The question simply makes no sense. What could an answer possibly be? "It feels like...?" What words could possibly fill the blank? — Isaac

If I can suppose my personal point of view is modulated by the collective of attributes of my brain-mind, then I have a practical explanation of my personal point of view.

If, moreover, I can simulate the collective of attributes of an individual bat's brain-mind, and if I can immerse myself within that modulating collective, then I can walk a mile in the shoes of that individual bat's brain-mind experience and thus I can know what it feels like to be a particular, individual bat.

I am not a historian, scientist or philosopher. I was simply reflecting on the key issues which today separate the physicalist from the higher consciousness/idealism schools.
I think what I say is accurate... — Tom Storm

I make no commentary upon the accuracy of your reflection.

I think your reflection invokes the historian, in spite of your self-perception as non-historian.

No evasion. I don't see it as relevant. — T Clark

You're claiming the objectivism of science does not handicap its examination of subjective mind?

I think your reflection invokes the historian, in spite of your self-perception as non-historian. — ucarr

OK. I'm nor sure what this gives us.

I'm kind of lost with this kind of language. In a previous post, I wrote that I didn't hold much with phenomenology. Since then, I've decided to put some effort into learning at least the basics so I can participate in these types of discussions more productively. What would recommend as Phenomenology for Dummies? — T Clark

Truly, I am not trying to be confusing. This is the way thinkers I read talk. There is a good reason why these authors are ignored: it takes a solid education in continental philosophy to even begin understanding them. The foundation for analytic philosophy, on the other hand, is already there, in the basic education we all receive growing up. Reading someone like Galen Strawson is like reading an rigorous extension of "common sense" that doesn't rely on the historical contexts of philosophy). If you really want to start somewhere, and you don't want to read Kant, then try Husserl's Cartesian Meditations. Then his Ideas I.

I am not a meditator, at least not in any formal way, but I think this misrepresents the meditative process, although I've heard this type of criticism before. Awareness without words is possible without any kind of annihilation. I come to this from my interest in the Tao Te Ching. Lao Tzu talks about "wu wei", which means "inaction," acting without intention. Actions come directly from our true selves, our hearts I guess you'd say. Lao Tzu might say our "te," our virtue. Without words or concepts. I have experienced this. It's no kind of exotic mystical state. It's just everyday, meat and potatoes, although it can sometimes be hard to accomplish. — T Clark

It is not for me to pry into and argue about what people experience. Wu wei is as exotic or mysterious as the person already is. Some are born off the charts. To me, this aligns with the world, which is, when subjected to a close inspection of what is going on in common perception, utterly foreign to understanding. Meditation is like a recovery of something lost, a metaphysical nostalgia.

We should do a reading of Heidegger's What is Metaphysics? It's so good.

What’s the answer to ‘what does this DVD mean?’ That’s much nearer the issue at hand than how it works. What any DVD means depends on the content, whereas how it works has nothing to do with the content, to press the analogy. The hard problem is not about ’how the brain works’, it’s about the question of meaning.

is not about ’how the brain works’, it’s about the question of meaning. — Wayfarer

How is it a question of meaning? It's about a theory of consciousness.

Is brain conditioning of conscious experience similar to modulation as, for example, a parallel to frequency modulation of radio waves? — ucarr

Better to stay away from analogies. Any attempt to describe epistemic connectivity would encounter the same problem it attempts to solve, for whatever the metaphor might be put in play, one would still have to explain how epistemic transmission is possible. I mean, in a straight causal description, we might begin with the way portions of the electromagnetic spectrum are reflected or absorbed, and the former enter the eye, where they are received by cones and rods, etc. But the object "itself" (whatever that means) is already left far behind. Causality of any medium cannot be conceived as knowledge bearing. The only thing I can imagine that would bridge the distance is identity, that is, one's knowing-self itself receives direct intimation of the presence of an object.

