We cannot reduce down the current experience into it's component parts without accepting that the act of such reduction is itself mediated by the very biases and preconceptions we're trying to investigate. — Isaac

It seems a tight needle to thread. There's no guarantee that our representation of our environment's structure corresponds to the structure of phenomenal character associated with it, nor that retrospection using those representations allows us even to describe what representational mechanism made that phenomenal character. But nevertheless, we don't need this guarantee as a blank cheque; we don't need non-representational access to our environment to generate representational knowledge of it, precisely because representation is such a relationship between us and our environment.

This undermines the force of necessity accompanying phenomenological description; it's no longer an a-priori conceptual structure imbued with transcendental necessity through immediately discerning its own properties; and turns it into, like any representational mechanism, a machine for making conjectures.

We have to think of introspection and derived conceptual analysis as one experiment among others, as far as our inner workings are concerned.

Do we see properties? Give an account of properties, and we'll check.

This was the part I was talking about:

"The notion of optical illusions is incoherent if we don't know what's really there contra the illusion."

"The idea, when we're talking about people, isn't that their perception is infallible. But to know that it's fallible, we have to know what they're getting wrong, which means getting something right. Otherwise the whole idea of fallibility is incoherent."

It's very interesting, and I'm not finished investigating. Thanks for your subsequent clarifications on what you're claiming...

:smile:

I'm not 100% sure I get what you're saying here, so I may go off on entirely the wrong tangent, but...

What I was trying to say to Sushi in the comment you quoted was that any phenomenal investigation based on introspection (of the sort being described with the box) cannot even begin without the structures already in place we're supposed to be investigating. We've already decided what a 'box' is prior to our investigation of its essential properties, otherwise we wouldn't know what the parameters are to our imagination.

Can I imagine a box with no sides? Well I can certainly imagine something with no sides, so is that a box? It becomes linguistic, not phenomenological.

I can definitely see how phenomenological investigations can be useful with experience, but objects seem more of a community resource which therefore comes down to a linguistic investigation.

"The notion of optical illusions is incoherent if we don't know what's really there contra the illusion." — Terrapin Station

We don't need to know anything about what's 'really' there, we seem, just as a species, to be fundamentally interested in variance minimising. There appears to be a white square when the black circles are (what appears to be) behind it. As soon as the black (what now appears to be) pacmen are removed, there no longer appears to be a white square. We want to reduce this variance, we prefer a model which has either a white square or not. Not a model which has a white square one minute but none the next. So we choose one to be 'accepted' and label the other 'illusion'. Rather than doing so randomly, we do so by minimising variance with a whole host of other models too. The white square being the 'illusion' does this best. At no point in the whole process do we need access to reality nor even to care which is which.

phenomenal character — fdrake

= quale
= 'what it's like' language

I'm not keen on the word 'quale', but that's all it's supposed to mean in anything I've read that features the word.

= quale — bert1

Give me some examples?

We don't need to know anything about what's 'really' there, we seem, just as a species, to be fundamentally interested in variance minimising. There appears to be a white square when the black circles are (what appears to be) behind it. As soon as the black (what now appears to be) pacmen are removed, there no longer appears to be a white square. We want to reduce this variance, we prefer a model which has either a white square or not. Not a model which has a white square one minute but none the next. So we choose one to be 'accepted' and label the other 'illusion'. Rather than doing so randomly, we do so by minimising variance with a whole host of other models too. The white square being the 'illusion' does this best. At no point in the whole process do we need access to reality nor even to care which is which. — Isaac

There's absolutely no grounds on that for calling something an illusion, though. It's completely arbitrary (and ridiculous, and not something that you at all really believe).

• There is the phenomenal character of me lying in the bath with the bubbles of my farts trickling between my thighs.
• There was something it was like for me to be lying in the bath with the bubbles of my farts trickling between my thighs.
• There is the quale of my lying in the bath with the bubbles of my farts trickling between my thighs.

