The sticking point of the BiV thought experiment is that we can stimulate specific combination of neurons in ways that mimic to a T actual experiences. For instance, I could apply an electrical current to the pressure & temperature sensors in your hand and give you the feeling that you're holding a hot cup of tea. There is no hot cuppa! A little extrapolation and you can now think yourself as a nothing more than a brain in vat whose entire reality is simply a supercomputer causing specific combinations of neurons to fire. Like the cuppa isn't real, neither is the world the brain perceives.
I recall pointing out once in another thread roughly half a year ago that there's only one thing we can be absolutely certain about - mental experience. The so-called physical world could be an illusion/ a simulation. Compare that to how there's no plausible way we could cast doubt of a similar nature regarding the mind. To doubt the mind is to admit there's mind; how else can you doubt it? — TheMadFool
I see, but don't you see the difference? It would be as if explaining how food get in the stomach included an explanatory dead zone, and so there would be nothing to say. Explaining how the cat gets into a brain, BEGINS with a brain phenomenon, — Constance
Nothing whatever can be affirmed outside phenomena, — Constance
The assumption is that something exists between perceiver and perceived, that some kind of medium makes what appears to be direct observation of the world, indirect observation. So what is it exactly that prohibits you from directly observing the world? What is it, exactly, that exists between you and what you perceive? — NOS4A2
Agreed but that doesn't seem to negate the existence of noumena. The point of BiV gedanken experiment is only to show that our total dependence on phenomena raises the possibility but not certainty of the absence of the noumenal world.
As I mentioned in my previous posts, neither Descartes' nor Harman's thought experiments prove the nonexistence of a physical world out there. All they do is cast doubt on it. You need a good reason to go from possible that not there to certain that noumena not there. — TheMadFool
What does this mean, really? Why even speak of the cat "getting into" the brain?
You seem to assume the existence of something in the brain, which we are to be addressing. You seem to believe that "thing" must be explained. This appears to distinguish the brain and the things within it or which are a part of it from everything else, or at least in this case from the cat or whatever it is, if anything at all.
Why do you believe there's a cat-thing in the brain? It would seem to me you must establish that there is such a thing before demanding an explanation for it. — Ciceronianus the White
I understand that all we have to work on are phenomena but that doesn't mean noumena don't exist. That's like saying the only philosopher I can understand is Wittgenstein; ergo, the only philosopher there was/is is Wittgenstein. — TheMadFool
I see it as a problem of identity. You are “wired up to receive the world”, which is presumably hidden beyond your vat, the skull. In this story you identify as the brain or some locus within. If you expand your identity to include the rest of you, you’ll find that you are in direct contact with the rest of the world. From there “essential epistemic connection to make out there come in here” falls apart. — NOS4A2
I am convinced that the epistemic distance between me and my cat is infinite — Constance
You have a point and I detect pragmatic undertones in your approach. Why bother about noumena at all; after all we can never know them (epistemic distance is for all intents and purposes infinite).
However, ontologically, we're not warranted to dismiss noumena - we may doubt it à la Descartes & Harman but we may not assert that noumena don't exist. — TheMadFool
The other way to look at this is through the concept of time. This is front and center in phenomenology, for apprehensions of the world are temporal events, which is why pragmatism is good way account for things: there are no "things", just events, with beginnings, middles and ends, and so the "real" is sought in the reductive "eternal present". — Constance
All roads lead to phenomenology. And the quest for truth in phenomenology leads, I claim, to one place: meditation, an existential destruction of the world whereby language as a dogmatic perceptual determination is annihilated. This sounds very weird, I know. But did we really think the world was not a weird place at the level of basic assumptions? — Constance
What is "outside" anyway, but phenomenon generated by brain matter? — Constance
Philosophy asks the most basic questions. About what? Everything. Then what are basic questions? Questions that underlie everything. They sit quiet as assumptions in a place that gives all knowledge claims there foundation. — Constance
The technical side of philosophy lies in the disciplined body of theory and inquiry regarding all things at this foundation...the way analytic philosophy goes after the givenness of the world." — Constance
Where do we get this qualia idea? From ordinary experience...the source is always everydayness — Constance
It depends on what you mean by religion. ...These play off Kierkegaard's Concept of Anxiety, as does all existential philosophy. — Constance
Not sure what other modes of thinking would be. — Constance
Obviously, they are mistaken. — Constance
I apologize for all the philosophers I threw out at you. But they are what I think. These guys are simply too interesting not to mention. Phenomenology is, as I see it, the only wheel that rolls in philosophy. — Constance
You assume that we're somehow apart from the world, and then ask why we seem to be a part of it. That's an unfounded assumption, to me; it's not something we can we merely take as a given. — Ciceronianus the White
