Searle's Biological Naturalism view of Consciousness.

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Consul
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Re: Searle's Biological Naturalism view of Consciousness.

Post by Consul »

GE Morton wrote: August 18th, 2022, 9:29 pm
Consul wrote: August 16th, 2022, 5:18 pm Do you think that for every predicate or concept there is some property represented by it? – I don't!
If the predicate term is one which enables us to distinguish an X from a non-X then yes, it denotes a property or a pseudo-property of X. (See below).
The question is whether for all predicates there is some real property.
GE Morton wrote: August 18th, 2022, 9:29 pmI have a different definition of the distinction between a property and a pseudo-property. We confirm that X has property P by (and only by) observing X. To confirm a pseudo-property Q of X we have to observe something external to X; the pseudo-property denotes some external, contingent fact about X. E.g., in "Alfie is 2 meters tall," being 2 meters tall is a property of Alfie. In "Alfie is a doctor," being a doctor is a pseudo-property of Alfie. We can't confirm that proposition by observing Alfie; we'll have to observe some school records, licensing records, etc.

Obviously these tests only apply to observable things. Propositions asserting or describing non-observable (imaginary or hypothetical/theoretical) things will also have predicates; these will denote hypothetical or defined properties.
Being a doctor is a functional or role property, so you cannot find out whether somebody is a doctor by observing or examining her/his body. (If the person wears a white coat, this may give you a clue.)
I don't believe functional or role properties are a real kind of properties. There are doctors, but there is no such entity as the property of being a doctor.

By the way, there is a distinction between extrinsic (relational, relation-dependent) properties and intrinsic ones: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intrinsic-extrinsic/

By "pseudo-property" I generally mean an unreal, fictional, nonexistent property which is nothing but a semantic projection onto things by predicates or concepts.
GE Morton wrote: August 18th, 2022, 9:29 pm
Consul wrote: August 16th, 2022, 5:18 pmNote that I don't think mereological simplicitly requires absolute partlessness; that is to say, simple entities do not have to lack parts (components/constituents) of any kind—be they substantial, spatial, temporal, or "modal" ones. (By a "modal part" of a thing I mean a property aka a mode (way) of being which is part of it.)
Is ice, then, a "part" of water, or just part of our concept of water? Parts of things (in ordinary speech) don't necessarily correspond to our concepts of things.
Ice is frozen water, and frozenness is a real property of solid water; but it is a structural property of water molecules, which means that it's not a simple property. But frozenness as a structural and thus nonsimple property of a mass of water molecules can be said to be part of it—a "modal part" (not a substantial, spatial, or temporal part).
GE Morton wrote: August 18th, 2022, 9:29 pm
Consul wrote: August 16th, 2022, 5:18 pmIn my understanding, mereological simplicity requires only the absence of substantial (or objectual) parts, i.e. parts which are themselves (smaller) objects or substances (and thus belong to the same ontological category). Mereological simples may still have spatial, temporal, or modal parts, such that e.g. they don't have to be spatially unextended or zero-dimensional like a mathematical point. The whole world might be one spatially/spatiotemporally extended simple object!
Everything not a point will have spatial "parts," e.g., a left side and a right side, etc., and everything not instantaneous will have temporal parts (a beginning and an end).
Yes, every spatially or temporally extended object has spatial or temporal parts. Whether it has fundamental spatial or temporal parts depends on whether space or time itself has fundamental parts, i.e. either unextended space-points or time-points (instants) or minimal volumes of space of minimal intervals of time.
GE Morton wrote: August 18th, 2022, 9:29 pmBut I'm not clear on your last point there --- the "world," as I conceive the term, surely has many smaller parts of the same ontological category.
If the world (cosmos/universe) as a whole is one big simple substance, then all other apparent substances—particles, atoms, molecules, organisms, planets, stars—are really nothing but nonsubstantial complexes ("bundles") of attributes inhering in some region of the one world-substance. Neither property-bundles nor regions of space are substances. Locally present property-bundles are modal (attributional) parts of the world-substance, and its regions are spatial parts of it; and modal (attributional) or spatial parts aren't themselves substantial parts or smaller substances. So it is not the case that the one world-substance (really) "has many smaller parts of the same ontological category."
GE Morton wrote: August 18th, 2022, 9:29 pm Due to the intractable vagueness of "part of" when applied to things, we should give up trying to decide "ontologically" whether a thing is "simple" or "complex." Does so characterizing a thing convey any useful information about it? It will always be possible to divide anything, other than spatiotemporal points, into "parts" in some sense of the word. But we can still speak of simple, or primitive, descriptive terms for denoting things, namely, those terms that can only be taught and learned ostensively. We can then, perhaps, define a simple "thing" as one denoted by a primitive term (if so describing it has any communicative utility). This illustrates my larger point --- how existents are categorized or related is a function of what say or can say about them in a given language (yes, there is some Wharfism there). Ontologies are implicit in language, and attempts by philosophers to regiment those categories, assume those "refined" categories describe "reality," then declare some of them to be "fundamental" is fatuous. They only describe "reality" as it is portrayed in some model, some theory, of reality.
The mereological distinction between simplicity (partlessness, non-compositeness) and non-simplicity is very important in ontology too; but there is also a meta-mereological distinction between mereological realism and mereological idealism. According to the latter, questions of composition and division are a thought-dependent matter of conceptual, intellectual association, separation, and classification, whereas according to the former there are objective, thought- and concept-independent facts about the mereological structure of reality.

It is important to mention that there are different kinds of divisibility:

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GE Morton wrote: August 18th, 2022, 9:29 pm
Consul wrote: August 16th, 2022, 5:18 pmWhat (kinds of) properties there really are is one question; but that there really are properties is not in question for me, because I am convinced that properties (attributes, modes, features, characteristics) are ontologically indispensable parts of the furniture of the world.
What makes them ontologically indispensible, other than the fact that talking about the world demands them?
The simplest argument:

QUOTE>
"Without properties, objects are empty and predicates blind."

(Martin, C. B. The Mind in Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. p. 80)
<QUOTE

Without properties, objects would have a "naked" Dasein (being-there) without Sosein (being-thus), an existence without any essence or nature.

QUOTE>
"The Jobs Properties Do

Properties are things that different objects can have in common.

