. I guess I mean any observable or measurable act or response that can be used to infer an internal state. — T Clark

Doesn’t this destroy the subjectivity of consciousness, the very essence of awareness? From cognitive science there are suggestions for a ‘mutual enlightenment’, between 1st person subjective , second person intersubjective and third person empirical methods.

http://www.neurohumanitiestudies.eu/archivio/gallagher97.pdf

Evan Thompson wants to go back and forth between phenomenology , mindfulness practices and cognitive
neuroscience, believing that none of these by themselves will fully explain consciousness.

CRT is dangerous because it holds a special status as being academic, which gives it an air of credibility. After a few decades since its conception it now finds itself in the highest echelons of politics and business and entertainment. — NOS4A2

The only way to effectively challenge CRT is to either show how it deviates from valuable
ideas in Critical theory, or critique the foundational
ideas of critical theory. The right wing lumps CRT together with Marxism , Critical theory and post-modernism. Their attempts to attack it in this sweeping way will fail , I believe, because we’re moving into a post-marxist era where the best concepts from Marx, Critical theory and post-modernism are usurping Enlightenment liberalism as the new ground of political
thought.

Are you familiar with any of the writings in Critical theory of Continental authors like Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse or Habermas? I’m wondering if your concerns are restricted to critical race theory or if they extend to Critical theory in general.

I don't think there is any mystery of consciousness. Consciousness is a behavior. — T Clark

How does one define behavior, as change in space-time of an observed object? Is there a notion of behavior joe that cannot be defined in terms of movement of an object in space? Is change of the sense of a meaning a behavior?

The following are all available free here:

https://ku-dk.academia.edu/DanZahavi

Zhavi: We in Me or Me in We? Collective Intentionality and Selfhood. March 2021 Journal of
Social Ontology

Zahavi: Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-Person Perspective.2005

Zahavi: ‘Is the Self a Social Construct’, Inquiry, Vol. 52, No. 6, 551–573,

Zahavi Consciousness and (minimal) selfhood: Getting clearer on for-me-ness and mineness
U. Kriegel (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Consciousness.
Oxford University Press, 2019

Heidegger discards the idea of a world independent of the Dasein’s projective structure.
— Joshs

I'm not sure he does. Hegel seems to in most people's reading of him, but I don't think he is a pure idealist, nor Heidegger. I've never heard of Heidegger being an idealist before to be honest — Gregory

I’m not sure what you mean by a pure idealist. You mean like Berkeley? Is Kant a pure idealist in your view? At any rate, Heidegger isnt saying that there is nothing but Dasein’s projective structure. He’s saying that one cannot separate the world from the subject.

“To say that the world is subjective is to say that it belongs to the Dasein so far as this being is in
the mode of being-in-the-world. The world is something which the “subject” “projects outward as it were, from within itself. But are we permitted to speak here of an inner and an outer? What can this projection mean? Obviously not that the world is a piece of myself in the sense of some other thing present in me as in a thing and that I throw the world out of this subject thing in order to catch hold of the other things with it. Instead, the Dasein itself is as such already projected. So far as the Dasein exists a world is cast-forth with the Dasein’s being. To exist means, among other things, to cast-forth a world, and in fact in such a way that with the thrownness of this projection, with the factical existence of a Dasein, extant entities are always already uncovered.”

The issue for this thread would be, do you think animals recognize experience as an issue for them or would they take it as a given that is nothing that raises "reflection" in such an animal? — Manuel

I’m not sure if ‘recognizing experience as an issue’ is a thing. That is , some special capacity of thought above and beyond good old fashion reflection. I do think higher animals reflect, so I don’t think however you want to characterize what it is people
do when they reflect on experience as their own belongs to some special capacity only humans posses. We’ve been down this anthrocentric road before. It wasn’t long ago that supposedly only humans had emotions, language, culture, cognition or tool use.
We now are beginning to learn that other animals have all kinds of complex cognitive abilities, including self-recognition and empathy.

