Regarding dark energy/dark matter. I’m saying that we simply have no idea what those are or even if they’re real. These things don’t represent a counter to materialism because there are plenty explanations for them within the materialist world view. For example, perhaps these are all galactic civilizations that are efficiently consuming energy in all observable spectrums leaving only a gravity footprint. It’s just a silly thought experiment to illustrate the point. More realistically, it could be that our model of the evolution of the universe is wrong or there are particles we haven’t detected yet, or a myriad other reasons. For example, MOND theory does away with the need for dark matter, and gets results that are closer to what we observe in the cosmos.
The broader point though is that our theory of cosmic evolution has little to do with us being able to understand how the immediate material world around us works. We have a very solid understanding of matter and energy down to the quantum level. We have conducted countless experiments on the behavior of particles and energy. None of that is magically invalidated by the fact that our theory of cosmology is incomplete.
I dismiss unscientific dogmatic behavior, like ignoring evidence that doesn’t fit the assumptions and begging the question
But we haven’t discussed any such evidence. Everything I’ve said is based on observed evidence and fits with our best understanding of reality. We don’t have conclusive proof of how consciousness arises in the brain, but that just means we have more research to do in this area.
It’s perfectly fine to critique science, but scientifically valid the critique has to be rooted in science which is fundamentally rooted in materialism. Invoking something that’s never been observed experimentally and for which we have no basis as a counter argument to ideas that are rooted in observation and material reality is not a sound critique from the scientific perspective.
The leap you’re making with EMF is saying that sicne our current model of cosmology has holes in it, then it follows that there are things beyond material reality. This logic does not follow. A simpler explanation is that our model is limited.
A historical example would be when we were using Newtonian physics to try and explain the universe, and a lot of observations did not fit. That didn’t mean that materialistic view of the universe was wrong, it meant that our model of the universe was limited. Einstein came along with relativity and we now have a better model. Asimov wrote a great essay on the subject incidentally https://mvellend.recherche.usherbrooke.ca/Asimov_anglosaboteurs.pdf
This is what science is all about, it’s a dialectical process of forming theories and doing experiments to come up with an increasingly more accurate description of reality.
Regarding the three points, hopefully I’ve addressed the first two above. The last point is not scientific. We have lots of anecdotal reports of unexplainable experiences, but none of these reports are repeatable or observable. The most likely explanation is that they exist solely within the minds of people who experienced them. It’s also worth noting how many unexplained phenomena started disappearing when things like cameras came into existence. A human mind is a fragile thing, and we are very much prone to hallucinating things. We have also evolved a predisposition to see agency where there is none.
Finally, the key part of Dialectical Materialism for me is that it states that physical reality has primacy. Our thoughts and actions do not exist in a separate realm disconnected from reality. They are fundamentally a product of the world around us.
I didn’t want to interrupt your discussion but I just wanted to let you and @freagle@lemmygrad.ml know that I was following it and found it interesting.
We don’t have conclusive proof of how consciousness arises in the brain, but that just means we have more research to do in this area.
The hard problem cannot be solved by “more research” because it’s not a scientific question but a contradiction within metaphysical realist philosophy. Such contradictions can’t be resolved through discovery, as it’s conceptually impossible to even begin to imagine what a possible solution could even look like. A philosophy built on contradictions is fundamentally flawed and must abandon its premises to progress, and that cannot be escaped through scientific discovery.
In Carlo Rovelli’s Helgoland, he discusses how Lenin misunderstood Bogdanov’s critique of metaphysical realism, falsely accusing him of idealism. Lenin couldn’t let go of the idea that what we experience is a “reflection” of reality rather than reality itself, keeping dialectical materialism tethered to metaphysical assumptions.
These assumptions boil down to Kant’s division between phenomenon (reality as experienced) and noumenon (reality independent of experience). Most modern philosophy implicitly maintains this dualism. Thomas Nagel argued that perception is brain-generated because reality, being independent of perspective, cannot match our perspective-dependent experiences. David Chalmers encapsulated this in the term “consciousness,” describing experience as distinct from reality.
This metaphysical framework assumes that reality is separate from perception, leading to the question of how the brain “gives rise” to perception. But this question is meaningless. If reality is independent of perception, it’s unobservable, and the claim becomes entirely metaphysical. Material sciences study observable reality, so distancing “true reality” from observation creates an unbridgeable gap that cannot explain how reality produces experience, and can’t even explain how we know anything at all, as supposedly the material sciences would be based in studying something we can never even hope to ever have evidence even exists!
While too many materialists cling to metaphysics and vaguely promise science will solve this problem, this “promissory materialism” fails because the hard problem stems from a flawed metaphysical premise. Idealists fare no better, adding mysticism to resolve the same contradictions. The solution is not to “solve” the problem but to reject the framework that creates it.
Metaphysical realism, logically similar to Kant’s dualism in its structure, assumes perception is separate from reality. Nagel’s and Donald Hoffman’s arguments for this fail: Nagel seems to have missed that in neither general relativity nor quantum field theory can you assign properties to physical systems without specifying a perspective, so there cannot meaningfully even be a perspective-independent reality, and thus the need for this division he demands isn’t justified. Hoffman misinterprets illusions as proof we don’t perceive reality as it really is because, supposedly, we perceive things that are false. However, reality is neither true nor false—it just is what it is. Misinterpretation is a failure of the observer, not of reality. There are no “illusions,” only misunderstandings.
Lenin still clung to the dualism implicit in metaphysical realism, insisting that what we experience is not reality itself, but a “reflection” of it created by the “mind.” He thus misunderstood and basically slander Bogdanov, accusing him of being an “idealist” for believing everything is “mind,” thinking he was denying that there even exists a reality independent of “consciousness.” But that was not even close to Bogdanov’s position. Bogdanov did not even believe experiences are “mind” or “consciousness” or some separate substance the brain “gives rise to.” The reality we experience just is reality. It is not a denial of reality, it is an embracing of it: the world we are immersed in every day, that surrounds us, that is the object of study of the material sciences, that is reality.
This supposed imaginary thing that Lenin claims is being “reflected” is entirely metaphysical. In Jocelyn Benoist’s Toward a Contextual Realism, this is why he rejects equally Kant’s notion of the phenomenon. The term “phenomenon” literally means “the appearance of,” suggesting that what is being perceived is merely the appearance of, reality as opposed to reality itself, kind of like a reflection of it. But this is not the stance of direct realism. The stance of direct realism is that what we observe is reality. It is neither the “appearance of” nor the “reflection of” anything. It just is, and what it is is neither true nor false, it is only real.