Properties mark genuine similarities.

Properties serve as semantic values of predicates.

Properties serve as semantic values of abstract singular terms.

Properties ground duplication.

Properties ground the causal powers of objects."

(Edwards, Douglas. Properties. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2014. pp. 10-1)
<QUOTE

Being a particularist rather than a universalist about properties, I reject the first "job"; but I accept all others as reasons for affirming property realism.

QUOTE>
"What is wrong in nominalism?
We can truly predicate 'freezes when cooled to 0°C' of water. There are facts of predication. It seems perfectly reasonable to ask for a robust, ontologically grounded, explanation of the fact that a predicate applies to an object. Such explanations are often available, and they typically present as explanans the existence of some properties borne by some objects. According to explanations of this type, it is the having if those properties that determines what predicates an object satisfies. Nominalism, being globally anti-realist about properties, cannot offer any such explanations. Instead it restates the semantic criterion for the correct application of the predicate: it is correct to say that a is F if a belongs to the extension of 'F', or if a satisfies 'F', or if a is among the Fs, and so on. This gives a formally adequate answer to the request for a truthmaker for the claim 'a is F'. But it is not metaphysically adequate. It is not the robust explanation that one can reasonably expect. The nominalist's formalist substitute for a robust explanation faces an obvious Euthyphro question: Do some things freeze when cooled to 0°C because they satisfy the predicate 'freezes when cooled to 0°C', or do these things satisfy the predicate 'freezes when cooled to 0°C' because they in fact freeze when cooled to 0°C? Once formulated the question looks easy to answer. Surely a belongs to the extension of 'F' because of some property or properties it has, and not conversely. For the nominalist, however, belonging to the extension of a predicate is just an inexplicable ultimate fact. The trope-theoretic verdict on What is wrong in nominalism? is that nominalists' well-founded distrust of universals misleads them into denying the reality of properties as such."

(Molnar, George. Powers: A Study in Metaphysics. Edited by Stephen Mumford. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. pp. 23-4)
GE Morton wrote: August 18th, 2022, 9:29 pmOooh, you seem to jumping the mind-body dichotomy dogmatically there, begging the question. That those qualities are caused by neural networks doesn't entail that "they are really complexes of objective "primary qualities" inherent in neural networks."
The quoted is what I assert, which you may call question-begging; but then to reject reductive neurophysicalism about secondary (phenomenal) qualities is no less question-begging. :wink:
GE Morton wrote: August 18th, 2022, 9:29 pmI think the only sense we can make of an "objective property" is that it is one predicated of a thing via an objective proposition.
If "objective" means "ontologically objective" in Searle's sense, then an objective property is a nonexperiential, experience-independent property.
GE Morton wrote: August 18th, 2022, 9:29 pmUsually "emergence" is used when the causal chain cannot be fully articulated. It is a confession of ignorance. But though we can't articulate all the steps in the causal chain, we can still say "Neural processes cause consciousness," just as pre-atomic theory people could say, "Heating water to 100C (at sea level) causes steam."
There is a confusing distinction between ontological emergentism and epistemological emergentism—but I think I've made it sufficiently clear here that by "emergentism" I always mean "O-emergentism" and by "emergent" always "O-emergent"!
GE Morton wrote: August 18th, 2022, 9:29 pmWhether a theoretical thing (such as a proton) is deemed simple or complex will depend upon how much explanatory power the theory postulating it has. E.g., if imagining protons to be composed of quarks helps us explain (and predict) some of the results observed in particle accelerator experiments then we can deem the quarks "real." We can also deem the quarks "simple" if imagining more elementary components gains us no additional explanatory power. The basis for the distinction is different, however, for empirically apprehensible things. Then we deem them "simple" if they are denotable by a primitive term.
If a kind of particle is really nonsimple, but is deemed simple by physicists for model-theoretic reasons, then this is an idealization. Things get even easier theoretically and particularly mathematically if single particles are regarded as both non-composed and non-extended. Physicists speak of "point-particles"; but this is an idealization, because they don't know (on the basis of their empirical/experimental data) whether their so-called "elementary" particles are really zero-dimensional.
GE Morton wrote: August 18th, 2022, 9:29 pm
Consul wrote: August 16th, 2022, 5:18 pmAre you a predicate nominalist about properties?
Oh, much worse. I'm an "ontological nominalist." What exists, beyond experiential phenomena, is whatever we SAY exists, provided that what we say exists enables us to predict and control future experience.

We postulate an external cause for the phenomena of experience (the noumena). We then construct a model of that postulated external world, and populate it with entities and processes which render the flux of experience coherent, predictable, communicable, and therefore more manageable. We have no knowledge of, and no grounds for claiming the existence of, anything not directly perceived or which has some utility for making sense of what is perceived and enabling communication about what is perceived. Thus trees and cats and stars are real because those terms denote complexes within our phenomenal experience we can use to direct someone else's attention to corresponding (but not necessarily identical) complexes within their phenomenal experience. Quarks and electromagnetic fields and the "strong force" are real because they enable us to predict and control certain types of experience. Gods and (disembodied) spirits and unicorns and Santa Claus are not "real" because they have no utility for predicting or controlling future experience or for communicating about it.
A basic ontological category scheme is or should be neutral between physical realism and idealism. If "is real" is used synonymously with "exists" rather than with "exists mind-independently", then property realism is compatible with Kantian and even Berkeleyan idealism. (Kant's category system includes qualities and quantities, which are kinds of properties.)

Don't minds, their subjects, and empirical phenomena (observables) have properties too? Doesn't thought itself have qualities? Don't concepts themselves have properties? Aren't experiential/phenomenal qualities real qualities? Is the phenomenological-psychological realm devoid of qualities, empty of Sosein, of essence or nature?

It's a mistake to suppose that idealism includes concept/predicate nominalism about properties.

I am aware that one is confronted with the problem of unobservables in the philosophy of science even if one rejects Kant's idealism with its absolute separation of knowable phenomena and unknowable noumena.

