Experience doesn’t amount to data unless it is interpreted. — Wayfarer

That’s the first thing I said back on page one.

Great minds.......etc, etc, etc.

we don’t directly apprehend reality. We perceive an independent reality — Noah Te Stroete

Exactly, methinks. We directly perceive, but indirectly apprehend. As dpolis says, we add elements from within us. Which is the fundamental principle grounding epistemological dualism.

My point was that while the form of these is different, their matter is the same. — Dfpolis

This makes no sense to me. The first is just a tree. That's all it is phenomenally. The second is phenomenally the tree plus phenomenally the notion of a self, an I, the notion of a perception (or if you want to say a judgment). — Terrapin Station

The tree in the first instance does not simply exist, it exists in relation to me. I can change my relation to it by doing things to myself, not to the tree. So, encountering a tree is loaded with intelligibility about myself:
- As I can change my relation to it, there is a relation to be changed, and thus relata which I choose to name "the tree" and "myself."
- I have encountered the tree, so I am a being with the power to encounter other beings. I can call this kind of encounter "experience."
- I have the power to receive content in experiences and call this kind of receptivity "subjectivity" and so see myself as a subject in relation to a tree object.
- Etc.

All of this allows me to tease <I am perceiving a tree> out of the encounter with the tree. The essential point is than an encounter is not a concept. I can't tease any of the above out of the bare concept <tree>, but, since an encounter is a dynamic relation, I can tease much out of the dynamics present in it.

You were saying that moving away from realism requires theoretical explanations, but so does sticking to realism as soon as you invoke false beliefs or hallucinations. — leo

I never said otherwise. Idealists pretend it's not the case and that idealism is clearly the default however.

What's important to realize is that we have to make theoretical moves in our philosophy of perception, our basic stance on realism/idealism, whatever our stance is. Once you realize that, we can deal with the reasons why we'd choose one construct over another.

You were guessing that I was arguing that one choice didn't involve invoking theory at all, while the other did. That's not at all what I was doing. I'm trying to get "your side" to admit that you're making choices based on theoretical options. It's worth exploring how you're arriving at the theoretical options you're arriving at, what those theoretical options imply, why you'd choose them over other options, etc.

Are hallucinations real? — Galuchat

Yes. They are real experiences potentially informing us of the reality of some neurological disorder. — Dfpolis

So, they are an encountered experience type of experience potentially informing us of the encountered experience of some neurological disorder.

This is nonsense. — Galuchat

That is how implication often works. It allows us to move from the data of experience to new realities, many of which are available to experience. For example, Jane has a hallucination and seeks medical help. The doctors may do blood tests and MRIs to seek the cause. That is medicine, not nonsense.

The tree in the first instance does not simply exist, it exists in relation to me. — Dfpolis

But this is the very question I'm asking you. Isn't it ever just that there's the tree, and not the phenomenon of "the tree in relation to me." If I'm asking you if it's ever that there's JUST the tree, you can't say "Yes, that's sometimes the case" but add "it's always in relation to me"--because that latter part isn't JUST the tree, it's something else, too.

I'd say that sometimes there's just the tree (well, and just the stuff around it, too--the grass, etc.)

dimensionally diminished mapping. — Dfpolis

Can you explain this, though? — Noah Te Stroete

Carnap has a model in which the yes or no answers to logically independent questions define different dimensions in the vector space of knowledge. While I see problems with his model, I think it can be a useful analogy. (Also, it can be used in conjunction with Shannon's notion of information.)

So, when we look at the front of a house we have a projection that answers certain questions, and leaves others (e.g. those about the back of the house) unanswered. Thus, our experience spans fewer of Carnap's dimensions than exhaustive data on the house would.

But perception is the result of something acting upon us, as well as us acting upon what acts upon us, and what we seem to perceive is not necessarily precisely the same as what is acting upon us. — Janus

This is because classification involves judgement, that may err, while experience does not. There is a many-to-one map from types of causes to types of experience. E.g., the experience of snakes might be due to reptiles or alcohol.

