I don't think the notion of internality is helpful here. — Janus

Working from the proposition, “present via us....”, internality is not only helpful with respect to theoretical predicates, it is absolutely necessary for epistemic operations. Via “US” makes it so.

Necessity is not sufficiency. The world and us are each necessary, but neither in itself is sufficient. This with regards to perception alone. The world is neither necessary nor sufficient for pure a priori cognitions, under the assumption there are such things.

The world is neither necessary nor sufficient for pure a priori cognitions, under the assumption there are such things. — Mww

The world would seem to be necessary for there to be a priori cognitions as far as I can tell. If I remember correctly Kant acknowledged that the synthetic a priori requires the schooling of prior experience, even though it can be thought of as being independent of the the empirical world in the sense that, once in place, further experience need not be consulted. So, once we have experienced (and gone on to conceptualize) space and time, for example, we can then know that all experience must be spatial and temporal.

We can still chit-chat about the world, though, including self-awareness. Meaningfully, too. Or we'd have no forums. — jorndoe

I fully agree! What is the self? I'm aware of it and see him in the mirror. :smile:

Are you saying that it is knowledge of a tree only because of us? — Janus

Yep. Think about it. What was it before it was a tree? And that thing, why is it a “tree” and not some other named thing? That thing always was a thing, it just wasn’t a tree until some human said it was.

Besides, if it always was a tree, why do we have to learn it as such? Why didn’t we already know it as tree before having to be instructed about it?

Kant acknowledged that the synthetic a priori requires the schooling of prior experience — Janus

Yes, for their proofs, their empirical validity. Not for their construction, which are merely logically non-contradictory. Logic alone cannot teach us facts of Nature.

A possible solution: as we all know, matter is made up from two basic fields. The matter fields contain three kinds of charges. On for the long-range interaction with other particles, and two for the small-range. This charge is somewhat a mystery in physics. It is not known what it exactly is. We therefore can use it for an explanation that can't be explained. Consciousness is charge. The charge of matter. Our conscious feelings and perceptions are extremely complicated forms of this charge. At the same time, panpsychism can learn from this, as charges reside in all matter.

Yep. Think about it. What was it before it was a tree? And that thing, why is it a “tree” and not some other named thing? That thing always was a thing, it just wasn’t a tree until some human said it was.

Besides, if it always was a tree, why do we have to learn it as such? Why didn’t we already know it as tree bore having to be instructed about it? — Mww

I don't think the question has any real sense. It might have been a configuration of microphysical particles or energy fields, but then even that is part of our experience. But it doesn't follow that it is nothing sans our experience. And whatever it is it obviously reliably manifests to suss and animals as what we would call a tree. So its manifestation as a tree depends on both its percipients and on its own structure, whatever that might be. You say it was a thing, but that too is as conceptual, even though obviously broader, a category as "tree". So it wasn't called a tree until some human named it such, but neither was it called a thing until some human named it as such.

Yes, for their proofs, their empirical validity. Not for their construction, which are merely logically non-contradictory. Logic alone cannot teach us facts of Nature. — Mww

But how could we have logic without empirical experience? take the logical idea of identity. We recognize things because they are (relatively) invariant. If there were no relative invariance in the things we perceive then there would be no identity, no idea of identity (and obviously no us and no life, either).

It transposes the discussion into an inappropriate frame of reference. — Wayfarer

But talking about the "neural binding problem" does not shift to an inapproprate empirical frame of reference (i.e. what your guru Chalmers calls "an easy problem of cognition") when discussing the allegedly philosophical "hard problem of consciousness"? :shade: Your hypocrisy, Wayf, is only exceeded by your conspicuous lack of grasping what's at issue here. :brow:

Your continual invocation of 'woo of the gaps' only illustrates that you're not grasping problem at hand. It's a hard problem for physicalism and naturalism because of the axioms they start from, not because there is no solution whatever. Seen from other perspectives, there is no hard problem, it simply dissolves. It's all a matter of perspective. But seen from the perspective of modern scientific naturalism, there is an insuperable problem, because its framework doesn't accomodate the reality of first-person experience, a.k.a. 'being', which is why 'eliminative materialism' must insist that it has no fundamental reality. You're the one obfuscating the problem, because it clashes with naturalism - there's an issue you're refusing to see which is as plain as the nose on your face. — Wayfarer

[edit: this is directed to those who accept the narrative of phenomenology]

I'd like to pick up from here.

The issue I want to talk about is not the scientific mapping, or the lack thereof, of subjective experience.
Not the measurement either. Those aren't the problems. The issue is that the mind, under phenomenology, is not allowed to have presuppositions -- presuppositions of the cause of the sense impressions. We both know that images reaching our retina can be measured. We also know that quantum entities aren't always perceivable, with or without our senses or an instrument. But in both cases, we aren't allowed to admit those facts in our narrative.

Tell me, does that sound complete to you when it comes to the subjective experience? It only takes a grain of sand to know the world out there. (Not sure if I'm using this saying correctly from the William Blake poem). Our connection to the outside world requires only a grain of sand. Phenomenology engenders an unsettling feeling in any one contemplating this problem.

I'd say, do not artificially cut off the narrative about the subjective experience by banning presuppositions of the material world. Let the subjective experience extend to the cause. Let us stabilize our idealization of the world by confirming that the material world exists.

I'm not satisfied with the "it's all a matter of perspective" statement. There's got to be something more compelling that this.

So it wasn't called a tree until some human named it such, but neither was it called a thing until some human named it as such. — Janus

Which is why "things-in-themselves", or the "thing in itself", or whatever specific variety of this idea one ends up using, can be helpful in thinking about this.

Or at least I find it very useful.

I agree, I think the idea is useful and inevitable just because we can make a logical distinction between something in itself and something for us. It seems an intelligent, inquiring human mind would inevitably at some point wonder: I see a tree, but it is as it is as an object of my seeing; what could it be in itself?

what could it be in itself? — Janus

That's my metaphysical bane.

You could even argue that it's kind of in Plato with his ideas. There's something about objects as they appear to us that seem incomplete, in some important respects.

I know, it's kind of life trying to think about the largest possible number, or something. But it's fascinating.

But talking about "neural binding problem" does not shift to an inapproprate empirical frame of reference (i.e. what your guru Chalmers calls "an easy problem of cognition") when discussing the allegedly philosophical "hard problem of consciousness" — 180 Proof

Materialist philosophy of mind is that the mind is a product of physical transactions, neurotransmitters, and the like. One of the Enlightenment philosophers expressed it (crudely) as 'the brain secretes thought like the liver secretes bile'. That I take to be the forerunner of the idea that the mind ('consciousness') is an 'emergent property' of the brain. So I was objecting to putting it in those terms as it is seems inevitably reductionist. It is reducing the discussion to neurological terms, again.

Chalmers is not 'my guru'. His 'facing up to the hard problem' is a canonical text in philosophy of mind, for the reasons given.

The issue of the subjective unity of experience is a different matter. The unity of conscious experience is an undeniable fact of experience, a priori. But that excerpt I quoted spells out that 'there is no place in the brain where there could be a direct neural encoding of the illusory detailed scene' - that 'illusory detailed scene' being 'conscious experience'. So it's indicating that, whatever the nature of that is, it is NOT accounted for by neuroscience.

The issue is that the mind, under phenomenology, is not allowed to have presuppositions -- presuppositions of the cause of the sense impressions — Caldwell

Did I talk about phenomenology? I'm sorry, but I can't understand the rest of what you said.

We see.....sense..... something directly. It isn’t a tree until the intellect gets done with it, somewhere downstream in the mental process. — Mww

Hmm... Are you made by someone seeing...sensing...something, which then becomes you, once their intellect gets done with it...? Or, are you referring to someone's perception alone, rather than you?

Did I talk about phenomenology? I'm sorry, but I can't understand the rest of what you said. — Wayfarer

The idea from your post fits perfectly in what I wanted to say. If you're not talking phenomenology, then I am. And I'm using your idea to illustrate the problem with phenomenology. Also my post wasn't primarily directed at you, but to those who lean towards phenomenology.

An urge to explain consciousness in supernatural terms seems as fraught as the need to use the more speculative aspects of quantum physics as the engine for driving a fresh cult of transcendental obscurantism. — Tom Storm

'Supernatural' is a very loaded word. It denotes the boundary between 'rational, sensible, scientific', and 'obscure, mystical, occult', right? Notice the responsese? The references to 'woo', to the occult? That what I call 'handrail naturalism' - gives you something to hang on to. That's why I so often refer to Nagel's essay, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion. But, don't mention the war.

Although now you've brought it up, I have to mention the 'Copenhagen Interpretation'. As we saw earlier in the thread, the outlook that gave rise to 'the hard problem of consciousness' was a consequence of Galileo's division of the world into objective (primary) and subjective (secondary) qualities. This held good for a long while, but the discovery which really made its shortcomings clear was the discovery of 'observer problem' in early 20th century physics. Another contributor put it very well in an earlier thread.

Another way of putting it is in terms of Lockean primary versus secondary qualities; Traditionally, the discipline of Physics charts only the primary qualities of objects, events and processes i.e. their mathematical interrelations, where the relationship of their primary qualities to their secondary qualities (i.e. qualia) is ignored and undetermined. The reason why the secondary qualities are classically ignored by physics is as a consequence of traditional physics treating it's subject matter to be independent of any particular observer, which is itself due partly to convenience and simplification, and due partly as a consequence of the objective of physics to model the causal relationships that hold between action and consequence irrespective of the contextual nuances and discrepancies of any given observer.

Strictly speaking, the propositions of physics are senseless, like an unexecuted computer program, until as and when the propositions are used by an agent and thereby become grounded in the agent's perceptual apparatus in a bespoke fashion, at which point Locke's secondary qualities become temporarily welded to the physical concepts.

Classical physical concepts are therefore by design irreducible to mental concepts; something has been a central feature of physics rather than a bug, at least up until the discovery of special relativity and quantum mechanics, both of which show that even the Lockean primary qualities of objects are relative to perspective. — sime

True the idea in a particular form is in Plato, the noumenal world of the Ideas as opposed to the phenomenal shadows of the Cave.

The idea is fascinating just because it is so hard to get a purchase on. The one thing I think we are entitled to say is that the world in itself must be energetically "carved at the joints" more or less isomorphically with the ways we perceive it. It's hard to imagine how a rich world of diversity, invariance and change could manifest out of an amorphous mass of whatever.

The unity of conscious experience is an undeniable fact of experience, a priori. — Wayfarer

I don't think so --that it's undeniable or obvious or given.

If this is along the line of bachelors don't have wives, then that's no fun. But I'm afraid it might be. Contingent inherited linguistic habits accepted as the most eternal and solid fact there is perhaps. Parmenides, adjusted. There is a hole, one hole, through which the world shines.

The 'experience' gestured at seems to be private in principle. Are we all supposed to check our intuitions (or similar) and make sure our 'conscious experience' is unified? If we need to check, it's not a priori. Also, we'd have know way to know if we were 'looking' at and talking about the same thing.

I suggest what I find a more plausible alternative. The supposed unity of the mind is stolen from the unity of the body. It doesn't seem efficient to reward & punish this or that half or quarter of a body. So we also don't offer praise & blame to a multitude of spirits all forced to take turns with the eyes and mouth. One is one around here.

both of which show that even the Lockean primary qualities of objects are relative to perspective. — sime

Mass, size and distance, for example, are not relative to perspective.

It might have been a configuration of microphysical particles or energy fields, but then even that is part of our experience. — Janus

Yes, overall, but not initially. By the time we get to the experience of molecular structure, trees, as such, are already presupposed. Experience of constituency follows from experience of the object to which the constituency belongs.

But it doesn't follow that it is nothing sans our experience. — Janus

An object of perception can never be nothing, so....

So its manifestation as a tree depends on both its percipients and on its own structure, whatever that might be. — Janus

Yes.

But how could we have logic without empirical experience? — Janus

We could, without experience, iff the human cognitive system is itself logical. We think logically for no other reason than that’s the mandate of the system with which we are equipped. Which explains why we can never use logic to explain logic, insofar as a necessary condition of a thing cannot at the same time be an explanatory device for that thing. Maybe why we don’t know how the brain presents subjectivity.

True the idea in a particular form is in Plato, the noumenal world of the Ideas as opposed to the phenomenal shadows of the Cave. — Janus

Whitehead had a point, philosophy consists of footnotes to Plato. Got to go back and reread some of his works sometime...

"carved at the joints" more or less isomorphically with the ways we perceive it. — Janus

Yes, something like that appears to be the case. With hard work, we are able to discern the structure of things, but what gives the thing it's structure we just don't know.

It's hard to imagine how a rich world of diversity, invariance and change could manifest out of an amorphous mass of whatever. — Janus

And most of it isn't even concrete, as in that you can touch it with your hands.

Hell, if dark matter and dark energy actually exist, we aren't even made of the stuff most of the Universe is made of. It's wild.

Supernatural' is a very loaded word. — Wayfarer

True. From my perspective, I am not sure what other word to use to get across the idea - of something that transcends the natural world.

We could, without experience, iff the human cognitive system is itself logical. We think logically for no other reason than that’s the mandate of the system with which we are equipped. Which explains why we can never use logic to explain logic, insofar as a necessary condition of a thing cannot at the same time be an explanatory device for that thing. Maybe why we don’t know how the brain presents subjectivity. — Mww

That seems reasonable, but then the 'machinery in itself' of the human cognitive system is also, in the final analysis, noumenal, part of the "great whatever" (to borrow a phrase from the moniker of a departed member of TPF).

So, if logic is intrinsic to the structure of the human cognitive system, and we have no reason to believe that we are any more separate from the "great whatever" than a tree is, then we could reasonably infer that the cosmos is, always already, prior to human experience, logically structured, or "conceptually shaped" as John McDowell puts it if I remember correctly.

The whole dialectic I’m involved in concerns perception, so I’m not sure what you’re asking. No one ever senses “me”, and nothing sensed is ever “made”, so......help a brutha out here?

'Metaphysical' seems to be, in a certain sense at least, synonymous with 'supernatural'.

:up: I've no doubt you wouldn't have it any other way! (I know I wouldn't).

we could reasonably infer that the cosmos is, always already, prior to human experience, logically structured, or "conceptually shaped" — Janus

That’s the very trap I referred to. If it is the case that the human system operates on logical structure and conceptual shaping, it then becomes the proverbial “transcendental illusion” to suppose systems not anything like ours, operate the same way. Just because some method is an absolute necessity for us doesn’t warrant that method’s infliction anywhere else.

But you’re right in a way. We can infer anything we like, as long as we have sufficient reason. Problem is, we could never have sufficient reason, with respect to the cosmos in general. Hell.....we don’t know hardly anything about it, so what warrant do we have for supposing its antecedents?

Metaphysical' seems to be, in a certain sense at least, synonymous with 'supernatural'. — Janus

If 'natural' is taken to be synonymous with empirical. But there's always the question of what gives rise to the empirical. What is the nature of existence?

Indeed.

it then becomes the proverbial “transcendental illusion” to suppose systems not anything like ours, operate the same way. — Mww

Sure, but. all other things being equal, we have no more warrant to suppose that they don't operate the same way than that they do. Add to that the inconceivability that an amorphous 'great whatever' could give rise to a world of diversity, invariance and change, and I think we actually have more warrant to suppose that the cosmos operates along more or less the same principles as we do, than we have to suppose that it doesn't. But I guess, in the final analysis. it remains a matter of taste.