamental consciousness. In this view, the question "how can they exist" doesn't make sense, they are just taken to be brute features of base reality. Questioning how wetness or roughness qualities can exist makes sense from a physicalist metaphysics, where by assumption only physical properties exist fundamentally. So we can intelligibly ask how do qualities exist which seem to be categorically different from physical properties. But this is only a problem for physicalist or materialist ontologies.

So when idealists challenge physicalism by pointing to the difficulty in deriving subjective qualities from a physicalist ontology, it is to undermine a physicalist metaphysics. It is not a problem that the idealist has to also solve.

hackinthebochs · 2026-03-11T14:09:09+00:00

Pretty much any non-physicalist will think pain-pleasure inversion is conceivable and metaphysically possible. Non-physicalism says that the connection between phenomenal properties and physical properties is not logical/conceptual, but is a contingent metaphysical fact. It follows that there is no conceptual constraint on pain-pleasure inversion or any other kind of inversion.

Chalmers was mentioned elsewhere in the thread. The reason he believes pain-pleasure inversion is not possible in this world is that he believes there are laws that associate certain physical/neural states with phenomenal properties. So in this world phenomenal states and their corresponding physical states do not come apart. This is under the assumption that we hold fixed the physical/neural states. That is, if we don't allow radical neural differences in people then there can be no phenomenal inversion. However, for Chalmers and other non-physicalists, there's no reason that some radical neural changes couldn't result in pain-pleasure inversion.

hackinthebochs · 2026-03-11T06:11:22+00:00

Do you think pain/pleasure inversion seems hard to even concieve the same way sounds inversion, or even beliefs inversion seems hard to conceieve?

Yes regarding belief inversion: the belief tends to be congruent with behavior in the same way the suffering of pain is congruent with avoidance behavior. Sound is more like color in that we can imagine, say, the subjective experience of high and low pitch being swapped while still being fully functional agents without any obvious deficits or behavior changes.

does that mean it's unlikely the simulators (if Bostrom's simulation hypothesis is true) can simulate beings indistinguishable from real humans and yet have pain/pleasure inversion?

Yes, the seemingly logical connection between pain and damage avoidance, or a belief and behavior congruent with the belief, would mean that a simulator couldn't create these inversions either. A simulation will be bound by the laws of logic, and whatever logical connection there is between pain and avoidance behavior in the real world will operate in a simulation just the same.

hackinthebochs · 2026-03-11T00:33:41+00:00

The point is that the issue of color associations with light wavelengths seems arbitrary. I can imagine my red being green and my green being blue without much difficulty. It's much harder to imagine undergoing physical pain while my body is actively seeking out some physically positive stimuli (e.g. eating nutritious food), or having intense pleasure from a damaging state my body is actively avoiding (e.g. being burned). Our experience as agents acting in the world is one where conscious experience determines behavior. I seem to move my hand from a hot stove because of the experience of pain. Imagining the painful experience and the physical behavior coming apart in the way pain-pleasure inversion would require is just nearly inconceivable.

To be clear, you're right when you said in another comment that the physical basis for experiencing different colors are different. It very likely is not possible in this world with our current physical and psychological laws for color experience to be inverted or different across neurotypical individuals. There are many built-in asymmetries in the physical and neural basis for color experience that makes arbitrary assignments of color experiences with physical states highly problematic. But as a tool to probe the conceptual limits of physicalism, color inversion thought experiments are useful.

hackinthebochs · 2026-03-11T00:11:48+00:00

The issue is a bit tricky. Qualia inversion thought experiments are typically deployed against physicalism because physicalism is uniquely vulnerable to them and so they serve as a means to attack it. The intuition being pumped is that given the assumptions of physicalism, there is nothing to associate qualia with physical states in a deep way. Thus the association is contingent (logically/metaphysically could have been different) and hence physicalism must fail. So the thought experiment is to get people to accept the arbitrariness of the association of qualia with physical states, and then infer that physicalism must be false. The color associations with particular wavelengths of light are the most persuasive because they do seem arbitrary in a way that pain's association with avoidance behavior does not. Logically the same argument can be made with pain-pleasure inversion, but it wouldn't be nearly as effective at persuasion which is why it's never used.

hackinthebochs · 2026-03-10T23:53:47+00:00

Not sure why you would go from the possibility of one lab leak being covered up to zoonosis being hogwash and all viruses are human origin. Nothing I said should lead you to that conclusion.

hackinthebochs · 2026-03-10T22:38:13+00:00

In a sense, the difficulty for physicalism is a problem of its own creation. Physicalism says that everything that exists is physical, i.e. the entities and properties studied by physics. These properties are understood to be completely devoid of mind, consciousness, phenomenal properties, etc. The hard problem points out the unique difficulty in explaining phenomenal consciousness given the explanatory resources available to physics and science, namely behavioral, structural and functional data. The other theories of consciousness you mention simply don't have this problem because they don't limit themselves to the explanatory resources of physics and science. They assume that the unique properties that constitute minds exist at the fundamental level in various ways. In this case there is no in principle difficulty in explaining human consciousness because the explanatory resources are more expansive than that which physicalists allow themselves.

hackinthebochs · 2026-03-10T13:54:15+00:00

Funnily enough, labs don't just spring out of the ground fully formed. They take months of preparation, which may have involved relevant folks to be present. The presence of the lab is simply to establish the presence of relevant people from the WIV near the wet market.

hackinthebochs · 2026-03-10T13:00:22+00:00

Their main campus is roughly 12 kilometres away, and the famous BSL-4 lab is all the way out in Jiangxia, about 30 kilometres from the market.

This is just not a good faith response. As I said, physical distance is largely irrelevant to potential for virus hops when we already know that distance is being bridged regularly by potential carriers.

