As I understand it phenomenology aims to reflect on and characterize the general nature of human experience. I have always been skeptical about attempts to make inferences from human experience to metaphysical claims. — Janus

And phenomenology was initially meant as a corrective to this tendency. But as many philosophers have argued since, this is very hard to do. In the act of reporting an observation, say a simple perception of a tree, we must include metaphysical assumptions if we are to speak at all. (Granted, this depends on a fairly broad interpretation of "metaphysical.").

What we're talking about here, I think, is the difference between the inference that there are really trees out there, and the inference that there is really a god out there. The evidentiary bases are wholly different, and would need to be weighed differently as well, but I want to claim that the basic process is the same -- we try to describe and understand our experiences, and then see if we can infer anything from them about the world, even if it's only an inference to the best explanation.

I think the salient question is as to just what is the content of a mystical experience — Janus

I agree. And to be unbiased, we should really put "mystical" in quotes, since several possible descriptions of their content would reveal "mystical" as an error.

The interpretation of mystical experiences seems to me to be a very personal matter. For me interpretation is more of a feeling, a sense of something, more like poetry than anything which can be couched in definite terms. — Janus

I think we were talking about interpretation earlier in this thread, weren't we? (Or was it somewhere else? Sorry!) I'll just say here that I think interpretation is much more than just a feeling or a sense. There are good and bad interpretations, in terms of their fidelity to the facts. Hermeneutics tries to lay this out in a systematic way.

It seems that there is a cross-cultural commonality of mystical human experience―but what does that point to? Who can say? — Janus

Good questions. And that, I believe, is the important thing -- that they are good questions, not ones we can dismiss because the answers are somehow obvious.

For an extraordinary claim like, “I had direct communication with God” an atheist is going to need more than someone's personal testimony. — Tom Storm

I would divide this into "the subjective experience," described as neutrally as possible, and "the explanation," in this case a purported direct communication with God. I'm suggesting that the atheist can accept that an extraordinary subjective experience took place while denying the explanation. But this isn't about rejecting personal testimony -- unless, that is, the claimant wants to maintain that the experience was what I'm calling "self-credentialed."

I wouldn't say 'ruled out' but worthy of robust skepticism certainly. — Tom Storm

Me too. Again, a "nicer atheist" may take this position, but I've just as often heard it described as "impossible" or "incoherent."

Is there a non-naturalistic explanation for anything we can definitely identify? — Tom Storm

I think all explanations that involve reasons, as opposed to causes, are non-naturalistic -- but that's a whole huge other topic.

Yes, this is the nub of the issue: is the God explanation really of equal weight to alternative explanations - such as psychological phenomena, mental illness, or substance use? — Tom Storm

It may not be, in a given case, but I wasn't saying all the possible explanations had to be weighted equally. Indeed, it would be odd if they were; that isn't how it works with "ordinary" explanations for things like sensual perceptions. I was saying that we ought to allow the "God explanation" to be weighed along with any others. Equal weight? That will be influenced by many factors, including substance ingestion!

And perhaps it's not worth debating, these discussions rarely shift anyone’s position and too often descend into unproductive or abusive exchanges. Not from you, I hasten to add. — Tom Storm

Nor you, thanks.

If the purpose of the discussion is really to shift someone's position on religion or mystical experiences, I completely agree -- ain't gonna happen. But I do think it's worthwhile to get some analytical clarity on what's involved in talking about, and evaluating, this kind of report. Especially, we want to understand better how beliefs are formed, and what counts as adequate justification and refutation.

Well, atheists I know would not say, as you write, “there isn’t any personal god.” — Tom Storm

You know nicer atheists than I do! :smile:

such experiences rely on subjective testimony — Tom Storm

I don't think this is the heart of the problem. We routinely accept subjective testimony about all sorts of things, if by "testimony" you mean merely "Here is what I saw/heard/tasted/thought." Rather, the problem is the explanatory value, as you say here:

experiences that, while meaningful to the individual, could have multiple naturalistic explanations and thus can't meaningfully serve as reliable evidence for the existence of a divine being. — Tom Storm

An alleged mystical experience can indeed have multiple explanations, just as an experience of romantic love can. The atheist can allow the experience, on a purely descriptive level; what they draw the line at is the explanation. They don't believe -- and I think they're right not to -- that any experience can be completely "self-credentialing." I can't claim that my experience of X includes as part of that experience the knowledge of what caused the experience. At best, we draw the most plausible conclusions.