A contrary phenomenological definition might be that we are perceiving when we think we are perceiving, that we cannot be mistaken about it, and under that definition, since we certainly seem to be perceiving when we dream, dreams would be counted as instances of perception. — Janus

Dreams have a different phenomenology than perception, so the resemblance is only superficial.

That is how implication often works. It allows us to move from the data of experience to new realities, many of which are available to experience. — Dfpolis

This is more nonsense, given your definition of reality in terms of experience. So, we are done here.

“the process of considering something independently of its associations, attributes, or concrete accompaniments”. I submit that’s diametrically opposed to what we do when we think; all thought is associative, insofar as understanding is the synthesis of intuition with conception, the epitome of an a priori construct. That which is constructed, is the model of whatever object affects perception, better known as representation. — Mww

As humans can only represent a limited number of chunks of information (typically < 8) at any time, we necessarily focus on some notes of intelligibility to the exclusion of others. That is abstraction -- taking what interests us out of its larger context.

Of course, what we do focus on has associations, but associations are not judgements. We may think of them as suggestions for reflection, not logical commitments. An analytical thinker will not commit to <A is B> simply because the concept <A> is associated with <B>.

I am not suggesting that we either know anything a priori or make a priori commitments.

As a concrete example of a model, consider the mind. We know from experience that we are conscious, and that damage to the brain affects our capacity to process data (and other data on human data processing). Naturalists add the construct (which they do not know from experience and cannot deduce) that the brain produces consciousness by some unknown physical mechanism. So their model contains both known and constructed elements.

My model includes other experiential elements, derived from Aristotle and from mystical experience, but it also has a construct, namely that there is a physical basis for the fact that some data is available to awareness while other data processing is unavailable to awareness.

We do not construct the forms of representation (qualia) in the sense that we construct hypotheses. Rather they are, themselves, data -- part of what is given in experience. Red light makes its presence felt by evoking a response. If it did not evoke a response, we could not know it was present. The form of that response (the quale red) is contingent and quite unimportant. It is merely part of our biology in the large sense.

Do you agree empirical realism does not diminish the theory that the human cognitive system is representational? — Mww

I take it that "empirical realism" is a term of art. I do not know how it is defined, so I decline to comment.

I will say that I do not see neural representations, or any perceptual representations, as objects distinct from what is "represented." I see them as presentations, not re-presentations. My perception of an apple is an existential penetration of me by the apple. The apple's modification of my neural state is identically my neural representation of the apple. This identity precludes any separation of perception and perceived -- any perceptual duality.

The problem, once again, is Whitehead's fallacy of misplaced concreteness. We confuse our abstract notion of the object as contained within well-defined surfaces with the actuality of a core surrounded by a radiance of action. If an object's radiance of action were removed, the object would no longer act as it does -- would no longer be what it is. It is this radiance of action which penetrates the perceiving subject -- creating the partial identity of perceiver and perceived I described above.

Does one work with 'experience'? — StreetlightX

In thinking. If we had no experiential content, we would have no material to think about.

Is there some other thing that we could instead, in principle, might 'work with' besides 'experience'? — StreetlightX

No.

The OP says 'experience' is 'how one relates to the world'. Is it? I 'relate' to the road by walking on it. — StreetlightX

How do you know that you walk on the road, except by experiencing it? Note that I am not denying physical interaction. I am looking at the relation of thought and reality.

'Experience' tends to be a shadow word, a word that looks to do conceptual work but does not. It conjures phantoms. — StreetlightX

You will have to make a case for this as I do not see it.

Experience doesn’t amount to data unless it is interpreted. — Wayfarer

It can't be interpreted unless it is given -- and "datum" is just Latin for "something given."

Besides, ‘experience’ is too broad a word in the context to really mean anything. You could say that if you’re not conscious, then you are unconscious, although it’s a pretty trivial tautology. But different people can share experiences, and draw completely different conclusions from them, so there’s clearly more than ‘experience’ in play. — Wayfarer

You have not said why "experience" doesn't mean anything.