I'm not keen on 'quale' in any context, and I like 'something it's like' in some contexts. I think 'phenomenal character' is probably better in most examples. Depends on the language of the example.

EDIT: were you asking for examples from philosophical literature?

You could just as well have these:

• The experience of me lying in the bath with the bubbles of my farts trickling between my thighs.
• The feeling of me lying in the bath with the bubbles of my farts trickling between my thighs.

I take all these to be essentially equivalent.

Also, if you're going to go back to the "everything is a model" lie then again, we'd need to explain why you went with one model over the other. You didn't do that yet.

Specifically, it seems that you've taken that to include things like letters and such. — creativesoul

Nahhhh.....I was just circumventing what we don’t do when reading a word, as opposed to what we do, re: relate the word to experience. I had in mind to juxtaposition “quark” with, say, “ice cube”, or your “dog”, these being much more familiar, hence more easily fathomable, conceptual identities, but having the same naming procedure. I used a weird word to emphasize that all words are invented, have a first instantiation but always bear a relation, which prioritizes the relation over the word that names it. I was fretting over the length of the comment. Nothing to do with letters and such.
—————-

understanding is imperative to good, productive, and valid discourse. I'm assuming we both seek just that... — creativesoul

Absolutely. In keeping with that, please elucidate “report” for me, if you would, please. I realize you’ve probably done that already, sometime ago, but as I said......I’m very much nearer my expiration date than my born-on date, so my retention isn’t what it used to be. Humor me?

Here’s how it relates to the dialogue:

All experience consists entirely of the thoughts/beliefs of the creature having the experience. — creativesoul

I claim that we cannot even offer an adequate report if we do not know what all thought and belief consists of. — creativesoul

Correlations drawn between different things are the building blocks of everything ever thought, believed, spoken, written, and/or otherwise uttered. — creativesoul

Is it that the combination of all three of those has something to do with “report”? I grant that everything ever spoken, written and/or otherwise uttered is the superficial rendition of the concept “report”, but I hesitate whether everything ever thought and/or believed should be deemed a “report”.

I don’t see how all the old-fashioned dichotomies an be eliminated, when the primary dualism intrinsic to correlation, is part of your theory. I mean, correlation just screams dichotomy, however simplistic it may be. It’s part of mine as well, but I’m not trying to get rid of it. Nevertheless, there is the dichotomy of experience and what it’s like that can easily be dismissed.

Little help?

This isn’t quite what phenomenology is about. It’s not merely a matter of words that gives an object.

Subjectivity isn’t a give or take. Without subjectivity there is no phenomenon to initially apply worded thought.

I take all these to be essentially equivalent. — bert1

Fair enough!

Never ceases to amaze me the lack of respect for scientists we read about here. Not science itself, the people conducting the experiments. Yes, everyone is biased, flawed to some extent, but this is just plain disrespectful. — Isaac

You're joking I hope! Otherwise you are massively overreacting.

I said:

This seems to be all in the interpretation: alternatively, it could be down to a feeling of envy or a preference for grape over cucumber. — Janus

As I said before I have read of studies which seem to contradict the idea that chimps have a sense of fairness. So, I have formed the opinion that this is still controversial. But I haven't read the studies myself, and I don't have the degree of interest or the time to do so.

I do think of humans as animals, but I think the proposal that other animals employ "models" of fairness or justice in a similar enough way to us, for them to count as "models" is an anthropomorphic projection. A model is a full-blown conceptualization, and I can't see any way to coherently think that doesn't require symbolic language.

Now, I said at the start that I have read of studies which seem to contradict the idea that chimps have a "senses" of fairness; but I am not claiming that they don't. They may have a sense of fairness (as opposed to a "model" of fairness and justice) but I remain unconvinced that even this has been definitively shown.

See this for example.

If you can point to a study that does definitely show what you are claiming and explain just how it does show that, then I would be interested enough to take a look.

