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? — Banno

But this is not philosophy's job. Obviously.

If Heidegger invented the light bulb, I'd use it. It actually has a use, and a beneficial one, apart from its inventor. But I don't read him merely because he was a loathsome man.

But this is not philosophy's job. Obviously. — Constance

Perhaps it is, and what you are doing isn't.

Either way, this stands:

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

Perhaps it is, and what you are doing isn't.

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

This is pure flippancy. And arbitrary. If you put something out there, then you have to explain it. I mean, go into it, and don't be shy about it. Either way it stands???? How so?

If Heidegger invented the light bulb, I'd use it. It actually has a use, and a beneficial one, apart from its inventor. But I don't read him merely because he was a loathsome man. — Ciceronianus the White

But he is a beneficial one, philosophically. It's just easier to turn on a light than it is reading Heidegger. This is the essence of the matter.

This is pure flippancy. — Constance

But that's what such muddled thinking deserves. It goes astray here:

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... — Constance

We don't need phenomenology in order to explain how a prism works. Indeed, it adds nothing.

We don't need phenomenology in order to explain how a prism works. Indeed, it adds nothing. — Banno

It adds nothing in terms of explaining how a prism works. Nor does it explain how a prism is taken up as an amusement for a child, or how rainbows inspire or romanticize, or how the gaseous content of stars produces different spectral analyses, and so on. Looking at matters such as these are not the "how" of philosophical analysis, which is, as with all the above mentioned, distinct and assessed according to a different set of standards.
The question you should be looking at is, What is the standard for assessing the worth of phenomenological philosophy? Prior to this, one has to look at philosophy itself, and inquire as to where the value lies here.

I feel bad that I haven't responded before this. I really like talking to you. I think we share a common outlook, an openness, on many of the issues we're discussing. It's just that you are playing on a piano, maybe a pipe organ, and I am playing on a three-string banjo. This old banjo is just right for the song I'm trying to sing.

When it comes to things like consciousness, how it operates, and how it produces cognition, perception, experience, etc. it is all guess work. — Apollodorus

By that logic, everything is guess work.
Can we think of anything that is “true”?
If yes, how did we come to know that it is true, as opposed to being not true?
If we can’t think of anything that is true, then even that
Inability to think can’t be thought of as true.
So where do we stand, and what in fact is knowledge?

So where do we stand, and what in fact is knowledge? — Jan Ardena

Knowledge is what we experience and what we believe to be true. Anything else is opinion. And then there are lots of things that we do not know.

So I agree with @Constance, above:

The question you should be looking at is, What is the standard for assessing the worth of phenomenological philosophy? Prior to this, one has to look at philosophy itself, and inquire as to where the value lies here. — Constance

What is "philosophical inquiry"?

Knowledge is what we experience and what we believe to be true. Anything else is opinion. And then there are lots of things that we do not know. — Apollodorus

If we know that “knowledge is experience… etc”, then our knowledge must be outside of of our experience, and what we believe to be true. Otherwise what you say amounts to your experience, and what you believe to be true. Your observation of that… ? The same, as it is “knowledge” according to you.
Yet we know we can draw conclusions based on things we have not experienced. Like your analysis.
I think knowledge is part and parcel of the Truth, and either we want, the truth, or what we believe/accept is the truth

If we know that “knowledge is experience… etc”, then our knowledge must be outside of of our experience, and what we believe to be true. — Jan Ardena

There are many forms of knowledge such as personal experience, conclusions we arrive at through reason, things we learn from others, etc.

One may also hold that everything we know is simply a "provisional truth" that we operate on until new truths are found that are deemed to have greater validity and authority.

The question you should be looking at is, What is the standard for assessing the worth of phenomenological philosophy? — Constance

I am looking at that question, and the answer I see is "it has no worth".

Knowledge is what we experience and what we believe to be true. Anything else is opinion. And then there are lots of things that we do not know. — Apollodorus

But an opinion is also what we believe to be true.

To count as knowledge, a statement must be true, not just believed.

There are, despite the ubiquitous, absurd pop philosophy to the contrary, very many things that we know.

But an opinion is also what we believe to be true. — Banno

There are different degrees of certainty.

There are, despite the ubiquitous, absurd pop philosophy to the contrary, very many things that we know. — Banno

"We" as the totality of knowers. Individuals know only a fraction of the total.

