All knowledge consists of explanations for facts of the matter — 180 Proof

Ah, so a positivist. Thanks for clearing that up.

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So you agree that we’re zombies? — Wayfarer

No ... we're just maggots accelerating the cosmic decomposition of this zombie universe. Nature, haven't you heard, is undead. (Blame the ghoulery on my pandeistic urges. :mask:)

:lol:

We're just maggots contributing to the cosmic decay of a zombie universe. — 180 Proof

We’ll at least you can look forward to pupating.

Phenomenology is often charged by it's critics to be a matter of mere introspection, since it is understood to be dealing, not with publicly available data, but with "subjective contents" supposed to be accessed by "looking within" the mind. — Janus

Yet we can theorize about the underlying causes of behaviors of organic and inorganic matter that we can't observe directly all the time. That's why they're theories as opposed to observations. Only by designing and constructing the right measuring devices can we then observe the underlying causes to confirm our theories. Like Galileo said, "Measure what can be measured, and make measurable what cannot be measured".

Atoms were theorized to exist before observing their existence. Why didn't we refer to atoms as "subjective contents" when we could only theorize their existence as a result of the impact they have on the macro objects we do observe? The same goes for organisms. The difference is that we each have direct knowledge of the existence of our own phenomenological experiences, and which have an impact on our behaviors that can be observed by others, including making statements like "I feel great!" or "I feel awful!" P-zombies could probably only understand and use phrases like, "I am great!", or "I am awful!". So there appears to be a distinction between how something is vs. how it can feel. Is that distinction an illusion, or a "folk" distinction?

The difference that we have when theorizing about the existence of things we can't observe except by the effect those things have on the things that we can observe and theorizing the existence of minds, is that with minds we start off with two different views - the 1st and 3rd person views, whereas, with atoms, we only have a 3rd-person view, yet this 3rd person view is always like a 1st-person view - just from some imagined place in space-time. The problem is that we have these two "opposing" views - which is what creates doubt in that we know the world or our minds as they actually are. The difference in doubting the existence of your mind as opposed to the world is that you only know the world by the "subjective contents" of your mind, so if you doubt your understanding of your own mind, you automatically undermine your understanding of the world.

Being that our "subjective contents" have an impact on how we behave, how are they not as real as atoms, and can be talked about like we talk about atoms like we did after we theorized their existence, but before we observed their existence?

Right, so you obviously believe Dennett did not understand traditional phenomenology. I'm inclined to agree, insofar as Dennett claims that it consists in mere introspection; which is what I take Zahavi to be arguing.

So, the question that follows is as to what else phenomenology consists in (because it seems that introspection is definitely part of it). Off the top of my head seems to consist in extending the kind of synthetic a priori thinking that began with Descartes and was improved by Kant into more corporeal areas of inquiry. — Janus

I think Dennett cannot make that dramatic move away from a scientist's model of the way the world is put together. He cannot prioritize meaning over material substance, is one way to put it. Heidegger asks, what is the very first thing we encounter in the world? It is meaning, not material substance, and by this, as we see in Being and Time, it is not conceptual meaning, but, and I find him aligned with dewey here, the whole ball of wax: affect, caring/concern, being with others, ready to hand "spatial" relations and so on. This is, no, CAN BE, the kind of analysis you get if you allow the phenomenon to take center stage. A lot of post Heideggarians these days.

I think you have to put Kant's synthetic apriori judgments aside for Heidegger. Heidegger does not live and think in the same world. Phenomena are not representations. They are the only basis for ontology we have, and the entirety of what IS, is analyzed very differently. Being and Time takes Descartes' res extensa and res cogitans (I think I have that right) as one big presence-at-hand error error, failing to understand the fundamental ontological ready-to-hand relations.

As I think of Heidegger, I see that it is impossible to fit him in Dennett's (and the analytic pov) simple thinking. Heidegger is kind of sui generis, even though when you read him, you find the whole history of philosophy throughout.

For me, I don't have a pro's detailed understanding, but I like to read Heidegger more than Husserl because the former really takes one on a trip, like an intellectual's adventure, a radically new way to conceive the world. But Husserl's epoche has this undeniable intuitive, revelatory dimension. Consider his Four Principles of Phenomenology:

so much appearance, so much being”
“that every originary presentive intuition is a legitimizing source of cognition”
“zu den Sachen selbst!”: To the things themselves!
“so much reduction, so much givenness.”