Husserl thought something like this, but he wasn't thinking about physical objects that way science does. the object was phenomenologically conceived, and the direct intimation was intuition. Of course, this is a big issue, but I think his Cartesian approach has merit, after all, pulling back from the technical issues, when I see my cat, it is impossible that nothing at all is happening. This impossibility is interesting and should be taken seriously when thinking about grounding knowledge claims.

Does this hypothesis assume a duality of physical delimitations/that which exceeds physical delimitations?

Is the latter what you suggest might be called spirit, thereby attributing to you belief in a physical/spirit duality? — ucarr

I think a term like physical substance is just an extension of the way science thinks about the world, into metaphysics. No one has ever witnessed it, nor can they. All one witnesses is phenomena. My couch is a phenomenal event and its "out thereness" is clearly evident, but how does its existence get into mine? Perhaps perceptual fields are more inclusive than imagined. "Spirit" is not a term taken seriously. I wonder.

Any examples come to mind of sciences or scientists that do? — Wayfarer

As I noted, I've thought about this a lot and I'm not at all satisfied with what I've come up with. I'll just throw out some ideas.

Kant says time and space are “pure intuition.”

What may be the nature of objects considered as things in themselves and without reference to the receptivity of our sensibility is quite unknown to us. We know nothing more than our mode of perceiving them, which is peculiar to us, and which, though not of necessity pertaining to every animated being, is so to the whole human race. With this alone we have to do. Space and time are the pure forms thereof; sensation the matter. The former alone can we cognize a priori, that is, antecedent to all actual perception; and for this reason such cognition is called pure intuition. The latter is that in our cognition which is called cognition a posteriori, that is, empirical intuition. — Kant - Critique of Pure Reason

“Project Hail Mary” is a good book by Andy Weir, who wrote “The Martian.” In it, an Earth man travels to another star system and meets and befriends an alien who is also a space traveler from a different star system. The non-carbon based alien evolved on a planet with an atmosphere so dense no light can penetrate it. Organisms there never developed sight. The alien was perplexed because its trip took much less time than had been predicted. The Earth man had to explain to him about the speed of light and special relativity.

Our brains and minds have evolved for a special purpose - to figure out what actions we should take to stay alive and have offspring even when we have limited data. That’s where our tendency to analyze events by cutting them up, allowing us to simplify them. This works really well when we’re dealing with situations where we can isolate events from outside interaction, e.g. the large hadron collider or the James Webb telescope. When we get closer to human scale, especially in situations that actually involve people, it becomes much harder to separate events from their environment. We can no longer treat conditions as systems of regular geometric shapes and points. This is something I have experience with as a civil engineer. This is why the idea of studying biological systems as interconnected organisms interacting in symbiosis, ecology, was so revolutionary.

This is Ellen Marie Chen’s translation of Verse 1 of the Tao Te Ching:

Tao that can be spoken of,
Is not the Everlasting (ch'ang) Tao.
Name that can be named,
Is not the Everlasting (ch'ang) name.
Nameless (wu-ming), the origin (shih) of heaven and earth;
Named (yu-ming), the mother (mu) of ten thousand things. — Lao Tzu

As Lao Tzu sees it, or at least as I see Lao Tzu seeing it, when something is nameless, unspoken, it doesn’t really exist. It is a formless, nameless unity - the Tao. When it is named, it is brought into existence as the multiplicity of the world as we experience it - the ten thousand things. I think this is similar to Kant’s idea of noumena and phenomena. I’ve always thought that it would be possible to experience the unspoken unity without words, although I have never been certain. In the article from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the phenomenology of self-consciousness that Joshs linked for me, the author identifies a similar kind of wordless experience as “pre-reflective self-consciousness.”

As I noted, I’m not really satisfied with any of these. I do like the Kant quote. At least I can say “Because Kant says so” to my detractors.

I'm nor sure what this gives us — Tom Storm

Your tone in your role as historian of (certain) ideas has importance because in my view you're sounding the imminent death knell of non-physicalist ideologies.