Just pointing to the progression... that'll do me. — Banno

If it truly is a linear progression then, yes, it makes sense to describe science as in the ‘solving’ business. But as far as I can see , with a linear causal
model of progress you end up with what you started with Kind of like ‘solving’ physics with a unified model of everything and thereby predicting all future events
on your computer. It solves everything and nothing at the same time. I do like a concept of prediction that jettisons the linear causal baggage though.

It is my understanding that young infants have to learn the difference between what is part of them and what is outside. — T Clark

“...this traditional hypothesis which takes
the infant’s experience to be initially impersonal and anonymous has been rejected
unequivocally by dominant positions in contemporary developmental psychology. On the basis of numerous experimental data it is now assumed that the infant already from birth begins to experience itself, and that it never passes through a period of total self/other nondifferentiation. As both Stern, Neisser and Butterworth have argued, there is no symbiotic-like phase, and thereexists no systematic and pervasive confusion between the child’s experience of self and other, nor between the child’s experience of the other and of the world.” Dan Zahavi

‘Can someone name a single solved scientific problem?’.
— Joshs

...he typed on his laptop... — Banno

which used to be a typewriter , and before that pen and paper , and before that a feather quill , and before
that a stone tablet. Did each invention solve the same
problem or create a new problem to solve? Wasn’t it Steve Jobs who said he made products that people didn’t even realize they needed?

We know that we have some kind of knowledge, and this fact is puzzling, why do we have this thing, experience? I doubt animals get near that, as it would also require language and much else, which is not to deny in the least the amazing capacities animals have in there own right. — Manuel

I don’t agree with Zahavi’s version of a pre-reflective self-awareness. He calls it ‘for-meness’ and deems it a self-identify of self , an ongoing feeling that accompanies all my intentional experiences. So I sense the coldness of the refrigerator and I ask sense how it feels for me. To me the issue of a sense of self isn’t a pure self-identity separate from but accompanying all my experiences of objects. I think it has to do with the relative integrity and internal coherence of my moment to moment changes in experience. In other words , self is a structural feature of the relation between my anticipative projecting and the objects that occur into that anticipation.
I think this is relevant not just for humans but other animals too. It deals with the issue of functional autonomy of a self-organizing system. A functionally autonomous cognizer is governed by internal norms which pre-select how it perceives its environment. I think the at normative projecting gives the experienced its sense of a relative self identity over time.

But isn't the problem with self-awareness that it goes a step beyond experience ("mere" consciousness)? — Manuel

There has been a fair amount of work in recent years on what has been called a pre-reflective form of minimal self-awareness. Dan Zahavi has made this his central focus, but there is growing concensus that all experience presupposes some primitive sense of self. Infants have been shown to differentiate self from others.

by affirming the propositions "Empirical facts are dependent on subjective organization," and "Empirical facts are a product of subjective organization," I have somehow contradicted myself? — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I didn’t mean that you contradicted yourself. I meant that your position may contradict an enactivist or postmodern account of subjectivity.

Most, if not all the properties associated with an object (as we experience it) are perceptually constructed and cannot belong to an object in itself independent of perception. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I’m not sure whether you mean this in a Kantian sense or a postmodern sense. Kant recognizes that there is no direct apprehension of a world, and that is what our interpretive faculties are for. But he believes that our empirical interpretations and theories strive to approximate a presumed objective world.

The enactivista believe , by contrast, that our empirical models are not an attempt to adequately represent a pre-existing external world , but the production of a world. We invent worlds to pragmatically interact with. Some of these worlds are more useful to us than others in relation to our needs and goals.

there is one modern problem that has been solved actually, substance dualism, the view that Descartes argued for. — Manuel

The understanding of philosophy or science that believes that either of them are in the business of ‘solving ‘ problems’ is a problem for me.
Solution implies for me the idea of thought as the mirror of nature. To me nature isn’t a static ‘out there’, it is a becoming that our inquiries contribute to. We don’t mirror the world, we produce worlds. I think the purpose of knowledge is to clear the ground for the asking of more interesting questions.

Since the human mind is incapable of accessing reality in any substantive way, people make-up all kinds of non-sense that changes, changes, changes with the winds that blow in every direction. — synthesis

You just gave a good description of science, which claims to ‘solve’ a problem and then refashions itself over and over to ‘solve’ again. Except the so-called progress of science is less about solving a previous problem than of asking a different question.

