What is it like? This is a question that elicits a rich source of experiential data from people, the answers are meaningful, but the question probably doesn't elicit specific, verifiable data. — Tom Storm
I have often heard philosophers, including gifted ones, assert that according to transcendental idealism 'everything exists in a mind, or in minds' or 'existence is mental'. This is a radical error. It is not what Kant or Schopenhauer were saying, nor is it what they believed. On the contrary, both of them believed that the abiding reality from which we are screened off by the ever-changing surface of our contingent and ephemeral experiences exists in itself, independent of minds and their perceptions or experiences. If reality had consisted only of perception, or only of experience, then it would presumably have been possible for us to encompass it exhaustively in perception or experience, to know it through and through, without remainder. But that is not so, and the chief clout of transcendental idealism is contained in the insight that while it is possible for us to perceive or experience or think or envisage only in categories (in the ordinary, not Kant's technical, sense) determined by our own apparatus, whatever exists cannot in itself exist in terms of those categories, because existence as such cannot be in categories at all. This must mean that in an unfathomably un-understandable way, whatever exists independently of experience must be in and throughout its whole nature different from the world of our representations. But because the world of our representations is the only world we know ‚ and the only world we can ever know ‚ it is almost irresistibly difficult for us not to take it for the world tout court, reality, what there is, the world as it is in itself. This is what all of us grow up doing, it is the commonsense view of things, and only reflection of a profound and sophisticated character can free us from it. — Bryan Magee, Schopenhauer's Philosophy
:up:So in that sense noumena and phenomena can be understood to be the same thing seen under the two different aspects: in-themselves and as-they-appear.
I remember reading somewhere that there are two schools of thought among Kant scholars: the dual world theorists and the dual aspect theorists. — Janus
Not relevant to my point. As I said,
What is it like? This is a question that elicits a rich source of experiential data from people, the answers are meaningful, but the question probably doesn't elicit specific, verifiable data.
— Tom Storm
For instance, if you were involved in counselling or supporting people to recover from trauma (as I am) or a series of other similar activities, then the question 'what is it like' can be of immense significance in assisting people to navigate their experiences and identity. — Tom Storm
There is no sensible meaningful answer to it. — creativesoul
There is no sensible meaningful answer to it.
— creativesoul
Which I think overstates the case, for reasons I have spelt out. — Tom Storm
Personally I have no idea what it's like to be me let alone you, or a fucking bat! — Tom Storm
No object without subject. That’s my final offer. :wink:
Pinter goes on to make the case that without subjects, there are no facts. — Wayfarer
I don't think of the ideas of noumena and in-itself as add-ons, but as qualifications marking the limits of knowledge. — Janus
What is the conscious mental experience that I have every day and every waking moment of my life?
Exactly what qualia are you referring to?
Is obscurity allowed now?
This is the crux of the issue for me. I am unconvinced by Schopenhauer's (and Kastrup's derivative) claims that we know the "in-itself" on the basis of some kind of postulated intellectual intuition
this cannot be knowledge but is just a feeling
Another significant problem I have with the idea is that there is a huge body of consistent and coherent scientific evidence that tells us there we many cosmological events long before there were any minds.
How does what I say differ from the hard problem as described by Chalmers? He concludes:
If experience arises from a physical basis, then the question of why and how biological function gives rise to experience, is the hard problem
Now you might think that science will not yield an answer, but that does not mean investigating the problem scientifically is not an investigation of the hard problem.
The physical transmission is not an extrinsic representation, it is the medium through which data is transmitted.
If the signals in the nervous system are blocked that shows that the transmission of data is physical.
This makes no sense. An anesthesiologist uses drugs not something mental. She does not rely on hypnosis.
These drugs affect awareness, they disrupt the mind.
In a human being, the Formless is in a relationship with the form and thus it is subject to different laws, laws of spacetime. The Formless does not lose its nature but it becomes limited by the form.
For some reason humans are born with the potential to realize that Formless Mind which is the original source of his/her consciousness.
So, I have created the following list, prompted by your request! :smile:
But consciousness is not limited to perception. I would mention that if I knew you would scrutinize my statement! :grin:
OK, but consciousness a characteristic of all life: Living organisms as well as plants.
All this is fine. But the "universal mind" is only a concept for me: I have no experience of it.
No, he didn’t correct the error; there wasn’t one to correct. It is impossible to know what things are in themselves, iff the human cognitive system is representational, which they both accepted as the case, and that necessarily.
All S did was take that which is impossible to not know….the will….and call it the thing-in-itself, a philosophical blunder for which there is no legitimate excuse.
it is impossible such knowledge can be of the original energy source.
noumena is a conception of a general class of conceptions
The categories are those primitive conceptions, not by which they are but by which representations of objects can be united such that a cognition is possible.
When we ask, "What is it like to watch a sunset?", what exactly are we asking for?
:brow:
Does that question even have an answer? It seems clear to me that it does not! Watching a sunset is not like anything. To quite the contrary, each viewing is different. One could watch the sun set as many times as one likes, and each event will be different. Likewise, each day, each moment of one's so called 'subjective experience' is different from all the others days and moments as well.
Hence, it is the question itself that is problematic in that it is not a well formulated question to begin with. — creativesoul
Maybe Mww can shed more light. — Janus
I know. And thanks for the clarification.I wasn’t trying to scrutinize your view but, rather, provide clarification in relation to analytic idealism. — Bob Ross
Yet, it does!A plant is conscious but does not perceive anything. — Bob Ross
That's why I like to connect consciousness with perception. Because we can know that the another person or a dog, etc. are conscious too --besides ourselves, who can experience consciousness directly-- by observing their reactions to stimuli, communicating with them, etc. If they react, it means that they can perceive and therefore they are conscious entities.other people and plants beings conscious is also a concept in that same sense (that we don’t experience it). — Bob Ross
Certainly.[Re: Me saying "I have no experience if it"] I don’t find this to be a problem: we can know things without experiencing them. — Bob Ross
With your claim (that you quoted as well), I was pointing out that you were claiming (if I didn’t misunderstand you) that science can eventually come to understand how the biological functions give rise to experience — Bob Ross
I am not sure how Chalmer’s defines a ‘hard problem’. — Bob Ross
If you agree that it is a hard problem, then I think you should also agree that science can’t help solve it. — Bob Ross
You can’t claim that biological functions product or give rise to experience without being committed already to physicalism — Bob Ross
you are presuming, in the question at least, that biological functions produce mental events). — Bob Ross
,but once they realize that it is impossible to understand it via science — Bob Ross
the physical transmission, which is a phenomena — Bob Ross
If the physical is an extrinsic representation of the mental ... — Bob Ross
If you hooked up a brain scanner to a person that is knocked out on anesthesia — Bob Ross
so would analytic idealism postulate that the ingestion of a drug and its side effects in the world is simply a representation — Bob Ross
it does not follow that what is truly happening is physical stuff (in a colloquial or even formal sense of the term) simply because we experience it as tangible within our dashboard of experience. — Bob Ross
The video game doctor — Bob Ross
does that mean that the character fundamentally exists as that ‘physical’ stuff? — Bob Ross
Yet, it [plants] does!
That's why I like to connect consciousness with perception. Because we can know that the another person or a dog, etc. are conscious too --besides ourselves, who can experience consciousness directly-- by observing their reactions to stimuli, communicating with them, etc. If they react, it means that they can perceive and therefore they are conscious entities.
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