I think at this point in history there are a few key issues left to people who wish to find support for higher consciousness/idealism/theism worldviews - — Tom Storm

I understand from the above you're saying consciousness studies and QM provide defenders of discredited ideologies with grasping, eleventh-hour attempts at redemption of their beliefs.

Is your appraisal of the science-guided zeitgeist correct?

You're claiming the objectivism of science does not handicap its examination of subjective mind? — ucarr

Science is one way of looking at the world. It's a good way, but not the only way. Subjective experience is not something magical or exotic. We all sit here in the whirling swirl of it all day every day. Why would something so common and familiar be different from all the other aspects of the world? I just don't see what the big deal is.

I think I am dealing more in reason than history. Is it not the case that the focus of current discussions about the viability of physicalism is focused on the nature of consciousness- esp the hard question? QM is playing a similar role. If this is incorrect please show me. Happy to change my view.

Truly, I am not trying to be confusing. This is the way thinkers I read talk. There is a good reason why these authors are ignored: it takes a solid education in continental philosophy to even begin understanding them. — Constance

The sources that @Joshs and @Wayfarer linked me to, which were written in mostly plain English, were interesting and helpful. As I noted in a previous post, they seem like psychology to me more than they do philosophy.

To me, this aligns with the world, which is, when subjected to a close inspection of what is going on in common perception, utterly foreign to understanding. — Constance

I just don't get this. There is a lot that is not understood, but I can't see why it would be "foreign to understanding."

As I noted in a previous post, they seem like psychology to me more than they do philosophy. — T Clark

Husserl devoted considerable energy to rejecting charges of ‘psychologism’ i.e. that phenomenology was a form of psychology or could be reduced to it. Too great a task to try and explain, besides I’m not expert in it.

How is it a question of meaning? It's about a theory of consciousness. — frank

It’s about whether consciousness has any intrinsic meaning, what is the meaning of being. The mechanistic analysis never noticed that.

Husserl devoted considerable energy to rejecting charges of ‘psychologism’ i.e. that phenomenology was a form of psychology or could be reduced to it. Too great a task to try and explain, besides I’m not expert in it. — Wayfarer

Given the limits of my understanding of phenomenology, it would be silly to take my statements as anything more than a first impression.

(Please forgive the following apparent non sequitur) consider that S and P are bound by action-at-a- distance. Can we assume that such binding of identity nonetheless preserves much of the autonomy and self-determination of each correspondent?

Can we hypothesize the brain/object junction is a complex surface with some topology of invariance? — ucarr

Again, how does this span the epistemic distance?

We should do a reading of Heidegger's What is Metaphysics? It's so good. — frank

Ah, the nothing. It is such a great, disturbing read. What thoughts have you here?

Any attempt to describe epistemic connectivity would encounter the same problem it attempts to solve, for whatever the metaphor might be put in play, one would still have to explain how epistemic transmission is possible. — Constance

Have you perhaps made epistemic transmission problematical by conceiving of consciousness and its learning process as being predicated upon a discrete self/other bifurcation? Have you contemplated a self/other complex surface semi-symmetrical in its continuity?

The only thing I can imagine that would bridge the distance is identity, that is, one's knowing-self itself receives direct intimation of the presence of an object. — Constance

All one witnesses is phenomena. My couch is a phenomenal event and its "out thereness" is clearly evident, but how does its existence get into mine? — Constance

Here again I see instances of an assumption of self/other bifurcation. If you're committed to bifurcation, why?

Can the action-at-a-distance of the gravitational field elevate our conjecture (re:epistemic connectivity) above the simple self/other bifurcation?