There is no “mind” or “consciousness” producing experience—it is not a product of anything or a reflection of anything, but simply is reality itself, which is precisely the subject of study of the material sciences. By rejecting this dualism, questions like “why does perception arise?” vanish because they stem from a false premise. The whole premise of Chalmers’ notion of “consciousness” is just nonsensical and should be rejected. The moment you buy into it, you have already bought into dualistic premises, and you will never “solve” this problem through some future scientific discovery, because it is not a scientific problem.
There are, of course, many scientific problems involved in understanding human brains, intelligence, problem-solving, self-awareness, etc, but there is absolutely no problem of “consciousness” because there is no such thing as “consciousness.” Indeed, even Chalmers admits that the notion of “consciousness” would be something that it would be impossible to distinguish between something that possesses it and something that does not, yet, somehow he doesn’t realize that this argument only demonstrates just how absolutely meaningless his notion of “consciousness” is, how it is just completely pure abstract metaphysics without any real content.
Even if we can create a complete replica of human intelligence in machines, there will still be people debating over whether or not it has “consciousness.” We can solve literally every scientific problem relating to understanding human minds and it would not even come close to putting to rest this debate, hence why no scientific discovery will yield anything here. We have to realize our premises are flawed and the “debate” is misguided in the first place, because “consciousness” should be entirely abandoned as a concept, as it relies on an unjustified metaphysical premise.
Yes, you’ve accurately summarized the issue. We possess subjective experiences or “qualia,” which are inherent to our individual consciousness and cannot be directly communicated or proven in others. This makes it impossible for us to confirm whether another being also has qualia, as it remains an internal property of their experience that is uniquely personal and not sharable with others.
In the absence of concrete proof, we are left with two fundamental assumptions regarding the nature of consciousness and its relationship to the physical world. One perspective, dualism, posits that qualia or subjective experiences originate from a separate, non-physical realm distinct from the material reality we perceive. Conversely, materialism proposes that qualia is derived from physical processes within our brain and body, suggesting they should be understood as emergent properties of neural activity rather than supernatural phenomena.
In my view, dualism lacks any further explanatory value when compared to materialism. Given that it necessitates additional assumptions that require further justification, I find it more reasonable to consider qualia as an emergent property of the physical system in which our minds are a product. This perspective allows for a more straightforward explanation of consciousness and subjective experience within the framework of known physical laws and principles.
I would propose taking this argument even further by suggesting that many of the distinctions we make, such as differentiating between inorganic and organic realms or physical and mental domains, are fundamentally arbitrary constructs created by our minds to simplify complex phenomena. While these categories can be useful for comprehension, it’s important to remember that they are simply abstract constructs and not inherently reflective of an underlying reality. In essence, the world operates as a continuum of dynamic patterns, with each layer representing an emergent property of the one beneath it.
We possess subjective experiences or “qualia,” which are inherent to our individual consciousness and cannot be directly communicated or proven in others.
The whole point of my post was to say that no, there is no such thing as “subjective experiences” because experiences are not products of the subject.
This makes it impossible for us to confirm whether another being also has qualia, as it remains an internal property of their experience that is uniquely personal and not sharable with others.
This is purely a linguistic issue. Perspectives are defined according to an object used as their basis, and so it definitionally would not make sense for one object to adopt the perspective of another, because doing so would require it to become that other object, and thus would cease to be itself any longer.
For example, my perspective and yours differ, we are standing in a different location, we have a different nose in the front of our face, etc. I could make my perspective more and more similar to yours by erasing differences between us, but I will never fully occupy your perspective until all differences are erased, which would mean I would literally become you, and so I would no longer occupy your perspective, because “I” would no longer exist.
There is literally no physical reason I could gradually move closer to your perspective, it is merely a linguistic issue that would prevent me from fully occupying it, because then by definition I would no longer be me.
In the absence of concrete proof, we are left with two fundamental assumptions regarding the nature of consciousness and its relationship to the physical world. One perspective, dualism, posits that qualia or subjective experiences originate from a separate, non-physical realm distinct from the material reality we perceive. Conversely, materialism proposes that qualia is derived from physical processes within our brain and body, suggesting they should be understood as emergent properties of neural activity rather than supernatural phenomena.
There is no “consciousness,” you have not established that there is, and so your “solutions” are not justified either. That was basically the whole point of my original comment. There is no convincing justification for such a dualistic split in the first place, so all these “solutions” are also unnecessary.
“Qualia” is also not interchangeable with “experience,” as qualia is a set of abstract objects like blue, red, loud, quiet, etc. Like all objects, they are normative and socially constructed ways of judging a set of experiences to be something. They do not fundamentally occupy any sort of different realm than any other kind of object that demands a separate explanation.
In my view, dualism lacks any further explanatory value when compared to materialism. Given that it necessitates additional assumptions that require further justification, I find it more reasonable to consider qualia as an emergent property of the physical system in which our minds are a product. This perspective allows for a more straightforward explanation of consciousness and subjective experience within the framework of known physical laws and principles.
Objects of qualia, or any category of objects at all, do not “emerge” from the brain, they are social constructs. You cannot dig into the brain and find them, you will never find “blue” or “red” in the brain any more than you will “cats” or “trees” or “circles” or “triangles.” Objects are socially constructed norms which only have ontological reality in how they are applied in a social setting, and do not have autonomous existence inside of brains.
I would recommend you research Wittgenstein’s “rule-following problem.” The book Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language is a good overview of this.
The whole point of my post was to say that no, there is no such thing as “subjective experiences” because experiences are not products of the subject.
I mean we all obviously have a qualia of experience. That’s not really in question. What’s in question is whether it’s a product of the physical world or not.
Perspectives are defined according to an object used as their basis, and so it definitionally would not make sense for one object to adopt the perspective of another, because doing so would require it to become that other object, and thus would cease to be itself any longer.
That’s not true. Let’s say we develop technology that allows us to connect two brains together. This isn’t purely hypothetical as there are cases of siamese twins who report having such shared experience.
There is no “consciousness,” you have not established that there is, and so your “solutions” are not justified either. That was basically the whole point of my original comment. There is no convincing justification for such a dualistic split in the first place, so all these “solutions” are also unnecessary.