Some examples:
Physics, psychology, linguistics, mathematics, logic, chemistry, biology... — Banno

Except that the op could just as well have been ‘Can someone name a single solved scientific problem?’.
Converting natural philosophy into physics didnt ‘solve’ anything. It just changed the language and methods.
I’m not sure what ‘solved’ is supposed to mean with regard to empirical paradigms unless
one believes that there is a way things ‘really are’ and we’re just mirroring nature with our theories. Science offers practical ways of interacting with the world in relation to our goals.

Is there a contradiction entailed somewhere by my affirming of those propositions? — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Yes, I think there is. Your model maintains a fact-value distinction that can’t justify itself, according to analytically trained philosophers like Quine, Putnam and Rorty. All facts get their sense via larger valuative schemes within which they are ensconced. It is incoherent to talk about facts or sense data that is what it is independent of the perceiver.

“Contrary to popular opinion and many philosophical epistemologies, knowledge does not involve the union or synthesis of an already existing subject and an independent object.” Mark Taylor

Subjectivity doesn’t just organize and categorize data from an presumed independent world. The subject co-creates the object.

What do you think modern phenomenology discards from Hegel or Kant? — Gregory

Kant believed that there was an objective world independent of the subject that the subject could come to know more and more perfectly as an asymptotic vector. Heidegger discards the idea of a world independent of the Dasein’s projective structure. Kant believes there were a priori categories of mind that allow us to organize experience via space time and causality. Heidegger rejected the idea of innate categories of perception. Kant also asserted the categorical imperative pertaining to moral values. Heidegger rejected this notion.

Then of course there is the argument that physicalism is itself a form of dualism.
— Joshs

How so? I thought physicalism is the belief that everything, including mind and all non-physical phenomena such as qualia, can be explained via physical phenomena and without recourse to any non-physical mechanisms. — fishfry

Physicalism thinks it leaves dualism behind, when in fact it simply ignores the subjective dimension of experience that is built into , but hidden within, the very assumptions of physicalism.

You may find this from philosopher Evan Thompson interesting. He adheres to the Enactivist approach in psychology.

“...we can see historically how the concept of nature as physical being got constructed in an objectivist way, while at the same time we can begin to conceive of the possibility of a different kind of construction that would be post-physicalist and post-dualist–that is, beyond the divide between the “mental” (understood as not conceptually involving the physical) and the “physical” (understood as not conceptually involving the mental)."

“Many philosophers have argued that there seems to be a gap between the objective, naturalistic facts of the world and the subjective facts of conscious experience. The hard problem is the conceptual and metaphysical problem of how to bridge this apparent gap. There are many critical things that can be said about the hard problem (see Thompson&Varela, forthcoming), but what I wish to point out here is that it depends for its very formulation on the premise that the embodied mind as a natural entity exists ‘out there' independently of how we configure or constitute it as an object of knowledge through our reciprocal empathic understanding of one other as experiencing subjects. One way of formulating the hard problem is to ask: if we had a complete, canonical, objective, physicalist account of the natural world, including all the physical facts of the brain and the organism, would it conceptually or logically entail the subjective facts of consciousness? If this account would not entail these facts, then consciousness must be an additional, non-natural property of the world.

One problem with this whole way of setting up the issue, however, is that it presupposes we can make sense of the very notion of a single, canonical, physicalist description of the world, which is highly doubtful, and that in arriving (or at any rate approaching) such a description, we are attaining a viewpoint that does not in any way presuppose our own cognition and lived experience. In other words, the hard problem seems to depend for its very formulation on the philosophical position known as transcendental or metaphysical realism. From the phenomenological perspective explored here, however — but also from the perspective of pragmatism à la Charles Saunders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, as well as its contemporary inheritors such as Hilary Putnam (1999) — this transcendental or metaphysical realist position is the paradigm of a nonsensical or incoherent metaphysical viewpoint, for (among other problems) it fails to acknowledge its own reflexive dependence on the intersubjectivity and reciprocal empathy of the human life-world.