Given the limits of my understanding of phenomenology, it would be silly to take my statements as anything more than a first impression. — T Clark

I too am a newbie in this area but for whatever reason, I find that Husserl really resonates with me. Incidentally there’s another good online resource here

https://iep.utm.edu/phenom/

Subjective experience is not something magical or exotic. We all sit here in the whirling swirl of it all day every day. Why would something so common and familiar be different from all the other aspects of the world? — T Clark

Your statement implies the belief commonplace subjective experiences should be easily accessible to the objectivist methodologies of science. It also implies the subjective/objective distinction is a trivial matter and should therefore be no problem for science. Scientists examining "the hard problem" indicate how, regarding this question, the division between subjective/objective is deep and treacherous. Why do you disagree with them?

You're claiming the objectivism of science does not handicap its examination of subjective mind? — ucarr

Your above observations do not answer my question. Are you unwilling to answer it?

Again, how does this span the epistemic distance? — Constance

My conjecture about a complex surface with some topology of invariance assumes a unity of subjective self and observed world (of material objects) so, what epistemic distance?

Your statement implies the belief commonplace subjective experiences should be easily accessible to the objectivist methodologies of science. It also implies the subjective/objective distinction is a trivial matter and should therefore be no problem for science. — ucarr

Neither of these statements is true.

Scientists examining "the hard problem" indicate how, regarding this question, the division between subjective/objective is deep and treacherous. Why do you disagree with them? — ucarr

You haven't provided any evidence that "Scientists examining "the hard problem" indicate how, regarding this question, the division between subjective/objective is deep and treacherous."

You're claiming the objectivism of science does not handicap its examination of subjective mind?
— ucarr

Your above observations do not answer my question. Are you unwilling to answer it? — ucarr

You're kind of a dick.

I just don't get this. There is a lot that is not understood, but I can't see why it would be "foreign to understanding." — T Clark

May I then offer you something that I found very helpful? It is here:



Hope I linked this properly. Derrida is saying language's relation to the world is indeterminate. References to dogs and cats and whatever really issue from a kind of associative field of meanings formed by regions of related ideas. Bennington is wonderful in this.

Also, an essay very accessible is Structure, Sign and Play.

So when I say foreign to understanding, I am saying that the idea that a tree is referred to, has some singularity in the thought of the tree (implicitly there in the familiarity I feel when I encounter tree) and that there is some directness of apprehension of what is before me as I witness the tree--all of this is wrong, because my direct encounter is really a diffuse meaning created out of the aggregate of many meanings. Ever since Kierkegaard argued that the world of actualities is qualitatively different from the language and the logic that the understanding clings to, I have tried to deal with this impossible relationship between me and the tree. This world is an astounding imposition on us, filled with powerful intuitions and dimensions of affectivity. I am reminded of Wittgenstein who wanted, and petitioned until was allowed, to face death in WWI. You may think he was out of his mind for wanting to go the the front, but this is what strikes me: He wanted true intimacy with a world that transcended the complacencies of thought and its categories. Sure, he was suicidal, but it was the passion of engagement I admire. He felt the world's impossible gravitas; why impossible? Because language brings the world to heel! And in doing so, we lose something profound about being here (qua being here).

I am a bit on the outside of philosophy, quite frankly. I am far less interested in understanding Husserl or Heidegger than I am interested in understanding the world. That is one way to put it. They are useful to my attempt to understand what is means to be thrown into a world that is utterly foreign to the formal structures of thought's attempts to address actuality.

Eckhart wrote, I pray to God to be rid of God. He understood that the self-in-language thereby rises up in thought, but finds itself bound and limited by it once it reaches a terminal point of indeterminacy in which meanings simply "run out" as Hillary Putnam once put it.

Keep in mind that even if Derrida is right, it changes nothing regarding the quality of what the world in its givenness yields. It does help us see that language does not speak the world.

The things you are saying are very alien to my understanding of the world. I will watch the video.

Have you perhaps made epistemic transmission problematical by conceiving of consciousness and its learning process as being predicated upon a discrete self/other bifurcation? Have you contemplated a self/other complex surface semi-symmetrical in its continuity? — ucarr

No, I've never thought of it. Tell me briefly how a "surface semi-symmetrical in its continuity" would do what needs to be done here.

