Then Ven. Maha Kotthita went to Ven. Sariputta and, on arrival, exchanged courteous greetings with him. After an exchange of friendly greetings & courtesies, he sat to one side. As he was sitting there, he said to Ven. Sariputta, "With the remainderless stopping & fading of the six contact-media [vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch, & intellection] is it the case that there is anything else?" — Kotthita Sutta, AN 4.174
:up:As Thanissaro Bikkhu (translator) notes in his commentary, ‘the root of the classifications and perceptions of objectification is the thought, "I am the thinker." This thought forms the motivation for the questions that Ven. Maha Kotthita is presenting here.’ The very action of thinking ‘creates the thinker’, rather than vice versa. — Wayfarer
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/johann-fichte/#Foun“the I posits itself”; more specifically, “the I posits itself as an I.” Since this activity of “self-positing” is taken to be the fundamental feature of I-hood in general, the first principle asserts that “the I posits itself as self-positing.”
The principle in question simply states that the essence of I-hood lies in the assertion of ones own self-identity, i.e., that consciousness presupposes self-consciousness (the Kantian “I think,” which must, at least in principle, be able to accompany all our representations). Such immediate self-identify, however, cannot be understood as a psychological “fact,” no matter how privileged, nor as an “action” or “accident” of some previously existing substance or being. To be sure, it is an “action” of the I, but one that is identical with the very existence of the same. In Fichte’s technical terminology, the original unity of self-consciousness is to be understood as both an action and as the product of the same: as a Tathandlung or “fact/act,” a unity that is presupposed by and contained within every fact and every act of empirical consciousness, though it never appears as such therein.
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A fundamental corollary of Fichte’s understanding of I-hood (Ichheit) as a kind of fact/act is his denial that the I is originally any sort of “thing” or “substance.” Instead, the I is simply what it posits itself to be, and thus its “being” is, so to speak, a consequence of its self-positing, or rather, is co-terminus with the same.
Well, Heidegger was according to some readings still pre-occupied with the fallen state of humanity. — Wayfarer
except for when we don't, which seems to happen an awful lot. — Wayfarer
Right. Dasein as being 'thrown into' existence. (Anamnesis, remembering how it happened, although I don't think that's in Heidegger.) — Wayfarer
As I understand it, Husserl grounds arithmetic in the act of counting. (I have the idea that this actually dovetails with Aquinas' idea of 'being as a verb'. So arithmetic, even though it comprises 'unchanging truths' on the one hand, is also inherently dynamic, in that grasping it is an activity of the intellect.) — Wayfarer
Reason is the relation of ideas. And the reason why it seems 'metaphysical' is because, as we already established, you look with it, not at it. We can't know it, because it is what is knowing. — Wayfarer
For most mathematicians the empiricist principle that 'all knowledge comes from the senses' contradicts a more basic principle: that mathematical propositions are true independent of the physical world. Everything about a mathematical proposition is independent of what appears to be the physical world. — Scrapbook Entry, from an archived version of the Wikipedia entry on Philosophy of Mathematics
They do indeed 'structure' experience, but they're not derived from experience. That's what makes them 'transcendental'. — Wayfarer
The German phenomenologist Edmund Husserl wrote a famous essay, “The Origin of Geometry” that called for a new kind of “historical” research, to recover the “original” meaning of geometry, to the man, whoever he was, who first invented it.
It seems to me not that hard to imagine the origin of geometry. Once upon a time, even twice or several times, someone first noticed some simple facts. For example, when one stick lies across another stick, there are four spaces that you can see. You can see that they are equal in pairs, opposite to opposite. It happened something like this, perhaps at some campfire, 20 or 30,000 years ago.