This where my interests lie now.

I never thought of Descartes in terms of synthetic priori judgments, and I don't really understand how this would work. How does this go?

For me, I don't have a pro's detailed understanding, but I like to read Heidegger more than Husserl because the former really takes one on a trip, like an intellectual's adventure, a radically new way to conceive the world. — Astrophel

I was profoundly impressed by Being and Time, but I think Husserl took the more radical leap, relative to what was being thought before him. Yes, he had Brentano, Hegel and Kant as reference points, but phenomenology was a sharp departure from Brentano. Heidegger, on the other hand, had Husserl.

Husserl, the originator of modern phenomenology, was quite determinate on knowledge claims. The only apodictically certain science is transcendental phenomenology. All other scientific results are contingent and relative.
— Joshs
In what way is "apodictic certainty" applicable to any modern science? What does a (like Kant, unsound) 'transcendental' deduction of "the essential structure of consciousness" from "apodicity" have to do with hypothetico-deductive explanations of nature or history? — 180 Proof

If you remember from Husserl’s work, Crisis of European Sciences, the hypothetico-deductive method as originally expounded by Bacon was expected to lead to adodictic certainties. This was before Humean skepticism or Kant’s unattainable thing-in-itself.

“ the true idea of rationality, and in connection with that the true idea of universal science, was not yet attained in ancient philosophy—such was the con­viction of the founders of the modern age. The new ideal was possible only according to the model of the newly formed mathe­matics and natural science. It proved its possibility in the inspir­ing pace of its realization. What is the universal science of this new idea but—thought of as ideally completed—omniscience?
This, then, is for philosophy truly a realizable, though infinitely distant, goal—not for the individual or a given community of re­searchers but certainly for the infinite progression of the gener­ations and their systematic researches. The world is in itself a rational systematic unity—this is thought to be a matter of apo­dictic insight—in which each and every singular detail must be rationally determined. Its systematic form (the universal struc­ture of its essence) can be attained, is indeed known and ready
for us in advance, at least insofar as it is purely mathematical. Only its particularity remains to be determined; and unfortu­nately this is possible only through induction. This is the path— infinite, to be sure—to omniscience. Thus one lives in the happy certainty of a path leading forth from the near to the distant, from the more or less known into the unknown, as an infallible
method of broadening knowledge, through which truly all of the totality of what is will be known as it is 'ln-itself"—in an infinite progression.”(Crisis of the European Sciences)

IIRC Francis Bacon is a 16th century inductivist. Husserl criticized Bacon for his 'mathematization of nature' program (i.e. contra-Aristotlean 'quidditas') but not for hypothetical-deductivism which had only emerged three centuries later in the 1800s. Also, the (deeper) connection I find between Husserl and the other "Bacon" is the influence 13th century Roger Bacon's "interior illumination" may have had on Husserl's early development of phenomenology.

Husserl criticized Bacon for his 'mathematization of nature' program (i.e. contra-Aristotlean 'quidditas') but not for hypothetical-ded — 180 Proof

Yes, you are right. Let me go back to your earlier question.

In what way is "apodictic certainty" applicable to any modern science? What does a (like Kant, unsound) 'transcendental' deduction of "the essential structure of consciousness" from "apodicity" have to do with hypothetico-deductive explanations of nature or history? — 180 Proof

The hypothetico-deductive method that Popper popularized belongs to the ‘crisis’ that Husserl talks about in the book , a move away from the apodoctic
grounding of Cartesian realism. Husserl wants to recover appdicticity , but not by returning to Descartes. What phenomenology claims to be certain is the formal structure of time consciousness on which intentionality is based. Husserl calls this a science , but it is not one of worldly facts, which will always be contingent and relative. Yet, it is what makes objectivity, logic and mathematics possible, and in this way is the condition of possibility of all empirical sciences.

We’ll at least you can look forward to pupating. — Wayfarer

Nah, we'll make silk out of his cocoon.

So you agree that we’re zombies? — Wayfarer

It depends on what that is taken to mean. I agree that some aspects of the so-called folk conception of consciousness are most likely mistaken. I think the idea of qualia is a gratuitous reification, but I don't agree that there is no inner life tout court.

Remember that zombies are not Dennett;s invention but Chalmer's; to distinguish between having the experience of 'what it is like' to have experience, and not having it. I think the idea makes little sense. We feel our aliveness I would say; and if a zombie is defined as an entity that does not feel it's own aliveness then we are not zombies.