Here again I see instances of an assumption of self/other bifurcation. If you're committed to bifurcation, why? — ucarr

Because the assumption of a non-bifurcated world simply needs explaining. That is all. I am not saying such a bifurcation is indeed the way the world is. You are invited to tell me why it isn't, of you can do so plainly.

Can the action-at-a-distance of the gravitational field elevate our conjecture (re:epistemic connectivity) above the simple self/other bifurcation? — ucarr

You suggest gravity is inherently epistemic?

My conjecture about a complex surface with some topology of invariance assumes a unity of subjective self and observed world (of material objects) so, what epistemic distance? — ucarr

You assume a unity. Is this a mathematical/geometrical unity?

Your statement implies the belief commonplace subjective experiences should be easily accessible to the objectivist methodologies of science. It also implies the subjective/objective distinction is a trivial matter and should therefore be no problem for science.
— ucarr

Neither of these statements is true. — T Clark

I think the following list of your statements within this conversation support my interpretation above. In my opinion, they intend to show objectivist science is well on its way to explaining the subjective mind.

Antonio Damasio is a neuroscientist who studies the biological foundations of mental processes, including consciousness. The book I have is "The Feeling of What Happens." — T Clark

In the same way, mental processes, including consciousness, are not nothing but biology. But they are bound by biology in the same way that recorded music is bound by a CD or MP3 reader or radio — T Clark

If it can't be known by science, how can it be known. How do you know it?... You don't. — T Clark

As far as I can see, there's no reason to think that consciousness can't be understood in terms of principles we already are aware of. I don't see any hard problem. — T Clark

the fact that many people cannot conceive that consciousness might have a physical basis is not evidence that it doesn't. — T Clark

You haven't provided any evidence that "Scientists examining "the hard problem" indicate how, regarding this question, the division between subjective/objective is deep and treacherous." — T Clark

Wayfarer has already done this on our behalf.

The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience.
— David Chalmers, Facing Up to the Hard Problem — Wayfarer

You're kind of a dick. — T Clark

Was the above ad hominem incited by,

You're claiming the objectivism of science does not handicap its examination of subjective mind?
— ucarr

Your above observations do not answer my question. Are you unwilling to answer it? — ucarr

I think your answer to this question is the essence of our debate. Why does the issue of this question enrage you? If I've enraged you by some other means, cite an example. If you're not enraged, why the hate speech?

they intend to show objectivist science is well on its way to explaining the subjective mind. — ucarr

I don't think I'd say "well on its way," but I think cognitive scientists and psychologists have made significant progress. Either way, that's not what you said I said. You said:

Your statement implies the belief commonplace subjective experiences should be easily accessible to the objectivist methodologies of science. It also implies the subjective/objective distinction is a trivial matter and should therefore be no problem for science. — ucarr

I didn't say or imply either of those things.

Was the above ad hominem incited by, — ucarr

It was not an ad hominem argument, it was an insult. The fact you don't recognize the difference tells me everything I need to know about whether or not to take you seriously.

I too am a newbie in this area but for whatever reason, I find that Husserl really resonates with me. — Wayfarer

I often wonder just how much of what we believe is arrived at through such personal processes - some ideas seem to neatly complement our existing aesthetics and values. I find Husserl, such as I have read, engaging too.

Keep in mind that even if Derrida is right, it changes nothing regarding the quality of what the world in its givenness yields. It does help us see that language does not speak the world. — Constance

Nicely put. I suspect this inadvertently summarises my position of not needing to disagree with those grand skeptics of grand narratives in philosophy, whilst simultaneously accepting that none of this makes a skerrick of difference to my actual life.

I am far less interested in understanding Husserl or Heidegger than I am interested in understanding the world. — Constance

This sounds quite old fashioned and perhaps seven quasi religious. I'm not sure I have ever thought the world could be understood. The more time I spend on this site, the more this seems reasonable. :wink: