However, the subject is not. — Wayfarer

So what's your point?

My problem, however, is this. If we are so 'constrained' by our own perspective and we can't make statements about the 'things in themselves' - i.e. metaphysical statements - the problem I notice is that the apparent intelligibility of the world as we experience it remains unexplained. Yes, following the 'broadly' Kantian tradition that Bitbol supports, it seems to me that we are compelled to say that intelligibility should be explained in terms of the capacity of our mind to 'order' experience, to 'give it a form'.

However, the problem is that even the most radical follower of this tradition must acknowledge that the possibility of such an 'ordering' - unless one is also prepared to say that the whole 'form'/'order' of the empirical world is a contrived self-deception or a totally furtuitous event - it is rooted on some property of 'what is outside of experience' that makes it possible. But to me this implies that the 'things in themselves' have, indeed, an intelligible order at least in principle. — boundless

An order which makes intelligibility possible is not the same thing as an intelligible order, if intelligible order implies a fixed a priori form dictating a particular logic of intelligibility.
One doesn’t have to assume such an epistemological a priori, as Bitbol does. Within the phenomenological tradition, there are more radical approaches than Bitbol’s, including those of Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger and Husserl. For them, the intelligibility of the empirical world is contingent and relative. For Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, the embodied subject is a center of activity. The subject dictates no specific a priori content to the experience of the world. Its formal role is to organize events on the basis of the relational structure of time.

One could say then that without the subject there is no time to produce the glue which makes the objectively real possible. The formal structure of time is not to be understood as ‘inside‘ the subject, however. It requires the exposure of the subject to a world, and therefore there is no subject prior to a world. There are no things in themselves, whether those things are objects outside the subject or an inner realm inside the subject. The subject has no interior since it is not an in-itself but the exposure to a world. It is also not a fixed perspective but the empty capability of generating perspectives.

While I think Bitbol is right to reject reductive materialism, right to expose the limits of objectification, and right to insist on the primacy of lived experience, I don’t think Bitbol is successful in dissolving the ontological question and, therefore, simply ends up leaving it unanswered. In my opinion, this results from a refusal to move from phenomenological critique to a positive, critically grounded account of being and truth. It mistakes the dissolution of bad metaphysics for the end of metaphysics itself. — Esse Quam Videri

I agree with your assessment of Bitbol, and I believe you can find a “positive, critically grounded account of being and truth” in phenomenologists like Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger “.

The result is not only circular but, he says, will always culminate in the notorious “hard problem”: consciousness treated as if it were something that emerges from structural relations in objectively–existing matter, when in reality it is the precondition for identifying those relations in the first place. In that sense, it is prior to the emergence of both objective and subjective, which themselves rely on distinctions that arise within consciousness. — Wayfarer

I think it is not one or the other, it is both. Consciousness does emerge from structural relations of non conscious entities, and consciousness is the precondition for identifying those relationships in the first place. This circularity results in the hard problem, but the hard problem, like all problems, is epistemic. We, as conscious beings, may face an insurmountable barrier in explaining consciousness itself. But from this apparent epistemic barrier it cannot be concluded that consciousness has no naturalistic explanation. Just that we might never get to it.

Consciousness does emerge from structural relations of non conscious entities, and consciousness is the precondition for identifying those relationships in the first place. This circularity results in the hard problem, but the hard problem, like all problems, is epistemic. We, as conscious beings, may face an insurmountable barrier in explaining consciousness itself. But from this apparent epistemic barrier it cannot be concluded that consciousness has no naturalistic explanation. Just that we might never get to it. — hypericin

We have no chance of getting to it if we continue to understand naturalism in terms of objectively causal processes which treat subjectivity as something added onto an objective world.

One could say then that without the subject there is no time to produce the glue which makes the objectively real possible. The formal structure of time is not to be understood as ‘inside‘ the subject, however. It requires the exposure of the subject to a world, and therefore there is no subject prior to a world. There are no things in themselves, whether those things are objects outside the subject or an inner realm inside the subject. The subject has no interior since it is not an in-itself but the exposure to a world. It is also not a fixed perspective but the empty capability of generating perspectives.