I don’t see consciousness as a dualistic split. I see it as an emergent phenomena that arises from the chatter of neurons within the brain. Much the same way a virtual world in a video game can be created from the underlying computation performed on a computer chip.
They do not fundamentally occupy any sort of different realm than any other kind of object that demands a separate explanation.
Again, I’m not suggesting that there is any separate realm. I’m arguing against such notion.
Objects are socially constructed norms which only have ontological reality in how they are applied in a social setting, and do not have autonomous existence inside of brains.
I disagree here. The primary purpose of the brain is to create a simulation of the world that can be used to extrapolate into the future to facilitate decision making. The objects are a part of the model the brain constructs, and that’s the basis for social interactions. These would not be possible in the first place without our brains having a common internal representation of the world around us.
I’m familiar with Wittgenstein, but I don’t agree with all of his ideas. He also also been demonstrably wrong on a grand scale with Principia Mathematica where he tried to show that formal systems can be proven to be self consistent. This whole notion was shown to be fundamentally misguided by Gödel.
I mean we all obviously have a qualia of experience. That’s not really in question. What’s in question is whether it’s a product of the physical world or not.
Again, all objects are socially constructed norms. Objects of qualia do not demand a separate explanation from any other object.
That’s not true. Let’s say we develop technology that allows us to connect two brains together. This isn’t purely hypothetical as there are cases of siamese twins who report having such shared experience.
If you connect two brains together then they are the same physical system. I’m not really sure the point you’re trying to make here.
I don’t see consciousness as a dualistic split. I see it as an emergent phenomena that arises from the chatter of neurons within the brain. Much the same way a virtual world in a video game can be created from the underlying computation performed on a computer chip.
Both the virtual world and the computer chip can be observed, yet what you are arguing that observability itself arises from things that are fundamentally unobservable. I fail to see how this could ever be explained in a weakly emergent sense, as I fail to see how any arbitrary configuration of unobservable stuff could weakly emerge the property of observability. It would seem to inevitably have to be something strongly emergent, which is basically dualism, even if you call this strongly emergent property “physical,” it would only be a change in language, not in kind.
Although, again, I am not advocating dualism, I am rejecting the premise that the reality we perceive is an illusionary product of the mammalian brain, but merely stating that what we perceive is reality, i.e. I am a direct realist. I am criticizing indirect realism as I fail to see how you can get from nonobservability to observability, nor have you provided a reason to believe that this supposedly entirely invisible reality even exists. As far as I am concerned, what we perceive is reality.
Again, I’m not suggesting that there is any separate realm. I’m arguing against such notion.
Then stop asking for explanations of qualia if you agree that they do not demand a special explanation.
I disagree here. The primary purpose of the brain is to create a simulation of the world that can be used to extrapolate into the future to facilitate decision making. The objects are a part of the model the brain constructs, and that’s the basis for social interactions. These would not be possible in the first place without our brains having a common internal representation of the world around us.
These objects only exist as a relationship between the brain and the social structure and do not exist independently within the brain. Nobody has ever been able to peer into someone’s brain and find a conceptual object. They can only correlate brain patterns to a set of stimuli which are pre-associated with some sort of socially recognized symbol, such as the experimenter has to first specify a symbol, such a “dog,” then specify what set of stimuli would correspond to a “dog” in that particular social setting, then they have to show this to the patient, and then you can correlate these to the person’s brain patterns. Everyone’s brain patterns are different, and so it is not even possible to build a general mind-reading machine, as each machine has to be trained specifically on the person’s brain and its associations with social symbols which require a specific social setting.
I’m familiar with Wittgenstein, but I don’t agree with all of his ideas. He also also been demonstrably wrong on a grand scale with Principia Mathematica where he tried to show that formal systems can be proven to be self consistent. This whole notion was shown to be fundamentally misguided by Gödel.
Okay, but that’s not relevant, I am talking specifically about the rule-following problem. If you think objects exist autonomously inside of the brain, then how do you solve the rule-following paradox that this belief leads to? Since you are familiar with Wittgenstein, you should be able to address this paradox.
Again, all objects are socially constructed norms. Objects of qualia do not demand a separate explanation from any other object.
I didn’t say qualia required any separate explanation. In fact, my whole argument is precisely that it doesn’t. However, saying that objects are just social norms is superficial because social norms and interactions themselves are a product of how our brains interpret the world. The concept of objects isn’t exclusive to humans either, other animals form these concepts as well without need to have social structures or language.
If you connect two brains together then they are the same physical system. I’m not really sure the point you’re trying to make here.
The point I’m making here is that you can share experience with another person without being that person. Once you disconnect the brains, then you’re two separate people again who have a shared past experience.
Both the virtual world and the computer chip can be observed, yet what you are arguing that observability itself arises from things that are fundamentally unobservable.
I’m not arguing that, and the example I gave with connecting to minds together is an example of internal experience being observable.
It would seem to inevitably have to be something strongly emergent, which is basically dualism, even if you call this strongly emergent property “physical,” it would only be a change in language, not in kind.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here to be honest or what you’re basing the argument on. You’re just stating this as fact without any reasoning provided.
Although, again, I am not advocating dualism, I am rejecting the premise that the reality we perceive is an illusionary product of the mammalian brain, but merely stating that what we perceive is reality, i.e. I am a direct realist.
That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m actually arguing is that the reality we perceive is a simulation the brain creates internally based on the inputs from the senses. It’s a model of reality derived from the information that feeds into the brain. There’s plenty of evidence that what we perceive does not directly correspond to reality. Stuff like optical illusions is a perfect example where our inner model diverges from the primary reality. Another example can be found in psychedelic drugs. Somebody tripping on shrooms is going to perceive reality in a very different way. This has absolutely nothing to do with dualism however.
Then stop asking for explanations of qualia if you agree that they do not demand a special explanation.
I’m not asking for explanation of qualia, I’m explaining that it is just an emergent phenomenon of how the brain models the world.
These objects only exist as a relationship between the brain and the social structure and do not exist independently within the brain.
Of course they exist independently within the brain. They’re part of the world model that the brain constructs. Words we use in our language are merely labels for the concepts encoded within the structure of our brains. The reason we’re able to communicate with other humans and even animals is precisely because we form similar underlying representations of the world. For example, you can give directions to a dog and it can understand them.
Everyone’s brain patterns are different, and so it is not even possible to build a general mind-reading machine, as each machine has to be trained specifically on the person’s brain and its associations with social symbols which require a specific social setting.