Theoretical Terms in Science: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/theo ... s-science/

"A simple explanation of theoreticity says that a term is theoretical if and only if it refers to nonobservational entities."
GE Morton wrote: August 18th, 2022, 9:29 pm …In short, phenomena, being real, have real properties. Hypothesized external entities have only those properties that are predicated of them via propositions having communicative utility. I do deny, of course, the existence of "universals" (in the Platonic sense). That is a postulate with no communicative or explanatory utility.
I disbelieve in universals both in the Platonic sense (universalia ante rebus) and in the Aristotelian sense (universalia in rebus).

Here you explicitly affirm property (quality) realism (relative to Kantian phenomena), which, as I already said above, is compatible with Kantian idealism.
GE Morton wrote: August 18th, 2022, 9:29 pm
Consul wrote: August 16th, 2022, 5:18 pmThe good news is that particularists can offer formally equivalent substitutes for universals: sets of perfectly similar property-particulars (modes or "tropes"), i.e. sets of property duplicates, which are qualitatively but not numerically identical to one another. One such set of many duplicates can be represented by one predicate or concept. We can even use one predicate or concept to represent a set of many imperfectly (more or less) similar qualities. For example, we can use the one predicate "red" to represent an entire range of imperfectly similar shades of red.
That perhaps rids us of the mysticism of universals, but it doesn't satisfy Occam's Razor any better.
Why should it satisfy "Occam's Razor"?

QUOTE>
"What of parsimony, Ockham’s razor? Parsimony serves as a tie-breaker: other things equal, the more parsimonious theory is to be preferred. Things are never equal, however, not really. Parsimony figures in the endgame, not at the outset of theorizing. Parsimony wielded as a theoretical constraint is a straitjacket. The question in play is whether an ontology of particulars (tropes alone or substances and modes) could accomplish what an ontology of particulars plus universals could accomplish."

(Heil, John. "Universals in a World of Particulars." In The Problem of Universals in Contemporary Philosophy, edited by Gabriele Galluzzo and Michael J. Loux, 114-132. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. p. 123)
<QUOTE
GE Morton wrote: August 18th, 2022, 9:29 pmThe whole concept of "external material objects" is a mental projection. But a useful one, and inputing colors and other properties to those objects is just as useful.
I beg to differ! Material objects aren't imperceptible/unobservable "mental projections", because we can and do perceive material objects! The physical world isn't "noumenal" and hence perceptually and cognitively inaccessible in principle, because my mind/consciousness is not a windowless dungeon.
GE Morton wrote: August 18th, 2022, 9:29 pm
Consul wrote: August 16th, 2022, 5:18 pmI've been talking about the ontological location and adherence/inherence problem with regard to properties in general, but there is a special location and adherence/inherence problem with regard to experiential/phenomenal qualia in particular.
Do you mean a problem in addition to and different from the more general question of the location of consciousness?
If qualia are the subjective, experiential content of (the state of) consciousness, then they are where the (state of) consciousness is whose content they are.
GE Morton wrote: August 18th, 2022, 9:29 pm Does that matter? Isn't it always correct to say of a cause/effect relationship that the cause produces the effect?
It depends on your metaphysical conception of causality. For example, if the cause/effect relationship is defined à la Hume as a non-necessary "constant conjunction", with y merely being regularly followed by x, then I wouldn't say that x causes y by producing it. I wouldn't say so either if the causal connection is defined merely in terms of statistical correlation, counterfactual dependence, or nomological subsumption.

In my understanding, a state of affairs S1 causes another state of affairs S2 by producing it only if S1 has the power to make it the case, and makes it the case that S2, with "making it the case" involving physical or ontological necessity, such that if S1 is the case, S2 must be(come) the case as S1's effect or product.

QUOTE>
What is the metaphysical basis for causal connection? That is, what is the difference between causally related and causally unrelated sequences?
The question of connection occupies the bulk of the vast literature on causation. One finds analyses of causation in terms of nomological subsumption (Davidson 1980d, Kim 1973, Horwich 1987, Armstrong 1999), statistical correlation (Good 1961 and 1962, Suppes 1970, Spirtes, Glymour, and Scheines 1993, Kvart 1997 and 2004, Pearl 2000, Hitchcock 2001), counterfactual dependence (Lewis 1986a and 2000, Swain 1978, Menzies 1989b, McDermott 1995 and 2002, Ganeri, Noordhof, and Ramachandran 1996, Yablo 2002, Sartorio 2005), agential manipulability (Collingwood 1940, Gasking 1955, von Wright 1975, Price and Menzies 1993, Woodward 2003), contiguous change (Ducasse 1926), energy flow (Fair 1979, Castaneda 1984), physical processes (Russell 1948, Salmon 1984 and 1998, Dowe 1992 and 2000), and property transference (Aronson 1971, Ehring 1997, Kistler 1998). One also finds views that are hybrids of some of the above (Fair 1979, Dowe 2000, Paul 2000, Schaffer 2001, Hall 2004, Beebee 2004b), along with primitivism (Anscombe 1975, Tooley 1987 and 2004, Carroll 1994, Menzies 1996) and even eliminativism (Russell 1992, Quine 1966).

Fortunately, the details of these many and various accounts may be postponed here, as they tend to be variations on two basic themes. In practice, the nomological, statistical, counterfactual, and agential accounts tend to converge in the indeterministic case. All understand connection in terms of probability: causing is making more likely. The change, energy, process, and transference accounts converge in treating connection in terms of process: causing is physical producing. Thus a large part of the controversy over connection may, in practice, be reduced to the question of whether connection is a matter of probability or process."

The Metaphysics of Causation: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr ... taphysics/
<QUOTE
GE Morton wrote: August 18th, 2022, 9:29 pmAs I said, I'm not sure any qualia can be meaningfully or usefully called "simple." What might be an example? But I certainly agree that an "analytic introspective neurology" is impossible.
Believing that all experiential qualia are really nonsimple neural properties, I cannot give you any example of a neurologically simple quale; but I can give you an example of a phenomenologically simple one, i.e. one which is introspectively perceived as simple: a patch of homogeneous phenomenal blue in your visual field.
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
GE Morton
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Re: Searle's Biological Naturalism view of Consciousness.

Post by GE Morton »

Consul wrote: August 20th, 2022, 9:32 pm
The question is whether for all predicates there is some real property.
The answer to that depends on how you define and what you count as "real," which in turn depends upon the ontological scheme one has adopted.