Nice, I add interconnected worlds too. Well layered and interconnected, with a layered and interconnected subject.

If we are so 'constrained' by our own perspective and we can't make statements about the 'things in themselves' - i.e. metaphysical statements - the problem I notice is that the apparent intelligibility of the world as we experience it remains unexplained. — boundless

I think you’re right that phenomenology alone doesn’t “explain” why the world is intelligible — but Bitbol’s point is that intelligibility isn’t the kind of thing that needs explaining by appeal to a reality-in-itself. The mistake, as he sees it, is assuming that intelligibility must belong either to the subject or to the world as such. His refusal to choose among those options isn’t skepticism, but a refusal to reintroduce a metaphysical comparison that phenomenological suspension has already shown to be unwarranted. Intelligibility is a characteristic of being-in-the-world. In fact, I wonder if the demand to “explain intelligibility” is itself a mistake — as if we want to explain explanation. Maybe that's an antinomy of reason! Bitbol’s refusal to supply such an explanation isn’t evasion, but critical in the Kantian sense.

But then, even given that scientific objectivity is not the be-all and end-all, there's still an enormous range of things it can accomplish. I don't think Bitbol is throwing that away or belittling it - just reminding us of the underlying assumptions which are so easily forgotten in our bedazzlement with what science can do. And also a reminder of the limits of objectivity.

We, as conscious beings, may face an insurmountable barrier in explaining consciousness itself. But from this apparent epistemic barrier it cannot be concluded that consciousness has no naturalistic explanation. Just that we might never get to it. — hypericin

You do wonder how different a 'naturalistic explanation that might never be grasped' is from a 'metaphysical postulate'.

The point is why bother saying that the mind is immaterial? If the mind is a process of the brain, then it is no more immaterial than digestion. Neither are objects of the senses, and if you are using 'immaterial' merely to indicate that, then sure.

All our thinking is dualistic anyway. As soon as you start talking about all experiences of things being the experiences of a subject, you have already entered Cartesian territory, at least in terms of modes, or distinctions if not substances.

Heidegger criticized Husserl, claiming he never freed himself from Cartesian thinking. If you start trying to pin this idea of different kinds of being (as opposed to different kinds of beings of course) down, you will inevitably end in paradox.

Even saying that we do not see reality as it is in itself is a product of dualistic thinking and cements the dualism even further.

It’s like the goldfish in the goldfish bowl. Wayfarer is saying the goldfish doesn’t realise there’s water there, it can’t see the water and takes it for granted. While you are saying, I know the water is there, but it’s no big deal. But then he says, but without the water you’d be lying on the bottom of the bowl and you say I know I’m suspended in water and it’s primary to me being suspended, but again it’s no big deal. — Punshhh

Perhaps it's like that. The irony is that I see Wayfarer's thinking as dualistic, whereas he claims that I am coming from a Cartesian standpoint, whereas, while I acknowledge that any discursive thinking is going to be inherently dualistic as that is just the nature of our language when it is doing analysis, I'm saying I see no point in claiming the mind is immaterial, even though we obviously have that conceptual distinction between material and immaterial. Every concept automatically invokes and evokes its opposite.

The point is why bother saying that the mind is immaterial? — Janus

You're the one who made the suggestion in the first place:

The OP says that consciousness is primary against, presumably, the idea that the material is primary. If consciousness is not, according to you, material, or at least a function of, or dependent on, the material, then the implication would be that it is immaterial, and that disembodied consciousness is possible. — Janus

And then:

you didn't answer the question I posed re whether you believe that immaterial or disembodied consciousness is possible. — Janus

You're still seeing the debate through the apparent dichotomy of material/immaterial.

Consciousness does emerge from structural relations of non conscious entities, and consciousness is the precondition for identifying those relationships in the first place. This circularity results in the hard problem, but the hard problem, like all problems, is epistemic. We, as conscious beings, may face an insurmountable barrier in explaining consciousness itself. But from this apparent epistemic barrier it cannot be concluded that consciousness has no naturalistic explanation. Just that we might never get to it. — hypericin

:up: :up:

Since you seem to be incapable of cogent discussion in good faith, I'll leave you to wallow in your confusion.

