One day I wish to retire so I could become a farmer, which is something a farmer never said, and something no one ever said is that they wanted to retire so they could become a lawyer. — Hanover

As Shakespeare wrote (Henry VI, Part 2) - "The first thing we do, let's retire all the lawyers."

Oops!

Oops!...
Shit!...
Ouch!...
Will somebody please get the phone.

It's rude to refer to the police as pigs. — Banno

In Australia they refer to them as "numbats."

By the way, people with aphantasia have a statistically significant higher IQ. — frank

She is one of the smartest people I know.

At current rates of posting, Shoutbox 2 will overtake Shoutbox 1 in number of posts at 2:13 am on the 2nd of March 2031. — Baden

I think we all can agree this is the greatest, most ironic, thread in the history of TPF. We owe thanks to alan 1000. I suggest you pin it to the top of the first page right under The Shoutbox.

You may have something akin to aphantasia so that you have no frame of reference for understanding qualia. — frank

I have a friend who has, as she puts it, no minds eye. That doesn't mean she doesn't have visual experience, i.e. qualia. She sees things the way we do but can't create visual images in her memory or imagination.

There's a big difference between saying that introspection is potentially a valid form of evidence, and having actually accepted any incidences of introspection as valid evidence. — Metaphysician Undercover

Much of what I know about how the mind works is based on paying attention to how my mind works. I think introspection is the source of a lot of psychology and probably most of philosophy of mind.

But anyway, I think if you judge the original Chalmer's essay on its merits, it makes a pretty clear-cut case. It's about something very specific - without having to refer to Taoism or Kant or quantum physics. — Wayfarer

I've read it, but I'll read it again. You say "without having to refer to Taoism or Kant or quantum physics." I don't have to refer to Taoism or Kant. I refer to them because I think they are relevant. As for quantum mechanics, I have often said the so called "weirdness" of QM has nothing to do with consciousness.

I don't know if Kant nor the Tao Te Ching have specific any bearing on the question. — Wayfarer

Your question was "Any examples come to mind of sciences or scientists that do?" I can see I didn't answer that question very well, although I think my answers were relevant to how science might examine consciousness effectively. As I said in a previous post:

Phenomenology isn't really philosophy at all. It's psychology. So much of it makes definitive statements about phenomena and processes that can be verified or falsified using empirical methods. — T Clark

I wouldn't be surprised if psychologists have completed studies that are relevant to those questions, but I can't name any. I have set a new task for myself. On the other hand, if I'm right that the phenomena phenomenologists describe are subject to empirical verification or falsification, phenomenologists have made factual statements without evidence. I've been wondering whether the insights they describe are based on introspection, but I haven't seen acknowledgement that that is the case. I consider introspection a valid form of evidence, at least potentially.

As for the Tao Te Ching, it is a statement from that particular source of the perennial philosophy - you could find comparable aphorisms in Christian mystical theology, but again, for those who understand the world that way, there is no hard problem (or any problem :-) ) — Wayfarer

I think the Tao Te Ching, as well as Kant and Heidegger, make statements that are, at least potentially, empirically verifiable.

@Wayfarer

Any examples come to mind of sciences or scientists that do?
— Wayfarer

As I noted, I've thought about this a lot and I'm not at all satisfied with what I've come up with. I'll just throw out some ideas. — T Clark

Didn't notice it, I'll go back through the thread. — Wayfarer

between a science that recognizes that reality is inextricably tangled with human cognition and one that doesn't.
— T Clark

Any examples come to mind of sciences or scientists that do? — Wayfarer

You asked me a question and I spent significant time and effort providing a respectful response. You did not respond to that.

"Great" people don't know they are extraordinary. Never. When you want to do different things from the ordinary, there are a lot of chances to suffer criticism. This is what happened to Van Gogh or James Joyce. A good example of masters in literature and arts. Their works are magnificent but with the eyes of modern generations. Van Gogh was poor because nobody really bought any of his paints and James Joyce was not well understood by the literature critics.