I assume you'll agree that any ontology must begin with, and rest upon, the phenomena of experience --- upon percepts. I assume you'll also agree that those unquestionable exist, and that we have and can have no information about what exists beyond those existents. We can of course imagine, and postulate, other existents, or realms or categories of them, a realm external to and independent from us and our percepts, but we can have no evidence for any such.

Now as a realist, you may wish to say, "But we do have evidence for an external world. The percepts are themselves evidence of that." But they're not. In order for e to be evidence for P, we must have already observed a connection or relation between e and P. Suppose an alien from Betelgeuse crash-lands his saucer in northern Canada. He does not know where he is, or anything about the flora and fauna of the world on which he now finds himself. Exiting his disabled saucer and stepping out onto the snowy meadow he sees a line of caribou tracks in the snow. For an Inuit hunter those tracks would be evidence that a caribou had recently passed that way, but for the Betegeusean they are evidence of . . . nothing. He may not even be familiar with legged animals; all the animals on his world are worm-like, and slither on their bellies. For him the depressions in the snow are just a mystery to be explained.

On the other hand, if the Betelgeusean accepts (as an axiom) that everything has a cause, he can conclude that the tracks are evidence of something; something caused them. We, likewise, can conclude something caused the phenomena we experience, but we have no more evidence for what that might be than does the Betelgeusean for the caribou tracks.

In my view a "real" property is a feature of a percept which differentiates it from other percepts and allows us to describe it in terms that enable others to identify it. It makes no assumptions about an external world. But once we postulate an external word, we project that property onto one of the external entities we've postulated. That external world and the entitites and properties comprising it become "real" too, but they're parts of our constructed "reality," as distinguished from perceived reality.
Being a doctor is a functional or role property, so you cannot find out whether somebody is a doctor by observing or examining her/his body. (If the person wears a white coat, this may give you a clue.)
I don't believe functional or role properties are a real kind of properties. There are doctors, but there is no such entity as the property of being a doctor.
You're conceiving properties as "entities"? But I agree those are not "real" properties, but "pseudo-properties."
By the way, there is a distinction between extrinsic (relational, relation-dependent) properties and intrinsic ones: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intrinsic-extrinsic/
That terminology is not very useful, because "intrinsic" is vague. Having 3 sides is intrinsic to triangles, but is being red intrinsic to a barn? Surely its redness is a real property of it. I take an "intrinsic" property to be one that is definitive of a thing, such that if X lacks property P, it is not an X. But most things have many properties not definitive of them, but which are nonetheless "real."
By "pseudo-property" I generally mean an unreal, fictional, nonexistent property which is nothing but a semantic projection onto things by predicates or concepts.
Wouldn't those simply be falsely attributed properties? Does the proposition, "Humans have meter-long tails," impute a "pseudo-property," or is it just a false proposition?
Yes, every spatially or temporally extended object has spatial or temporal parts. Whether it has fundamental spatial or temporal parts depends on whether space or time itself has fundamental parts, i.e. either unextended space-points or time-points (instants) or minimal volumes of space of minimal intervals of time.
Which depends upon one's theories of space and time. I.e., what exists (apart from the phenomena of experience) depends upon what we SAY exists, provided what we say exists has some explanatory value.
If the world (cosmos/universe) as a whole is one big simple substance, then all other apparent substances—particles, atoms, molecules, organisms, planets, stars—are really nothing but nonsubstantial complexes ("bundles") of attributes inhering in some region of the one world-substance. Neither property-bundles nor regions of space are substances. Locally present property-bundles are modal (attributional) parts of the world-substance, and its regions are spatial parts of it; and modal (attributional) or spatial parts aren't themselves substantial parts or smaller substances. So it is not the case that the one world-substance (really) "has many smaller parts of the same ontological category."
Who has proposed that the universe as a whole is one big simple substance? A Leibnizian monad? What explanatory utility is such a substance conceived to have?

The concepts of "substances" and "properties" arise from apprehensible patterns in phenomena and linguistic structures used to describe them, i.e., subject/predicate propositions. We export, "reify," those phenomenal terms to the postulated external world. Then come the attempts of speculative philosophers to classify those substances and nominate some as "fundamental." None of those "philosophical" characterizations of "substance" have much explanatory utility.
GE Morton wrote: August 18th, 2022, 9:29 pm
What makes them ontologically indispensible, other than the fact that talking about the world demands them?
The simplest argument:

QUOTE>
"Without properties, objects are empty and predicates blind."

(Martin, C. B. The Mind in Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. p. 80)
<QUOTE

Without properties, objects would have a "naked" Dasein (being-there) without Sosein (being-thus), an existence without any essence or nature.

QUOTE>
"The Jobs Properties Do

Properties are things that different objects can have in common.

Properties mark genuine similarities.

Properties serve as semantic values of predicates.

Properties serve as semantic values of abstract singular terms.

Properties ground duplication.

Properties ground the causal powers of objects."

(Edwards, Douglas. Properties. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2014. pp. 10-1)
<QUOTE

Being a particularist rather than a universalist about properties, I reject the first "job"; but I accept all others as reasons for affirming property realism.
Do any of those amount to anything beyond conferring the ability to communicate? Some of them expressly assert the role of properties in communication, those mentioning predicates, terms, semantic values. Does it matter in the least whether properties (and substances too) have an existence independent of consciousness? Would our ability to function in the world be lessened if they did not?