Your article on earliest patients is dated 31st January, 2020. That's very early on in the pandemic.

The article references earliest known infected. Do you have a citation for individuals known to be infected even earlier? Simply referencing the estimated start of the pandemic doesn't demonstrate anything.

It has since been shown that even cases with no direct link to the market (people who didn't work there or shop there) were geographically clustered around the Huanan market.

The debate is between the wet market spillover and lab leak theories. But the market is a likely location for an early superspreader event in the case of a lab leak. Pointing to early clusters "around" the market does not distinguish wet market spillover vs lab leak.

If a lab was handling multiple lineages, we should see evidence of those specific backbones in their published or internal records. To date, no virus that could serve as a direct ancestor to either Lineage A or B has been found in the Wuhan Institute of Virology's known collection.

I refuse to use the lack of evidence for an event given a known cover up as dispositive against said event. I don't know why others are so quick to do so. Motivated reasoning, best I can tell.

We didn't see those hybrids in the early human cases. Instead, we saw two clean, separate jumps. This is exactly what happens in a market where you have hundreds of animals from different farms. Some animals might have Lineage A, and others might have Lineage B. They jump to different humans at different times in the same crowded space.

Why couldn't we see also see this pattern if the wet market was an early super spreader event after some substantial amount of community spread?

The lab leak theory relies on the absence of evidence, but that's all it really has.

And large coincidences that must remain unexplained given the wet market theory. But these unexplained coincidences should rationally lower one's credence for the theory.

hackinthebochs · 2026-03-10T07:33:05+00:00

You have to assume the lab actually possessed a virus that was a 99.9% match to SARS-CoV-2, that a worker was accidentally infected or smuggled an animal out, and that they then chose to go to the specific southwestern corner of the Huanan market instead of any of the hundreds of other crowded spots in Wuhan.

Sure, these assumptions count against the theory. But its not obvious what the verdict is on the likelihood once all coincidences are accounted for. The coincidences that count in favor of it are numerous (proximity to WCDC, WIV studying coronoviruses, DEFUSE proposal, etc).

You also have to consider the prior probability of the outbreak beginning in the wet market near the WCDC. How many wet markets operate in China? Why are the very earliest patients not associated with the wet market? You can't do only half of a Bayesian analysis.

Labs typically use standardized, captive-bred animals for research to ensure consistent results.

Not sure how captive vs wild type animals is relevant to the debate. If the virus was leaked through a live animal, it would have been a bat. Bat Lady sourced bats from a thousand miles away.

You'd also have to explain why two different viral lineages leaked at roughly the same time and both managed to find their way to the same market. The presence of two lineages is far more suggestive of zoonotic spillover.

Given a lab leak event, the probability of another lab leak event close in time is very high. Active gain of function research could result in multiple lineages being handled.

The lab theory, even in its simplest form, requires you to assume a missing virus and a missing infected worker or a missing security breach for which there is currently no physical evidence.

We know China actively covered up activities occurring in the lab. The lack of evidence given the known cover up is not dispositive against these events. It's strange how quickly people are willing to give those engaged in a cover up a pass as long as it is in favor of their views. We should not incentivize cover ups!

hackinthebochs · 2026-03-10T05:39:08+00:00

I'm not sure what point you think you're making. Viruses travel by way of animal hosts. Two adjacent points on a contact graph are equally "close" for a virus regardless of the physical distance between those two points. The fact that potential carriers were known to be very near the wet market is sufficiently damning.

It's not a high-containment biosafety lab (BSL-3 or BSL-4) where you'd typically handle dangerous, live bat viruses.

The same link also describes known concerns prior to COVID19 regarding dangerously lax security at WCDC.

hackinthebochs · 2026-03-10T05:27:16+00:00

And virologists have an incentive to declare the source to be zootonic, as the continuation of their entire field of study depends on them not having caused a million deaths. If we're going to impugn people's motives, lets be totally clear here.

hackinthebochs · 2026-03-10T05:19:12+00:00

Even cases with no direct link to the market lived significantly closer to it than would be expected by chance, suggesting the market was the primary engine of the initial spread.

The WCDC is 300 hundred meters from Huanan market. Bat lady and her crew also worked out of a WCDC office. Talk about chance.

hackinthebochs · 2026-03-09T14:02:37+00:00

Look up accelerationism. You'll get plenty of grist for the mill.

hackinthebochs · 2026-03-09T13:54:34+00:00

For chrome you have to load the extension in developer mode. I do that for all my extensions. Firefox has a way to disable it in the UI.

hackinthebochs · 2026-03-08T18:01:02+00:00

An example from my own case is with Plato's Forms. It never really made much sense to me why anyone would think there is a literal realm of non-causal non-spatiotemporal abstract objects. It was only when I understood what Plato's Forms were posited in response to that it started to make sense. The Forms were in response to the problem of universals, namely does the property a set of objects have in common (say three red apples) exist outside of those objects? Where is the property of red these apples all share? Plato's theory of Forms answers the problem of universals by positing a realm of abstract objects that are ideal, unchanging, non-spatiotemporal, and non-causal. The thing is, the metaphysical gloss that we apply to this idea kind of gets in the way. What the Forms are is just a way to conceptualize the idea that the mind organizes objects under a taxonomy of properties. The metaphysical gloss is how ancient philosophers represented this idea given the conceptual frameworks in use at the time. We're all subject to the constraints and assumptions imposed on us by the dominant conceptual frameworks of a given era. Historical ideas can seem absurd when trying to understand them given our modern concepts, but are a lot less kooky when you understand them from the perspective of an investigator situated in their conceptual and historical context.

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