↪Wayfarer Since you seem to be incapable of cogent discussion in good faith, I'll leave you to wallow in your confusion. — Janus

Welcome to the club! :up:

All our thinking is dualistic anyway. As soon as you start talking about all experiences of things being the experiences of a subject, you have already entered Cartesian territory ... Even saying that we do not see reality as it is in itself is a product of dualistic thinking and cements the dualism even further. — Janus

Exactly. :100:

Wayfarer is saying the goldfish doesn’t realise there’s water there, it can’t see the water and takes it for granted. While you are saying, I know the water is there, but it’s no big deal. — Punshhh

Notice that the term 'immaterial' came up a couple of times, first in this post of 180's and then shortly after by Janus (they seem to be in furious agreement).

What I'm saying is that this is the false dilemma of Cartesian dualism, which divides the world into 'the physical' (res extensa) and the mental (res cogitans). But this is much larger that 'the philosophy of Descartes', as it is woven into the cultural grammar of modernity - we naturally tend to 'carve up' reality along those lines. So the implication is, if something is not physical, then it must be res cogitans - hence 'the immaterial mind'.

What I'm saying is that this is the false dilemma of Cartesian dualism, which divides the world into 'the physical' (res extensa) and the mental (res cogitans). But this is much larger that 'the philosophy of Descartes', as it is woven into the cultural grammar of modernity - we naturally tend to 'carve up' reality along those lines. So the implication is, if something is not physical, then it must be res cogitans - hence 'the immaterial mind'. — Wayfarer

Understanding that the mind/consciousness is the function of the structure (the brain) dispels any notion of Cartesian dualism. Function cannot be separated from operating structure, no more than the music played by a piano can be separated from the piano.

Right, consciousness is determined by material conditions, and without material conditions there would be nothing to be conscious of. On the other hand without consciousness there would be no one to be aware of material conditions. So, a conclusion might be that neither is primary, and that they co-arise. On the other hand we can certainly imagine that material conditions were present prior to the advent of consciousness or least prior to consciousness as we understand it. All our scientific evidence points to that conclusion. — Janus

Yes, I think they co-arise. Just as mass and charge co-arise. We don't think one came before the other. It's all there from the beginning.

I would rephrase "[at] least prior to consciousness as we understand it" as something along the lines of "at least prior to intelligence capable of contemplating and discussing it". Because I think there are things that are conscious that do not have that kind of intelligence. I don't draw any line at all, which I know you disagree wirh. But do you draw a line? I don't imagine dolphins contemplate and discuss consciousness, but are they conscious? If so, how about bats? Bees? Worms? Paramecia? Archaea?

Understanding that the mind/consciousness is the function of the structure (the brain) dispels any notion of Cartesian dualism. — Questioner

Yes. That is plain materialism.

Function cannot be separated from operating structure, no more than the music played by a piano can be separated from the piano. — Questioner

Of course it can. It can be played on another instrument, recorded, or transcribed into notation. In every case the music stays the same while the material form is different.

But from this apparent epistemic barrier it cannot be concluded that consciousness has no naturalistic explanation. — hypericin

Nothing in this reality can have a non-naturalistic explanation. Consciousness cannot be non-natural. Things that would not exist if consciousness did not bring them about cannot be non-natural.

It seems most reasonable to me to think that animals of any kind might be considered to be conscious, however minimally. Plants and fungi I don't know. It does depend on what you take 'consciousness' to refer to.

I follow Whitehead in thinking that everything experiences processes and relations with other things, but I don't think it is necessarily conscious experience. I think about 99% of what we humans experience is not conscious experience.

So, I think there is a sense in which everything feels the affects of being acted upon―Whitehead, I seem to recall, refers to this as "pan-experientialism". The other point is that I think everything has a kind of immanent intelligence. I see consciousness, experience and intelligence as three different things that may or may not be connected or operating together depending on what phenomena we are considering.