Dennett denies that a being could be constituted exactly as we are and yet lack some aspect of our experience. So if zombies, beings who are constituted exactly as we are, and yet do not have a certain kind of experience (that we take ourselves to have), are possible, then according to that argument we must be zombies. I agree with that; but it's not exactly clear to me just what zombies are taken to lack; so I think the whole idea is pretty useless.

Interesting read. So...thanks for the link.

Good points!

I almost feel tempted to let science win whatever argument it wants to have with philosophy. If science wants to claim it’s the only sound or reliable way of producing knowledge systematically — sure, you can have that; philosophy can produce something else, understanding maybe. — Srap Tasmaner

I agree: the distinction between knowledge (that) and understanding is a very important one. Our understandings don't have to be true or false; they are the ways we conceive of things that allow us to act in and deal with the world. I imagine they provide for the possibility of language and communication and any knowledge-that or science at all.

The difference in doubting the existence of your mind as opposed to the world is that you only know the world by the "subjective contents" of your mind, so if you doubt your understanding of your own mind, you automatically undermine your understanding of the world.

Being that our "subjective contents" have an impact on how we behave, how are they not as real as atoms, and can be talked about like we talk about atoms like we did after we theorized their existence, but before we observed their existence? — Harry Hindu

Sure, the idea of mind is how we conceive of what we take to be the faculty doing the thinking and experiencing. It doesn't seem necessary to hold to any particular conception of mind in order to have an understanding of what we take to be the workings of the world.

You are taking it as read that we 'have' "subjective contents"; that is the default understanding, based on the intuitive analogy of the mind as a kind of container, but is it the best way to understand the mind. Wouldn't we need to consider all the other conceivable alternatives before deciding?

I never thought of Descartes in terms of synthetic priori judgments, and I don't really understand how this would work. How does this go? — Astrophel

I generally agree with what you said. It seems to me the "cogito" is a synthetic a priori judgment.

:cool: I'm glad you enjoyed it Emdubbyadubbya!

For Kant, a priori synthetic judgments are about the non-empirical world. So it matters to ask if the self is non-empirical (Descartes) or not. When we examine the world, there is debate among German idealists and latter generations if and when we use posterior analytic judgments or posterior synthetic judgments. Where the self falls in all this is what phenomenology is about. My 2 cents

.

For us, subjectively speaking, the self, understood as the experiencer (and the doer) is the basis of "all this". Without experiencers the world would not appear at all. We can take a more detached scientific perspective and say the world is more basic since the self is born into a pre-existing world. These are two imaginable perspectives; how do we decide between them? Do we need to claim that one or the other is the "true" perspective? Or should we not deploy whichever perspective is the more useful for the task at hand?

OK, I wasn't aware of that, thanks.

For us, subjectively speaking, the self, understood as the experiencer (and the doer) is the basis of "all this". Without experiencers the world would not appear at all. We can take a more detached scientific perspective and say the world is more basic since the self is born into a pre-existing world. These are two imaginable perspectives; how do we decide between them? Do we need to claim that one or the other is the "true" perspective? Or should we not deploy whichever perspective is the more useful for the task at hand? — Janus

I just finished rereading for the 20th time the first three chapters of Hegel's Phenomenology (skipping over the Preface and Introduction). I think they are very important for philosophy. The rest of Hegel is just commentary on this. Its a question of the paradox of perception. The world, on say the left side, is how we perceive it. We manipulate reality because we know it as other, are a part of it, and have intellect. On the other hand, we construct reality and make it what it is. We bring waves to particles, create colors and sounds and smalls in existence, and form the material of the world into the structure of our own personal worlds. So it is really both ways: the world creates us and we create the world. At least, that's my opinion from my Hegel studies.

So it is really both ways: the world creates us and we create the world. — Gregory

Yes, this is like the Buddhist idea of interdependent co-arising.

I’ll see your 2 cents, and raise you a nickel.

Where the self falls in all this is what phenomenology is about. My 2 cents — Gregory

While this seems to be the case, it means that somewhere buried in the depths of the phenomenology literature, must be some sort of proof that the self is a phenomenon. Hence, the debate amongst later German idealists and neo-Kantians, all in the name of justifying the evolution of transcendental philosophy from its Enlightenment origins, in which the self cannot be a phenomenon.