Now, I'm also a property "realist" --- but hold that properties of external things belong to our constructed reality, not our phenomenal reality, and not necessarily to "noumenal" reality. Things in phenomenal reality are "real" if they are experienced; in constructed reality they are "real" if they have some explanatory and communicative utility. So redness is a "real" property of some roses --- but roses and their imputed colors are artifacts of our constructed reality.
If a kind of particle is really nonsimple, but is deemed simple by physicists for model-theoretic reasons, then this is an idealization. Things get even easier theoretically and particularly mathematically if single particles are regarded as both non-composed and non-extended. Physicists speak of "point-particles"; but this is an idealization, because they don't know (on the basis of their empirical/experimental data) whether their so-called "elementary" particles are really zero-dimensional.
Same issue. How would be possibly know whether a "kind of particle is really nonsimple," other than by whether the theory postulating the particle has more or less explanatory power by assuming one or the other?
A basic ontological category scheme is or should be neutral between physical realism and idealism.
Idealism and realism are themselves ontological schemes. But I agree a sound meta-ontology ought not presuppose either.
Don't minds, their subjects, and empirical phenomena (observables) have properties too? Doesn't thought itself have qualities? Don't concepts themselves have properties? Aren't experiential/phenomenal qualities real qualities? Is the phenomenological-psychological realm devoid of qualities, empty of Sosein, of essence or nature?
Absolutely! Whatever is experienced is per force "real." That is the only category of "reality" not subject to Cartesian doubt. If I perceive a tree, I may be mistaken about what causes that percept; it may well be an hallucination. But I can't doubt that I'm having the percept. And since percepts are distinguishable from one another they must have properties, which are just as real.
GE Morton wrote: August 18th, 2022, 9:29 pmThe whole concept of "external material objects" is a mental projection. But a useful one, and inputing colors and other properties to those objects is just as useful.
I beg to differ! Material objects aren't imperceptible/unobservable "mental projections", because we can and do perceive material objects! The physical world isn't "noumenal" and hence perceptually and cognitively inaccessible in principle, because my mind/consciousness is not a windowless dungeon.
We perceive what we take to be external, material objects! Indeed, we take the phenomenal field to be a transparent "window" we see through, though it is a model of a world constructed by our brains from data it receives via a few sensory channels. Or so a reasonably good theory we've devised declares.

But we have no means of stepping outside, as it were, to see whether the view through the window shows us what (if anything) is "really out there."

Challenging posts, Consul!

More later on causation.
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Re: Searle's Biological Naturalism view of Consciousness.

Post by Consul »

GE Morton wrote: August 26th, 2022, 8:10 pm
Consul wrote: August 20th, 2022, 9:32 pm The question is whether for all predicates there is some real property.
The answer to that depends on how you define and what you count as "real," which in turn depends upon the ontological scheme one has adopted.
A category scheme can be regarded as system of possible categories (basic kinds of entities) or of actual (real) ones. For example, one can include abstract objects in one's category scheme without assuming that there are abstract objects in the actual (real) world.

(As opposed to David Lewis, I don't regard nonactual, merely possible worlds as equally real ones. My question concerns properties which are real in the sense of being part of the actual world. I regard nonactual worlds as nonreal, nonexistent ones.)
GE Morton wrote: August 26th, 2022, 8:10 pmI assume you'll agree that any ontology must begin with, and rest upon, the phenomena of experience --- upon percepts. I assume you'll also agree that those unquestionable exist, and that we have and can have no information about what exists beyond those existents. We can of course imagine, and postulate, other existents, or realms or categories of them, a realm external to and independent from us and our percepts, but we can have no evidence for any such.
Are "the phenomena of experience" what I experience (introspectively perceive) in my phenomenal consciousness, i.e. its content(s), or what I experience (non-introspectively perceive) through my phenomenal consciousness, i.e. its object(s)?
That is to ask, are the phenomena of experience the appearings OF things or the appearing things?

Anyway, I'm a realist both about inner (sensory) contents of experience and about outer objects of (perceptual) experience; and I believe the former give us (direct or indirect) information about the latter, because I deny that the sensory appearings are themselves the appearing things. The very concept of appearance presupposes that there is something appearing which is not the appearing itself but something different from it, since appearances aren't self-appearing, and an appearance of nothing is a non-appearance. So the "transcendental" aspect is built into the concept of appearance, because all appearances point towards something beyond them—something which isn't imperceptibly "noumenal" but perceptibly "phenomenal" as an external, nonmental object of sensory appearance.

This is not to say that all physical realities are perceptible or detectable by us humans by means of our unaided senses or with the help of technology (e.g. microscopes, telescopes, body scanners, particle accelerators). It is merely to say that not all physical realities are unperceptible or undetectable by us humans by means of our unaided senses or with the help of technology.
GE Morton wrote: August 26th, 2022, 8:10 pm Now as a realist, you may wish to say, "But we do have evidence for an external world. The percepts are themselves evidence of that." But they're not. In order for e to be evidence for P, we must have already observed a connection or relation between e and P. Suppose an alien from Betelgeuse crash-lands his saucer in northern Canada. He does not know where he is, or anything about the flora and fauna of the world on which he now finds himself. Exiting his disabled saucer and stepping out onto the snowy meadow he sees a line of caribou tracks in the snow. For an Inuit hunter those tracks would be evidence that a caribou had recently passed that way, but for the Betegeusean they are evidence of . . . nothing. He may not even be familiar with legged animals; all the animals on his world are worm-like, and slither on their bellies. For him the depressions in the snow are just a mystery to be explained.

On the other hand, if the Betelgeusean accepts (as an axiom) that everything has a cause, he can conclude that the tracks are evidence of something; something caused them. We, likewise, can conclude something caused the phenomena we experience, but we have no more evidence for what that might be than does the Betelgeusean for the caribou tracks.
Your contention is that the external distal causes of sensory appearances are themselves imperceptible; but this is what I deny!
When I see a tree its visually appearing to me is my empirical evidence for it, and the tree visually appearing to me is part of the distal cause of its visually appearing to me (my being visually appeared to by it); so the tree isn't an imperceptibly "noumenal" cause of my visual experience.
GE Morton wrote: August 26th, 2022, 8:10 pmIn my view a "real" property is a feature of a percept which differentiates it from other percepts and allows us to describe it in terms that enable others to identify it. It makes no assumptions about an external world. But once we postulate an external word, we project that property onto one of the external entities we've postulated. That external world and the entitites and properties comprising it become "real" too, but they're parts of our constructed "reality," as distinguished from perceived reality.
A definition of realness is one thing, and empirical criteria for realness are another thing.

First of all, what exactly do you mean by "percept"?

Simon Blackburn writes that "percepts" is "a term for items of a perceptual field, sharing the dangerous tendencies of sense-data." Fred Dretske defines a percept as "the subjective experience accompanying perception of objects and events." And Bertrand Russell defines it as "what happens when, in common-sense terms, I see something or hear something or otherwise believe myself to become aware of something through my senses."