I did not make any tautological claims. If you think I did, quote them.

I did not claim to give an exhaustive account of experience, or of epistemology. So, I am happy to agree that there is more to be considered than experience.

In thinking. — Dfpolis

So one 'works with experience' in thinking. Experience is how we relate to the world. Does thought then exhuast our 'relation' with the world? Or since experience seems anterior to thought in this topology, is there experience which is not subject to thought? If the former than you beg the question. If the latter then you've said very little, almost nothing, about experience.

But this is the very question I'm asking you. Isn't it ever just that there's the tree, and not the phenomenon of "the tree in relation to me." — Terrapin Station

The tree as an independent existent being is ontologically prior, but logically posterior, to our perceptual encounter (the phenomenal tree). The phenomenological encounters always involve a subject.

If I'm asking you if it's ever that there's JUST the tree, you can't say "Yes, that's sometimes the case" but add "it's always in relation to me"--because that latter part isn't JUST the tree, it's something else, too. — Terrapin Station

This is very confused. "Just a tree" describes a being, an intelligible object, not a phenomenon. To have a phenomenon, an appearance, there has to be a subject to which something appears. So, a subject is implicit in any phenomenon.

One can abstract the tree from the phenomenon as it is one of the relata, but an actual phenomena requires two relata: a subject and object.

So, we are done here. — Galuchat

As you wish.

The tree as an independent existent being is ontologically prior, — Dfpolis

I don't know why this is so hard, but I'm not asking you anything about that.

The phenomenological encounters always involve a subject. — Dfpolis

This is what I'm asking you about. So your answer to "Isn't there (for you) sometimes just a tree phenomenally" is actually "No," it's not "Yes."

For me, phenomenally, sometimes there's just a tree. There's no subject.

To have a phenomenon, an appearance, there has to be a subject to which something appears. — Dfpolis

There's not always a subject for me phenomenally. In fact, quite often that's the case.

So then the issue is why our phenomenal experience is so different. I can't imagine having a phenomenal sense of a subject 100% of the time. And it seems that you can't imagine sometimes NOT having the phenomenal sense of a subject.

Does thought then exhuast our 'relation' with the world? — StreetlightX

No, it does not. My statement was made in the context of the epistemological problem of realism. Taking out of that context is not helpful.

Or since experience seems anterior to thought in this topology, is there experience which is not subject to thought? — StreetlightX

No, it is not prior to thought. Experience is a species of thought.

If the former than you beg the question. If the latter then you've said very little, almost nothing, about experience. — StreetlightX

I was not trying to explicate experience, but to point out the difficulties involved in attacking realism.

I never said otherwise. Idealists pretend it's not the case and that idealism is clearly the default however.

What's important to realize is that we have to make theoretical moves in our philosophy of perception, our basic stance on realism/idealism, whatever our stance is. Once you realize that, we can deal with the reasons why we'd choose one construct over another.

You were guessing that I was arguing that one choice didn't involve invoking theory at all, while the other did. That's not at all what I was doing. I'm trying to get "your side" to admit that you're making choices based on theoretical options. It's worth exploring how you're arriving at the theoretical options you're arriving at, what those theoretical options imply, why you'd choose them over other options, etc. — Terrapin Station

Fair enough. I guess one of the main reasons I'm not a realist is that I have noticed how what I believe changes in profound ways what I experience, so in a sense the reality I see depends on what I believe. And then I can't just model what I see to conclude that my mind reduces to a brain, that conclusion isn't warranted to me, it makes more sense to me to say that what I experience depends on me in some way, whatever that 'me' is (which isn't just the body I see). I have also noticed how interacting with other people can lead them to change their beliefs and to then see a different reality, or how that can lead myself to change my beliefs. "Folie à deux" is a thing (or "folie à plusieurs"), wherein several people come to share a reality that is very different from the commonly accepted one. Of course the realist view sees it as a mental disorder ("there is only one reality so if they don't agree with ours they're crazy!"), but without assuming realism it doesn't have to be seen that way. And it seems many other people have noticed that the reality they see depends in some way on what they believe. And I think that people who always stick to the same beliefs wouldn't understand that, because they wouldn't have had that experience.