And this leads to the other point that the atheist wants to insist on -- your use of the phrase "naturalistic explanations." I think that, for most atheists, non-naturalistic explanations are ruled out a priori. But if we don't do this, and simply talk about "multiple possible explanations" among which could be explanations based on an encounter with God, then at least the "God explanation" can join the other contenders and be weighed for its plausibility just like any other.

Good post, and like you I think epiphenomenalism has to be wrong. The possible descriptions of the psychophysical nexus, however, need to give a clear answer to this question: When I come up with a solution to some problem -- fixing a car, say -- and implement it, have I in fact come up with a solution? And then used my (mental) solution to affect physical objects? Or is all this loose talk for some kind of "emerging" and "constraining" and "causal relevance" and "shaping" and "filtering" and "operating" that, if and when we fully understand it, will make the "solution" story either much too simple or downright wrong?

I'm not making fun of your terminology at all. I have none better to offer. It's very hard to use our current concepts to construct a simple picture of what's going on here. And yet it's the simple picture that we need: Am I along for the ride, like steam from the train, or do my decisions really cause anything to happen? And if these binaries are misguided, how should we understand that?

I can honestly imagine being in your shoes to some extent. If you reject that line of thought, then yes, such talk couldn't reflect the way you actually think. — frank

I don't reject it, in fact such empathy is very important. I just believe it doesn't count as a genuine possible world for philosophical purposes.

I can imagine possible worlds where I'm somebody else, or a rock. I'd love being a rock. — frank

Looooooosely, yes. :smile: Do you know this song?

the name . . . as a sort of nexus of possibility — frank

That's a very good way of putting it.

All of that is sorted out by a specific statement. For instance, if you say, "If I were Barack Obama, I would have told the Syrian rebels to calm down. — frank

Not so sure about this. First of all, I don't take "If I were Barack Obama . . . " as a genuine reference to a possible world. For me, this is loose talk for "Barack Obama should have. . . " If we insist on pressing this hypothetical, we run up against Kripke: "You can't be Obama; he was born of different parents." And I think this is right. "If I were Obama . . . " etc. reads like a meaningful sentence but that's an illusion.

But there's another issue as well. Let's compare to "If I were a rock, I would have been happy in 2015." I suppose the "different parents" argument could be said to apply, but the problem seems deeper than that. We've crossed over from loose talk into nonsense. Why, and how? Can we say that being a rock is even less possible? Someone can be Obama -- namely, Obama himself -- but no one can be a rock. That sounds a little ad hoc, but I don't know.

if "a" necessarily designates a, can we conclude that a necessarily has the property of being designated by "a"? — Ludwig V

Right, this is the same question I'm raising about whether something about reference needs to be included in a list of X's properties. (I'm going to stick with X rather than a because the lower-case "a" can be confusing.). I asked:

Can I know everything (or nothing) about X without including the reference-fixing story in my knowledge (or lack thereof)? — J

and you replied:

You don't need to include the reference-fixing story. But you do need to know how to refer to X. If you get that wrong, the rest collapses. — Ludwig V

I'm inclined to agree, but it opens a messy subject: What is the difference between fixing the reference of an individual versus a generic? In the gold example, we can indeed be wrong about whether sample G is gold, but what about "gold" as a substance? Don't we have two items whose references have been fixed -- sample G and "gold"? How these are fixed is quite distinct. If we both can recognize sample G out of a dozen other samples, that's because of a reference-fixing story that is local and specific. It really has nothing to do with understanding what "gold" refers to, if you see what I mean.

human experience in general — Janus

This, I think, deserves attention. You're saying that, because phenomenology et al. are at least "quasi-empirical," we can reasonably abstract from them to make statements about human life in general. This can't be rigorously intersubjective, but it is more so than mystical or religious experiences. Would it follow, then, that if most people had mystical experiences, we'd consider them also to be "quasi-empirical" and possible evidence for general conclusions? How many would we need? What would be the threshold beyond which the experiences gained evidentiary status?