Literally, a percept is a perceptum, something perceived; but what is perceived when we perceive something?
There is a distinction between my subjective perceptual field, which is populated by my sensory experiences/appearances or internal, mental objects such as sense-data, and my objective perceptual field, which is populated by external, physical objects.
Given your idealistic approach, percepts are always internal, mental objects—i.e. sense-data in one's subjective sense-field with certain sense-qualities (aka secondary qualities)—which (idealists think) are the (only and only possible) objects of sensory perception.

You regard the secondary qualities of such internal, mental percepts as real (e.g. colors), but what about primary qualities of external, physical objects or materials (as listed by physics, chemistry, and biology) that aren't secondary ones (illusorily) projected onto external, physical objects? Do you regard them as real properties too?
GE Morton wrote: August 26th, 2022, 8:10 pm
Consul wrote: August 20th, 2022, 9:32 pmI don't believe functional or role properties are a real kind of properties. There are doctors, but there is no such entity as the property of being a doctor.
You're conceiving properties as "entities"? But I agree those are not "real" properties, but "pseudo-properties."
Real, existent properties are entities, since anything real, existent is an entity (in the broadest ontological sense of the term)—irrespective of the ontological category to which it belongs.
GE Morton wrote: August 26th, 2022, 8:10 pm
Consul wrote: August 20th, 2022, 9:32 pmBy the way, there is a distinction between extrinsic (relational, relation-dependent) properties and intrinsic ones: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intrinsic-extrinsic/
That terminology is not very useful, because "intrinsic" is vague. Having 3 sides is intrinsic to triangles, but is being red intrinsic to a barn? Surely its redness is a real property of it. I take an "intrinsic" property to be one that is definitive of a thing, such that if X lacks property P, it is not an X. But most things have many properties not definitive of them, but which are nonetheless "real."
Colors aren't intrinsic properties of physical objects—unless you identify apparent surface colors with microstructural properties of the surfaces of physical objects. To do so is to reduce colors qua secondary qualities to complexes of external primary qualities.
However, this reductionistic strategy doesn't really work, because if secondary qualities such as colors are reduced to external primary qualities, there are still unreduced internal phenomenal qualities as "tertiary qualities". For the subjective visual appearance of the objective physical color of (= physical microstructure of) the surface of an external object is still something in addition to the physically reduced color, which means that there is still a real difference between objective physical colors and subjective phenomenal colors.

"Intrinsic property" and "essential property" aren't synonyms. For instance, the actual size of an inflated balloon is intrinsic but not essential to it, because it can shrink without thereby ceasing to be (a balloon).

QUOTE:
"An intrinsic quality is a quality an object has in its own right. (...) Think of intrinsic qualities as being built into objects, extrinsic characteristics as being possessed by objects only in virtue of relations those objects bear to other objects."

(Heil, John. Philosophy of Mind: A Contemporary Introduction. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2004. pp. 63-4)
:QUOTE
GE Morton wrote: August 26th, 2022, 8:10 pm
Consul wrote: August 20th, 2022, 9:32 pmBy "pseudo-property" I generally mean an unreal, fictional, nonexistent property which is nothing but a semantic projection onto things by predicates or concepts.
Wouldn't those simply be falsely attributed properties? Does the proposition, "Humans have meter-long tails," impute a "pseudo-property," or is it just a false proposition?
It's a false predication, because it isn't true of humans that they have meter-long tails. And if it is true of other animals, then it is simply made true by their meter-long tails rather than by an extra entity which is the property of having a meter-long tail. For example, a crocodile's meter-long tail makes it true that it has a meter-long tail.
GE Morton wrote: August 26th, 2022, 8:10 pm
Consul wrote: August 20th, 2022, 9:32 pmYes, every spatially or temporally extended object has spatial or temporal parts. Whether it has fundamental spatial or temporal parts depends on whether space or time itself has fundamental parts, i.e. either unextended space-points or time-points (instants) or minimal volumes of space of minimal intervals of time.
Which depends upon one's theories of space and time. I.e., what exists (apart from the phenomena of experience) depends upon what we SAY exists, provided what we say exists has some explanatory value.
It won't surprise you to read that from my perspective of physical realism, space and time aren't mind-dependent "forms of intuition", as Kant famously claims.

What exists according to some scientific theory which contains theoretical terms referring to "theoretical entities" (unobservable entities) depends on that theory (and its ontological posits), but what exists in the natural realm of unobservables doesn't. From the perspective of scientific realism, theoretical entities aren't to be equated with ideal or fictional ones, since they can very well exist theory-independently. Theories (purport to) represent the world, and they do so correctly or incorrectly, accurately or inaccurately; but they don't make the world.
GE Morton wrote: August 26th, 2022, 8:10 pmWho has proposed that the universe as a whole is one big simple substance? A Leibnizian monad? What explanatory utility is such a substance conceived to have?
The most famous monist about the number of substances is Spinoza. As opposed to Spinoza's one big world-substance, Leibniz' monads are very small simple substances, since they are spatially unextended souls, which lack both substantial parts and spatial ones (but may have temporal parts at least). Moreover, as opposed to Spinoza, Leibniz is a pluralist about the number of substances, there being many monads.

I find the view that the world (cosmos/universe/spacetime) as a whole is one extended simple substance and the only (irreducibly) existing substance highly attractive, especially from the perspective of modern physics.

See: Uriah Kriegel: [Franz] Brentano’s Latter-day Monism (PDF)

QUOTE:
"Spinoza holds that there is but one extended substance, the universe as a whole. What we regard as objects—trees, planets, electrons, rabbits—are in fact modes, modifications, ways the one substance is. You could think of these as analogous to concentrations of energy in fields, or thickenings of space or spacetime, where the fields, or space, or spacetime play the role of substances. If you accept my characterization of essences or substantial forms as principles, rather than organizing entities or processes, then you could say that, to the extent that a region of spacetime, or a field, or whatever satisfies a given principle, it is a tree, or a planet, or an electron, or a rabbit.

Now consider the motions of objects thus conceived. These would be wavelike eddies or disturbances in the fabric of the universe. The motion of a baseball from home plate to the left field bleachers would resemble the motion of a cursor across your laptop’s screen. There is no parcel of matter, no continuant occupying successive regions of space, but a succession of modifications in or of contiguous regions of a continuous extended substance.