Experience is a species of thought. — Dfpolis

Experience is how we humans relate to [reality] -- and we can only deal with it as we relate to it. — Dfpolis

So if experience is a species of thought, and experience is how we relate to reality, I'm not sure how it follows that thought does not exhaust our relation to reality. Unless of course one admits extra-experiential 'relations to reality'. Or extra-cognitive 'relations to reality in general.

I guess Terrapin would disagree with that, he says he encounters mostly phenomena of direct things, for instance the phenomenon of "just a tree", not the phenomenon of "light traveling from a tree towards our eyes", so how does a realist conclude that everything he sees is light reaching his eyes? — leo

Then I would ask what happens to the tree when the lights are out? Why do you need light to see anything?

Terrapin said "The only way to move away from realism with respect to experience is to introduce theoretical explanations for what's really going on", I'm arguing that to stick with realism we have to "introduce theoretical explanations for what's really going on" all the same, unless we say that everything we experience is real. — leo

Realism is just one of those theoretical explanations. Idealism and solipsism are others. Anytime we attempt to get at the cause of our experience, we are introducing a theoretical explanation.

Is your mind real? Does it have causal power? If you can talk about your experiences, then they are real, no? The problem here is that we aren't be clear on what we are talking about. Are we talking about our experience, the thing we experience, or something else? When we use language we need to be more specific of what part of reality we are referring to - our experience, our perception, or the thing that we are perceiving (light or the object).

. Of course the realist view sees it as a mental disorder ("there is only one reality — leo

Remember that I'm a realist, but a relativist/"perspectivalist." There is only one reality, but it's not identical at any two different reference points.

Realism also doesn't imply anything about "always sticking to the same beliefs." I'm not even sure where you'd be getting that notion from.

The tree as an independent existent being is ontologically prior, — Dfpolis

I don't know why this is so hard, but I'm not asking you anything about that. — Terrapin Station

I did not think you were. I was saying this was all that is "just a tree."

So your answer to "Isn't there (for you) sometimes just a tree phenomenally" is actually "No," it's not "Yes." — Terrapin Station

The content of an experience can be just a tree, but an experience is more than its content. By avoiding the term "experience," your question about "it" being just a tree is ambiguous.

For me, phenomenally, sometimes there's just a tree. There's no subject. — Terrapin Station

Then there is no appearance, and so, no phenomena.

So then the issue is why our phenomenal experience is so different. I can't imagine having a phenomenal sense of a subject 100% of the time. And it seems that you can't imagine sometimes NOT having the phenomenal sense of a subject. — Terrapin Station

Let us be clear. I am not saying that the intelligibility of the subject is always, or even usually, actualized. I'm saying that if there is no subject, there can be no appearance, and so the subject is always intelligible/implicit/latent in any phenomenon. As it is intelligible, it can be teased out by reflection without adding new content/intelligibility. The teasing-out is actualizing intelligibility we did not previously attend to.

I guess Terrapin would disagree with that, he says he encounters mostly phenomena of direct things, for instance the phenomenon of "just a tree", not the phenomenon of "light traveling from a tree towards our eyes", so how does a realist conclude that everything he sees is light reaching his eyes? — leo

I'm not sure what post that was from (I just saw it because Harry Hindu was responding to it).

The question I was asking Dfpolis was about phenomena or phenomenal experience per se (though again, "experience" has a lot of baggage I was trying to avoid). The reason I was asking him that was that the first post of this thread seemed to be from the old idealist/representationalist/at-least-agnostic-on-realism standpoint, where he seemed to be saying that we can only know experience as mental events that we have. That's not what phenomena are at all limited to for me. I often have zero notion of something mental going on.

That's not saying anything about whether we perceive trees via light traveling to our eyes. But that's an issue of "what's really going on." The phenomenon, qua the phenomenon, isn't of light traveling from the tree to your eyes. That's rather theoretical.