I don't think "can you imagine" is limited to "can you form a mental image of", and even if we did impose such artificial limits, how is our thus shackled investigation of any use to us now? — Isaac

What else do think imagination is beyond forming images in some sense? Can you describe some further function?

There is the phenomenal character of me lying in the bath with the bubbles of my farts trickling between my thighs.
There was something it was like for me to be lying in the bath with the bubbles of my farts trickling between my thighs.
There is the quale of my lying in the bath with the bubbles of my farts trickling between my thighs. — bert1

All of these are nothing more than you lying in the bath and farting, and being aware of it.

( It's fucking self-indulgent btw :joke: )

We've already decided what a 'box' is prior to our investigation of its essential properties, otherwise we wouldn't know what the parameters are to our imagination. — Isaac

I guess one way to get at the distinction I'm driving at is through the relationship of a perceptual feature to an environmental stimulus. How an environmental stimulus works is different from how it inspires a perceptual feature in an agent. The first how regards the environment; represented through a procedural description of a process in it; the second how regards the relationship of an agent (or agents) to environments.

Out of the jargon, running on a road, slope steepness (environmental stimulus) is felt in body posture change (perceptual feature).

Gotta have both, surely? Can't collapse represented into representation or modelled into model or signified into signifier.

All of these are nothing more than you lying in the bath and farting, and being aware of it. — Janus

Yes, indeed.

How would we be able to know this without knowing what the world is like sans modeling for comparison? — Terrapin Station

Is there a way to know the world without our modeling of it?

Everything is phenomenon
— I like sushi

If that's the case, then the notion itself can and ought be cast aside for it cannot be used to further discriminate between anything at all. It becomes superfluous, unhelpful, and offers nothing but unnecessarily overcomplicated language use. — creativesoul

Eventually.....maybe....we would have arrived here, at this very place. It is not correct to say everything is phenomenon, but rather, every object of sensibility, called appearance, united with an intuition by imagination, is phenomenon. It is the same as an object in general, the form of objects in general. But not as yet a named object. Understanding synthesizes phenomena to some manifold of conceptions, and a logically consistent, non-contradictory named object is cognized. Or not. There are phenomena cognized as possible, there are phenomena cognized as impossible, but no phenomena will ever be cognized that is possible and impossible simultaneously.

Phenomena aren’t used to discriminate, it’s not their job. They are more than helpful; they are necessary, in order for concepts to relate to something given to us by perception. This is also why the source, or occasion, for concepts is vital, because these same faculties are used even if there is nothing presented to sensibility, which means there is nothing that appears....but the rational system maintains its operational capacity. We need to account for how we can think empirical objects when there aren’t any, or they are merely possible objects, and more importantly, how we can cognize that for which no object of experience is at all possible, while using the exact same system that gives us empirical knowledge.

I admit Kantian epistemological metaphysics is historical...to be kind. It is, nonetheless, complete in itself, and incorporates enormous explanatory power. Doesn’t at all make it correct, but what speculative philosophy is, especially one developed long before science got its fingers into the human brain.

If you insist on casting phenomena aside, what would take its place?

understanding is imperative to good, productive, and valid discourse. I'm assuming we both seek just that...
— creativesoul

Absolutely. In keeping with that, please elucidate “report” for me, if you would, please. I realize you’ve probably done that already, sometime ago, but as I said......I’m very much nearer my expiration date than my born-on date, so my retention isn’t what it used to be. Humor me?

