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

Actually, it goes beyond this. It is NOT a matter that all that can be affirmed is mental activity. There is only one conclusion, and I mean only one, that issues form this radical hermenuetics of the brain in vat problem: Nothing whatever can be affirmed outside phenomena, thus, the inside and outside of the brain in a vat is nonsense, for it is nonsense to speak of an outside to something all possible insides and outsides contexts of which are bound to a singularity. It would be like talk about the extension of a point, or angels on the head of a pin. Just nonsense. It can only not be. You would have to reach out, beyond phenomena.
Near death experiencers talk like this. But then, they borrow language from the singularity called the world.

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

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.

Nothing whatever can be affirmed outside phenomena, — Constance

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 noumen not there to certain that noumena not there and you don't have one.

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

Neurons?? What do you mean?

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

Noumena?? Whos is talking about noumena? You understand that Kant said nothing about this unknown X save that he was compelled to bring it up. It is not in space or time, certainly NOT the "physical world"; it is unthinkable, as it is beyond the conceptual world. No sense can be made of noumena at all. It's just that in order for representations to be what they are, they have to be OF something. kant goes to great lengths to steer us clear of bad metaphysics in the Dialectics. But Harman knows this and all analytic philosophers know this. Kant was an idealist, and he was never refuted, only ignored, and they very well know that it is categorically impossible to generate an epistemic nexus between "noumena" and the conceptual/sensible intuition object one observes. One would have to grasp noumena as a causal entity!! One would have to fit noumena into an observable sequence of events tracing one to the other. Is causality an "out there" feature? Nobody holds this. What they do is assume causality in discussions about things because they claim, with Wittgenstein, that factual "states of affairs" are the only things that make sense. But Witt never for a moment thought one could talk about conditions that are free of logical structure.
The point is, no sense can be made of an epistemic connection between transcendental object and observer because one can use phenomenological models of possible connections to talk about things that are not phenomena. And all we have are phenomenological models.
Finally note how the question posed is entirely ignored. It is intended to be a very simple thought construction in "how does anything out there get in here?" You seem to want some kind of qualified knowledge of the cat. But it is worse than it seems: it is using the physicalist model of the world, the (standard, putting aside quantum entanglement) empirical scientist's model, that knowledge becomes impossible for knowing my cat, for there is nothing epistemic about causality, and tracing a causal sequence from the cat to my receptive faculties says nothing about how knowledge is related to the cat. Indeed, it shows just the opposite. I know my "cat" as well as a dented car fender "knows' the offending guard rail.

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

But how does one explain knowledge? this idea of getting the cat in the brain is just a way saying how absurd it would be if such knowledge were possible. Simply put, according the language of neuroanatomy, a bunch of neurons connected by axonal fibers firing together is not a cat. But it goes further than this: in order to even conceive of neurons firing, one has to have other neurons firing to do the conceiving. So, even on this model of neurophysiology, knowledge about the "outside" world doesn't even begin to make sense. What is "outside" anyway, but phenomenon generated by brain matter? But again, to call something a brain is no more foundational than calling something outside, for both are equal as phenomena. There IS no "out" to this if we follow the very simple and accessible logic here.

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.

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 the “essential epistemic connection to make out there come in here” falls apart.

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

Well, it is not that there is nothing, its just that this is entirely beyond conceiving, because it is supposed to be outside of experience. Forget Wittgenstein, because we don't need him to tell us that two things in the world cannot have an epistemic nexus between them. To me, it is as simple as the opacity test. Just how opaque is a brain? I give it a 10, and a zero for transparency. All who object to this avoid the simplicity of it, and I think it is because there is a blind assumption in place that to know a thing is as plain as a thing can be, which is true, until the question is raised as to what and how. Then it falls apart instantly. What do we usually say about such things that have no explanatory basis? It is not that we simply doubt them. that would be like doubting the earth is round. No, we flat out dismiss them.
I am convinced that the epistemic distance between me and my cat is infinite at the level of basic analysis, that whatever that is is completely Other.

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

so are you saying the solution lies in this expansion? And I would say the world is what we experience, not what is beyond this. We are wired up to something, but then, this something is beyond the language we can use to talk about it. So where does this put "wired up to receive"? In this matrix of experience, "wired up" makes sense, but to talk about things that are outside of language, logic and sensation, and beyond time and space? What is the basis any meaningful statement?

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.

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". This gets way over the top but it is THE principle ontological claim of 20th century Continental philosophy.
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?

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

Truth Is Not Truth Until Truth Is Eternal.