Note that it would be a mistake to regard this way of thinking about material bodies as a historical curiosity. In many respects it is closer to the picture coming from physics today than is classical atomism. What are commonly regarded as particles exhibiting identifiable trajectories through spacetime could in fact turn out to be shifting concentrations of energy in fields or congealed regions of space resembling bulges in a carpet. In that case, the motion of objects—particles, for instance—would be a kind of wave motion, and particles would turn out not to be substances but to be modes of substances, with the fields, or space, or spacetime playing the substance role.

For Spinoza, and perhaps for Aristotle, a substance lacks substantial parts, parts that are themselves substances. What you might at first regard as substantial parts of a substance are, in reality, modes, Aristotelian accidents, modifications of that substance. In that case it would be a mistake to think of substances as influencing their parts causally. What appear to be parts would in reality be modes, entities dependent on the substance of which they are modes; their antics would be best understood, not as caused by the substance they modify, but as expressions of the dynamic nature of that substance.

Of course, Spinoza and Aristotle differ in their respective inventories of substances. For Spinoza, there is a single substance. For Aristotle there are presumed to be many substances jostling one another and providing the relata for efficient causal relations.
So much the better for Aristotle, you might think.

But now reflect on Aristotle’s metaphysics of stuffs. The universe, or at any rate the terrestrial, sublunar universe, comprises a kind of lumpy primordial blancmange that exhibits local variations in density depending on the relative concentrations of the four elementary stuffs. At a particular region you might have a spherical concentrated mixture of earth, water, air, and fire in the right proportions so as to yield a bronze sphere. In another region you have a much more variegated mixture so as to yield a rabbit. Although, for Aristotle, the rabbit, and perhaps the bronze sphere, are substances, it is hard not to see the rabbit and the sphere asmodifications—thickenings of, or eddies in—the primordial blancmange, not substances at all. If there is a substance it is the blancmange taken as a whole.

I admit that we are now miles from Aristotle, but I cannot resist pointing out what strike me as difficulties in reconciling a universe comprising mixtures of stuffs—a blancmange universe—with an ontology of individual, mobile, causally interacting continuants. Consider the bronze sphere, and imagine Socrates’s tossing it across the room to Simmias. The sphere, a portion of in-formed matter, appears tomove from one place to another through the air, a fluid medium. But could this be right? The sphere is, after all, a dense region of an all-encompassing, variable stuff. What separates it from its surroundings? How could a discrete continuant arise in a continuous stuff? A seamless universe might congeal, wrinkle, stretch, vibrate, and deform in various ways but it is hard to see how any ‘piece’ of it could be separated from any other so as to allow for motion as it is ordinarily conceived.

So what happens when Socrates tosses the sphere? It would be natural to think that a spherical portion of matter pushes aside or displaces matter making up the medium, and this is likely what Aristotle thought. But, given the underlying metaphysics of stuffs, the sphere’s motion would more nearly resemble that of a bulge shifting from one part of a carpet to another or a shiver running down your spine. The sphere’s motion is merely apparent!

Disaster? Not necessarily. Return to the Spinozistic picture, and suppose that there is just one extended, material substance, space itself or spacetime. What we identify as objects are in fact modes, modifications of this extended substance, local contortions, congealed regions of space. Or consider the possibility that what we today regard as particles are in fact concentrations of energy in fields or perturbations in space or spacetime. When Socrates tosses the sphere to Simmias, you do not have a portion of matter occupying successive spatial locations, but successive modifications in an encompassing substance.

Suppose, for instance, that what we regard as particles are at bottom disturbances in spacetime or local concentrations of energy in fields. When Socrates tosses the sphere, you have something like a cursor’s moving across your laptop screen. When the cursor moves, a piece of your screen does not move. Rather you have a sequence of pixels changing color and levels of brightness. Even so, your cursor moves: this is just what it is for your cursor to move. Similarly, when Socrates tosses the bronze sphere, what you have is a wavelike sequence of disturbances in a region of spacetime. Still, it would seem, it is true to say that the sphere moves from Socrates to Simmias: this is just what it is for the sphere to move.

Call this the ‘deep story’ about motion in a blancmange universe or a universe of stuffs. The deep story gives us the truthmakers for all the ordinary truths about ordinary material bodies—everything from particles to planets—and their motions. Just as Spinoza and contemporary physicists are happy to talk about particles moving through space, somyimagined Aristotle could continue to talk about material objects in motion. The truthmakers for such talk, however, given the envisaged physics of stuffs, would involve nothing that moves, or at least no discrete bits of matter occupying
successive regions of space."

(Heil, John. "Hylomorphism: What's Not To Like?" Synthese XX (2018): 1–14.)
:QUOTE

QUOTE:
"I have insisted that space-time has properties, yet it is not itself had as a property or even a set of properties, and it could not exist without properties. A propertied space-time is a one-object universe and space-time satisfies the correct definitions of 'substratum'."

(Martin, C. B. The Mind in Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. p. 47)

"[O]bjects are not to be taken to be fundamental or basic. They are replaced by spatiotemporal trajectories of successive lightings-up of properties of spatiotemporal regions. You cannot have both this and objects. Propertied spatiotemporal regions and their warps and woofs are what there really are, as Einstein told us. Objects, whether large (observers) or small (electrons), are gone from any fundamental basic picture of the world. They are gone from the ultimate and basic physics. …
There is a huge ontological shift here: from having objects with their properties and relations as basic and explaining spatiotemporal regions in terms of relations among objects to having regions explaining and replacing relations of objects by field properties and relations of spatiotemporal regions. Their warps and woofs are basic and explain and replace objects.
The account I am endorsing makes no mention of objects but only of spatiotemporal segments instead.
Saying that the replacement of objects moving by sequential lightings-up of field properties of the warps and woofs of space-time regions is 'just what objects moving comes down to' is like saying that Einstein's relativity is just what the all-pervasive ether comes down to. This flattens the ontological novelty of scientific discovery. Einstein declared that he wanted to know the mind of God. Someone asked, 'What kind of God?' Einstein replied, 'Spinoza's God.' This expresses Einstein's ontology."