Here’s how it relates to the dialogue:

All experience consists entirely of the thoughts/beliefs of the creature having the experience.
— creativesoul

I claim that we cannot even offer an adequate report if we do not know what all thought and belief consists of.
— creativesoul

Correlations drawn between different things are the building blocks of everything ever thought, believed, spoken, written, and/or otherwise uttered.
— creativesoul

Is it that the combination of all three of those has something to do with “report”? I grant that everything ever spoken, written and/or otherwise uttered is the superficial rendition of the concept “report”, but I hesitate whether everything ever thought and/or believed should be deemed a “report”. — Mww

A report is an account of what's happened and/or is happening. They are all meaningfully based in thought and belief formation(drawing correlations between different things). With that in mind, not everything ever thought and/or believed should be deemed a "report" because some thought and belief is prior to language. Reports are existentially dependent upon language. That which exists prior to language is neither existentially dependent upon reports nor consists thereof. Not all thought and belief should be deemed "a report" because some exists prior to language.

understanding is imperative to good, productive, and valid discourse. I'm assuming we both seek just that...
— creativesoul

Absolutely. In keeping with that, please elucidate “report” for me, if you would, please. I realize you’ve probably done that already, sometime ago, but as I said......I’m very much nearer my expiration date than my born-on date, so my retention isn’t what it used to be. Humor me?

Here’s how it relates to the dialogue:

All experience consists entirely of the thoughts/beliefs of the creature having the experience.
— creativesoul

I claim that we cannot even offer an adequate report if we do not know what all thought and belief consists of.
— creativesoul

Correlations drawn between different things are the building blocks of everything ever thought, believed, spoken, written, and/or otherwise uttered.
— creativesoul

Is it that the combination of all three of those has something to do with “report”? — Mww

Those three things are thought and/or belief statements. My offering them is to offer a report of my own thought and belief. The notion of report I'm using is quite simple, 'layman' even. I mean, there is no inherent nuance for you to be overly concerned with aside from the following common sense measure of understanding:That which is being reported upon always exists in it's entirety prior to the report.

The first claim is just plain common sense language use.

The second claim has been arrived at via (a heretofore undisclosed)deductive means. To shed a bit of light on that means, I'll offer this:We first look to what all thought and belief statements have in common that make them what they are. We keep in mind that in addition to being a common denominator of all thought and belief statements, these proposed basic elemental constituents must be able to exist in their entirety prior to language. Otherwise, our notion of human though and belief fails to be amenable to an evolutionary progression from no thought and belief(at the moment of biological conception) to the complex metacognitive endeavor that we're currently an active participant in.

The third claim is the conclusion arrived at from the groundwork 'elucidated' upon above.

There's absolutely no grounds on that for calling something an illusion, though. It's completely arbitrary — Terrapin Station

->

Rather than doing so randomly, we do so by minimising variance with a whole host of other models too. The white square being the 'illusion' does this best. — Isaac

we'd need to explain why you went with one model over the other. You didn't do that yet. — Terrapin Station

->

I don't think it's possible to answer such a question from outside of a model, the closest I can possibly get to an answer would be from a model of how models obtain. That's why I chose that one. — Isaac

If you don't like my answers then fine, but it's pointless keep asking for them as I haven't given you any, we're just going tend up going round in circles that way.

This isn’t quite what phenomenology is about. It’s not merely a matter of words that gives an object. — I like sushi

Yes, but it obviously seems that way to me otherwise I wouldn't have wrote what I wrote. It's not really much a contribution just to say "you got that wrong".

Subjectivity isn’t a give or take. Without subjectivity there is no phenomenon to initially apply worded thought. — I like sushi

I don't understand this sentence at all, any chance of re-wording it?

You're joking I hope! Otherwise you are massively overreacting. — Janus

Unfortunately not, but I do have an ear infection which is making me more than usually cranky (which is very cranky). I'm a little fed up in general, so adding glib rejections of decades of patient scientific research to my list of antagonists was all too easy. You have my apologies.

A model is a full-blown conceptualization, and I can't see any way to coherently think that doesn't require symbolic language.

Now, I said at the start that I have read of studies which seem to contradict the idea that chimps have a "senses" of fairness; but I am not claiming that they don't. They may have a sense of fairness (as opposed to a "model" of fairness and justice) but I remain unconvinced that even this has been definitively shown.

See this for example.