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

Big claims! I like the last sentence! G'day!

What is "outside" anyway, but phenomenon generated by brain matter? — Constance

You appear to assume that we're somehow apart from the world, and then ask why we seem to be a part of it. I'm not sure how else to construe what you've written. I don't think you've been very clear regarding just what you intend to say, as it now seems you were never serious about the cat getting into our brains in some fashion. But I may just be dull, or incapable of understanding, not being an initiate of phenomenology. I've been told when I've complained about Heidegger's mysterious use of words and jargon that I was expected to learn what he meant and shouldn't comment until I did so. This has given me to wonder if there's a "Heidegger Code" similar to that of Da Vinci according to that popular book.

Regardless, the assumption we're apart from the world is unfounded, to me; it's not something we can we merely take as a given.

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.

So, I'm not really sure what it is that you're asking, or what you're point is. I assume you're not asking for an explanation of how our bodies work or how we see or how our brains work. But the "basic questions" you speak of seem to me to arise only if you assume were on the inside looking out.

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

I agree, but is that all of philosophy or just metaphysics, including epistemology?

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

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.

Where do we get this qualia idea? From ordinary experience...the source is always everydayness — Constance

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.

It depends on what you mean by religion. ...These play off Kierkegaard's Concept of Anxiety, as does all existential philosophy. — Constance

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.

Not sure what other modes of thinking would be. — Constance

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.

Obviously, they are mistaken. — Constance

I was getting worried until I came to this.

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

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.

So - no need to apologize.

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

I don't mean to complain, but I find the above suspiciously unresponsive. If you are clear in your position, why not just tell me what it is?
Apart from the world? What is it you mean by "world"?
As to my assumption, I merely raised a question, not an ontological thesis about different kinds of being. It may turn out that judgment about the epistemic distance between me and my cat is perfectly compatible with not being apart from the world. But I don't know what you mean by world, nor what you mean by being a part of it.
Of course, not everything is the same, and things certainly stand apart from other things, like dogs from cats from Chinese pictograms; I mean, things being what they are rests with difference, so I'm at all sure what not being apart is about.

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

But then, what does it mean to be a participant? Of course, no one thinks of a cat being inside us. This idea is just a way of showing what it might be like if knowledge and the justificatory conditions for knowing actually were about things that were independent of phenomena. That "aboutness" would have to stretch to the thing in some unimaginable way, like spooky "action at a distance". I mean, if you can't say in any way that the cat I perceive is beyond the phenomenological presentation, then you might as well just say so and call yourself a pragmatic phenomenologist. As I am. As Rorty was, though Rorty misses the boat in ways I won't go into (pragmatism is not descriptive at the most basic level of apprehending the world).
Frankly, when you say "in the world with the cat and everything and everyone else" I think you nailed it. But if this kind of thinking issues from an empirical scientist's "world" then no; in my view it all gets very peculiar: I do see that there is this "otherness" that is presented in and among the phenomena of the world which cannot be explained on a simply physical model. Putnam argued with Rorty on just this, saying when he looked at his wife, it is simply patently implausible to say all that is there is a pragmatic phenomenon. There is this very mysterious Other, other people, things, things NOT me that have a presence that is unquestionably "out there". Don't really know how far Rorty went, but his idea of ethics and pragmatic truth simply fails utterly (Simon Critchley argues) . THEN: how is it that we explain knowledge of this OTher? This metaphysical OTher? There must be, as you say, an underlying unity of all things that does indeed connect the world in unseen ways, One thing the Brain in a Vat counterexample to knowledge does is it makes us aware of the metaphysics of ordinary affairs.

There's your problem: "out there" vs "in here".
— Banno

How so? — Constance

The BIV scenario takes for granted that there is an outside and an inside.

I agree, but is that all of philosophy or just metaphysics, including epistemology? — T Clark

That is pretty much what philosophy is about. But it is, in my view, very important to know that in doing this, philosophy is an existential matter, and not merely an abstract logical exercise. The world is literally made of thought and habits and the familiar, and the nameless intrusion that gives rise to all of this is utterly transcendental. Ideas are not abstractions, but are as real as any sensory intuition. So, when we talk about truly basic assumptions dealing with the truth, reality, value and ethics, and so on, we are restructuring reality. As I said earlier, in a letter Husserl once wrote that his readers, many of them, were inspired to turn to religion because his "epoche" had an existential enlightenment dimension to it. Husserl himself didn't seem to get it, and few do, for it is after all, strangely, well, mystical. Wittgenstein knew this, as do the current French post modern theological thinkers like Jean luc Marion and Michel Henry.
This kind of thinking is generally something confined to the mystical arts of Eastern thought. I read through much of the Abhidhamma arguing with Baker in another thread, and was taken as to how the Buddha could be seen as the ultimate phenomenologist.