Which, now that I reflect further, suggests 'that of which we cannot speak....' — Wayfarer
On the contrary - doesn't C S Peirce say that 'matter is effete mind'? — Wayfarer
Although the psychological or epistemological specifics given by Mill through which we build our logical apparatus may not be completely warranted, his explanation still inadevertantly manages to demonstrate that there is no way around Kant’s a priori logic. To restate Mill's original idea: “Indeed, the very principles of logical deduction are true because we observe that using them leads to true conclusions” - which is itself a deductive proposition! — Scrapbook Entry, from an archived version of the Wikipedia entry on Philosophy of Mathematics
But he moves on to Kant who showed that there must be innate faculties :yikes: which organize and categorise sense-data, otherwise we would not be able to make sense of sense. — Wayfarer
The objects of experience then are not things in themselves, but are given only in experience, and have no existence apart from and independently of experience. — Kant
The OP is pretty well an exercise in understanding how this can be true. — Wayfarer
I quoted from that in my MA thesis in Buddhist Studies. As I've said before, the self is never an object, yet the reality of the subject of experience ('what it is like to be....') is apodictic, cogito ergo sum. Where in the world is the metaphysical subject to be noted? Why, that would be 'nowhere', yet otherwise there is no world. — Wayfarer
https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/mill-the-collected-works-of-john-stuart-mill-volume-ix-william-hamiltons-philosophyWe have no conception of Mind itself, as distinguished from its conscious manifestations. We neither know nor can imagine it, except as represented by the succession of manifold feelings which metaphysicians call by the name of States or Modifications of Mind. It is nevertheless true that our notion of Mind, as well as of Matter, is the notion of a permanent something, contrasted with the perpetual flux of the sensations and other feelings or mental states which we refer to it; a something which we figure as remaining the same, while the particular feelings through which it reveals its existence, change. This attribute of Permanence, supposing that there were nothing else to be considered, would admit of the same explanation when predicated of Mind, as of Matter. The belief I entertain that my mind exists when it is not feeling, nor thinking, nor conscious of its own existence, resolves itself into the belief of a Permanent Possibility of these states. If I think of myself as in dreamless sleep, or in the sleep of death, and believe that I, or in other words my mind, is or will be existing through these states, though not in conscious feeling, the most scrupulous examination of my belief will not detect in it any fact actually believed, except that my capability of feeling is not, in that interval, permanently destroyed, and is suspended only because it does not meet with the combination of conditions which would call it into action: the moment it did meet with that combination it would revive, and remains, therefore, a Permanent Possibility.
He somewhat follows Husserl and suggests that we have good reasons to infer or suppose that others are worldstreams too, though we don't have direct access to this streaming. And in the age of high tech and AI, we may eventually be faced with genuine perplexity. Does this thing feel? Does this thing see ? Note that (for me) we can't 'prove' that other humans are 'really' there, but most of us fortunately don't wrestle with living, genuine doubt.In the first place, as to my fellow-creatures. Reid seems to have imagined that if I myself am only a series of feelings, the proposition that I have any fellow-creatures, or that there are any Selves except mine, is but words without a meaning. But this is a misapprehension. All that I am compelled to admit if I receive this theory, is that other people’s Selves also are but series of feelings, like my own. Though my Mind, as I am capable of conceiving it, be nothing but the succession of my feelings, and though Mind itself may be merely a possibility of feelings, there is nothing in that doctrine to prevent my conceiving, and believing, that there are other successions of feelings besides those of which I am conscious, and that these are as real as my own.
It may perhaps be said, that the preceding theory gives, indeed, some account of the idea of Permanent Existence which forms part of our conception of matter, but gives no explanation of our believing these permanent objects to be external, or out of ourselves. I apprehend, on the contrary, that the very idea of anything out of ourselves is derived solely from the knowledge experience gives us of the Permanent Possibilities. Our sensations we carry with us wherever we go, and they never exist where we are not; but when we change our place we do not carry away with us the Permanent Possibilities of Sensation: they remain until we return, or arise and cease under conditions with which our presence has in general nothing to do. And more than all—they are, and will be after we have ceased to feel, Permanent Possibilities of sensation to other beings than ourselves. Thus our actual sensations and the permanent possibilities of sensation, stand out in obtrusive contrast to one another: and when the idea of Cause has been acquired, and extended by generalization from the parts of our experience to its aggregate whole, nothing can be more natural than that the Permanent Possibilities should be classed by us as existences generically distinct from our sensations, but of which our sensations are the effect.
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The same theory which accounts for our ascribing to an aggregate of possibilities of sensation, a permanent existence which our sensations themselves do not possess, and consequently a greater reality than belongs to our sensations, also explains our attributing greater objectivity to the Primary Qualities of bodies than to the Secondary. For the sensations which correspond to what are called the Primary Qualities (as soon at least as we come to apprehend them by two senses, the eye as well as the touch) are always present when any part of the group is so. But colours, tastes, smells, and the like, being, in comparison, fugacious, are not, in the same degree, conceived as being always there, even when nobody is present to perceive them. The sensations answering to the Secondary Qualities are only occasional, those to the Primary, constant. The Secondary, moreover, vary with different persons, and with the temporary sensibility of our organs; the Primary, when perceived at all, are, as far as we know, the same to all persons and at all times.
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We have no conception of Mind itself, as distinguished from its conscious manifestations. We neither know nor can imagine it, except as represented by the succession of manifold feelings which metaphysicians call by the name of States or Modifications of Mind. It is nevertheless true that our notion of Mind, as well as of Matter, is the notion of a permanent something, contrasted with the perpetual flux of the sensations and other feelings or mental states which we refer to it; a something which we figure as remaining the same, while the particular feelings through which it reveals its existence, change. This attribute of Permanence, supposing that there were nothing else to be considered, would admit of the same explanation when predicated of Mind, as of Matter. The belief I entertain that my mind exists when it is not feeling, nor thinking, nor conscious of its own existence, resolves itself into the belief of a Permanent Possibility of these states. If I think of myself as in dreamless sleep, or in the sleep of death, and believe that I, or in other words my mind, is or will be existing through these states, though not in conscious feeling, the most scrupulous examination of my belief will not detect in it any fact actually believed, except that my capability of feeling is not, in that interval, permanently destroyed, and is suspended only because it does not meet with the combination of conditions which would call it into action: the moment it did meet with that combination it would revive, and remains, therefore, a Permanent Possibility.
https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/mill-the-collected-works-of-john-stuart-mill-volume-ix-william-hamiltons-philosophyMatter, then, may be defined, a Permanent Possibility of Sensation. If I am asked, whether I believe in matter, I ask whether the questioner accepts this definition of it. If he does, I believe in matter: and so do all Berkeleians. In any other sense than this, I do not. But I affirm with confidence, that this conception of Matter includes the whole meaning attached to it by the common world, apart from philosophical, and sometimes from theological, theories. The reliance of mankind on the real existence of visible and tangible objects, means reliance on the reality and permanence of Possibilities of visual and tactual sensations, when no such sensations are actually experienced. We are warranted in believing that this is the meaning of Matter in the minds of many of its most esteemed metaphysical champions, though they themselves would not admit as much: for example, of Reid, Stewart, and Brown. For these three philosophers alleged that all mankind, including Berkeley and Hume, really believed in Matter, inasmuch as unless they did, they would not have turned aside to save themselves from running against a post. Now all which this manœuvre really proved is, that they believed in Permanent Possibilities of Sensation. We have therefore the unintentional sanction of these three eminent defenders of the existence of matter, for affirming, that to believe in Permanent Possibilities of Sensation is believing in Matter. It is hardly necessary, after such authorities, to mention Dr. Johnson,
or any one else who resorts to the argumentum baculinum of knocking a stick against the ground. Sir W. Hamilton, a far subtler thinker than any of these, never reasons in this manner. He never supposes that a disbeliever in what he means by Matter, ought in consistency to act in any different mode from those who believe in it. He knew that the belief on which all the practical consequences depend, is the belief in Permanent Possibilities of Sensation, and that if nobody believed in a material universe in any other sense, life would go on exactly as it now does. He, however, did believe in more than this, but, I think, only because it had never occurred to him that mere Possibilities of Sensation could, to our artificialized consciousness, present the character of objectivity which, as we have now shown, they not only can, but unless the known laws of the human mind were suspended, must necessarily, present.