If you can point to a study that does definitely show what you are claiming and explain just how it does show that, then I would be interested enough to take a look. — Janus

I don't see there's much point in pursuing the evidence, If you're not convinced by the two articles I gave CS here, then I have nothing more. I suspect what we really disagree about is not the evidence (though you may be more persuaded one way and I the other), but the definition of 'model', and no amount of evidence is going to solve that.

Your reliance on language to form complex conceptions is, I think, mistaken. there must first be a referent before there is a referring word. The concept has to come first. A very advanced brain, I'll give you as a necessary cause, but language... I think you're subliming certain mechanism of thought into something more esoteric than they really are.

What else do think imagination is beyond forming images in some sense? Can you describe some further function? — Janus

Can you imagine a really load noise? Can you imagine the set of all sets? Can you imagine if you forgot where your home was?...

OK, but consider you're walking along the floor in some weird house, your feature detection system is telling you the floor is not level, you check with your level and indeed it is at 30 degrees. You walk into the next room and your feature detection system tells you the floor is steep, you check and it is indeed steep, it's 60 degrees. You walk into the next room and your feature detection tells you the floor is astonishingly steep, you check and it's 90 degrees.

Only this last never happens, because a floor at 90 degrees is a wall. you've decided already that whatever you're experience tells you about the steepness floor, it's only allowed to tell you certain answers because a floor only has certain steepness values before it's not a floor anymore.

And this is not arbitrary definition. It's strongly correlated with the very somatic feedback which modulates our perceptual experience. At what angle does a very steep floor become a wall? The angle at which we can no longer walk on it without falling over. Would spiders distinguish between floors and walls?

Gotta have both, surely? Can't collapse represented into representation or modelled into model or signified into signifier. — fdrake

I think you can. All I'm saying is that what is 'represented' to our conscious awareness is itself a model. So to take your running example. The experience of running on a road - the steepness alone - is 'represented' to us as an already integrated part of our 3D spatiotemporal model. There is no actual steepness of the road because 'steepness' is a variable within our spatiotemporal model, not a property of the road. When we then, as neuroscientists, or psychologists, or philosophers of mind, try to understand how all this fits together we must form a model of these models, right? But to do so, we have only the same system to use. I cannot imagine 5D space, not because there's no such thing (it's mathematically possible, even physically possible according to some). I can't imagine 5D space because I don't have a system in the device I'm using (the brain) that can do that.

Likewise with discussing the limits to such an investigation as this. Phenomenological or otherwise. Certain answers are ruled out by the parameters of the device we're using to investigate, What I'm referring to as our model of models, but if that term is confusing we could just say the limits of the device, just like a spectrometer can't detect how load something is.

Words are intersubjective. Anyone can experience a box without sharing a common worded representation of box. It is the subjective of a box that matters.

It is a tricky subject because many people go for Heidegger’s Phenomenological Hermeneutics rather than referring back to Husserl’s Transcendental Reduction.

You cannot NOT be subjective. It isn’t a choice. You don’t need worded language to interact in the world of things. Much like an ant doesn’t need to understand it is on a table to be on a table - or us on a planet.

The term horizon is probably of better use. All there is is the horizon of subjective experience. I am certainly not saying we don’t bring past experiences along with us, that’s clear enough.

Anyone can experience a box without sharing a common worded representation of box. It is the subjective of a box that matters. — I like sushi

Yes, maybe, but we're talking to each other here. It's not true to say anyone can experience a box without sharing a common worded representation of box to me, because in saying it to me you're relying on a common use of 'box' to imply some parameters. My private distinction of what a box is never gets a look in, it's never relevant. The moment I even conceive of distinguishing 'box' from 'not box' I'm doing so entirely in a social ecosystem, I'm doing so entirely to get the word 'box' right. "Is this 'box', how about this, or this". My thought is testing what the world of my language users will accept as 'box' in different contexts.

My subjective experience of 'box' is inextricably tied up with the language community.

My subjective experience of 'box' is inextricably tied up with the language community. — Isaac

Why is it? Are you suggesting that it is impossible to understand what a box is without the word box?