There's a general anti-religious argument that goes something like: "There isn't any personal God, because there's no evidence for such a being. That explains why so few people are 'mystics' and claim to have such direct evidence. They're a little crazy, and are misinterpreting their experiences." The question is, Which way does the reasoning go? Are we saying that the lack of evidence shows the non-existence of God, or are we saying that, because God does not exist, there couldn't be such evidence? If it's the latter, that would commit us to saying that even if everybody had mystical experiences, they'd still be wrong in believing they were evidence for a personal God. I think this is what most of the atheists I know would say: You can't have evidence for unicorns because there aren't any. Those who believe in them nonetheless are, charitably, misguided.

So compare that to our (relative) confidence in the conclusions of quasi-empirical inquiries such as philosophy. Do we have confidence in them merely because the experiences they're based on are so widespread? Or is it rather that we have independent, non-experiential reasons for believing in the credibility of these experiences -- and thus expect most people to have them?

So we say that "a" and "b" are like proper names, and since "a" and "b" are rigid designators, we say that proper names are also rigid designators. And so it seems that since no property need be true of "a" in every possible world, no property need be true of a proper name in every possible world — Banno

Yes, but let's not forget indexicals. These are rigid designators as well. This seems a little puzzling. Do we want to consider "the fact that I am 'I'" -- or, if you prefer, "the fact that 'I' designates me" -- to be a property of me? I can't remember if Kripke goes into this. If it is a property, then it would appear to be a property that must be true in every possible world -- I am always the person in question. But if it is not a property, then it must be strictly a "seeming" or "pointing" by which we fix reference. I suppose we could take this latter course and, when switching perspectives, just go ahead and switch pronouns too, but then don't we have the same problem? "The fact that you are 'you' . . ." etc.?

I think this is pointing to the question we've tossed around already -- whether "how a reference is fixed for X" is part of the list of X's potential properties; or whether we're mixing discourses by thinking of it that way. Can I know everything (or nothing) about X without including the reference-fixing story in my knowledge (or lack thereof)?

Weird similarities with the "existence [is/is not] a predicate" problem too.

Could there be strictly empirical evidence available to guide me in answering that question [of how I should live]? — Janus

This caught my eye. Could you tighten up a couple of things? First, what would strictly empirical evidence be? Do you mean, say, physical evidence that is uninterpreted, or at least only minimally interpreted according to schema that would gain universal assent? Second, can evidence guide me without demanding or demonstrating a particular answer? I'm guessing that's what you mean, since otherwise you wouldn't say "guide" but something more like "determine" or "necessitate".

I am not arguing that there are some sacred descriptions that cannot be overturned. — Ludwig V

No, that's clear. The relevant question is:

. . . provided we can fix the reference of X without appealing to any of the properties of X. But most people would say that "tiger" refers to large striped cats that live in parts of Asia. How would you fix the reference without relying on any of the known properties of tigers? — Ludwig V

We can do it by talking about how tigers seem, and how we use that seeming to fix the reference. It's a kind of austerity or agnosticism about whether what appears to us is also in fact the case about the object. So yes, "large striped cats that live in parts of Asia" is exactly how tigers seem, and if they didn't seem that way, we wouldn't have been able to fix the reference. But, in the unlikely event that some part of this description turned out to be only a seeming -- that is, factually inaccurate -- we would say we had learned something about tigers. We wouldn't say, "Oh, that wasn't a tiger after all." This is Kripke's basic argument.

If we did find out that everything we knew about tigers were mistaken or in error, that would nevertheless be a discovery about tigers. It follows that "tiger" does not refer to tigers in virtue of some description that sets out their characteristics. — Banno

The idea is that we learn what some thing is, name it, and then discover that everything we knew about it was false. — Banno

There's something very odd about saying that we learn what some thing is, and then discover that what we have learnt about it is false. What is the "it" here? — Ludwig V

if a human successfully "picks out" the fresh water, hydrates themselves, and survives to see another day, don't we want to say he knows how to "pick out" fresh water? If the answer is "yes", in this scenario, what sense can we make that this human could later discover "that everything we knew about it was false"? Seems we are flirting with radical skepticism. — Richard B

Depends what counts as part of "everything we know" about X. Does it include "how to fix the reference of X"? If it does, then no, we can't discover that this was false. In such a case, we'd discover we were talking about something different. But if "everything we know" is limited to properties of X, then yes, we could even discover, of a tiger, that it was translucent and incorporeal, and only gave the appearance of being the sort of thing we've come to reference as "tiger". This startling result would be described as being about the tiger.