So, to become "great" needs a lot of facts than just thinking I am good. You (we) need the approval from the rest of the people. — javi2541997

Yes. Exactly.

The sources that @Joshs and @Wayfarer linked me to, which were written in mostly plain English, were interesting and helpful. As I noted in a previous post, they seem like psychology to me more than they do philosophy. — T Clark

I've been rethinking this. Strikes me that if what I say here is true, Taoism as presented in the Tao Te Ching is also psychology. Which it is, of course, but that doesn't stop it from being philosophy too.

I wanted to say that he complained about "shoutbox" while he "shouted" in his posts in this thread. It is a paradox — javi2541997

I didn't object to "shouted," it was "literally." He used "shouted" metaphorically, i.e. figuratively, not literally. Literally would only apply if he actually said "shout" very loudly.

Let’s not forget those who did not make it here in the first place, high quality contributors such as To Mega Therion (fierce but fair Leninist physicist) and Sheps (wishy-washy socialist). A few others made it across but dropped out quickly, perhaps feeling that the death of PF was a good time to break the habit. — Jamal

I participated in the old forum, but not to the extent I have here. I can't even remember my user name. So I'm glad you've been able to fill in the gap a bit.

If we're going to talk forum history and mythology and stuff, we should not forget the heroes who have fallen on their swords or had their swords fall on them:

@TimeLine
@Sapientia or @S
@Streetlight
@Donald Trump Jr.
@Agustino
@Marco in his many manifestations
@Clarky
@Jamalrob
@Hugh G. Rection
@tim wood
@Buxtebuddha
@Posty McPostface
@Pattern-chaser
@Valentinus
@Terrapin Station

And many more

So suck it up, or fuck off. — Banno

I have been told that such language here on the forum is "hate speech."

they intend to show objectivist science is well on its way to explaining the subjective mind. — ucarr

I don't think I'd say "well on its way," but I think cognitive scientists and psychologists have made significant progress. Either way, that's not what you said I said. You said:

Your statement implies the belief commonplace subjective experiences should be easily accessible to the objectivist methodologies of science. It also implies the subjective/objective distinction is a trivial matter and should therefore be no problem for science. — ucarr

I didn't say or imply either of those things.

Was the above ad hominem incited by, — ucarr

It was not an ad hominem argument, it was an insult. The fact you don't recognize the difference tells me everything I need to know about whether or not to take you seriously.

The things you are saying are very alien to my understanding of the world. I will watch the video.

Your statement implies the belief commonplace subjective experiences should be easily accessible to the objectivist methodologies of science. It also implies the subjective/objective distinction is a trivial matter and should therefore be no problem for science. — ucarr

Neither of these statements is true.

Scientists examining "the hard problem" indicate how, regarding this question, the division between subjective/objective is deep and treacherous. Why do you disagree with them? — ucarr

You haven't provided any evidence that "Scientists examining "the hard problem" indicate how, regarding this question, the division between subjective/objective is deep and treacherous."

You're claiming the objectivism of science does not handicap its examination of subjective mind?
— ucarr

Your above observations do not answer my question. Are you unwilling to answer it? — ucarr

You're kind of a dick.

Husserl devoted considerable energy to rejecting charges of ‘psychologism’ i.e. that phenomenology was a form of psychology or could be reduced to it. Too great a task to try and explain, besides I’m not expert in it. — Wayfarer

Given the limits of my understanding of phenomenology, it would be silly to take my statements as anything more than a first impression.

Truly, I am not trying to be confusing. This is the way thinkers I read talk. There is a good reason why these authors are ignored: it takes a solid education in continental philosophy to even begin understanding them. — Constance

The sources that @Joshs and @Wayfarer linked me to, which were written in mostly plain English, were interesting and helpful. As I noted in a previous post, they seem like psychology to me more than they do philosophy.