There are different degrees of certainty. — Apollodorus

But not of truth.

"We" as the totality of knowers. Individuals know only a fraction of the total. — Apollodorus

Yet there are things we know.

That is,

Knowledge is what we experience and what we believe to be true. Anything else is opinion. And then there are lots of things that we do not know. — Apollodorus

is a mischaracterisation.

But not of truth. — Banno

Of certainty regarding truth.

Yet there are things we know. — Banno

And there are things we don't know. Few of us are omniscient.

I feel bad that I haven't responded before this. I really like talking to you. I think we share a common outlook, an openness, on many of the issues we're discussing. It's just that you are playing on a piano, maybe a pipe organ, and I am playing on a three-string banjo. This old banjo is just right for the song I'm trying to sing. — T Clark

If you read what I wrote and find agreement, then by all means, feel free to disagree here and there. "Play" as you please.

I am looking at that question, and the answer I see is "it has no worth". — Banno

I see. No greater motivation for joining a philosophy club, eh? Analytic philosophers are in it for the "fun" of puzzles, and are generally bound to clarity and logic. But Continental philosophers can be quite different, sincere and intuitive. Trouble is, Continental philosophy is hard to read, though here is the foundation of basic inquiry as to the issues of the self, meaning, value, reason, and so on.It is unfortunate that important things are so difficult. Oh well.

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. — Constance

How do we deal with the problem of private language? If naming-words refer necessarily to internal phenomena - all singularly private and mutually incomparable - then we cannot communicate. 'Yes, I understand, you are saying things are like such-and-such!' - But 'such and such' can be neither like nor unlike anything shared between us, for nothing is shared. Worse, we cannot distinguish one phenomenon from another even in our own case. If the distinctive criteria for some experience make sense to the person having that experience, then those criteria have a sense that can be explained, communicated and shared between us.

If your view is true then necessarily you cannot explain it to me. Your explanation is a kind of accompanying music to a phenomenal film that is playing in your mind. And my understanding is whatever I might be hearing.

[

Pls proceed to explain how it is that my cat gets "in" the brain thing.
— Constance

Viewing humans as living organisms in an environment (which is what we are, I believe), I can't help but think this is tantamount to asking someone to explain how our food gets into our stomachs. — Ciceronianus

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. — Constance

I was interested to find that Dewey wrote of food and stomachs as well (from The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy):

The problem of knowledge exists because it is assumed that there is a knower in general, who is outside of the world to be known, and who is defined in terms antithetical to the traits of the world. With analogous assumptions, we could invent and discuss a problem of digestion in general. All that would be required would be to conceive the stomach and food-material as inhabiting different worlds. Such an assumption would leave on our hands the question of the possibility, extent, nature, and genuineness of any transaction between stomach and food.

But because the stomach and food inhabit a continuous stretch of existence, because digestion is but a. correlation of diverse activities in one world, the problems of digestion are specific and plural: What are the particular correlations which constitute it? How does it proceed in different situations? What is favorable and what unfavorable to its best performance?—and so on. Can one deny that if we were to take our clue from the present empirical situation, including the scientific notion of evolution (biological continuity) and the existing arts of control of nature, subject and object would be treated as occupying the same natural world as unhesitatingly as we assume the natural conjunction of an animal and its food? Would it not follow that knowledge is one way in which natural energies cooperate? Would there be any problem save discovery of the peculiar structure of this cooperation, the conditions under which it occurs to best effect, and the consequences which issue from its occurrence?

How do we deal with the problem of private language? If naming-words refer necessarily to internal phenomena - all singularly private and mutually incomparable - then we cannot communicate. 'Yes, I understand, you are saying things are like such-and-such!' - But 'such and such' can be neither like nor unlike anything shared between us, for nothing is shared. Worse, we cannot distinguish one phenomenon from another even in our own case. If the distinctive criteria for some experience make sense to the person having that experience, then those criteria have a sense that can be explained, communicated and shared between us.

If your view is true then necessarily you cannot explain it to me. Your explanation is a kind of accompanying music to a phenomenal film that is playing in your mind. And my understanding is whatever I might be hearing. — Cuthbert

Let the conditions unfold then. I don't think we are bound to this phenomenological singularity because I think it makes all problems go away. I simply ask the question about basic epistemology, and find this inevitable conclusion. How move from here is another question, but one thing remains very clear: on a materialist model of causal relationships, one cannot explain knowledge of objects. Causality does not deliver epistemology, for one thing. For another, all explanatory possibilities are inherently phenomenological. How does one ever get "out" of this?