Another way to make this point, one which is phenomenological, but also resonates with William James's thought (see Taylor, 1996), is to assert the primacy of the personalistic perspective over the naturalistic perspective. By this I mean that our relating to the world, including when we do science, always takes place within a matrix whose fundamental structure is I-You-It (this is reflected in linguistic communication: I am speaking to You about It) (Patocka, 1998, pp. 9–10). The hard problem gives epistemological and ontological precedence to the impersonal, seeing it as the foundation, but this puts an excessive emphasis on the third-person in the primordial structure of I–You–It in human understanding. What this extreme emphasis fails to take into account is that the mind as a scientific object has to be constituted as such from the personalistic perspective in the empathic co-determination of self and other. The upshot of this line of thought with respect to the hard problem is that this problem should not be made the foundational problem for consciousness studies. The problem cannot be ‘How do we go from mind-independent nature to subjectivity and consciousness?' because, to use the language of yet another philosophical tradition, that of Madhyamika Buddhism (Wallace, this volume), natural objects and properties are not intrinsically identifiable (svalaksana); they are identifiable only in relation to the ‘conceptual imputations' of intersubjective experience.“

If you think that Husserl provided additional development of the ideas of Kant and Hegel, feel free to post something on it here. I am much more familiar with his student Heidegger — Gregory

Do you think that Heidegger provided additional development of the ideas of Kant and Hegel? More specifically, did he simply add to what they said or did he transform their ideas through a critique of them? I think both Husserl and Heidegger left behind certain metaphysics assumptions of Kant and Hegel.

The dualist believes there is "something else" beyond the physical. — fishfry

Then of course there is the argument that physicalism is itself a form of dualism.

I dont disagree. My point is just that we need different empirical accounts to explain different phenomena. A quantum account of consciousness wouldn’t be ‘wrong’, but I don’t think it would address what psychologists need it to in their approach to consciousness.

You’re thinking idealism, I’m thinking phenomenology. Constructs aren’t ‘all in the mind’ , they are products of mind-world interaction. Our constructs make direct contact with reality, but reality is always perspectival.

this post/thread is simply the brain/mind telling itself how insignificant it itself is in the grand scheme of things I suppose. — TheMadFool

You’re right. The brain-mind don’t dominate. It’s brain-mind-body and environment together. They cannot be separated except artificially.

I expect researchers to eventually model in the context of a quantum consciousness theory — Enrique

This would be of interest mainly to physicists. My impression is that for most psychologists a
quantum theory of consciousness would be almost useless. The most promising theories of consciousness deal with such issues as empathy, affectivity and self-awareness These make uses of an intentional account of motivation, not a physically causal one.

the spirit and the soul do not exist and are merely artificial constructs or concepts. The mind, a result of complex brain function, and body is all we have. — Brock Harding

The mind and the brain are also the result of artificial constructs. It’s not a question of getting beyond our constructs, but of deciding which ones appear more
useful to us in navigating our world.

I do see a strong affinity between Scheler and Merleau-Ponty, but not with Heidegger.

Interesting. I’m less familiar with Scheler’s approach to perception than with Husserl. But there’s a lot of interest these days among psychologists in Scheler.

have you never heard and instantly responded, "What was that?" Or listened to the same music played by different musicians, encountering their differences in interpretation, amounting to differences in sound. Or for that matter tested different instruments listening for exactly their "noise"? — tim wood

But notice that in each case there was a prior context of interest and relevance that made it possible for a sense to break through into consciousness as something meaningful. What determines the difference between all those situations in which background noise is entirely ignored while we intently focus on what is drawing our interest, and a situation in which we suddenly ‘notice’ something as a noise? It’s not as if there is no awareness at all of background stimulation in the first instance, but the relevance and therefore the very substance of the ‘sound’ changes with our interest in it Context is key here, and I think that’s Heidegger’s point. He’s saying there are no isolable
primitives of sensation independent of the meaningful, relevant contexts of human activities.
As you know , how musical notes are heard is dependent on the prior context out of which they arise.