The fresh water example seems trickier, because we're using a property,"freshness," to name the item in question, which gives the illusion of an essence. To make matters worse, we're associating that property with what we believe is an inductively necessary effect on humans. But I think the principle is the same: Change the name to "lala." If we then discover that lala sometimes makes us sick, what would we say? We'd say we were wrong about lala always producing a certain effect on us. The question of freshness would be handled separately, and differently: Now we also need to say that being fresh doesn't necessarily prevent us from getting sick. It's the little cause-effect story that's been proved false, not anything about lala.

Or to put it another way, by giving a different answer to Richard's question: No, we mustn't say that humans know how to pick out fresh water. We know how to pick out lala on the basis of whether it harms us -- or we did, until the hypothetical counterexample arrived. Now we're not sure how to do it.
And notice that the "biological machinery" can remain intact. That's because we can say that the hypothetical counterexample happens(ed) so rarely that it didn't affect evolution.

PS -- I let all this age for a while, and upon rereading, I have some doubts about the fresh water example. But rather than launch into the counter-arguments, I'll just wait and see how others respond.

Yes, this highlights an important fact about memory, which is its peculiar status as both present and past. We can bracket "a memory" or we can bracket "the experience of remembering". They are not the same. The latter must emphasize my conscious role, now, in what is occurring. I, the remembering self, am a player in the drama, so to speak -- as Proust was. Of course, many on this thread have rightly inquired whether "a memory," taken on its own, is really so innocent of the self's involvement.

What makes it, something I am remembering, and not sensing or imagining? — Fire Ologist

Right, and we need to keep discriminating the "what makes it" or "how does it happen" question between two possible meanings. We might give a psychological, semi-causal reading to this question, and try to answer it by describing how memories are formed -- what literally makes a memory. Or we can interpret the question, as I've been doing, to be about how the purported memory presents itself to us, quite apart from its psychological origins. So "what makes it something I am remembering?" here means "how can I tell it's something I'm remembering?"

There is something “already” in a memory, that is not there in an imagination-representation.

I am saying there is a similar something “already” in what purports to be a sensation. — Fire Ologist

Additionally, a sensual perception seems to include the same kind of near-instantaneous identification as does a memory; we're not aware of doing a quick mental check to make sure it's really a perception. What you're calling the "already" does seem to be part of this.

whatever this is “already” in a memory or a sensation, it is not there when imagining a unicorn flying through space on an orange peel.

This is difficult to talk about, without . . . sounding like an insane person apparently. — Fire Ologist

Oh, that doesn't stop anyone around here. Say more about the unicorn on the orange peel! :smile:

Thanks for this thoughtful answer. I understand better what you mean now. But I'm going to take issue with it.

You are remembering your childhood bedroom to be this or that size, to have this or that location in the house, to be furnished thus and so, etc. All of those mental acts refer to your childhood bedroom (or, better, are acts of you referring to it in imagination) and, maybe, chiefly refer to visual aspects of it. But there is no image that you are contemplating. — Pierre-Normand

It's possible that I haven't succeeded in describing the phenomenon I'm asking about. (I've noticed that several other people on this thread find it rare or at least unusual.) It's this: I'm going about my daily business when all at once, for no discernible reason, a visual/mental image flashes into my mind. Let's say it's the childhood bedroom, as seen from the bed. Now, everything you say would be true, if I were describing how the image is formed. I do indeed remember, or claim to remember, the shape, the furnishings, etc. And yes, these acts refer to the bedroom, or perhaps are imagined acts of reference.

But none of this is what occurs, what happens. All I'm trying to do is to give a phenomenological description, and I don't find any of that. It's almost as if you're giving a transcendental argument for what has to have happened, what must be the case, in order for me to have the experience I do have. And you may well be right. But the actual experience is one of a visual mental image which I claim to recognize as a memory. In fact, let's leave out the "memory" part entirely. When you say, "There is no image that you are contemplating," this would presumably apply to any alleged mental image, memory or not. And this is what I have to deny, based on my own experience.

