Scientism is the belief that the scientific method is the best or only way to understand the world and solve problems. It is often associated with the belief that science can or should be applied to all areas of knowledge, including those that are traditionally outside the scope of science, such as morality and the meaning of life. Some people view scientism as a positive approach that can lead to new discoveries and insights, while others see it as a narrow-minded or reductionist way of thinking that oversimplifies complex issues. — ChatGPT
I'm very grateful to you, Constance. Thank-you for you time, attention, knowledge and wisdom as applied to my thoughts about the mode of the phenomenon of consciousness.
I can see, in an early state of understanding, not yet in sharp focus, some of the truth of your claim consciousness is more at metaphysics than at physics. I therefore see value in developing my thinking towards effecting the transition suggested.
I'm supposing, tentatively, that physically grounded consciousness as metaphysics has for one of its essentials the phenomenon/noumenon relationship. This directs my research towards Husserl and, before him, Kant.
Encouragement such as you've given me motivates my presence here. — ucarr
You were talking about being. It's a twin of the nothing. — frank
I don't know if Kant nor the Tao Te Ching have specific any bearing on the question. — Wayfarer
Phenomenology isn't really philosophy at all. It's psychology. So much of it makes definitive statements about phenomena and processes that can be verified or falsified using empirical methods. — T Clark
As for the Tao Te Ching, it is a statement from that particular source of the perennial philosophy - you could find comparable aphorisms in Christian mystical theology, but again, for those who understand the world that way, there is no hard problem (or any problem :-) ) — Wayfarer
Are you referring to Wilder Penfield's research here? — Wayfarer
Of course, I'm looking for trouble bringing something like this up here. — Constance
I think the Tao Te Ching, as well as Kant and Heidegger, make statements that are, at least potentially, empirically verifiable. — T Clark
But anyway, I think if you judge the original Chalmer's essay on its merits, it makes a pretty clear-cut case. It's about something very specific - without having to refer to Taoism or Kant or quantum physics. — Wayfarer
Indeed, and this is an extraordinary point: If the brain were the generative source of experience, every occasion of witnessing a brain would be itself brain generated. This is the paradox of physicalism. — Constance
when you can demonstrate a self-creating machine that follows goals... — Wayfarer
machines are human artefacts, produced intentionally to deliver a result. They embody the intention of the agent who builds them. — Wayfarer
If you define a 'machine' as human-made... — Isaac
No I can't. A machine is not bucket of water, or a fruit-bearing plant, or an animal. I'm not going to engage in pointless arguments. — Wayfarer
for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, — Nagel/Chalmers
the experience of dark and light, — Nagel/Chalmers
the quality of depth in a visual field. — Nagel/Chalmers
Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, — Nagel/Chalmers
the smell of mothballs. — Nagel/Chalmers
Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; — Nagel/Chalmers
mental images that are conjured up internally; — Nagel/Chalmers
the felt quality of emotion — Nagel/Chalmers
and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. — Nagel/Chalmers
what unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. — Nagel/Chalmers
All of them are states of experience. — Nagel/Chalmers
Unsurprisingly we often have to unpick an apparently reliable (because habitual) account alleging that a picture glows, somewhere inside our head. — bongo fury
for there is this impossible "outside" of the "unhiddenness" of what we deal with that we face when we encounter a creative moment: the nothing of an unmade future possibility. Our freedom is the nothing. — Constance
But how is this to be taken? I remember reading Hegel once, and he, as I recall, placed the nothing in dialectical opposition to being, thereby producing becoming, which God works out through our historical progress. That is pretty out there, but I have to look again to see how he spells it out. — Constance
I'm not saying that mechanisms can't bring about consciousness. I'm saying that the mere classification of signals is, obviously, not consciousness. — hypericin
These 0s and 1s are then translated on the player into a format amenable to the display device, which produces audio and video. — hypericin
Do you think that's what Chalmers and Nagel are suggesting? That a picture glows in the head? — frank
mental images that are conjured up internally; — Nagel/Chalmers
the felt quality of redness, — Nagel/Chalmers
Do you think that's what Chalmers and Nagel are suggesting? That a picture glows in the head?
— frank
Pretty much. Do I slander them? — bongo fury
How would you paraphrase
the felt quality of redness,
— Nagel/Chalmers
? — bongo fury
Consider, if you will, the one abiding thought that dominates my thinking: The world is phenomena. Once this is simply acknowledged, axiomatically so, then things fall into place. The brain is no longer the birth of phenomena, phenomena issue forth from phenomena, and what phenomena are is an open concept. Conscious open brain surgery shows a connection between brain and experiences, thoughts, emotions, memories, but does not show generative causality. Indeed, and this is an extraordinary point: If the brain were the generative source of experience, every occasion of witnessing a brain would be itself brain generated. This is the paradox of physicalism. What is being considered here, in your claim about gravity and its phenomenal universality (keeping in mind that gravity is not, of course, used in phenomenology's lexicon. But the attempt to bridge phenomenology with knowledge claims about the world of objects that are "out there" and "not me" is permitted {is it not?} to lend and borrow vocabularies with science. An interesting point to consider) is a "third perspective". Recall how Wittgenstein argued that we cannot discuss what logic is, for logic would be presupposed in the discussing. You would need some third perspective that would be removed from that which is being analyzed; but then, this itself would need the same, and so forth. This is the paradox of metaphysics, I guess you could call it, the endless positing of a knowledge perspective that itself, to be known, would require the same accounting as that which is being explained. An infinite regression.
But if you follow, in a qualified way, Husserl's basic claim that what we call appearances are really an ontology of intuition (though I don't recall he ever put it like this), whereby the givenness of the world IS the foundation we seek, the "third perspective" which is a stand alone, unassailable reality, then, while the "what is it?" remains indeterminate, for language just cannot "speak" this (see above), we can allow the scientific term "gravity" to be science's counterpart to the apparent need for an accounting of a transcendental ego in order to close the epistemic distance between objects and knowledge. — Constance
They're talking about experience. — frank
Remember that pan-psychism is on the table as a possible explanation. — frank
I've never heard of the glowing picture theory. — frank
How would you paraphrase
the felt quality of redness,
— Nagel/Chalmers
?
— bongo fury
I wouldn't. — frank
if you aren't willing to read an essay or book by Chalmers, — frank
I consider introspection a valid form of evidence, at least potentially. — T Clark
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