Perhaps it may be objected, that the very possibility of framing such a notion of Matter as Sir W. Hamilton’s—the capacity in the human mind of imagining an external world which is anything more than what the Psychological Theory makes it—amounts to a disproof of the theory. If (it may be said) we had no revelation in consciousness, of a world which is not in some way or other identified with sensation, we should be unable to have the notion of such a world. If the only ideas we had of external objects were ideas of our sensations, supplemented by an acquired notion of permanent possibilities of sensation, we must (it is thought) be incapable of conceiving, and therefore still more incapable of fancying that we perceive, things which are not sensations at all. It being evident however that some philosophers believe this, and it being maintainable that the mass of mankind do so, the existence of a perdurable basis of sensations, distinct from sensations themselves, is proved, it might be said, by the possibility of believing it.
Let me first restate what I apprehend the belief to be. We believe that we perceive a something closely related to all our sensations, but different from those which we are feeling at any particular minute; and distinguished from sensations altogether, by being permanent and always the same, while these are fugitive, variable, and alternately displace one another. But these attributes of the object of perception are properties belonging to all the possibilities of sensation which experience guarantees. The belief in such permanent possibilities seems to me to include all that is essential or characteristic in the belief in substance. I believe that Calcutta exists, though I do not perceive it, and that it would still exist if every percipient inhabitant were suddenly to leave the place, or be struck dead. But when I analyse the belief, all I find in it is, that were these events to take place, the Permanent Possibility of Sensation which I call Calcutta would still remain; that if I were suddenly transported to the banks of the Hoogly, I should still have the sensations which, if now present, would lead me to affirm that Calcutta exists here and now. We may infer, therefore, that both philosophers and the world at large, when they think of matter, conceive it really as a Permanent Possibility of Sensation. But the majority of philosophers fancy that it is something more; and the world at large, though they have really, as I conceive, nothing in their minds but a Permanent Possibility of Sensation, would, if asked the question, undoubtedly agree with the philosophers: and though this is sufficiently explained by the tendency of the human mind to infer difference of things from difference of names, I acknowledge the obligation of showing how it can be possible to believe in an existence transcending all possibilities of sensation, unless on the hypothesis that such an existence actually is, and that we actually perceive it.
The explanation, however, is not difficult. It is an admitted fact, that we are capable of all conceptions which can be formed by generalizing from the observed laws of our sensations. Whatever relation we find to exist between any one of our sensations and something different from it, that same relation we have no difficulty in conceiving to exist between the sum of all our sensations and something different from them. The differences which our consciousness recognises between one sensation and another, give us the general notion of difference, and inseparably associate with every sensation we have, the feeling of its being different from other things: and when once this association has been formed, we can no longer conceive anything, without being able, and even being compelled, to form also the conception of something different from it. This familiarity with the idea of something different from each thing we know, makes it natural and easy to form the notion of something different from all things that we know, collectively as well as individually. It is true we can form no conception of what such a thing can be; our notion of it is merely negative; but the idea of a substance, apart from its relation to the impressions which we conceive it as making on our senses, is a merely negative one. There is thus no psychological obstacle to our forming the notion of a something which is neither a sensation nor a possibility of sensation, even if our consciousness does not testify to it; and nothing is more likely than that the Permanent Possibilities of sensation, to which our consciousness does testify, should be confounded in our minds with this imaginary conception. All experience attests the strength of the tendency to mistake mental abstractions, even negative ones, for substantive realities; and the Permanent Possibilities of sensation which experience guarantees, are so extremely unlike in many of their properties to actual sensations, that since we are capable of imagining something which transcends sensation, there is a great natural probability that we should suppose these to be it. — Mill
https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/mill-the-collected-works-of-john-stuart-mill-volume-ix-william-hamiltons-philosophyThe sensations, though the original foundation of the whole, come to be looked upon as a sort of accident depending on us, and the possibilities as much more real than the actual sensations, nay, as the very realities of which these are only the representations, appearances, or effects. When this state of mind has been arrived at, then, and from that time forward, we are never conscious of a present sensation without instantaneously referring it to some one of the groups of possibilities into which a sensation of that particular description enters; and if we do not yet know to what group to refer it, we at least feel an irresistible conviction that it must belong to some group or other; i.e. that its presence proves the existence, here and now, of a great number and variety of possibilities of sensation, without which it would not have been. The whole set of sensations as possible, form a permanent background to any one or more of them that are, at a given moment, actual; and the possibilities are conceived as standing to the actual sensations in the relation of a cause to its effects, or of canvas to the figures painted on it, or of a root to the trunk, leaves, and flowers, or of a substratum to that which is spread over it, or, in transcendental language, of Matter to Form.
When this point has been reached, the Permanent Possibilities in question have assumed such unlikeness of aspect, and such difference of apparent relation to us, from any sensations, that it would be contrary to all we know of the constitution of human nature that they should not be conceived as, and believed to be, at least as different from sensations as sensations are from one another. Their groundwork in sensation is forgotten, and they are supposed to be something intrinsically distinct from it.
We can withdraw ourselves from any of our (external) sensations, or we can be withdrawn from them by some other agency. But though the sensations cease, the possibilities remain in existence; they are independent of our will, our presence, and everything which belongs to us. We find, too, that they belong as much to other human or sentient beings as to ourselves. We find other people grounding their expectations and conduct upon the same permanent possibilities on which we ground ours. But we do not find them experiencing the same actual sensations. Other people do not have our sensations exactly when and as we have them: but they have our possibilities of sensation; whatever indicates a present possibility of sensations to ourselves, indicates a present possibility of similar sensations to them, except so far as their organs of sensation may vary from the type of ours. This puts the final seal to our conception of the groups of possibilities as the fundamental reality in Nature. The permanent possibilities are common to us and to our fellow-creatures; the actual sensations are not. That which other people become aware of when, and on the same grounds, as I do, seems more real to me than that which they do not know of unless I tell them. The world of Possible Sensations succeeding one another according to laws, is as much in other beings as it is in me; it has therefore an existence outside me; it is an External World. — Mill
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/mach.htmAs soon as we have perceived that the supposed unities " body " and " ego " are only makeshifts, designed for provisional orientation and for definite practical ends (so that we may take hold of bodies, protect ourselves against pain, and so forth), we find ourselves obliged, in many more advanced scientific investigations, to abandon them as insufficient and inappropriate. The antithesis between ego and world, between sensation (appearance) and thing, then vanishes, and we have simply to deal with the connexion of the elements a b c . . . A B C . . . K L M . . ., of which this antithesis was only a partially appropriate and imperfect expression. This connexion is nothing more or less than the combination of the above-mentioned elements with other similar elements (time and space). Science has simply to accept this connexion, and to get its bearings in it, without at once wanting to explain its existence. — Mach
https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/mill-the-collected-works-of-john-stuart-mill-volume-ix-william-hamiltons-philosophyI see a piece of white paper on a table. I go into another room. But, though I have ceased to see it, I am persuaded that the paper is still there. I no longer have the sensations which it gave me; but I believe that when I again place myself in the circumstances in which I had those sensations, that is, when I go again into the room, I shall again have them; and further, that there has been no intervening moment at which this would not have been the case. Owing to this property of my mind, my conception of the world at any given instant consists, in only a small proportion, of present sensations. Of these I may at the time have none at all, and they are in any case a most insignificant portion of the whole which I apprehend.The conception I form of the world existing at any moment, comprises, along with the sensations I am feeling, a countless variety of possibilities of sensation: namely, the whole of those which past observation tells me that I could, under any supposable circumstances, experience at this moment, together with an indefinite and illimitable multitude of others which though I do not know that I could, yet it is possible that I might, experience in circumstances not known to me. These various possibilities are the important thing to me in the world. My present sensations are generally of little importance, and are moreover fugitive: the possibilities, on the contrary, are permanent, which is the character that mainly distinguishes our idea of Substance or Matter from our notion of sensation. These possibilities, which are conditional certainties, need a special name to distinguish them from mere vague possibilities, which experience gives no warrant for reckoning upon.
One of the perennial problems in philosophy is why a general consensus or rational agreement is so hard to come by on virtually all the interesting topics. — J
Anyway, 'unknown unknowns' are "meaningless" and yet ineluctably encompassing, even constraining, of "whatever we think or say ... absent any mind" or not. What you call "meaningless", sir, seems to me the most meaningful thing we (philosophers & poets) can think or say about the world. — 180 Proof
My objection, despite my embrace of the sentiment, is that this is a logical absurdity, a bad check. It's like that joke about twelve-tone music being 'better than it sounds.' The emotional value of such an impossible Frontier (what people like about the Kantian X ) is obvious to me, but any pointing beyond all possible experience reads like mystified paradox to me -- which may have genuine motivational value but still lacks content otherwise.Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I have read and heard many attempts at a systematic account of it, from materialism and theosophy to the Christian system or that of Kant, and I have always felt that they were much too simple. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy. — Haldane
In the same vein, Meister Eckhart dismisses space-time phenomena as 'literally nothing'. — FrancisRay
"Monks, the All is aflame. What All is aflame? The eye is aflame. Forms are aflame. Consciousness at the eye is aflame. Contact at the eye is aflame. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on contact at the eye — experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain — that too is aflame. Aflame with what? Aflame with the fire of passion, the fire of aversion, the fire of delusion. Aflame, I tell you, with birth, aging & death, with sorrows, lamentations, pains, distresses, & despairs.
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"The intellect is aflame. Ideas are aflame. Consciousness at the intellect is aflame. Contact at the intellect is aflame. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on contact at the intellect — experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain — that too is aflame. Aflame with what? Aflame with the fire of passion, the fire of aversion, the fire of delusion. Aflame, I say, with birth, aging & death, with sorrows, lamentations, pains, distresses, & despairs.
"Seeing thus, the well-instructed disciple of the noble ones grows disenchanted with the eye, disenchanted with forms, disenchanted with consciousness at the eye, disenchanted with contact at the eye. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on contact at the eye, experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain: With that, too, he grows disenchanted.
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"He grows disenchanted with the intellect, disenchanted with ideas, disenchanted with consciousness at the intellect, disenchanted with contact at the intellect. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on contact at the intellect, experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain: He grows disenchanted with that too. Disenchanted, he becomes dispassionate. Through dispassion, he is fully released. With full release, there is the knowledge, 'Fully released.' He discerns that 'Birth is ended, the holy life fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for this world.'"
Exactly! And no-thing is precisely what we need as the ultimate for a systematic fundamental theory. Again, Kant proves this. At any rate, mysticism will make no sense to anyone who reifies time or space. — FrancisRay
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4280/pg4280-images.html#chap78Possible experience can alone give reality to our conceptions; without it a conception is merely an idea, without truth or relation to an object. Hence a possible empirical conception must be the standard by which we are to judge whether an idea is anything more than an idea and fiction of thought, or whether it relates to an object in the world. — Kant
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4280/pg4280-images.html#chap78Transcendental idealism allows that the objects of external intuition—as intuited in space, and all changes in time—as represented by the internal sense, are real. For, as space is the form of that intuition which we call external, and, without objects in space, no empirical representation could be given us, we can and ought to regard extended bodies in it as real. The case is the same with representations in time. But time and space, with all phenomena therein, are not in themselves things. They are nothing but representations and cannot exist out of and apart from the mind. — Kant
The objects of experience then are not things in themselves, but are given only in experience, and have no existence apart from and independently of experience. That there may be inhabitants in the moon, although no one has ever observed them, must certainly be admitted; but this assertion means only, that we may in the possible progress of experience discover them at some future time. For that which stands in connection with a perception according to the laws of the progress of experience is real. They are therefore really existent, if they stand in empirical connection with my actual or real consciousness, although they are not in themselves real, that is, apart from the progress of experience. — Kant
https://www.wittgensteinproject.org/w/index.php?title=Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_(English)#5The world and life are one.
I am my world. (The microcosm.)
The thinking, presenting subject; there is no such thing.
If I wrote a book "The world as I found it", I should also have therein to report on my body and say which members obey my will and which do not, etc. This then would be a method of isolating the subject or rather of showing that in an important sense there is no subject: that is to say, of it alone in this book mention could not be made.
The subject does not belong to the world but it is a limit of the world.
Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be noted?
You say that this case is altogether like that of the eye and the field of sight. But you do not really see the eye.
And from nothing in the field of sight can it be concluded that it is seen from an eye.
Here we see that solipsism strictly carried out coincides with pure realism. The I in solipsism shrinks to an extensionless point and there remains the reality co-ordinated with it.
There is therefore really a sense in which in philosophy we can talk of a non-psychological I.
The I occurs in philosophy through the fact that the "world is my world".
The philosophical I is not the man, not the human body or the human soul of which psychology treats, but the metaphysical subject, the limit—not a part of the world. — TLP
http://www.classicallibrary.org/descartes/meditations/9.htm
...the mind does not immediately receive the impression from all the parts of the body, but only from the brain, or perhaps even from one small part of it...
...when I feel pain in the foot, the science of physics teaches me that this sensation is experienced by means of the nerves dispersed over the foot, which, extending like cords from it to the brain, when they are contracted in the foot, contract at the same time the inmost parts of the brain in which they have their origin, and excite in these parts a certain motion appointed by nature to cause in the mind a sensation of pain, as if existing in the foot; but as these nerves must pass through the tibia, the leg, the loins, the back, and neck, in order to reach the brain, it may happen that although their extremities in the foot are not affected, but only certain of their parts that pass through the loins or neck, the same movements, nevertheless, are excited in the brain by this motion as would have been caused there by a hurt received in the foot, and hence the mind will necessarily feel pain in the foot, just as if it had been hurt; and the same is true of all the other perceptions of our senses...
...as each of the movements that are made in the part of the brain by which the mind is immediately affected, impresses it with but a single sensation, the most likely supposition in the circumstances is, that this movement causes the mind to experience, among all the sensations which it is capable of impressing upon it; that one which is the best fitted, and generally the most useful for the preservation of the human body when it is in full health...
...when the nerves of the foot are violently or more than usually shaken, the motion passing through the medulla of the spine to the innermost parts of the brain affords a sign to the mind on which it experiences a sensation, viz, of pain, as if it were in the foot, by which the mind is admonished and excited to do its utmost to remove the cause of it as dangerous and hurtful to the foot...
— Descartes
Again from Eastern philosophy, you will doubtless recall the koan, made into a song, 'first there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.' That also is about the transition from naive realism (first there is..) to critical philosophy (then there is no...), and the 'return' to seeing 'things as they truly are' (then there is...) — Wayfarer
I wouldn't be surprised if the East had it first, tho I'd check the Christian mystics for a premodern grasp?As I think I've already mentioned either here or some other place - it's something I mention often - the canonical source for the idea of that 'the eye cannot see itself' is not something found in the Western tradition, as far as I'm aware. It's found in the Upaniṣads. — Wayfarer
Because we lose sight of the necessity of experience, we erect a false idol of science as something that bestows absolute knowledge of reality, independent of how it shows up and how we interact with it. ...