Now there is one possible sense in which you may be correct. If all our talk about mental images is mistaken, that may be because we misunderstand what they are, or mean, rather like an illusion. But I want to say that the phenomenology doesn't allow us to make this discrimination. If we ask for a phenomenological description of a thirsty person in the desert who believes they see water ahead, we aren't going to be making any reference to whether there is water. All we can do is tell, faithfully, how it seems, how it presents to experience. And so it is with mental images. If you mean by "But there is no image that you are contemplating" the possible fact that this experience fools us in some way, rather as a mirage does, I have no quarrel. But I am using "mental image" to mean what I seem to be contemplating. For this usage I claim general linguistic agreement. And for the fact that I do indeed contemplate such a seeming image, I must insist on my privileged access.

Does any of this make sense to you?

I'm not sure what you mean by pallette-style. — Dawnstorm

I'm using that term to describe an image that doesn't come to me as a memory -- the snark would be a good example -- but which, as you point out, still has to be composed of discrete memories from a palette of colors, shapes, etc. It's an imagined composite image comprising elements I do remember.

A memory being (a) true and (b) autobiographical is part of the intentionality of the act of remembering, but not of the actual memory - neither the flash, nor its more substantial substratus. — Dawnstorm

Good, this would be a fresh approach to my problem. If I understand you, you're agreeing with me when I can't seem to find any "marker" or "feature" that would allow me to recognize a purported memory. And when I ask, "Yet how can it be that I nonetheless do make that identification?" the reply is, "Because what makes it this kind of memory -- the kind that's purportedly true and autobiographical, not merely images composed from the mental palette -- is a type of intentionality."

I'll give that more thought, to see if I can fit it into my personal phenomenology. The only part I'm leery about is "just assume," which seems to throw it back again onto something brute.

Do you see what I mean? — Dawnstorm

I do. When we interrogate "memory" in this way, all the questions you raise are important. Are they phenomenological questions, though? I think the actual experience is cruder and less thoughtful than this -- and therefore puzzling to me.

I get the mental image and along with it, some kind of identification. You're quite right that we need to remember many things in order to make up a snark, that every image is almost certainly composed of a palette of remembered colors, shapes, contexts, et al. Yet none of this seems to matter in identifying the kind of memory under discussion, namely the kind that purports to be a) true and b) autobiographical. In other words, it's fine to extend what memory does to include the palette-concept, which makes nearly all mental images partially formed by memories. But I'm asking about something much less general -- that certain type of remembering that's typified by my getting an image of my grandfather on the street. We distinguish that from a snark, even if we agree that we need the concept of "memory" for other purposes as well, and that this is by no means the only correct way to use the term. So . . . can we identify anything in the experience that allows us to make this distinction?

You remember stuff that doesn't manifest as "a memory". If you didn't, no "memory" could manifest. — Dawnstorm

I understand the first part -- it's what I was just discussing, hopefully. But could you say more about why "no 'memory' could manifest"? Do you mean we require the palette-style of remembering in order to have the other, more specific type that satisfies a) and b)?

Is any one reading this? — Banno

Yes. I'm getting a lot from what you and @Richard B and your interlocutors are discussing.

. . . fundamental philosophical questions, about more than simply 'what we can say'. — Wayfarer

I'm plucking this phrase out of its context because of what I think it implies. One version of what a "fundamental philosophical question" is would claim that such a question is about something that might be inexpressible in words. Another version would limit the idea of a "fundamental philosophical question" to what can be said in a language, on the grounds that philosophy must not be misunderstood as the gatekeeper of all truths, all things "fundamental." Philosophy is limited to discourse, and so must be the subjects of its questions. Yet a third version would insist on a distinction between "answer" and "subject": thus, we can answer a philosophical question within the realm of philosophical discourse, but that doesn't mean that the subject of such discourse is also necessarily linguistic.

I think you mean to stake out the first territory, yes? That there are truths -- answers to fundamental philosophical questions -- that cannot be uttered? Or is it closer to the third version, with all truths utterable but not all subjects being linguistic?