(Martin, C. B. The Mind in Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. pp. 197-98)
:QUOTE
GE Morton wrote: August 26th, 2022, 8:10 pm The concepts of "substances" and "properties" arise from apprehensible patterns in phenomena and linguistic structures used to describe them, i.e., subject/predicate propositions. We export, "reify," those phenomenal terms to the postulated external world. Then come the attempts of speculative philosophers to classify those substances and nominate some as "fundamental." None of those "philosophical" characterizations of "substance" have much explanatory utility.
You can certainly try to replace substance-attribute ontology with an alternative one doing without the category <substance>. For example, there is an event/process ontology postulating "absolute", "free", "pure", i.e. object-/subjectless, events/processes, ones lacking any substantial substratum; but I haven't yet seen any convincing example of such substanceless, non-substance-involving occurrences. A river isn't "pure flowing" but the flowing of something, viz. water. The idea of a flowing free from anything flowing, or of a moving free from anything moving makes no coherent ontological sense to me.
GE Morton wrote: August 26th, 2022, 8:10 pmDo any of those amount to anything beyond conferring the ability to communicate? Some of them expressly assert the role of properties in communication, those mentioning predicates, terms, semantic values. Does it matter in the least whether properties (and substances too) have an existence independent of consciousness? Would our ability to function in the world be lessened if they did not?
Of course, you can meaningfully and successfully communicate with others in your everyday life without ever having to think philosophically about (the nature and status of) properties; but ontological theorizing about them does matter in philosophy&science, where we seek to describe&explain (the nature and structure of) reality. Philosophers and scientists alike want to know what (really) exists, what is true, and what makes true what is true.

Your question regarding the existence of consciousness-independent properties is part of the realism vs. idealism debate; but I am convinced that properties must be part of any plausible basic ontology—irrespective of whether they are ontologically integrated into a physicalistic worldview or a mentalistic one. For example, Berkeley's totally immaterial/mental world isn't devoid of properties, although it is devoid of mind-independent ones.
GE Morton wrote: August 26th, 2022, 8:10 pmNow, I'm also a property "realist" --- but hold that properties of external things belong to our constructed reality, not our phenomenal reality, and not necessarily to "noumenal" reality. Things in phenomenal reality are "real" if they are experienced; in constructed reality they are "real" if they have some explanatory and communicative utility. So redness is a "real" property of some roses --- but roses and their imputed colors are artifacts of our constructed reality.
I'm not sure what mean by "our constructed reality". You seem to say it's a reality between "phenomenal reality" and "noumenal reality". What puzzles me is that you call roses "artifacts of our constructed reality". If I understand you correctly, what you call "phenomenal reality" is constituted by our subjective sensory appearances/experiences. And given your idealistic point of view, you seem to imply that phenomenal reality is the only (possible) object of perception, such that we never perceive anything but our own subjective sensations (sense-data/-impressions) as inner, mental events.

It follows that roses are imperceptible, because they are not inner, mental events or objects but outer, physical objects. However, even if roses are imperceptible, they are conceivable and conceptualizable at least. We can form and have a concept (qua nonpercept, nonperceptual mental representation) of them.

Is your "constructed reality" the mental realm of conception and concepts, the realm of (pure) thought? If it is, then my objection is that there is a relevant difference between constructing a concept of X and constructing X. The concept <rose> is certainly a thought-construct, but roses aren't. If "constructed reality" is the realm of concepts qua thought-constructs, then roses aren't part of it, since roses aren't mental concepts but physical objects; and as such they are part of "phenomenal reality", because they are not imperceptible. I can conceive roses, but I can perceive them too!
GE Morton wrote: August 26th, 2022, 8:10 pm Same issue. How would be possibly know whether a "kind of particle is really nonsimple," other than by whether the theory postulating the particle has more or less explanatory power by assuming one or the other?
Absent any empirical evidence, the reasons for regarding particles as (extended or unextended) simple or (extended) nonsimple objects are purely theoretical, with explanatory power being an important criterion.
GE Morton wrote: August 26th, 2022, 8:10 pm
Consul wrote: August 20th, 2022, 9:32 pmDon't minds, their subjects, and empirical phenomena (observables) have properties too? Doesn't thought itself have qualities? Don't concepts themselves have properties? Aren't experiential/phenomenal qualities real qualities? Is the phenomenological-psychological realm devoid of qualities, empty of Sosein, of essence or nature?
Absolutely! Whatever is experienced is per force "real." That is the only category of "reality" not subject to Cartesian doubt. If I perceive a tree, I may be mistaken about what causes that percept; it may well be an hallucination. But I can't doubt that I'm having the percept. And since percepts are distinguishable from one another they must have properties, which are just as real.
By "percepts" you mean subjective sensations (sense-impressions/sense-data) qua objects of perception, don't you?

From my point of view, when I perceive a tree, the percept (perceptum) is the tree (itself) rather than some sensory appearance or impression of it, because the latter is only the medium of perception and not its object. I see a tree by means of sensory appearances or impressions of it, but what I see, the object of my seeing is the tree (outside me) rather than some tree-impression (inside me). Trees are visible, whereas tree-impressions are invisible. I don't and can't see my visual experiences. I see other things with and through them which aren't visual experiences. Visual impressions are invisible, since the having of them is the seeing of something which is not itself a visual impression, but that which the visual impression is an impression of.

As for "Cartesian doubt", one shouldn't get bewitched by it in the first place!
Yes, there are perceptual illusions and even pseudoperceptual hallucinations; but these don't give us any compelling reason to deny the possibility of perceptual access to physical reality.
GE Morton wrote: August 26th, 2022, 8:10 pm
Consul wrote: August 20th, 2022, 9:32 pmI beg to differ! Material objects aren't imperceptible/unobservable "mental projections", because we can and do perceive material objects! The physical world isn't "noumenal" and hence perceptually and cognitively inaccessible in principle, because my mind/consciousness is not a windowless dungeon.
We perceive what we take to be external, material objects! Indeed, we take the phenomenal field to be a transparent "window" we see through, though it is a model of a world constructed by our brains from data it receives via a few sensory channels. Or so a reasonably good theory we've devised declares.
But we have no means of stepping outside, as it were, to see whether the view through the window shows us what (if anything) is "really out there."
It is an irresistible common-sense conviction of mine that when what happens in me which I call "seeing a rose", I do see something which is "really out there". The doctrine that all objects of perception are part of our minds, being internal, mental items ("ideas") rather than external, physical ones, is one of the biggest mistakes philosophers ever made.
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
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