Right, consciousness is determined by material conditions, and without material conditions there would be nothing to be conscious of. On the other hand without consciousness there would be no one to be aware of material conditions. So, a conclusion might be that neither is primary, and that they co-arise. On the other hand we can certainly imagine that material conditions were present prior to the advent of consciousness or least prior to consciousness as we understand it. All our scientific evidence points to that conclusion.

I’m going to say something controversial, another conclusion to the one in bold is that they didn’t co-arise, but that consciousness was introduced, to a pre-existing world. It makes more sense to me than the idea that consciousness was always present, even in the Big Bang.

( I’m quite happy with the Cartesian view that consciousness might have arisen when life emerged from the primordial soup. I just don’t give it much weight in the light of alternatives that I have worked out)

Perhaps it's like that. The irony is that I see Wayfarer's thinking as dualistic, whereas he claims that I am coming from a Cartesian standpoint, whereas, while I acknowledge that any discursive thinking is going to be inherently dualistic as that is just the nature of our language when it is doing analysis, I'm saying I see no point in claiming the mind is immaterial, even though we obviously have that conceptual distinction between material and immaterial. Every concept automatically invokes and evokes its opposite.

Right at the beginning of my interest in philosophical thinking, back in the mists of time. The first thing I learned to do was to think outside the box, so to speak. I was reading a book written by a Sufi Guru/ mystic (I can’t remember the author, or the book, if I say which book it was, I might have confused it with another, so I won’t, it was quite well read, you might have read it yourself). He kept going back to the same idea, from different angles and it stuck with me.
Basically that, intuitive thinking is a skill that can be developed and it is like trying to listen to someone in the next room, talking quietly, while sitting in a noisy room, with someone talking at you, trying to convince you of something. The person trying to convince you of something is your conditioned self. In a philosophical context your Cartesian, or empirical self.
The idea being that for the Sufi, they are concerned with what that quiet person is saying.

What I’m saying is that there is a way of stepping out of this dualistic thought process. To develop a sense of things which can become like an alternative approach, or perspective on an issue. Over time, it becomes like a reference system, but not dualistically based, but intuitive/feeling based. It helps if you are dyslexic, which I am, because you have to work out your own alternative ways of thinking, because you just can’t do the simple stuff like learning how to read and write. (Learning to read was a Herculean task for me, I still don’t know how I did it).

Anyway what I’m thinking of in this discussion and what I think Wayfarer is trying to put across is that there is something about the subject which is deeper, more fundamental than what the Cartesian thinking can allow. The Cartesian fish can’t see the water, doesn’t know it’s there and when it’s told there is water there, it says, yes I know, so what?

Now I know I might come out with some pretty weird stuff, but I don’t necessarily believe any of it. They are all just working hypotheses for me. Like alternative ways of reading when the part of my brain that reads the written word, doesn’t work properly.

But this is much larger that 'the philosophy of Descartes', as it is woven into the cultural grammar of modernity - we naturally tend to 'carve up' reality along those lines.

Yes, I know, the conditioning is so deep, it goes to every fibre of our being. But we must remember, that that being and the nature we are being conditioned by is all natural and is perhaps closer to the truth than we might think.

An order which makes intelligibility possible is not the same thing as an intelligible order, if intelligible order implies a fixed a priori form dictating a particular logic of intelligibility. — Joshs

While I agree with the wording, my problem here is that I don't see how these kinds of accounts are plausible. They appear to give to the subject the entire 'responsibility' of the 'ordering' of the empirical world. In other words, for all practical purposes, an epistemic solipsism.

There are no things in themselves, whether those things are objects outside the subject or an inner realm inside the subject. The subject has no interior since it is not an in-itself but the exposure to a world. It is also not a fixed perspective but the empty capability of generating perspectives. — Joshs

Does this mean that the only value of knowledge is pragmatic?

Intelligibility is a characteristic of being-in-the-world. — Wayfarer

The problem is that we have all reasonable evidences to conclude that we aren't necessary for the existence of the 'world'. While what Bitbol and others might say is true for the empirical world, I can't see how the same can be said for anything else.