Thoughts are, to use a metaphor, the threads of the living fabric of the world, and hence, when we think, we do more than interpret or define' we "make" our world, and the epoche takes one into its core (though always keeping in mind what Derrida says about the text. Tough issue to discuss here).

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

Such an interesting thing to say, for it places you right in the middle of a very important, post modern debate that deals with has been called the "metaphysics of presence". It is a long historical argument, but the entire affair rests with Time: To see and know is an historical event, the past and all of that language acquisition moving into the "present" to define, interpret, make familiar, and so on. How can one ever affirm a present in the midst of all this? All of this that is essentially anticipatory, forward looking in the structure of knowing itself?
But then, take a lighted match and apply it to your finger. Is this an interpretative matter? "When" is it? Is there not a present that itself intrudes into the stream or conscious events? So much going on here. Derrida says we are stuck in "difference".

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

Qualia is tough because when w talk about it, it vanishes, which is why Derrida writes "under erasure". You find the same thing in Wittgenstein who in the Tractatus insist he is speaking nonsense in drawing a line between nonsense and sense. We find ourselves at a crossroad where actuality and language "meet" and we cannot speak of it, but cannot deny actuality. Buddhists tell us to put the entire enterprise down, and "ultimate reality" will step forward (Abhidhamma).

Spooky. But there is something to this, I know. Something powerful and sublime about being a person, and it hangs there just beyond the threshold of our everydayness. Try to think it, and it slips away. I think, again, that language is pragmatic, and cannot hold actuality (Kierkegaard).

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 thought you mentioned religion and how your views were not expressed in something I said.

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

You are in Heidegger's world now. He calls it dasein. Being and Time takes your thoughts here and gives them hundreds of pages of penetrating thought. Hardwired is a problem, but cannot explain Heidegger here. All is hermeneutics.

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

Analytic philosophy is very bullshitty. Smart, but entirely outside the substantive issues. Gettier problems? Barn facsimiles and severed heads?? Such a disappointment. Continental philosophy is profound, but it takes work (what doesn';t?). Being and Time might just convince you.

The BIV scenario takes for granted that there is an outside and an inside. — baker

Does it? Keep in mind that the scientists are supposed to be the truly real, but then, the purpose of this challenge is to insert doubt into this very idea. How do the scientists know they are not brains in vats, themselves, being controlled and experimented on by other scientists who could also be brains in vats? This makes the BIV a metaphysical problem, for there is nothing foundational presented. See the difference here between this and say some standard problem where doubt has asserted itself, as when you turn the key and the care doesn't start. Here, the assumption is not questioned according the premises of the condition given, for once the doubt is relieved and the battery cable secured, there is no metaphysics to deal with.

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.

What do I mean by "world"? If we limit it to a place with cats (the context of the example which has been discussed) it would be Earth, the planet, but I mean in general the universe of which the Earth is a tiny part, and of which we're even tinier parts. The environment in which we live. By "we" I mean human beings--all of us, including our brains.

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?

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.

I'm not sure what more I can say.

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

Phenomenology is what existentialists are.When theories of natural science break down the the level of basic questions, one can only turn to phenomenology and hermeneutics for foundational thinking. This latter insists that knowledge is inherently interpretative, that is, language which is the medium for understanding the world, does not, at this level of analysis, simply observe this world, it literally constitutes the world. So it is not as if there is the world there, that tree, those shoes on the floor, and so on, and there we are to take in its nature as it informs us as to what it is; rather, there is no world at all until an experience constructing agency is there to make it. BUT: it is not as if there is nothing at all whatsoever there prior to this agency making an appearance; but rather it is not "a world". It is entirely other than a world, and I want to say for obvious reasons.
So talk about the world, philosophical talk, is talk about this very complex horizon that is reducible to phenomena. These are considered foundational because beyond this kind of talk is ismply more hermeneutics. Derrida calls this "difference": an endless system of deferred meaning in which one concept is contingent on others, and so there is NO affirmation apart from this.
And so on. For Rorty, this foundation of interlinguistic (wd?) reference is pragmatic, grounded in what works. I think this right.