The brain patterns may be different, but the overall structures are quite similar at high level. Everyone’s internal model is indeed a product of their unique experience, however we all exist within the same shared environment and that’s our common context. That’s what facilitates communication.
Okay, but that’s not relevant, I am talking specifically about the rule-following problem. If you think objects exist autonomously inside of the brain, then how do you solve the rule-following paradox that this belief leads to? Since you are familiar with Wittgenstein, you should be able to address this paradox.
The rule-following paradox has to do with problems of structuring formal systems. This has nothing to do with encoding concepts within the brain. The objects don’t just magically appear within the brain. They’re a product of reinforcement learning through our interactions with the environment. A child spends a long time learning concepts like object permanence through physical interaction with the world. This is how the world model is built. It’s not arbitrary in any way, it’s shaped by the sensory feedback loop.
I didn’t say qualia required any separate explanation. In fact, my whole argument is precisely that it doesn’t.
Then why bring it up? It’s pointless to talk about qualia at all if you do not think it need some sort of separate explanation than any other objects. It’s not relevant to the discussion.
However, saying that objects are just social norms is superficial because social norms and interactions themselves are a product of how our brains interpret the world. The concept of objects isn’t exclusive to humans either, other animals form these concepts as well without need to have social structures or language.
The concept of objects requires language and symbols. What other animals is there evidence of this?
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here to be honest or what you’re basing the argument on. You’re just stating this as fact without any reasoning provided.
I thought the reasoning was rather self-apparent, but I will explain in more detail. Weak emergence is when you can explain a system’s properties as reducible to the laws that govern the behavior of what it is composed of in that particular configuration. Strong emergence is when you cannot reduce down a system’s properties in this way. Strong emergence would be as if the property just appears when you have a particular configuration, with no underlying physical laws that could possibly explain where it comes from. All you can say for certain is that property comes into being when you have a particular configuration, and the properties are not reducible down to the individual parts.
Those aren’t claims, but just definitions. All I am saying is that having a strong emergence view of consciousness is basically the same as dualism, because that’s what dualism also posits, that in the arbitrary configuration of matter that is the human brain, consciousness just appears on top of it, and there is no explanation for it and it is not reducible to any physical laws that can explain its origin, as it would not be derivative of the physical laws that govern the brain’s behavior. It is just a separate thing that is slapped on top of it, of which there can be no explanation as to its origin, only that it is always there whenever you have particular configurations of matter, such as the brains of living organisms.
If the universe is entirely invisible, you cannot explain how the visible world of our lived experiences “arises” without, at some point, just arbitrarily inserting it there, such as, in particular atomic configurations you can claim that experiences just appear. This is just a logical necessity and is unavoidable.
That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m actually arguing is that the reality we perceive is a simulation the brain creates internally based on the inputs from the senses. It’s a model of reality derived from the information that feeds into the brain.
That is absolutely and undeniably what you are saying. If you argue that what we perceive is not reality as it really is, but something else, then by unavoidable logical necessity, you are claiming that “true” reality is beyond our perceptions, and if something is beyond our perceptions, it is invisible. If you think “true reality” is invisible, then you will never be able to explain, from a weakly emergent standpoint, how a collection of invisible stuff gives rise to the visible world of our experiences, i.e. how is it that a world that is nonperceptual gives rise to perception.
There’s plenty of evidence that what we perceive does not directly correspond to reality. Stuff like optical illusions is a perfect example where our inner model diverges from the primary reality. Another example can be found in psychedelic drugs. Somebody tripping on shrooms is going to perceive reality in a very different way. This has absolutely nothing to do with dualism however.
I addressed this in my very first reply. Illusions are not even close to an argument that we do not perceive reality as it really is. It is only evidence that we can misinterpret what we perceive.
Of course they exist independently within the brain. They’re part of the world model that the brain constructs. Words we use in our language are merely labels for the concepts encoded within the structure of our brains.
No, they are labels encoded within the social structure which would not only have no meaning but also have no purpose if you lived in complete isolation. These objects only have existence and meaning as a correlation between the brain and the social structure, but not independently within the brain.
The reason we’re able to communicate with other humans and even animals is precisely because we form similar underlying representations of the world. For example, you can give directions to a dog and it can understand them.
We can form similar representations because we are all taught to associate our experiences with the same symbols in the same social structure. We all have different physical bodies and experience the world differently, but are all taught under the same social institutions to assign the same set of stimuli with the same words, allowing us to then have a shared language. We agree on what “red” is or what “cats” are not because we all have the same physical object of “red” or “cat” floating around in our skull, but because we all live in the same society where everyone is taught to associate “red” and “cat” with the same set of stimuli.
The rule-following paradox has to do with problems of structuring formal systems. This has nothing to do with encoding concepts within the brain.
That is not the rule-following paradox. The rule-following paradox is the notion that symbols cannot encode meaning independent of a social structure. If a person in complete isolation invented their own symbols to refer to what they categorize as different objects, and you discovered these symbols, it would be impossible to actually derive their meaning with certainty. If you want to define a symbol, you can do it using other symbols, but at some point, but this will be entirely circular unless at some point you connect the symbol to empirical content. If those symbols are connected to something like a basket of examples, the point of the rule-following paradox is that every basket is inherently ambiguous, because there is always an infinite number of way to interpret the meaning of the symbol from the basket. If you cannot derive the meaning of the symbols from the basket, then neither could the person who produced the basket, i.e. if you were in complete isolation, you could never have certainty that you are even using the symbols you are using today with the same meaning that you were using them yesterday. Enforcement of the consistent use of symbols requires social institutions, and those symbols are ambiguous unless they are correlated with those social institutions.
The objects don’t just magically appear within the brain. They’re a product of reinforcement learning through our interactions with the environment.
Yes, they only exist as a relationship between the brain and its social environment, hence they cannot be found in the brain, but only in correlations between the brain and the social structure.
Then why bring it up? It’s pointless to talk about qualia at all if you do not think it need some sort of separate explanation than any other objects. It’s not relevant to the discussion.
It’s absolutely not pointless to talk about the fact that we have an internal experience. The whole discussion you’ve hopped into is about whether this internal experience that we have can be explained purely in material terms.
The concept of objects requires language and symbols. What other animals is there evidence of this?
It absolutely does not require that. There are mountains of research showing that other animals construct world models and use them to plan their actions. Corvids are one prominent example of this. In fact, symbols and language require this underlying machinery to work, that’s why we can teach stuff like sign language to apes.
I thought the reasoning was rather self-apparent, but I will explain in more detail.
I understand the difference between weak and strong emergence. What I asked you is the basis for your claim of dismissing the possibility of weak emergence as an explanation for consciousness.
If you argue that what we perceive is not reality as it really is, but something else, then by unavoidable logical necessity, you are claiming that “true” reality is beyond our perceptions, and if something is beyond our perceptions, it is invisible.
I’ll try to explain this to you once again. Please try to actually read and understand what I’m saying before responding this time. The brain constructs an internal model using the data from the senses like eyes, ears, touch, and so on. This data is assembled into an internal model that is a representation of reality. The brain cannot simulate reality in its full fidelity because that would mean recreating the full complexity of the universe around us. Therefore, the model that is created must necessarily be an abstraction that loses detail. This has nothing to do with the universe being beyond our perception or being invisible.
This is no different from the act of a computer program creating a 3d scene using data from a camera. Nobody in their right mind would start claiming that this means that reality is beyond our perceptions, and if something is beyond our perceptions, it is invisible. The argument is equally absurd when applied to the human mind.
If the universe is entirely invisible, you cannot explain how the visible world of our lived experiences “arises” without, at some point, just arbitrarily inserting it there, such as, in particular atomic configurations you can claim that experiences just appear. This is just a logical necessity and is unavoidable.
Again, try to think about how computer simulations work. What you’re saying has no logic behind it.
I addressed this in my very first reply. Illusions are not even close to an argument that we do not perceive reality as it really is. It is only evidence that we can misinterpret what we perceive.
The fact that we are able to misinterpret logically requires that what we perceive is a model of reality otherwise the whole concept of misinterpreting would be impossible to begin with.
No, they are labels encoded within the social structure which would not only have no meaning but also have no purpose if you lived in complete isolation. These objects only have existence and meaning as a correlation between the brain and the social structure, but not independently within the brain.
That’s complete nonsense. A human that grows up in isolation would still have a world model and would be able to interact with their environment. Language and symbols emerge from the underlying model. Ironically, it is you who are arguing for dualism claiming that language and social structures exist separate from underlying physical reality.
We can form similar representations because we are all taught to associate our experiences with the same symbols in the same social structure.
Except that these representations aren’t unique to humans. We are able to communicate with other animals without having shared social structures or language. Furthermore, animals are able to communicate with each other, and even coordinate complex tasks. This doesn’t even require complex animals. Even bees and ants can do complex tasks and coordination.
If a person in complete isolation invented their own symbols to refer to what they categorize as different objects, and you discovered these symbols, it would be impossible to actually derive their meaning with certainty.
That’s precisely the problem that shared environment solves. We are able to communicate with one another because symbols are rooted in the environmental context. If you met somebody who came from a completely different culture and spoke a different language, over time you would be able to create a way to communicate with each other.
If you cannot derive the meaning of the symbols from the basket, then neither could the person who produced the basket, i.e. if you were in complete isolation, you could never have certainty that you are even using the symbols you are using today with the same meaning that you were using them yesterday. Enforcement of the consistent use of symbols requires social institutions, and those symbols are ambiguous unless they are correlated with those social institutions.
If you grew up in isolation, you could absolutely create symbols that made sense to you. The fact that other people couldn’t decipher them without help is a completely separate issue. You’re conflating transmission of symbols with the origin of symbols here.
Yes, they only exist as a relationship between the brain and its social environment, hence they cannot be found in the brain, but only in correlations between the brain and the social structure.
Just a few closing thoughts from my end as well.
Regarding dark energy/dark matter. I’m saying that we simply have no idea what those are or even if they’re real. These things don’t represent a counter to materialism because there are plenty explanations for them within the materialist world view. For example, perhaps these are all galactic civilizations that are efficiently consuming energy in all observable spectrums leaving only a gravity footprint. It’s just a silly thought experiment to illustrate the point. More realistically, it could be that our model of the evolution of the universe is wrong or there are particles we haven’t detected yet, or a myriad other reasons. For example, MOND theory does away with the need for dark matter, and gets results that are closer to what we observe in the cosmos.
The broader point though is that our theory of cosmic evolution has little to do with us being able to understand how the immediate material world around us works. We have a very solid understanding of matter and energy down to the quantum level. We have conducted countless experiments on the behavior of particles and energy. None of that is magically invalidated by the fact that our theory of cosmology is incomplete.
But we haven’t discussed any such evidence. Everything I’ve said is based on observed evidence and fits with our best understanding of reality. We don’t have conclusive proof of how consciousness arises in the brain, but that just means we have more research to do in this area.
It’s perfectly fine to critique science, but scientifically valid the critique has to be rooted in science which is fundamentally rooted in materialism. Invoking something that’s never been observed experimentally and for which we have no basis as a counter argument to ideas that are rooted in observation and material reality is not a sound critique from the scientific perspective.
The leap you’re making with EMF is saying that sicne our current model of cosmology has holes in it, then it follows that there are things beyond material reality. This logic does not follow. A simpler explanation is that our model is limited.
A historical example would be when we were using Newtonian physics to try and explain the universe, and a lot of observations did not fit. That didn’t mean that materialistic view of the universe was wrong, it meant that our model of the universe was limited. Einstein came along with relativity and we now have a better model. Asimov wrote a great essay on the subject incidentally https://mvellend.recherche.usherbrooke.ca/Asimov_anglosaboteurs.pdf
This is what science is all about, it’s a dialectical process of forming theories and doing experiments to come up with an increasingly more accurate description of reality.
Regarding the three points, hopefully I’ve addressed the first two above. The last point is not scientific. We have lots of anecdotal reports of unexplainable experiences, but none of these reports are repeatable or observable. The most likely explanation is that they exist solely within the minds of people who experienced them. It’s also worth noting how many unexplained phenomena started disappearing when things like cameras came into existence. A human mind is a fragile thing, and we are very much prone to hallucinating things. We have also evolved a predisposition to see agency where there is none.
Finally, the key part of Dialectical Materialism for me is that it states that physical reality has primacy. Our thoughts and actions do not exist in a separate realm disconnected from reality. They are fundamentally a product of the world around us.
I didn’t want to interrupt your discussion but I just wanted to let you and @freagle@lemmygrad.ml know that I was following it and found it interesting.
The beauty of Lemmygrad is that you can have a discussion like this. :)
Yeah, I like slower forums, easier to follow and longer discussions.
indeed
The hard problem cannot be solved by “more research” because it’s not a scientific question but a contradiction within metaphysical realist philosophy. Such contradictions can’t be resolved through discovery, as it’s conceptually impossible to even begin to imagine what a possible solution could even look like. A philosophy built on contradictions is fundamentally flawed and must abandon its premises to progress, and that cannot be escaped through scientific discovery.
In Carlo Rovelli’s Helgoland, he discusses how Lenin misunderstood Bogdanov’s critique of metaphysical realism, falsely accusing him of idealism. Lenin couldn’t let go of the idea that what we experience is a “reflection” of reality rather than reality itself, keeping dialectical materialism tethered to metaphysical assumptions.
These assumptions boil down to Kant’s division between phenomenon (reality as experienced) and noumenon (reality independent of experience). Most modern philosophy implicitly maintains this dualism. Thomas Nagel argued that perception is brain-generated because reality, being independent of perspective, cannot match our perspective-dependent experiences. David Chalmers encapsulated this in the term “consciousness,” describing experience as distinct from reality.
This metaphysical framework assumes that reality is separate from perception, leading to the question of how the brain “gives rise” to perception. But this question is meaningless. If reality is independent of perception, it’s unobservable, and the claim becomes entirely metaphysical. Material sciences study observable reality, so distancing “true reality” from observation creates an unbridgeable gap that cannot explain how reality produces experience, and can’t even explain how we know anything at all, as supposedly the material sciences would be based in studying something we can never even hope to ever have evidence even exists!
While too many materialists cling to metaphysics and vaguely promise science will solve this problem, this “promissory materialism” fails because the hard problem stems from a flawed metaphysical premise. Idealists fare no better, adding mysticism to resolve the same contradictions. The solution is not to “solve” the problem but to reject the framework that creates it.
Metaphysical realism, logically similar to Kant’s dualism in its structure, assumes perception is separate from reality. Nagel’s and Donald Hoffman’s arguments for this fail: Nagel seems to have missed that in neither general relativity nor quantum field theory can you assign properties to physical systems without specifying a perspective, so there cannot meaningfully even be a perspective-independent reality, and thus the need for this division he demands isn’t justified. Hoffman misinterprets illusions as proof we don’t perceive reality as it really is because, supposedly, we perceive things that are false. However, reality is neither true nor false—it just is what it is. Misinterpretation is a failure of the observer, not of reality. There are no “illusions,” only misunderstandings.
Lenin still clung to the dualism implicit in metaphysical realism, insisting that what we experience is not reality itself, but a “reflection” of it created by the “mind.” He thus misunderstood and basically slander Bogdanov, accusing him of being an “idealist” for believing everything is “mind,” thinking he was denying that there even exists a reality independent of “consciousness.” But that was not even close to Bogdanov’s position. Bogdanov did not even believe experiences are “mind” or “consciousness” or some separate substance the brain “gives rise to.” The reality we experience just is reality. It is not a denial of reality, it is an embracing of it: the world we are immersed in every day, that surrounds us, that is the object of study of the material sciences, that is reality.
This supposed imaginary thing that Lenin claims is being “reflected” is entirely metaphysical. In Jocelyn Benoist’s Toward a Contextual Realism, this is why he rejects equally Kant’s notion of the phenomenon. The term “phenomenon” literally means “the appearance of,” suggesting that what is being perceived is merely the appearance of, reality as opposed to reality itself, kind of like a reflection of it. But this is not the stance of direct realism. The stance of direct realism is that what we observe is reality. It is neither the “appearance of” nor the “reflection of” anything. It just is, and what it is is neither true nor false, it is only real.
There is no “mind” or “consciousness” producing experience—it is not a product of anything or a reflection of anything, but simply is reality itself, which is precisely the subject of study of the material sciences. By rejecting this dualism, questions like “why does perception arise?” vanish because they stem from a false premise. The whole premise of Chalmers’ notion of “consciousness” is just nonsensical and should be rejected. The moment you buy into it, you have already bought into dualistic premises, and you will never “solve” this problem through some future scientific discovery, because it is not a scientific problem.
There are, of course, many scientific problems involved in understanding human brains, intelligence, problem-solving, self-awareness, etc, but there is absolutely no problem of “consciousness” because there is no such thing as “consciousness.” Indeed, even Chalmers admits that the notion of “consciousness” would be something that it would be impossible to distinguish between something that possesses it and something that does not, yet, somehow he doesn’t realize that this argument only demonstrates just how absolutely meaningless his notion of “consciousness” is, how it is just completely pure abstract metaphysics without any real content.
Even if we can create a complete replica of human intelligence in machines, there will still be people debating over whether or not it has “consciousness.” We can solve literally every scientific problem relating to understanding human minds and it would not even come close to putting to rest this debate, hence why no scientific discovery will yield anything here. We have to realize our premises are flawed and the “debate” is misguided in the first place, because “consciousness” should be entirely abandoned as a concept, as it relies on an unjustified metaphysical premise.
Yes, you’ve accurately summarized the issue. We possess subjective experiences or “qualia,” which are inherent to our individual consciousness and cannot be directly communicated or proven in others. This makes it impossible for us to confirm whether another being also has qualia, as it remains an internal property of their experience that is uniquely personal and not sharable with others.
In the absence of concrete proof, we are left with two fundamental assumptions regarding the nature of consciousness and its relationship to the physical world. One perspective, dualism, posits that qualia or subjective experiences originate from a separate, non-physical realm distinct from the material reality we perceive. Conversely, materialism proposes that qualia is derived from physical processes within our brain and body, suggesting they should be understood as emergent properties of neural activity rather than supernatural phenomena.
In my view, dualism lacks any further explanatory value when compared to materialism. Given that it necessitates additional assumptions that require further justification, I find it more reasonable to consider qualia as an emergent property of the physical system in which our minds are a product. This perspective allows for a more straightforward explanation of consciousness and subjective experience within the framework of known physical laws and principles.
I would propose taking this argument even further by suggesting that many of the distinctions we make, such as differentiating between inorganic and organic realms or physical and mental domains, are fundamentally arbitrary constructs created by our minds to simplify complex phenomena. While these categories can be useful for comprehension, it’s important to remember that they are simply abstract constructs and not inherently reflective of an underlying reality. In essence, the world operates as a continuum of dynamic patterns, with each layer representing an emergent property of the one beneath it.