To me, this aligns with the world, which is, when subjected to a close inspection of what is going on in common perception, utterly foreign to understanding. — Constance

I just don't get this. There is a lot that is not understood, but I can't see why it would be "foreign to understanding."

You're claiming the objectivism of science does not handicap its examination of subjective mind? — ucarr

Science is one way of looking at the world. It's a good way, but not the only way. Subjective experience is not something magical or exotic. We all sit here in the whirling swirl of it all day every day. Why would something so common and familiar be different from all the other aspects of the world? I just don't see what the big deal is.

Any examples come to mind of sciences or scientists that do? — Wayfarer

As I noted, I've thought about this a lot and I'm not at all satisfied with what I've come up with. I'll just throw out some ideas.

Kant says time and space are “pure intuition.”

What may be the nature of objects considered as things in themselves and without reference to the receptivity of our sensibility is quite unknown to us. We know nothing more than our mode of perceiving them, which is peculiar to us, and which, though not of necessity pertaining to every animated being, is so to the whole human race. With this alone we have to do. Space and time are the pure forms thereof; sensation the matter. The former alone can we cognize a priori, that is, antecedent to all actual perception; and for this reason such cognition is called pure intuition. The latter is that in our cognition which is called cognition a posteriori, that is, empirical intuition. — Kant - Critique of Pure Reason

“Project Hail Mary” is a good book by Andy Weir, who wrote “The Martian.” In it, an Earth man travels to another star system and meets and befriends an alien who is also a space traveler from a different star system. The non-carbon based alien evolved on a planet with an atmosphere so dense no light can penetrate it. Organisms there never developed sight. The alien was perplexed because its trip took much less time than had been predicted. The Earth man had to explain to him about the speed of light and special relativity.

Our brains and minds have evolved for a special purpose - to figure out what actions we should take to stay alive and have offspring even when we have limited data. That’s where our tendency to analyze events by cutting them up, allowing us to simplify them. This works really well when we’re dealing with situations where we can isolate events from outside interaction, e.g. the large hadron collider or the James Webb telescope. When we get closer to human scale, especially in situations that actually involve people, it becomes much harder to separate events from their environment. We can no longer treat conditions as systems of regular geometric shapes and points. This is something I have experience with as a civil engineer. This is why the idea of studying biological systems as interconnected organisms interacting in symbiosis, ecology, was so revolutionary.

This is Ellen Marie Chen’s translation of Verse 1 of the Tao Te Ching:

Tao that can be spoken of,
Is not the Everlasting (ch'ang) Tao.
Name that can be named,
Is not the Everlasting (ch'ang) name.
Nameless (wu-ming), the origin (shih) of heaven and earth;
Named (yu-ming), the mother (mu) of ten thousand things. — Lao Tzu

As Lao Tzu sees it, or at least as I see Lao Tzu seeing it, when something is nameless, unspoken, it doesn’t really exist. It is a formless, nameless unity - the Tao. When it is named, it is brought into existence as the multiplicity of the world as we experience it - the ten thousand things. I think this is similar to Kant’s idea of noumena and phenomena. I’ve always thought that it would be possible to experience the unspoken unity without words, although I have never been certain. In the article from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the phenomenology of self-consciousness that Joshs linked for me, the author identifies a similar kind of wordless experience as “pre-reflective self-consciousness.”

As I noted, I’m not really satisfied with any of these. I do like the Kant quote. At least I can say “Because Kant says so” to my detractors.

Are you not evading an essential problem science (unwittingly) created for itself vis-a-vis study of first person experience when it defined itself as objective examination of entities, phenomena and facts, thus cordoning off itself from the personal mind, a something inherently subjective? — ucarr

No evasion. I don't see it as relevant.

You literally shouted when you had started this thread... — javi2541997

You should look up the meaning of "shout." Also "literal."

