One of the aspects of this is qualia, which is about being able to consider the verge between subjectivity and metaphysics — Jack Cummins
It is hard to know where mind and matter end or merge here, and which impacts most. The brain can damage experience but we could also ask whether the 'mind' can damage physical organs, on a psychosomatic level. — Jack Cummins
Going back to Descartes, the awareness of the 'I' was about going within oneself, but alongside this, was the exploration of the outer world, and empirical investigations. — Jack Cummins
Cataphatic metaphysics (i.e. deductively positing categories/universals), I completely agree, is obsolete but not apophatic metaphysics (i.e. deductively negating categories/universals) which has not yet been adequately explored. It's my preferred approach for acid testing impossible (self-contradictory) concepts or models used in defeasible discursive practices such as natural sciences, historical sciences, legal theory, formal systems, etc. Scientism, however, doesn't seem a viable, or coherent, alternative to speculatively creating 'new' concepts (metaphor-paradigms) adequate to our theoretical problems or interpreting their theoretical solutions accordingly. In other words, a nail (re: science) can't hammer itself.In my opinion, metaphysics is obsolete ... — Enrique
But, we do exist as aspects of a larger whole and as separate beings — Jack Cummins
As a result of these considerations, I begin to recognize what I am somewhat better and with better clarity and distinctness than heretofore. But nevertheless, it still seems to me, and I cannot keep myself from believing that corporeal things, image of which are formed by thought and which the senses themselves examine, are much more distinctly known than that indescribable part of myself which cannot be pictured by the imagination. — Decartres, Second Meditation, translated by L.J. Lafleur (emphasis mine)
By "too reductive" do you mean philosophical analyses which conceptualize 'mind' as emergent (e.g. embodied cognition, functionalism) from non-mental processes and therefore not a fundamental feature of nature, or reality (like e.g. panpsychism or absolute idealism or neo/platonism)? If so, why is being "too reductive" in this sense problematic for you?I guess what I am trying to argue against is a philosophy of mind which is too reductive. — Jack Cummins
I do agree that the 'I' is hard to explain as an entity rather than us being a mass of experience. — Jack Cummins
I believe that it is this which lead to the idea of dualism in the first place, because even if it is illusory, it involves a certain sense of distance or separation from the body and experience itself, and it is this 'I' of consciousness which many believed to be an inner aspect of consciousness which could even survive death potentially. — Jack Cummins
I don't understand what you mean here. "Consciousness", I think, denotes sentience.... it may be that consciousness is not exclusive to sentient beings. — Jack Cummins
Okay. Do you mean a 'formal possibility'? a 'metaphysical possibility'? an 'empirical possibility'? In any case, panpsychism make no sense to me for reasons I've discussed elsewhere. For instance, if "consciousness" (i.e. sentience) is a fundamental property of nature (or reality) like spin, charge, fields, etc, then how is it that amputees consciously experience 'phantom limbs' (& phantom sensations, itching, pains, etc) or brain injuries can completely change someone's conscious self-identity (i.e. personality) as in dissociative disorders? Or psychotropic medications can 'regulate' self-awareness and subjective experience?I don't rule out the possibility of panpsychism ...
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