The whole point of my post was to say that no, there is no such thing as “subjective experiences” because experiences are not products of the subject.
This is purely a linguistic issue. Perspectives are defined according to an object used as their basis, and so it definitionally would not make sense for one object to adopt the perspective of another, because doing so would require it to become that other object, and thus would cease to be itself any longer.
For example, my perspective and yours differ, we are standing in a different location, we have a different nose in the front of our face, etc. I could make my perspective more and more similar to yours by erasing differences between us, but I will never fully occupy your perspective until all differences are erased, which would mean I would literally become you, and so I would no longer occupy your perspective, because “I” would no longer exist.
There is literally no physical reason I could gradually move closer to your perspective, it is merely a linguistic issue that would prevent me from fully occupying it, because then by definition I would no longer be me.
There is no “consciousness,” you have not established that there is, and so your “solutions” are not justified either. That was basically the whole point of my original comment. There is no convincing justification for such a dualistic split in the first place, so all these “solutions” are also unnecessary.
“Qualia” is also not interchangeable with “experience,” as qualia is a set of abstract objects like blue, red, loud, quiet, etc. Like all objects, they are normative and socially constructed ways of judging a set of experiences to be something. They do not fundamentally occupy any sort of different realm than any other kind of object that demands a separate explanation.
Objects of qualia, or any category of objects at all, do not “emerge” from the brain, they are social constructs. You cannot dig into the brain and find them, you will never find “blue” or “red” in the brain any more than you will “cats” or “trees” or “circles” or “triangles.” Objects are socially constructed norms which only have ontological reality in how they are applied in a social setting, and do not have autonomous existence inside of brains.
I would recommend you research Wittgenstein’s “rule-following problem.” The book Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language is a good overview of this.
I mean we all obviously have a qualia of experience. That’s not really in question. What’s in question is whether it’s a product of the physical world or not.
That’s not true. Let’s say we develop technology that allows us to connect two brains together. This isn’t purely hypothetical as there are cases of siamese twins who report having such shared experience.
I don’t see consciousness as a dualistic split. I see it as an emergent phenomena that arises from the chatter of neurons within the brain. Much the same way a virtual world in a video game can be created from the underlying computation performed on a computer chip.
Again, I’m not suggesting that there is any separate realm. I’m arguing against such notion.
I disagree here. The primary purpose of the brain is to create a simulation of the world that can be used to extrapolate into the future to facilitate decision making. The objects are a part of the model the brain constructs, and that’s the basis for social interactions. These would not be possible in the first place without our brains having a common internal representation of the world around us.
I’m familiar with Wittgenstein, but I don’t agree with all of his ideas. He also also been demonstrably wrong on a grand scale with Principia Mathematica where he tried to show that formal systems can be proven to be self consistent. This whole notion was shown to be fundamentally misguided by Gödel.
Again, all objects are socially constructed norms. Objects of qualia do not demand a separate explanation from any other object.
If you connect two brains together then they are the same physical system. I’m not really sure the point you’re trying to make here.
Both the virtual world and the computer chip can be observed, yet what you are arguing that observability itself arises from things that are fundamentally unobservable. I fail to see how this could ever be explained in a weakly emergent sense, as I fail to see how any arbitrary configuration of unobservable stuff could weakly emerge the property of observability. It would seem to inevitably have to be something strongly emergent, which is basically dualism, even if you call this strongly emergent property “physical,” it would only be a change in language, not in kind.
Although, again, I am not advocating dualism, I am rejecting the premise that the reality we perceive is an illusionary product of the mammalian brain, but merely stating that what we perceive is reality, i.e. I am a direct realist. I am criticizing indirect realism as I fail to see how you can get from nonobservability to observability, nor have you provided a reason to believe that this supposedly entirely invisible reality even exists. As far as I am concerned, what we perceive is reality.
Then stop asking for explanations of qualia if you agree that they do not demand a special explanation.
These objects only exist as a relationship between the brain and the social structure and do not exist independently within the brain. Nobody has ever been able to peer into someone’s brain and find a conceptual object. They can only correlate brain patterns to a set of stimuli which are pre-associated with some sort of socially recognized symbol, such as the experimenter has to first specify a symbol, such a “dog,” then specify what set of stimuli would correspond to a “dog” in that particular social setting, then they have to show this to the patient, and then you can correlate these to the person’s brain patterns. Everyone’s brain patterns are different, and so it is not even possible to build a general mind-reading machine, as each machine has to be trained specifically on the person’s brain and its associations with social symbols which require a specific social setting.
Okay, but that’s not relevant, I am talking specifically about the rule-following problem. If you think objects exist autonomously inside of the brain, then how do you solve the rule-following paradox that this belief leads to? Since you are familiar with Wittgenstein, you should be able to address this paradox.
I didn’t say qualia required any separate explanation. In fact, my whole argument is precisely that it doesn’t. However, saying that objects are just social norms is superficial because social norms and interactions themselves are a product of how our brains interpret the world. The concept of objects isn’t exclusive to humans either, other animals form these concepts as well without need to have social structures or language.
The point I’m making here is that you can share experience with another person without being that person. Once you disconnect the brains, then you’re two separate people again who have a shared past experience.
I’m not arguing that, and the example I gave with connecting to minds together is an example of internal experience being observable.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here to be honest or what you’re basing the argument on. You’re just stating this as fact without any reasoning provided.
That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m actually arguing is that the reality we perceive is a simulation the brain creates internally based on the inputs from the senses. It’s a model of reality derived from the information that feeds into the brain. There’s plenty of evidence that what we perceive does not directly correspond to reality. Stuff like optical illusions is a perfect example where our inner model diverges from the primary reality. Another example can be found in psychedelic drugs. Somebody tripping on shrooms is going to perceive reality in a very different way. This has absolutely nothing to do with dualism however.
I’m not asking for explanation of qualia, I’m explaining that it is just an emergent phenomenon of how the brain models the world.
Of course they exist independently within the brain. They’re part of the world model that the brain constructs. Words we use in our language are merely labels for the concepts encoded within the structure of our brains. The reason we’re able to communicate with other humans and even animals is precisely because we form similar underlying representations of the world. For example, you can give directions to a dog and it can understand them.
The brain patterns may be different, but the overall structures are quite similar at high level. Everyone’s internal model is indeed a product of their unique experience, however we all exist within the same shared environment and that’s our common context. That’s what facilitates communication.
The rule-following paradox has to do with problems of structuring formal systems. This has nothing to do with encoding concepts within the brain. The objects don’t just magically appear within the brain. They’re a product of reinforcement learning through our interactions with the environment. A child spends a long time learning concepts like object permanence through physical interaction with the world. This is how the world model is built. It’s not arbitrary in any way, it’s shaped by the sensory feedback loop.
Then why bring it up? It’s pointless to talk about qualia at all if you do not think it need some sort of separate explanation than any other objects. It’s not relevant to the discussion.
The concept of objects requires language and symbols. What other animals is there evidence of this?
I thought the reasoning was rather self-apparent, but I will explain in more detail. Weak emergence is when you can explain a system’s properties as reducible to the laws that govern the behavior of what it is composed of in that particular configuration. Strong emergence is when you cannot reduce down a system’s properties in this way. Strong emergence would be as if the property just appears when you have a particular configuration, with no underlying physical laws that could possibly explain where it comes from. All you can say for certain is that property comes into being when you have a particular configuration, and the properties are not reducible down to the individual parts.
Those aren’t claims, but just definitions. All I am saying is that having a strong emergence view of consciousness is basically the same as dualism, because that’s what dualism also posits, that in the arbitrary configuration of matter that is the human brain, consciousness just appears on top of it, and there is no explanation for it and it is not reducible to any physical laws that can explain its origin, as it would not be derivative of the physical laws that govern the brain’s behavior. It is just a separate thing that is slapped on top of it, of which there can be no explanation as to its origin, only that it is always there whenever you have particular configurations of matter, such as the brains of living organisms.
If the universe is entirely invisible, you cannot explain how the visible world of our lived experiences “arises” without, at some point, just arbitrarily inserting it there, such as, in particular atomic configurations you can claim that experiences just appear. This is just a logical necessity and is unavoidable.
That is absolutely and undeniably what you are saying. If you argue that what we perceive is not reality as it really is, but something else, then by unavoidable logical necessity, you are claiming that “true” reality is beyond our perceptions, and if something is beyond our perceptions, it is invisible. If you think “true reality” is invisible, then you will never be able to explain, from a weakly emergent standpoint, how a collection of invisible stuff gives rise to the visible world of our experiences, i.e. how is it that a world that is nonperceptual gives rise to perception.
I addressed this in my very first reply. Illusions are not even close to an argument that we do not perceive reality as it really is. It is only evidence that we can misinterpret what we perceive.
No, they are labels encoded within the social structure which would not only have no meaning but also have no purpose if you lived in complete isolation. These objects only have existence and meaning as a correlation between the brain and the social structure, but not independently within the brain.
We can form similar representations because we are all taught to associate our experiences with the same symbols in the same social structure. We all have different physical bodies and experience the world differently, but are all taught under the same social institutions to assign the same set of stimuli with the same words, allowing us to then have a shared language. We agree on what “red” is or what “cats” are not because we all have the same physical object of “red” or “cat” floating around in our skull, but because we all live in the same society where everyone is taught to associate “red” and “cat” with the same set of stimuli.
That is not the rule-following paradox. The rule-following paradox is the notion that symbols cannot encode meaning independent of a social structure. If a person in complete isolation invented their own symbols to refer to what they categorize as different objects, and you discovered these symbols, it would be impossible to actually derive their meaning with certainty. If you want to define a symbol, you can do it using other symbols, but at some point, but this will be entirely circular unless at some point you connect the symbol to empirical content. If those symbols are connected to something like a basket of examples, the point of the rule-following paradox is that every basket is inherently ambiguous, because there is always an infinite number of way to interpret the meaning of the symbol from the basket. If you cannot derive the meaning of the symbols from the basket, then neither could the person who produced the basket, i.e. if you were in complete isolation, you could never have certainty that you are even using the symbols you are using today with the same meaning that you were using them yesterday. Enforcement of the consistent use of symbols requires social institutions, and those symbols are ambiguous unless they are correlated with those social institutions.
Yes, they only exist as a relationship between the brain and its social environment, hence they cannot be found in the brain, but only in correlations between the brain and the social structure.
It’s absolutely not pointless to talk about the fact that we have an internal experience. The whole discussion you’ve hopped into is about whether this internal experience that we have can be explained purely in material terms.
It absolutely does not require that. There are mountains of research showing that other animals construct world models and use them to plan their actions. Corvids are one prominent example of this. In fact, symbols and language require this underlying machinery to work, that’s why we can teach stuff like sign language to apes.
I understand the difference between weak and strong emergence. What I asked you is the basis for your claim of dismissing the possibility of weak emergence as an explanation for consciousness.
I’ll try to explain this to you once again. Please try to actually read and understand what I’m saying before responding this time. The brain constructs an internal model using the data from the senses like eyes, ears, touch, and so on. This data is assembled into an internal model that is a representation of reality. The brain cannot simulate reality in its full fidelity because that would mean recreating the full complexity of the universe around us. Therefore, the model that is created must necessarily be an abstraction that loses detail. This has nothing to do with the universe being beyond our perception or being invisible.
This is no different from the act of a computer program creating a 3d scene using data from a camera. Nobody in their right mind would start claiming that this means that reality is beyond our perceptions, and if something is beyond our perceptions, it is invisible. The argument is equally absurd when applied to the human mind.
Again, try to think about how computer simulations work. What you’re saying has no logic behind it.
The fact that we are able to misinterpret logically requires that what we perceive is a model of reality otherwise the whole concept of misinterpreting would be impossible to begin with.
That’s complete nonsense. A human that grows up in isolation would still have a world model and would be able to interact with their environment. Language and symbols emerge from the underlying model. Ironically, it is you who are arguing for dualism claiming that language and social structures exist separate from underlying physical reality.
Except that these representations aren’t unique to humans. We are able to communicate with other animals without having shared social structures or language. Furthermore, animals are able to communicate with each other, and even coordinate complex tasks. This doesn’t even require complex animals. Even bees and ants can do complex tasks and coordination.
That’s precisely the problem that shared environment solves. We are able to communicate with one another because symbols are rooted in the environmental context. If you met somebody who came from a completely different culture and spoke a different language, over time you would be able to create a way to communicate with each other.
If you grew up in isolation, you could absolutely create symbols that made sense to you. The fact that other people couldn’t decipher them without help is a completely separate issue. You’re conflating transmission of symbols with the origin of symbols here.
Once again you’re peddling dualism here.