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

I agree with everything you say, except for one: That there is nothing remarkable here. It all gets very remarkable at the more basic level. You say we it is where we eat, drink, and so on, but I ask, what are these things?, and you think I've lost a marble or two. But it is here where centuries of philosophy BEGIN. It begins with the father of phenomenology, Kant and his Critique of Pure Reason. Once you have read this, you will see what all the fuss is about, this "Copernican Revolution" of philosophy.

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?
The greatest philosopher by analytic standards, not phenomenological, is Wittgenstein. Yes he was a phenomenologist, of sorts.

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. You might consider what empirical science has achieved before you wonder why it's view point has value--then ask yourself what philosophy has achieved.

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?

I don't know what you mean by "the perceptual act." Nor do I understand what you think is "actually in the world" if we're unable to know what is actually in the world, which is what you appear to think--sometimes, at least. If we can't know what's actually in the world, then what's actually in the world is not a matter we should devote any time or effort to determine. We're better off devoting time and effort to that which can make a positive difference in our lives. And that, for good or ill, means dealing with what we interact with in our daily lives, no matter how many "presuppositions" we must accept to do that.

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 love empirical science, and took enough courses in college to know well what it is. But it is not philosophy. A scientist asks, how do we understand a fossil according to the applicable classifications? Philosophy asks, what is the structure of the thought that perceives at all? How is knowledge possible? What are concepts qua concepts and what is their relation to things? What is this substance that comprises all things?
Before you even get to science questions, you have more basic questions about what science takes up as a world. For example, look at experience and its structure: When I talk about a star's spectral analysis, I am talking about light. But any high schooler knows light as a phenomenon is manufactured in the brain. You know, visible light is part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and some parts of this are reflected, some absorbed, and the reflected parts are received by the eye, and there are cones and rods that process for color and intensity, and this goes to the brain that manufactures the phenomenon in clusters of axonally connected neurons. So it goes. The scientist will of course admit this, because what is " really" happening "out there" is not color, but waves; but then how do waves get internalized and what is this internal event that allows us to "know" what is out there?
Consider further that when a perception occurs, it occurs in Time, and this makes a perceptual affair one with a temporal structure: I "see" light but then, I am not a feral entity, nor am I an infant, whose world is "buzzing and blooming". When I register the seeing, it is learned language and its logical operation that makes this a knowledge event, and without this, there would be no understanding of light; and this knowing is predelineated, it issues from memory. This makes an actual present matter one that is not present at all, but a construction in time,with a past and a future; in deed, this is right up Dewey's tree, because this temporal dimension is the forward-looking nature of a pragmatist's theory of knowledge. Pragmatists, the old school, are necessarily phenomenologists.
Etc., etc. To really go into an analysis like this, look at Heidegger, Husserl, Kant, and so many more. There was a century of post Kantian philosophy, which turned into existentialism, which became post modern thinking with its deconstructive post structuralism. It is a massive enterprise. Rorty thought Dewey, Heidegger and Wittgenstein the most important philosophers ever, and all three were, in some way, phenomenologists.
All of which science has little or nothing to say because this is not its job. Scientists are not philosophers.

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.

But any high schooler knows light as a phenomenon is manufactured in the brain. — Constance

You take this as implying that light is manufactured in the brain. That's an obvious mistake.

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

A flimsy rationalization for not wanting to do the hard work of reading perhaps the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. If you found out that Edison was a child molester, would you simply stop using light bulbs?

You take this as implying that light is manufactured in the brain. That's an obvious mistake. — Banno

It depends on your level of analysis. A five year old will not understand the idea at al but simply talk about light i a natural way, but then, material reductionists talk like this all the time. Phenomenologists will say both are right, but rightness and wrongness depends on context. They do think, however, there is one context called phenomenology that looks at light as phenomenon, an eidetically formed predication. Here, one is not using light in the "naturalistic way" as in "turn off the light when you leave" but rather as reduced to its features as a phenomenological presence. The more reduction, the greater the presence, says Jean luc Marion.

It depends on your level of analysis. — Constance

No it doesn't. Light is not phenomenal. It's a thing in the world, not a sensation. In so far as phenomenology treats things that are not phenomenal as if they were, it is wrong.

No it doesn't. Light is not phenomenal. It's a thing in the world, not a sensation. In so far as phenomenology treats things that are not phenomenal as if they were, it is wrong. — Banno

So tell me how it is not a phenomenon.

Tell me how it isn't a cat.

You claim it is a phenomena; I claim it is stuff in the world.

I can explain how it bends in a prism.

Can you, using only phenomenal analysis?