Now you're contradicting yourself. — creativesoul
what's below does not follow from what's above...
There's not a thing in the world which is not brought into being, from the heterogeneous soup of hidden states, by our conceptualizing, and constant reconstruction of it.
So much for discovery huh? — creativesoul
it is on you to show that 'human experience' is not such a grouping (like 'cell') so as to support your claim that it's contents (both internal and external) is a fact of the world and not a fact of our language use. — Isaac
It's always peculiar to me when one handwaves away and downright neglects several different arguments, examples, and lines of reasoning while gratuitously asserting the opposite only to later act as if no justification has been given... — creativesoul
Perhaps you may want to re-read the exchange I had with Janus. — creativesoul
And what I envied most about him was that he managed to reach the end of his life without the slightest conscience of being burdened with a special individuality or sense of individual mission like mine. This sense of individuality robbed my life of its symbolism, that is to say, or its power to serve, like Tsurukawa’s, as a metaphor for something outside itself; accordingly it deprived me of the feelings of life’s extensity and solidarity, and it became the source of that sense of solitude which pursued me indefinitely. It was strange. I did not even have any feeling of solidarity with nothingness. — javi2541997
When it comes to these kinds of issues, about which no empirical confirmation can be found, I remember something Nietzsche said: there are no truths, only perspectives — Janus
the notion of a tree is not the tree. We actually see the tree, not our notion. My notion of trees is not out in my front yard. The Kukui nut tree is though. What we believe about the tree is our notion. The tree is not equivalent to our belief about it. We can be wrong about the tree. The same is true of all that exists in its entirety prior to our picking it out to the exclusion of all else. — creativesoul
No object simply exists for us as what it is outside of changing contextual relationships of sense.
Key words being "for us"... Does that include the toddler in the crib under the tree?
— creativesoul
If the toddler is young enough, they will not yet have attained the level of object permanence. To recognize an object as something which remains when we are no longer looking at it , or when it is covered up , requires a constructive process. — Joshs
In fact , everything to do with the concept of a spatial object requires a sequential process of construction. We don’t originally directly see objects as solid unities.. — Joshs
We concoct the idea of a unitary object like ‘tree’ from concatenations of memory, expectations and the meager data that we actually see in front of us. The notion of a tree as this thing in front of me is thus a complex synthesis of what we actually see... — Joshs
...what we remember and what we predict we will see... — Joshs
Most of the ‘tree’ is filled in this way. And the most important element is that we have to interact with the ‘object’ in order for it to exist for us. Animals deprived of the ability to move and interact with their surroundings do not learn to see objects. When we passively see a thing, we are understanding what it is in terms of how we can interact with it, how it will change in response to our movements. This is the standard model from developmental perceptual psychology. — Joshs
the notion of a tree is not the tree. We actually see the tree, not our notion. My notion of trees is not out in my front yard. The Kukui nut tree is though. What we believe about the tree is our notion. The tree is not equivalent to our belief about it. We can be wrong about the tree. The same is true of all that exists in its entirety prior to our picking it out to the exclusion of all else.
— creativesoul
We actually see an idealization or abstraction. Without our ‘notion’ filling in for what is not actually presented to us , in the form of memories and expectations, what we would ‘actually’ see is a disunified flow of perceptual phenomena, not the idealized object we define as a ‘tree’. — Joshs
What you are doing is taking the constructed idealization we create ( the ‘tree’) , ignoring the fact that it is a combination of actual appearance, recollection and expectation, and then treating the derived idealization (the object we call ‘tree’) as if it were the true and actual basis of the name ‘tree’, and our job as perceiver is merely to accurately represent it as it is in itself. — Joshs
What you are doing is taking the constructed idealization we create ( the ‘tree’) , ignoring the fact that it is a combination of actual appearance, recollection and expectation, and then treating the derived idealization (the object we call ‘tree’) as if it were the true and actual basis of the name ‘tree’, and our job as perceiver is merely to accurately represent it as it is in itself.