If intelligiblity requires our 'being in the world', it seems to me that this can't avoid the claim that 'without us' the world is unintelligible. This is an ontological claim, not merely an epistemic one.

Maybe that's an antinomy of reason! Bitbol’s refusal to supply such an explanation isn’t evasion, but critical in the Kantian sense. — Wayfarer

I can see that. And I'm not completely against that. I just think that what Kant and so on achieved is that we can't have a certain/direct knowledge of 'how reality is' irrespective of our own perspective. I just don't see how this excludes any possibility of speculation beyond it.

The problem is that we have all reasonable evidences to conclude that we aren't necessary for the existence of the 'world'. — boundless

Do you recall that that blog post about Schopenhauer that you posted - how time began with the first eye that opened?

Do you recall that that blog post about Schopenhauer that you posted - how time began with the first eye that opened? — Wayfarer

Yes, and I still in some way I agree with that perspective, i.e. that consciousness is foundational to intelligibility.

However, we need to ask ourselves which 'consciousness' is foundational. The consciousness of any sentient being doesn't seem foundational. The consciousness of any given sentient being seems to be contingent and have arisen. Assuming that such an arising isn't unintelligible, these consciousnesses of each sentient being must have arisen in some way and this means intelligibility preceded each of them.

Anyway, I still agree with the blog posts in two senses:

1) Consciousness is foundational to intelligibility. Intelligibility is incomprehensible without a necessary relation to consciousness. However, I nowadays lean towards panentheism, so not problem for me.
2) There is a limit of what a given sentient being can know and this limit is also due to the particular perspective such a being finds itself in. So, an individual sentient being can't know directly anything 'in itself'. But this doesn't pose an a priori limit to speculations.

So, an individual sentient being can't know directly anything 'in itself'.

I’m not so sure about this, yes with the sensory apparatus we have, I would agree with this. But it doesn’t mean we can’t bear witness to it, or be hosted by a being who can know it.

However, we need to ask ourselves which 'consciousness' is foundational. — boundless

But that question is still being asked from an external perspective i.e. treating consciousness as a phenomenon, something that exists or may not exist. I think you're actually conflating two perspectives, that of regarding consciousness as an attribute of sentient beings, as you would from an evolutionary perspective, and then the transcendental insight that consciousness is the horizon within which the nature of being is intelligible in the first place. That excerpt from Schopenhauer does address this. He acknowledges that life evolves from matter, that higher organisms evolve from earlier forms:

"On the other hand, the law of causality and the treatment and investigation of nature which is based upon it, lead us necessarily to the conclusion that, in time, each more highly organised state of matter has succeeded a cruder state: so that the lower animals existed before men, fishes before land animals, plants before fishes, and the unorganised before all that is organised; that, consequently, the original mass had to pass through a long series of changes before the first eye could be opened."

"And yet", he goes on, "the existence of this whole world remains ever dependent upon the first eye that opened, even if it were that of an insect. For such an eye is a necessary condition of the possibility of knowledge, and the whole world exists only in and for knowledge, and without it is not even thinkable. The world is entirely idea, and as such demands the knowing subject as the supporter of its existence." Of course that goes against the grain of 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect'. I've had many long (and mainly fruitless) arguments about this point on the forum, contested by those who are adamant that the world is there, external, outside of us, and ideas internal, in the mind, subjective. This long course of time itself, filled with innumerable changes, through which matter rose from form to form till at last the first percipient creature appeared,—this whole time itself is only thinkable in the identity of a consciousness whose succession of ideas, whose form of knowing it is, and apart from which, it loses all meaning and is nothing at all."

At this point, 99% of people will object: “But we know that the world existed before there were any sentient beings.” My reply is that “before” is a mental construct. Fossils are not mental constructs, nor is the geological record. But pastness is not something contained in those rocks. It is a form under which they are understood. Outside that form—outside a temporal framework supplied by consciousness—the fossils do not say “earlier,” “later,” or “before” at all. They simply are.

The record constrains what can coherently be said, but it does not interpret itself. And without that interpretive framework, the notion of a world that “existed before” anything capable of experience is not false so much as unintelligible.