But there is a big "on the other hand" to this: Obviously there is in my knowledge of my cat something that is not me, but something else entirely, and it is seems to be there, across an expanse of space. But again, one runs against Kant, who may not be altogether right in his details, but space and time are forms of intuition, if not as he explains it exactly (Heidegger complained, and many others). We are stuck with this event of me knowing my cat is on the sofa, occurring as a phenomenon, but this notion of "noumena" takes the stage again: what IS this "out thereness" that is entirely off radar in our brains? Well, many look, not to the out mystery, but the inner; after all, there is a noumenal "direct" access to the unknown X world, and that is the self, for while the "outer" ness of things seems to be altogether impossible, the "inner"ness of things is some core essence of the self. Where, after all, in metaphysics are all things? All things are impossibly grounded in eternity, or better, finitude is "really" eternity, and this applies to our inner self especially. So if one wants get intimate with with this impossible "other", one need look within, deeply, apart from the "totality" of our constructed selves.

This little bit above is part of the religio-apophatic turn in phenomenology.

There are, despite the ubiquitous, absurd pop philosophy to the contrary, very many things that we know. — Banno

List 3.

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

Does it? — Constance

Of course, which is evidenced by asking questions such as, "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?" You wouldn't be asking this if you wouldn't think that inside vs. outside is a meaningful distinction.

This makes the BIV a metaphysical problem, for there is nothing foundational presented.

No, it makes it a poorly conceived one.

The problem of knowledge exists because it is assumed that there is a knower in general, who is outside of the world to be known, and who is defined in terms antithetical to the traits of the world. With analogous assumptions, we could invent and discuss a problem of digestion in general. All that would be required would be to conceive the stomach and food-material as inhabiting different worlds. Such an assumption would leave on our hands the question of the possibility, extent, nature, and genuineness of any transaction between stomach and food.

But because the stomach and food inhabit a continuous stretch of existence, because digestion is but a. correlation of diverse activities in one world, the problems of digestion are specific and plural: What are the particular correlations which constitute it? How does it proceed in different situations? What is favorable and what unfavorable to its best performance?—and so on. Can one deny that if we were to take our clue from the present empirical situation, including the scientific notion of evolution (biological continuity) and the existing arts of control of nature, subject and object would be treated as occupying the same natural world as unhesitatingly as we assume the natural conjunction of an animal and its food? Would it not follow that knowledge is one way in which natural energies cooperate? Would there be any problem save discovery of the peculiar structure of this cooperation, the conditions under which it occurs to best effect, and the consequences which issue from its occurrence? — Ciceronianus

Take it bit by bit. I don't assume there is a knower outside the world to be known. Assume the world and I are one. Then in this unity there is a divide that has to be explained. If it cannot be explained, it may be that there is in this unity something that is occurring perhaps requires a new assessment of what the unity is. Look, there are differences all around, in fact, if not for differences, no affirmation is possible: what is an affirmation without differences? (see Saussure) Anyway, what this brain in a vat suggests is that perhaps there is a primordial division in this unity, that is, a division that isn't about the phylar distinctions in some taxonomy, but about something at a fundamental level? How do scientists handle differences? They make a science out of them. That is what phenomenology is: the science of phenomena. It takes the world at the basic level, where experience (to use Dewey's language) takes up things and generates meaning, value, and everything else, at the generative level, where thing first "appear" and asks how should we understand this? Of course, Dewey answers this question in terms of pragmatism: all knowledge is essentially pragmatic. What does this mean? It means knowledge is forward looking and meaning is generated out of the consummatory product of problem solving. He of course, is a evolutionist, as am I, and when I think of a pragmatic concept of knowledge, I think about our personal and collective history out of which language issues, and I think about the structure of a thought as well as the ontology of the thing the thought is about: I see my cat, but how do I know it is a cat? I learned this term, of course, long ago, as it was modeled by others. pointing to that furry thing, I "made" the association, started using it myself, was encouraged, and it became knowledge of cats in various contexts in my world.
I would need to read a lot more of Dewey to draw on his ideas to make this point, but to be a pragmatist, you have to have a pragmatist theory of knowledge, and this reduces meaning and understanding to the essential thrust of a problem solved.
You may not like Heidegger, but he is certainly close to Dewey. What is a hammer? It is ready to hand; it is the picking up, the hammering, and the possibility of these there, when I turn to the hammer and "know" what it is, what I "know" is this future looking possible event, this "IF I approach the hammer, THEN it presents possibilities, which are x, y, and z and so on. There is for Dewey no of the mystical apprehension of a cat "out there". The cat's meaning and knowledge possibilities are bound up in what works, nd that's it.
BUT, what are the consequences for this? Dewey has to be a pragmatic phenomenologist. This is the only possibility, for if what I know is all about pragmatics, then knowledge is a synthesis the problem solving agency (not to put any metaphysical significance to this) and what comes in as the "givenness" of things.
This kind of thing makes questions like the brain in a vat into nonsense if applied to actual world, as Wittgenstein told us. It is an error in reasoning to conceive of an "in the brain" and "outside the brain" in this way, to ask what are things without the participation of a pragmatic agency/perceiver. Pure impossible metaphysics. This is the way of Dewey, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Rorty, and on and on. Not all pragmatists, exactly, but they agree, this is nonsense.