— Joshs — creativesoul
He meant that also with regard to issues about which empirical confirmation can be found. And in the case of the relation between affect and abstract conceptualization, a wide range of contemporary approaches in psychology and other social sciences has arrived at a model which they have confirmed empirically. — Joshs
In recognizing that affectivity is the necessary underpinning for abstract cognition, you are in agreement with these new approaches. But you go on to characterize feeling as concrete and verbalization as abstract. By concrete , do you have in mind bodily sensations? — Joshs
By concrete , do you have in mind bodily sensations? According to embodied approaches to affect, feeling isn't just directed toward the body, it is directed toward the world. It is the situation that feels bad, not our bodily sensations that are triggered by it. Feeling is world-directed and intentional. It involves appraisal and judgement concerning the relevance of situations to our goals. This is because feeling isn't simply an underpinning of verbal thought, it is so inseparably intertwined with it at all levels of abstraction that it makes no sense to try and tease out what aspect of our experience is felt and what is conceptualized. — Joshs
By "concrete" I have in mind what is experienced by us as immediate and tangible. By "abstract" I have in mind what is lacking such immediacy and tangibility, but may of course have associations, more or less attenuated, with the immediate and tangible. Some — Janus
We begin with the question of whether there is a realm beyond my "immediate experience." Does the Empire State Building continue to exist even when I am not looking at it? If either of these questions can be asked, then there must indeed be a realm beyond my experience. If I can ask whether there is a realm beyond my experience, then the answer must be yes. The reason is that there has to be a realm beyond my experience in order for the phrase 'a realm beyond my experience' to have any meaning. Russell's theory of descriptions will not work here; it cannot jump the gap between my experience and the realm beyond my experience. The assertion 'There is realm beyond my experience' is true if it is meaningful, and that is precisely what is wrong with it. There are rules implicit in the natural language as to what is semantically legitimate. Without a rule that a statement and its negation cannot simultaneously be true, for example, the natural language would be in such chaos that nothing could be done with it. Aristotle's Organon was the first attempt to explicate this structure formally, and Supplement D of Carnap's Meaning and Necessity shows that hypotheses about the implicit rules of natural language are well-defined and testable. An example of implicit semantics is the aphorism that "saying a thing is so doesn't make it so." This aphorism has been carried over into the semantics of the physical sciences: its import is that there is no such thing as a substantive assertion which is true merely because it is meaningful. If a statement is true merely because it is meaningful, then it is too true. It must be some kind of definitional trick which doesn't say anything. And this is our conclusion about the assertion that there is a realm beyond my experience. Since it would be true if it were meaningful, it cannot be a substantive assertion.
' Is there an external world? ' The challenge is making the absurdity of this question conspicuous. — Pie
The absurdity of the question is readily apparent to anyone and everyone first hearing it. — creativesoul
The absurdity of the question is readily apparent to anyone and everyone first hearing it.
— creativesoul
I grant that most people, even philosophers, see its practical nullity. But it really seems to be a big part of the tradition that we work from the ghost outward, with only the ghost truly, securely known, leaving all the rest a mere hypothesis, however likely.
So the challenge is to make its absurdity apparent to philosophers... — Pie
So there is concrete perception and concrete feeling , abstract verbal thought and abstract social feeling. Instrumental music , dance and painting are slightly less definitive modes of abstract symbolizarion than verbal conceptualization, but considerably more abstract than concrete perception, given that they produce a wealth of social emotions. — Joshs
:up:It is when philosophers began attempting to take account of meaningful human experience that things went awry. — creativesoul
Biological machinery is internal. Oranges are external. Meaningful experience involving oranges consists of both, internal and external things. — creativesoul
Let me just start by saying I don't deny private experiences. — Pie
what is concrete is what has immediate affective impact phenomenologically speaking, what affects us predominately in terms of being a sight, a sound, a smell, a taste, a bodily sensation, regardless of whatever story we might tell about the underlying machinery. — Janus
what is concrete is what has immediate affective impact phenomenologically speaking, what affects us predominately in terms of being a sight, a sound, a smell, a taste, a bodily sensation, regardless of whatever story we might tell about the underlying machinery.
— Janus
Right, this is what I’ve characterized as the concreteness of bodily felt sensation. — Joshs
I think we’re taking about the same thing. What I’m claiming is that, in addition to this bodily sensation there is another aspect of feeling which is not concrete, not bodily and not a sensation
Some of them made serious mistakes. I'll grant you that readily. — Pie
:up:Been enjoying it, but... why cling to the mentalist talk in a "manner of speaking"? Why not be literal? And eliminativist? — bongo fury
Again, this leads to saying that there is no meaning prior to language, that meaning is a language construct, that language is necessary for meaning, and/or that meaning is existentially dependent upon language.
Some language less creatures are capable of forming, having, and/or holding belief that is meaningful as well as true or false. — creativesoul
If a language less creature is capable of forming meaningful true belief, then meaning and truth are prior to language, and not all belief is equivalent to a propositional attitude. — creativesoul
I'm curious what this other 'aspect of feeling' could possibly be if it's a bodily sensation that is not concrete, not bodily, and not a sensation. Looks like nonsense to me. — creativesoul
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