Actualizations of a capacity to know, or to remember, can indeed be construed as acts of representing the known or remembered object (or proposition). — Pierre-Normand

I'm going to stay with my simple-minded question, because I genuinely don't understand what this means. When an image of my bedroom as a 5-year-old comes to mind, is this a representation? It certainly fits the criteria most of us would use for "mental image". Is this what you're calling "an actualization of a capacity . . . to remember"? If it is that, does that mean it isn't a mental image? If it's only "construed" as an act of representing the remembered object, what would be another way of construing such an image?

These aren't meant to be objections, really. I'm just trying to get clear on your terminology, and how it compares with our more common language.

A memory has to have some sort of independent presence/existence/ontological status/process of verification [IPEOSPoV] to it. — Fire Ologist

That's what I want to say too, intuitively. And what this thread is showing is that this idea encounters (at least) two major problems:

1. Whatever the IPEOSPoV is, it can't depend on the memory's being accurate. What we verify is that the memory purports to be one; it presents itself as one; not that it's accurate.

2. The IPEOSPoV is a lot to ask, unless it happens very much below the surface.

This is really interesting. Could I ask a simple-minded question? When you say:

I tend to construe "the memory that P" not as inspecting an inner representation, but as the persistent ability to know that P — Pierre-Normand

are you denying that there is any mental representation at all? Or only that inspecting such a representation couldn't result in recognizing "the memory that P"?

Rhetoric aside, and sorry for mine, this comes down to how you think of racism. If "objective racism" means "espouses/acts on consciously held racist views," then I might estimate this to be true of 50% of US people. But systemic racism is where the "racist assumptions" really play out, and here it would be difficult to find anyone, myself included, who is immune. The Implicit Association Test is one interesting indicator, and there are similar tests involving faces and racial traits.

But more generally, the US is constantly finding surrogates for explicitly racist policies, most recently the moves against immigrants. Our policing and justice system is of much longer duration. I have no hesitation in calling the belief that the US criminal system is fair and equitable a "racist assumption." It is impossible to believe this without ignoring the reasons why -- just to pick one feature -- people of color have less effective legal representation than white people. This is the systemic part. To say, "But that's not because of their race, it's because of ____ (usually some version of poverty or lack of education)" is to avoid the question, "But how did that come about? Why is this group poorer/less educated?" etc. The racist assumption here would be that, somehow or other, there is a racially neutral explanation of this.

All that said, there are many ways of using the word "racism" and I don't mean to dispute your right to use it differently. I'm just trying to explain what my comment meant.

the act of remembering involves an implicit self-awareness that “this is something from my past,” — Number2018

I like Gallagher's perspective, and what you write in your post is reasonable and interesting. It falls under the category that both @Srap Tasmaner (I think) and I would call psychology rather than philosophy. In the quoted phrase above, it's the "implicit self-awareness" that I'm trying to bracket and focus on. Is there anything more that can be said about it, as an experience? I'm reluctant to accept that it's merely definitional of "the act of remembering."

Emotions are thoughts and constructed like all thoughts. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, I've seen some research about this. Apparently the physical or somatic experience of "this emotion" is much more general than we think. The same physical experience, for instance, can be read as either anger or fear, depending on the rest of the story we're telling at the moment. Even joy and terror, I've heard, may be identical below the level of consciousness. It's all "arousal."

Is this like memories? Are we telling a little contextual story, when an image comes to mind?

So I think in a way there is an answer to "Why do I think this particular thought I was just having is a memory?" and the answer is because your mind said it was, or some perhaps much more subtle and noncommittal equivalent — Srap Tasmaner

Here I worry that bringing in "your mind" is one entity too many. Is this the picture?: An image occurs, my mind says it is a memory, and then some other item called "I" identifies it as a memory? Or when you say, "My mind said it was," does this just mean that I said it was?

This kind of question does help us see how hard it is to work with a term like "mind". Do I want to identify "mind" with some psychological account of how images et al. get generated? Or would it be better to make "mind" equivalent to the "I", the self? Or is it this third activity that can mediate between the first two conceptions?

I actually think your "much more subtle and noncommittal equivalent" is closer to how it is.