If you accept that we're part of the world, our brains aren't outside the world. What we think is part of the world. What we know is part of the world. Our emotions are part of the world. There's no outside world except in context. In other words, no one speaks of or thinks of a cat as being "inside us." We think and speak of it as "outside us." It doesn't follow that we're not in the world with the cat and everything or everyone else. We're not inside looking out, in other words. Dewey criticized what he called the "spectator" theory of knowledge. That theory uses the metaphor of vision, of seeing, as the model of knowing. Knowing becomes passive, objects known are "out there" and are impressed on us in some fashion which must be explained. But we're not spectators. We're participants. — Ciceronianus the White
I agree, but is that all of philosophy or just metaphysics, including epistemology? — T Clark
I like this. I might even agree with it. I'll think more about it. Except, for me, there is no "givenness of the world. — T Clark
The idea of "qualia" does not match my experience. This is my objection to much of western philosophy, even phenomenology, acknowledging my limited knowledge. Philosophers say it's from experience, but it's not. Not directly, anyway. They take experience and cover it with jelly and syrup and marshmallow. Rational jelly and syrup and marshmallow I guess. It obscures true experience. — T Clark
I'm not sure how to respond to this long paragraph. It feels like the Constance philosophy train has switched tracks and is headed off in a different direction than mine. We probably were on different tracks to start with. — T Clark
I think most of what we know, understand, use is not knowledge of facts or propositions at all, i.e. justified true belief; Gettier; etc. I think there is a model of the world built into each of us. The model is built up from our interactions with the world, our parents, language, education from the time we are babies. It probably also includes factors that are hardwired into us. I feel this model of the world in myself very viscerally all the time. I recognize it as the source most of my day to day decisions both consciously and unconsciously. I guess you would call it intuition. Generally, new knowledge has to get incorporated into that model before it is used. That is vastly oversimplified. — T Clark
I took two courses in philosophy in my first try at college back in 19(mumble, mumble). The first was "The Mind/Brain Identity Problem." I remember thinking in my first week of class "This is all bullshit." And I was right. That set the stage for the rest of my experience with western philosophy. I have maintained this bias to a certain extent up till today. I found a home of sorts with Lao Tzu and Alan Watts. They were talking about things that really did match my personal experience of the world.
Since I've been on the forum, I've met several people, yourself included, who've convinced me that western philosophy can be a powerful tool to understand what is going on. I've found some of the discussions moving. People have showed me that they have the same goal I have always had, but their paths have been a little different. In some cases, I've felt that philosophy saved those people. Gave them a ladder out of confusion and despair. It's hard to argue with that, even though that path definitely doesn't work for me. — T Clark
The BIV scenario takes for granted that there is an outside and an inside. — baker
If you are clear in your position, why not just tell me what it is? — Constance
I'd ask you the same question. I suspect my confusion results from my lack of familiarity with the mysteries of phenomenology. I'd apply to an appropriate hierophant for admission, but have my doubts it would be worth the effort. If initiation is required, we may well use words differently or mean different things when we use them. — Ciceronianus the White
We participate in the world by being part of it, but also by living. Living isn't merely beholding. By living we eat, drink, reproduce, think, feel, see, hear, create, make things out of other things that are in the world--we do everything we do, and interact with other constituents of the world, things and creatures. We shape the world and it shapes us in this fashion. Cats participate in the world as well; they do what they do, and so interact with us and other creatures and things of the world. Cats and people participate in the world. There's nothing remarkable about this. We don't ask how we get in the brain of a cat; why ask how a cat gets in ours? — Ciceronianus the White
There's nothing lying between us and the rest of the world--no sense datum, or whatever. We're just creatures of a particular kind. We experience the world as humans do, given our physical and mental characteristics; cats experience the world as cats do, given their physical and mental characteristics. The world we live in isn't different from the world cats live in; we're just different from cats. — Ciceronianus the White
What you have here is empirical science's view point. I wonder why. All of this has an underpinning of presuppositions, and philosophy's job is to expose these and analyze them. What makes physics even possible? Do you think the logic that identifies things in the world is actually IN the world apart from the perceptual act? — Constance
I know you dislike empirical science, or at least its pretensions as alleged by some. But when you ask what makes physics or any science possible I don't know what you mean. Are you asking a question about we humans--what is it about us that caused us to create science, or how we did so? Are you asking a question about the universe--how it came to be subject to scientific analysis, investigation, with predictable, testable results? Are you asking about both? — Ciceronianus the White
I've read enough of Everyone's Favorite Nazi to satisfy me I'll not benefit from reading him further, and enough Kant as well. As for the others, I fear that if they focus on what you describe to be the purposes of philosophy, they'll have little to say about us as living creatures in the world in which we occur and how we actually live our lives and should live it. So, I'll pass. — Ciceronianus the White
You take this as implying that light is manufactured in the brain. That's an obvious mistake. — Banno
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