I say, well, this is one way to get rid of metaphysics: just pretend it is nonsense. Well, it is and it isn't is the only answer to this. No time to go into this, there is alot on this. My principle thought are about ethics and value. Another avenue has to do, not with the out thereness of things, but the "presence" of phenomena. And so on.

The problem of knowledge exists because it is assumed that there is a knower in general, who is outside of the world to be known, — Ciceronianus

Just a follow up: in the natural setting, call it, it is not absurd to note that when a person leaves the room, then s/he takes away all of the pragmatic meaning possibilities, just as when I remove a hammer from the tool box, I remove the possibility of hammering in some setting. Why is it that talk about the hammer is not nonsense but talk about removing perceptual apparatus is? Clearly this latter makes sense: here I go, out of the room, and what is behind me is no longer a room, for the term 'room' is a pragmatic construction, and just left bringing this construction with me.

What happened to the room? Simply, it became metaphysics, something still "there' but unspeakable. There is your division, and I don't think pragmatism is slippery enough to avoid it.

You may not like Heidegger, but he is certainly close to Dewey. — Constance

I've mentioned this more than once in this forum, but the philosopher Joseph Margolis supposedly asked Dewey to read Heidegger. He did (I don't know what he read). Margolis asked Dewey what he thought after reading whatever of Heidegger's he read, and claimed that Dewey responded "Heidegger reads like a Swabian peasant trying to sound like me."

Dewey was by all accounts I've read not a man inclined to sarcasm, but usually mild and gentlemanly, so I have my doubts about this, particularly the "Swabian peasant" reference. But the similarity of their views in some respects has been noted.

My problems with H aren't limited to the fact he was an unrepentant Nazi and made some preposterously worshipful claims regarding Hitler. I see him as unduly romantic and something of a mystic. I'm thinking of his The Question Regarding Technology, which I think is sentimental and anachronistic, and of course such things as his rhapsodic statements regarding The Nothing and the unique superiority and destiny of the German language and people.

Dewey was criticized for his emphasis on practical experience as knowledge by such as the aristocratic Santayana, who felt Dewey neglected the higher, better aspects of reality and Nature. Dewey didn't claim that only a certain kind of experience was significant, or that true knowledge was limited in some sense. That seems to have been what his critics felt, in fact.

Why is it that talk about the hammer is not nonsense but talk about removing perceptual apparatus is? — Constance

What is the "perceptual apparatus" you speak of? The person? In what sense is a person similar to a hammer, or an apparatus? Regardless, neither the person nor the hammer is removed from the world nor are they in a different one. Why think they are? They moved to a different location in the world, but how does it necessarily follow that the room disappears or becomes something else unless you think of the room as in a different world than the person?

List 3. — baker

That Baker understood enough of this thread to ask a question; that Baker reads and writes English; that this is an answer to Baker's question.

Of course, which is evidenced by asking questions such as, "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?" You wouldn't be asking this if you wouldn't think that inside vs. outside is a meaningful distinction. — baker

Outside/inside certainly is a meaningful distinction, but it is articulated within the unity of phenomenology.