Well, okay, I won't quibble further. Following Spinoza, Maimon, Frege, Peirce, Wittgenstein, Popper ... I think syntax is the basis of logic, mathematics & computation, and applied like scaffolding to "the things themselves", we re/de-construct "things" into testable, objective models of which the natural sciences consist. "Intentionality", IME, belongs to folk psychology and is a discursive artifact of the introspective illusion, which calls phenomenology into question insofar as it's considered as anything more than a 'formalist(?) method for descriptively interpreting subjective percepts' – ideal-izing (i.e. reifying) of folk psychologies.

It seems to me you are saying "anatman". And again Buddhism enters the conversation!

I think syntax is the basis of logic, mathematics & computation, and applied like scaffolding to "the things themselves", we re/de-construct "things" into testable, objective models of which the natural sciences consist. — 180 Proof

They are applied like scaffolding to objects ( ‘things’) that are held to be enduringly self-identical. Without this assumption of enduring objective presence there could be no formal logical or mathematical scaffolding.

“A true object in the sense of logic is an object which is absolutely identical "with itself," that is, which is, absolutely identically, what it is; or, to express it in another way: an object is through its determinations, its quiddities [Weisheiten], its predicates, and it is identical if these quiddities are identical as belonging to it or when their belonging absolutely excludes their not belonging.”(Husserl)

“…it is not primarily the dependence upon a science, mathematics, which just happens to be especially esteemed, that determines this ontology of the world (empirical science), rather this ontology is determined by a basic ontological orientation toward being as constant objective presence, which mathematical knowledge is exceptionally well suited to grasp.”(Heidegger 2010)

But is the self-identical object irreducible? It is for Frege, Peirce and Popper, all of whom are following Kant here, who defines objectivity in terms of the mathemetizable. But not for phenomenology , which shows the self-identical object to be the product of a process of intentional constitution. Husserl argues that the self-identical object on which duration and mathematical quantification is based is transcendent to what is actually experienced; it is an idealization , a synthesis pieced together from moments of experience that never reproduce their sense identically. Actual experience does not subsist, inhere or endure.

“ The object is “a unity which “appears” continually in the change of the modes of its givenness and which belongs to the essential structure of a specific act of the ego.” “The "object" of consciousness, the object as having identity "with itself" during the flowing subjective process, does not come into the process from outside; on the contrary, it is included as a sense in the subjective process itself and thus as an "intentional effect" produced by the synthesis of consciousness.”(Husserl 1973)

Do we need to claim that one or the other is the "true" perspective? Or should we not deploy whichever perspective is the more useful for the task at hand? — Janus

“useful for the task at hand.” In other words , relative to an ongoing activity of significance and context of relevance. Which presupposes a subjective background. There can no coherent notion of usefulness without such an assumption. At the same time, what is useful is determined by the present context of use, which implies an objective dimension. In sum, any notion of pragmatic use is inseparably subjective and objective. Whether we want to use one perspective over the other, in either case we are presupposing this pragmatic subjective-objective condition of possibility. That, in a nutshell, is phenomenology.

By sheer accident.

Overwhelmingly agree.

Language: there is a temptation to look at computers and say, that's just syntax without semantics, which leads to a further temptation to say that our ability to "attach" meaning to symbols is what makes us special -- but now we're distinguishing ourselves not just from machines but from animals that don't have language. Lacking our higher mental capacities, their behavior is, insofar as it is instinctive, mechanical.

But I think that's wrong. I think Chomsky might have been right to focus on recursive, generative grammar as what's special about language, because I think maybe you find semantics anywhere you find life -- and that's why you don't find it in computers.

What I mean is something like this: a living thing is something things matter to. Nothing matters to a machine. But nutrients matter even to a bacterium, and this is not a question of how the bacterium 'conceptualizes' or 'categorizes' bits of its environment. For everything living, food matters, threats, shelter, offspring, and thus these things have meaning, and there is the potential for their environment to be a meaningful world, something that could be understood. (I remember reading years ago that wolves are sometimes clearly puzzled by cattle, because they don't behave like wild prey.)

There's plainly an 'affinity' between natural science and the mechanical, as an object of knowledge, which might not quite define the limits of possible science. Don't care. I think there's a similar 'affinity' between philosophy and the meaningful. Whether it's possible for them to meet in the middle is not my concern; I'll be arriving from the meaning side.