Any examples come to mind of sciences or scientists that do? — Wayfarer

This is something I've thought a lot about, with much frustration. I'll try to come up with a response tomorrow.

The authors of the Stanford Encyclopedia article would agree with you. They are among those who believe that a ‘mutual enlightenment’ between cognitive science and phenomenology is desirable and attainable. Husserl himself believed that trying to ground phenomenology in empirical science was putting the cart before the horse. I believe that it can eventually be possible to naturalize phenomenology , but this will require innovations in thinking within the psychological sciences that haven't taken place yet. Using current models within biology, neuroscience and cognitive psychology to underpin Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology would completely misrepresent the subject matter. — Joshs

This gets at something I've been thinking about as I read the SEP article. Phenomenology isn't really philosophy at all. It's psychology. So much of it makes definitive statements about phenomena and processes that can be verified or falsified using empirical methods. It's making scientific statements without providing evidence. Maybe I just haven't read enough to find it.

The distinction is that biology and neurology are conducted at arms length, to to speak. They’re objective disciplines, as distinct from immediate awareness of first-person experience. I think it’s a pretty easy distinction to draw. That quote I provided before from Dennett is from a post of his called ‘The Fantasy of First-Person Science’ so clearly it’s a distinction that he (one of the protagonists in the debate) recognizes. — Wayfarer

I wasn't questioning that people, including well-known philosophers, have made the distinction. But I think the important line of distinction is located elsewhere. Not between inside and outside science, but between a science that recognizes that reality is inextricably tangled with human cognition and one that doesn't.

What would recommend as Phenomenology for Dummies?
— T Clark

Try this:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/self-consciousness-phenomenological/ — Joshs

What would recommend as Phenomenology for Dummies?
— T Clark

Although only on one aspect, try this. (Amended link.) — Wayfarer

I took a look at both of these sources. I finished Wayfarer's and about halfway through Josh's. I will read the rest. They were exactly what I was looking for. Thanks. Probably the most interesting aspect of the readings for me is how the views presented are closely parallel my own which I've presented here often. This from the blog post Wayfarer linked to:

When we leave our house in the morning, we take the objects we see around us as simply real, factual things—this tree, neighboring buildings, cars, etcetera. This attitude or perspective, which is usually unrecognized as a perspective, Edmund Husserl terms the “natural attitude” or the “natural theoretical attitude.”...

...From a phenomenological perspective, this naturalizing attitude conceals a profound naïveté. Husserl claimed that “being” can never be collapsed entirely into being in the empirical world: any instance of actual being, he argued, is necessarily encountered upon a horizon that encompasses facticity but is larger than facticity. Indeed, the very sense of facts of consciousness as such, from a phenomenological perspective, depends on a wider horizon of consciousness that usually remains unexamined. — Marc Applebaum

As the text indicates, we don't find our everyday world waiting for us, we create it, i.e. the idea of objective reality is not necessary to account for the world we find ourselves in. From Verse 1 of Stephen Mitchell's translation of the Tao Te Ching:

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

This from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article Joshs linked to:

For phenomenologists, the immediate and first-personal givenness of experience is accounted for in terms of a pre-reflective self-consciousness. In the most basic sense of the term, self-consciousness is not something that comes about the moment one attentively inspects or reflectively introspects one’s experiences, or recognizes one’s specular image in the mirror, or refers to oneself with the use of the first-person pronoun, or constructs a self-narrative. Rather, these different kinds of self-consciousness are to be distinguished from the pre-reflective self-consciousness which is present whenever I am living through or undergoing an experience, e.g., whenever I am consciously perceiving the world, remembering a past event, imagining a future event, thinking an occurrent thought, or feeling sad or happy, thirsty or in pain, and so forth. — SEP - Phenomenological Approaches to Self-Consciousness

The idea of pre-reflective self-consciousness is one I've thought a lot about, although not in those terms. It's one of the primary questions I have about Lao Tzu's way of seeing the world - is it possible to experience the Tao directly without words. My intuition tells me it is, but I've struggling with it. A lot of the issues raised in the SEP article echo ones I've been working on and I got some new ways of looking at the questions from the article. I'm not as sour on phenomenology as I was before I read this stuff.

Which brings us to the bottom line, as the cliche goes - I don't see how anything I've read here is inconsistent with the idea that the experience of consciousness is a manifestation of biological and neurological processes.

I think I am aligned with you in that I think these historical possibilities cover up "something" that is revealed in a reduction that removes implicit knowledge claims from the "moment" of encounter. This something is inherently, what could you call it, value-cognitive, where the cognitive part refers to the fact that the understanding is engaged. — Constance

I'm a bit lost with this kind of language. In a previous post, I wrote that I didn't hold much with phenomenology. Since then, I've decided to put some effort into learning at least the basics so I can participate in these types of discussions more productively. What would recommend as Phenomenology for Dummies?

What happens when the strictures of thought are removed and the self is truly decentered; is it not thereby dissolved altogether?

When I think of the meditative "method", the allowing of thought content to fall away from consciousness, while sitting quietly, I am struck by its annihilative nature. It really is the most radical thing a person can do, one could argue, this annihilation of the world. But if language falls away, so does understanding and knowledge, and agency is lost, and one is no longer "there" to witness anything. — Constance

I am not a meditator, at least not in any formal way, but I think this misrepresents the meditative process, although I've heard this type of criticism before. Awareness without words is possible without any kind of annihilation. I come to this from my interest in the Tao Te Ching. Lao Tzu talks about "wu wei", which means "inaction," acting without intention. Actions come directly from our true selves, our hearts I guess you'd say. Lao Tzu might say our "te," our virtue. Without words or concepts. I have experienced this. It's no kind of exotic mystical state. It's just everyday, meat and potatoes, although it can sometimes be hard to accomplish.

Perhaps the "direct experience of noumena" should not be so radically conceived. This term 'noumena' I am not that comfortable with because of its Kantian association. I prefer "pure phenomenon" for the act of reducing what is there, in our midst to what is strikingly "other" than the language that conceives it, but the what-is-there doesn't go anywhere. — Constance

I use the Kantian "noumena" instead of the Taoist "Tao" just because it is more familiar to western philosophers with the hope it might make my way of seeing things seem less foreign and mystical.

You are clearly not understanding what I am saying. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think I understand, but I disagree. As far as I'm concerned, we can leave it at that unless you have more to say.

that is the inside of their body, not the inside of their experience. — Wayfarer

When this started, that is what I thought we were talking about, but @Metaphysician Undercover didn't seem to be making that distinction.

It is looking at the outside of things and making inferences about what is happening on the inside through theories and logical inference. We see effects on the outside and make inferences about the internal causes. — Metaphysician Undercover

No. I take a picture of with an x-ray that I can look at and see what is inside the person. How is that different from taking a picture of that person and seeing what their outside looks like. They can insert a thin camera attached to a fiber-optic cable and take pictures of what is inside me either by making a small hole or going in through one of my natural orifices. I'm scheduled to have one of them stuck up my butt in a few months.

You are making an artificial, unsupportable distinction in an effort to hold your argument together.

This is how spatial expansion is commonly modeled, but it's very problematic. How could we create a boundary, even in principle, between the space which is inside a galaxy and not expanding, and the space which is between galaxies and is expanding. — Metaphysician Undercover

Problematic or not, astronomers have measured the red and blue shifts of stars and even planets within the Milky Way, our galaxy. They are not moving toward or away from each other. According to what I've read, gravity between parts of an individual galaxy is strong enough to overcome any local expansion.

physicists do not at all understand the relationship between space and massive objects. I think that's what the famous Michelson-Morley experiments demonstrated to us. — Metaphysician Undercover

The Michelson-Morley experiments measured the speed of light in different directions. They didn't have anything to do with gravity or the expansion of the universe.

It's a problem because we can never truly see the inside of an object. So sense observations of an object are always observations of the outside of things. No matter how we divide the object into parts, or peer at those parts through Xray or MIR, we are always looking at the parts as objects themselves, and we are looking at them from the outside...

...So, sure we can look at any phenomenon in the universe with the scientific method, but we cannot see the inside of any object that we look at with the scientific method. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is true of many things science studies. We don't see electrons, protons, quarks. We look at them by smashing them together and watching the parts spin off. We can't see the inside the sun, but we look at neutrinos and the results of spectroscopic analysis. We can't see inside black hole and neutron star collisions, but we can look at gravity waves. We can't see much more than a couple of miles into the Earth, but we can look at seismic and gravimetric data. We learn about things by looking inside them all the time - x-rays, cat scans, mri. There's no reason our minds should be any different.

The expansion of space is a difficult issue to wrap one's head around. I think it calls for a two dimensional time. But consider that if space expands, it must expand from every point outward. This means that there must be a multitude of such points with an expansion around each. And since the structures we know exist in the expanded space, the points must be connected somehow through the inside, in order to support coherent structures in the outwardly expanded space. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm not sure if this is what you're getting at, but it is my understanding that the expansion of the universe leads to galaxies moving apart, but features within galaxies, e.g. stars, do not. The Earth is not moving away from the sun.

The point was that the only way to observe the inside of an object is through the first-person conscious experience. The methods of science cannot observe the inside of objects. — Metaphysician Undercover

As I've noted, this is clearly not true.

If science is disqualified from speaking about ethics and ultimate values, then so is religion. — Art48

Science already has lots to say about ethics and ultimate values - from the perspective of psychology, sociology, and anthropology.

Science fiction has been calling for a theory of consciousness since Capek's RUR. Those who aren't interested, don't know why anyone would ask, and are irritated because philosophical texts aren't dumbed down enough for them, should leave those who are interested in peace. — frank

Oh Frankie, Frankie, Frankie. Here, let me make some cocoa for you. I put in a marshmallow the way you like it. Now come over here and sit in your nice chair, drink you nice warm cocoa, and shut the fuck up.

The Wikipedia entry on “Non-overlapping magisterial” has: Non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA) is the view, advocated by evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, that science and religion each represent different areas of inquiry, fact vs. values, so there is a difference between the "nets" over which they have "a legitimate magisterium, or domain of teaching authority", and the two domains do not overlap. — Art48

Stephen Jay Gould is one of my favorite writers. He taught me a lot about evolution, science, and writing. But I agree that his non-overlapping magisterium idea is wrongheaded. I think it's, as you say, a political gambit that doesn't really work.

Martin Luther placed astronomy in the domain of religion: — Art48

So Martin Luther was wrong, by our lights, about the sun and Earth. On the other hand, the Protestant Reformation knocked the Roman Catholic Church out of the center of the Christian religious universe and freed people to experience God directly. I'd say, socially and politically at least, it is as important as what Copernicus did. So cut Martin some slack.

And let's take a look at something else a religious leader wrote long before Luther came along - "The Literal Meaning of Genesis," written in 415 AD.

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience.

Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.

If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? — St. Augustine

But if domain is not the essential difference between science and religion, what is? Epistemological method. The fundamental difference between science and religion is epistemological. — Art48

I think this is probably true.

Religion derives authority from sacred personages and holy scriptures, which cannot be contradicted. Science derives its authority from evidence and explanatory theories. — Art48

But I disagree with this.

Will science ever appropriate the fields of ethics and ultimate values for itself? It may be difficult to see how it could. But if it did, I would expect progress similar to the progress it made in cosmology, linguistic, and astronomy. — Art48

Dr. Mengele and his colleagues have already shown us what it would look like if science were to "appropriate the fields of ethics and ultimate values for itself."