Phenomenology, the school of thought that started with Kant I believe, says that reality is being and flux together, thereny taking the steps of the ancient Greeks to a third point. Phenomena, I believe, means that reality is both becoming and being, both subjective and objective, and both phenomena and noumena. — Gregory

Modern phenomenology began with Husserl around 1900. While it is indebted to Kant’s phenomenology , it functions as a critique of Kant. For Husserl, Being IS becoming. The subject provides no contentful categories of meaning but is merely a pole alongside the objective pole in the constitution of sense from
moment to moment. There is no noumenon, only appearance.

How easy it is to counter that the cup, of all "things," we never, ever encounter, but only the atoms. — tim wood

Is the empirical physical description really the most primary one from a philosophical point of view, or is it just one of may possible derived products of the direct perception of an object , in which we don’t experience atoms but this object in its relevance for us?

““Initially" we never hear noises and complexes of sound, but the creaking wagon, the motorcycle. We hear the column on the march, the north wind, the woodpecker tapping, the crackling fire. It requires a very artificial and complicated attitude in order to "hear" a "pure noise."” Heidegger

some objects only exist in specific realms, e.g. a cup exists in the realm of natural objects, — Pantagruel

One could argue from a phenomenological point of view that the cup is a cultural object. It loses its sense when we take away its socially assigned use.

I agree with everything you said , but it doesn’t sound like Cartesian trigger-puppets would accept that empirical facts are dependent on and a product of subjective organization.

I think I misread your position as a postmodern form of subjectivity.

Subjectivity is probably best understood as a psychological context about the way things are and also as the opposite of objectivity, which is the way things are independent from individual subjectivity — Cartesian trigger-puppets

For postmodern and phenomenological positions , it is incoherent to talk about the way things are independent from individual subjectivity, because subjectivity is merely a pole alongside the objective pole in the experience of the world. That is, objectivity is a derived product of subjective experience rather than the ‘opposite’ of it.

The totality of physical and phenomenological variables — Cartesian trigger-puppets

the deterministic flow of the universe i — Cartesian trigger-puppets

What is the relationship between subjectivity and empirical notions like the physical , neurophysiological facts and adeterministic universe? Are empirical facts the product of intersubjectivity? Are they social constructs, and if so, is s scientific truth adjudicated the same way as subjective moral truth?Does science progress through falsification or change the way the arts and politics do?

I just want to add that Marx and Freud tend to be treated in a much narrow context in the U.S. than in Europe. Here the focus is typically on applied political theory only, whereas among Continental philosophers he is looked at as a philosopher
with wide ranging interests, including ethics , aesthetics and psychology. Freud is thought of here only in terms of a clinical approach , whereas in Europe Freudianiam means much more than that.

Epistemic justification/explanations. — Marty

How are these grounded? In some idealist a priori?
Are you appealing to revelation?

As you may know, Husserl didn’t consider epistemic justification to be self-grounding , but a constituted product of motivated associative acts.

An entire generation sold-out to McMansions, European luxury sedans/SUVs, and whatever else people find it necessary to rip-out off the common man. — synthesis

That was the theme of ‘The Big Chill’. But the premise was kind of silly, because they were all just followers of fashion to begin with. One could argue that BLM protesters are in their own way followers of fashion.

I am 66 and the amount I know now as compared as what I knew at thirty is incalculable ( — synthesis

I think that’s true of my favorite pop composers. But the issue isn’t just how much more you know now that 30 years ago, it’s how much younger generations have leapfrogged over your knowledge. Frank Sinatra was undoubtedly wiser at 70 than at 25, but his way of thinking about music became irrelevant to a new generation.

Everything of significant value in life you gain through direct experience. — synthesis

Everything of significant value in my life came from sitting in a quiet room and generating ideas out of all variety of experience, both direct and indirect. All ‘direct’ means to me is a set of ideas I generate that link to what I learned from others but goes beyond it.

What I'm saying is Marx is far less original than some people think. — Apollodorus

The ‘some people’ that I respect are among the the most notable philosophers ( and psychologists) of the past 100 years, and they find Marx to be a seminal thinker. So you would have to go down that long list and explain why those thinkers should also be de-valued.

btw, can you give me the names of a few favorite
psychologists of yours?