The earth, say, as it was before there was life, is a field of empirical enquiry in which we have come to know a great deal; its reality is no more being denied than is the reality of perceived objects in the same room. The point is, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding, which apprehends all the objects of empirical knowledge within it as being in some part of that space and at some part of that time: and this is as true of the earth before there was life as it is of the pen I am now holding a few inches in front of my face and seeing slightly out of focus as it moves across the paper. — Bryan Magee, Schopenhauer's Philosophy

Of course it can. It can be played on another instrument, recorded, or transcribed into notation. In every case the music stays the same while the material form is different. — Wayfarer

But it would not be that particular music - those particular vibrations propagating those particular acoustic waves through that particular air - played by that particular piano at that particular point in space and time.

That would be like saying my brain could produce your consciousness

ETA - besides, you did not refute my main point - that you cannot have piano music without a piano

And yet", he goes on, "the existence of this whole world remains ever dependent upon the first eye that opened, even if it were that of an insect. For such an eye is a necessary condition of the possibility of knowledge, and the whole world exists only in and for knowledge, and without it is not even thinkable. The world is entirely idea, and as such demands the knowing subject as the supporter of its existence." — Wayfarer

Just note that this not any kind of phenomenology. It makes the thread a little confusing if you smash up differing philosophical approaches.

I’m not so sure about this, yes with the sensory apparatus we have, I would agree with this. But it doesn’t mean we can’t bear witness to it, or be hosted by a being who can know it. — Punshhh

Ok, perhaps 'direct'/'indirect' isn't the best way to put it. But I would say that our knowledge of the world is limited, imperfect, we can't deny the role of our mind in ordering the experience and so on etc.

Thanks for the answer, but I don't think it rejects what I was saying. Kant, Schopenhauer, Bitbol etc are, as I understand them, saying that there is antinomy between what we learn by analysing the events of the empirical world and what we learn by analysing the intelligible structure of the empirical world. In the first case, we are presented with evidence that strongly suggest that our consciousness began at a certain point of time, is derivative and so on. The latter analysis, however, suggests that the framework in which the former 'story' is intelligible is a framework given by consciousness itself. This clearly poses a problem, a tension with two seemingly contradictory accounts.

One is of course free to stop at the antinomy and accept it as unsolvable. We can't 'go beyond' it. That's where Kant, Bitbol and so on ask us to stop. The two perspectives can't be reconciled in a singular conceptual framework that explains both. As I said, I respect that. But I don't think the antinomy alone forces us to stop to seek some kind of way to reconcile the two 'perspectives' that generate it.

However, this is one of these situations where I can't help but remind myself that the 'puzzlement/wonder' it creates is a motivator for trying to go beyond that. So, as a way to solve the antinomy, I propose that we need to accept both stories and reconcile them. Yes, our consciousness is contingent, is ontologically dependent etc and it can't be the ground of 'intelligibility' of ourselves and the 'external world' (and also the 'empirical world', at the end of the day). But at the same time, I take seriously the other 'side' of the antinomy and I also affirm that intelligibility seems to be grounded in consciousness. However, in order to get a 'coherent story' that includes both insights, I acknowledge that I have to posit a consciousness of some sort that can truly be regarded as the ground of intelligibility. Panentheism is a way, I believe, to overcome and at the same time accept the 'main message' of the antinomy you are referencing.

At the same time, however, I am also inclined to agree with the antinomy in that it correctly shows that we can't have the kind of 'certainty' that pre-Kantian philosophers sought. We can discuss about the plausibility of 'worldviews' but I don't think we can 'certainty' about them. So I do not claim certainty about my own purpoted 'solution' but I think I have reasonable motivations to think it is plausible.

However, in order to get a 'coherent story' that includes both insights, I acknowledge that I have to posit a consciousness of some sort that can truly be regarded as the ground of intelligibility. Panentheism is a way, I believe, to overcome and at the same time accept the 'main message' of the antinomy you are referencing.

I entirely agree, although I expect our interpretations will differ somewhat.