The content of an experience can be just a tree, but an experience is more than its content. — Dfpolis

What is that supposed to mean? It seems kind of nonsensical to me. What's the difference between "content of an experience" and "an experience"?

Realism isn't simply the view that there are things that exist independent of perception — Michael

Realism, in philosophy, the viewpoint which accords to things which are known or perceived an existence or nature which is independent of whether anyone is thinking about or perceiving them. — Encyclopedia Britannica

If we look at Kant's transcendental idealism as an example, it is accepted that there are things that exist independent of perception but argued that these "noumena" are unknowable and not the objects of perception. The objects of perception – known as "phenomena" – are not independent of perception and so Kant's transcendental idealism is a kind of idealism. — Michael

Sounds like realism to me. For a realist there are objects and perception of objects. The qualia of experience are not objects themselves. Many people here seem to be confusing the two. If there isn't a difference between the two, then solipsism. If there is, then (indirect) realism.

So it might be clearer to say that one is a realist about some X rather than just to say that one is a realist. For example one might be a realist about the kind of fundamental entities described by our best scientific models but believe that the objects of perception – chairs, trees, people, etc. – are not reducible to these fundamental entities. — Michael

If you are a realist about some experience, but not others then you aren't being logically consistent. Experiences exist out in the world, separate from me, and within me. There are experiences that are not part of my experience. We can talk about our experiences just as we can talk about trees. Experiences are real things. Trees are real things. What is the difference?

An example of a theory that suggests something like this is enactivism: "organisms do not passively receive information from their environments, ... [they] participate in the generation of meaning ... engaging in transformational and not merely informational interactions: they enact a world." Objects of perception are products of our interaction with an external world and as such are as much dependent on us as they are dependent on this external world. — Michael

I've talked about something similar. Our perception of X is the effect of our body's interaction with the world. When we attempt to explain some experience as the effect of some cause that isn't the same as the effect, then we are explaining some form of realism. Notice that you still use realist terms, like "organisms" and "environments". Our experience isn't an organism or an environment. It is an experience - which is a causal relationship between the two. You have experiences about organisms and environments.

So if experience is a species of thought, and experience is how we relate to reality, I'm not sure how it follows that thought does not exhaust our relation to reality. — StreetlightX

Because we can relate to reality in other ways than thinking. As I said before, you are ignoring the context of "experience is how we relate to reality," which is epistemological, not physical or metaphysical. So, you are to understand "experience is how we relate to reality epistemologically."

One thing that's going to make this confusing, by the way, is that a lot of people are going to read comments from a Kantian perspective, when not everyone buys or is speaking from that perspective.

For example, as Michael is quoted above, he says, "objects of perception – known as 'phenomena'" a la Kantianism. But that's not the only way to use the term "phenomena." Synonyms for common senses of "phenomena" (or the singular "phenomenon") include "occurrence, event, happening, fact, situation, circumstance, case, incident, episode, appearance, thing"

Personally, I don't buy any sort of phenomena/noumena distinction, no appearance/reality distinction. Appearances are what things are really like from some reference point, and there's always some reference point.

The content of an experience can be just a tree, but an experience is more than its content. — Dfpolis

What is that supposed to mean? It seems kind of nonsensical to me. What's the difference between "content of an experience" and "an experience"? — Terrapin Station

The content of an experience is the intelligibility actualized in it. The experience is the act (which happens to be that of a subject) actualizing that intelligibility. The act can be understood as an act without adding anything. When we do, we know more than the original content.

Appearances are what things are really like from some reference point, and there's always some reference point. — Terrapin Station

This seems reasonable. I would say that whatever the object does in presenting itself to me in these circumstances is something it can actually do in these circumstances.

The content of an experience is the intelligibility actualized in it. — Dfpolis

What in the world is that supposed to refer to? It seems extremely gobbledygooky to me, probably because it's resting on theoretical views that I don't at all buy.