What if I punch myself? Is that perception? How does it differ from kicking a rock? Am I beholding a mental construct of myself? Am I experiencing myself or a mental construct of myself? — creativesoul

I'm not sure. Nobody has talked about the worst argument ever from Stove that Street linked to.

Perception seems to imply some sort of conscious recognition. You feel the floor beneath you feet more often than you perceive it. — Banno

Makes sense.

Neither you simply experience what you experience. Trying to understand what happens in experience is not the same as the experience.

Trying to understand is an experience.

Nobody has talked about the worst argument ever from Stove that Street linked to. — Marchesk

Get into it...

:)

Yes it is another experience, which always adds and leaves things out.

Experience has agency?

Perhaps, but our reflection on what we experience has agency.

Sounds fine to me. To perceive a tree one acts, paying attention to one part of the world.

I had presumed that @apokrisis meant something like this in his notion of pointing on two ways.

Well then it would only follow that paying attention is required for perception. Unpacking what counts as paying attention will get quite hairy.

Ditch the notion.

I tend to think that when I kick a rock, my toe hurts, and my experience is constituted solely by virtue of the associations/correlations drawn. For me, perception isn't equivalent to experience. It is a necessary elemental constituent thereof.

Perception and experience in the sense Marchesk put forth are a catch-all for everything and anything mental...

For me, perception isn't equivalent to experience. It is a necessary elemental constituent thereof.

If so then what other mental agencies are constitutive of experience and how do they affect experience, isn't that the point.

Perception and experience in the sense Marchesk put forth are a catch-all for everything and anything mental... — creativesoul

I meant experience to mean anything we're conscious of, which includes mental images. Sometimes those are the result of perception, and sometimes other faculties, such as dreaming.

The question in the OP is whether the ability to experience mental images when not perceiving has any bearing on the nature of perception. The notion that we "behold" a mental image when seeing is at the root of both idealism and skepticism about the external world.

The realization that there is a physiological and psychological process that must occur for us to perceive is a the root of Kantianism.

If so then what other mental agencies are constitutive of experience and how do they affect experience, isn't that the point. — Cavacava

I'm not sure what the point is. My position has thought/belief at it's basis.

Is experience something that 'exists' regardless of whether or not the agent is aware of it, or must the agent be conscious? If it must be conscious, need it be conscious of the fact that it's doing something? Need it be self-conscious?

I meant experience to mean anything we're conscious of, which includes mental images. Sometimes those are the result of perception, and sometimes other faculties, such as dreaming — Marchesk

So perception is not equivalent to experience.

What is complex, what is simple? Depends what you are doing. — Banno

Nate Robinson is short. LeBron James is tall.
Pixels are simple. Computer images are complex.
Words are simple. Sentences are complex.
Bricks are simple. Buildings are complex.
And so on and so forth.

That all depends upon how the person talks about it. — creativesoul

It's not merely about talking. It's about which one of the two descriptions is more concrete or precise. When I say that a tree is a single object rather than a multiplicity of objects I am being less concrete and less precise.

That's a tree. How much more precise can it get? Which part misses the mark?

The more you say about the tree the more likely you are to say something about it that isn't true.

So perception is not equivalent to experience. — creativesoul

Nope, but perception is one kind of experience.

perception is one kind of experience. — Marchesk

There we go... kinds of experience.

Is experience something that 'exists' regardless of whether or not the agent is aware of it, or must the agent be conscious? If it must be conscious, need it be conscious of the fact that it's doing something? Need it be self-conscious?

Is experience something that 'exists' regardless of whether or not the agent is aware of it, or must the agent be conscious? If it must be conscious, need it be conscious of the fact that it's doing something? Need it be self-conscious?

Don't we negotiate this pragmatically...habitual vs consciously intentional, conscious vs unconscious.

I was thinking more along the lines of growing in complexity...

A good starting point. Set all kinds out. Isolate common denominators that remain extant after removing individual particulars. Look at what's left.

What did you have in mind? Pardon the pun.

Our phenomenal experience of the aesthetic depends as much on what we are perceiving as what we are up to when we perceive. We give privilege to what concerns us, the pragmatic point.

Yet still, there would remain a difference between seeing a real tree and seeing a virtual tree; one is real, the other virtual. — Banno

That's a difference between the trees, not between seeing the trees.

I'm experiencing pain when I stub my toe on a rock. Seems you want to say that I'm experiencing the rock. — creativesoul

You're perceiving the rock, you're experiencing the perception in the form of pain. You can't experience a physical object, only its consequences.

While it may well look different to each of us, we do not each see a different tree — Banno

If I see a blue and black dress and you see a white and gold dress, are we seeing the same thing? If I see a rabbit and you see a duck, are we seeing the same thing?

I think it's an ambiguous question, as I think there are two different ways to interpret what it means to see the same thing. It can refer to having the same phenomenological experience or it can refer to the same external stimulus being responsible for the experience. I don't think either is more right than the other.

Have you ever had the same dream twice? In one sense, probably. In another sense, it doesn't make sense.

So I think most of the disagreements are people talking past each other. To repeat examples I've used before, one person is saying that the painting is paint and that they're reading words, and another person is saying that the painting is of a tree and that they're reading about the triumph of good over evil. Two different ways to talk about the same thing.

I kicked a rock and stubbed my toe. My toe hurt as a result. There was a sharp pain in my toe. I broke it.

Years later, when certain meteorological conditions obtain, it hurts again. The pain is different though. It is now less intense and more of a dull ache in the same area. All of this originates from kicking the rock in the first place.

Moreover, I can remember kicking it. I can actually go outside and find it, because it is still a feature in the landscape. I can look at the rock I kicked years ago while remembering kicking it. I can look at the rock - in real time - and simultaneously remember kicking the rock in times past... all the while feeling pain in my toe.

My eyes are open the entire time.

So I think most of the disagreements are people talking past each other. — Michael

I'm not so sure of that. I mean, I do not think that most disagreements(here on this thread) are a result of incompatible senses being used on 'opposing' sides. In fact, I'm doing my best to set aside my physicalist flavored notion of perception in order to carefully consider another...