We all know that memory is pretty much always confabulation — Srap Tasmaner

We do? I guess you're thinking of narrative accounts where there's a lot of filling-in. But surely image-memories are reliable, by and large? Or is there evidence that this is not so? Well, the fallibility of witness testimony, I suppose -- but here too there's a story involved.

I think there's a middle way. — Srap Tasmaner

. We feel one way about a thought if we think of it as a memory, and another if we think of it as fancy. Even though those two toys came out of the same bin. — Srap Tasmaner

Sure, this sounds like a good inquiry -- why does it matter so much which is which?

I doubt there's anything worth chasing that would turn out to be the "genuine experience" of memory rather than imagination, because I doubt there's any such thing. Still, we behave as if there is, and that feeds back into our mental lives quite powerfully. — Srap Tasmaner

Well, that's the question that grounds the OP. I think your suggestion is that we behave as if there is because the outcome matters quite powerfully to us. If it didn't, we might be content with a hazier borderline between memory and imagination. Quite possibly. And yet . . . the plausibility of this account lessens for me when I try to use it to describe what I've been calling unbidden mental images. I persist in believing that, in this context, there is a crucial difference between my experience of a purported memory image and my experience of a fancied image. What is that difference? Quite simply, the different recognitions involved. Yes, the "mental content" is the same, if you like, but I am not aware of adding anything to that content in the process of recognition. The experience of seeing image X and recognizing image X as, say, a memory, is simultaneous, and thus makes the experience different from recognizing image Y as a fancy. I'm not adding anything to some unlabeled or unrecognized image; it's all of a piece.

Of course, as you say, this is how it seems, and this is how we behave. That doesn't mean it's true.

Your posts overlap nicely, and are both extremely interesting. I'll just select a few things to highlight.

Now if what you're doing is "associating" (or something), situations might occur in which it becomes relevant whether the content of the association "really occured, was experienced, etc." or not. And it's going to be hard to figure this out precisely because the psychological functions of imagination and memory are both going to be involved to some degree or other. Embellished memory? Memory-inspired vision? — Dawnstorm

Yes, and this is what you'd expect to be the rule rather than the exception. But this topic puzzles me because in fact we find the opposite, most of the time: If I suddenly get an image of my grandfather walking beside me in Manhattan, I know it's a purported memory. And if I get an image of a snark, I'm quite sure it isn't. At the risk of repeating myself, I ask again: How do I know these things? (And see below for some explication about what I mean by "how".) Of course we can make a mistake, and of course a purported memory may be inaccurate to a greater or lesser degree, but that's an outcome that's subsequent to the problem I'm raising: How am I even able to make the "mistake" in the first place? Or to put it differently: What is it about a purported memory that is, evidently, the same to us, regardless of whether the memory is accurate or not? Why does it get recognized as "purported memory" at all? We agree that its accuracy can't be the reason -- so what is it?

A common example would be a composer composing a piece of music and then finding out it sounds like something else. — Dawnstorm

I like this. As a musician myself, I know that subconscious stealing happens all the time. (And yes, if a court convicts you of using a chromatic scale that "belongs" to someone else, we're all in trouble!) I agree that, when a meretricious theft occurs, and assuming it isn't a deliberate rip-off, then something like a confusion of memory with imagination is taking place. Does this tell against my assertion that we almost always know the difference? It might, if the composer had genuinely attended to his musical phrase as he wrote it, and was still in the dark. But we know this isn't how composition works. It's much more rapid and subconscious, and then once it's done we grow attached to it. I'm afraid a certain degree of self-deception and wishful thinking is involved when a composer doesn't identify a musical "memory." The solution, of course, is to play it for somebody else who knows the repertoire.

we don't consciously decide whether the content in our awareness is remembered or imagined; in some sense, yes, there's a decision being made about what it is, very much so, but I think that "decision" is mostly made without your conscious involvement. Obviously there will be exceptions. — Srap Tasmaner

That might be true, so let's say it is. Would we want to also say that, because of the subconscious quality of the "decision," it has no phenomenological character at all? That isn't "isn't like anything"? (I don't mean to press a particular meaning of "phenomenological" on you. Whatever term you'd choose to describe attending to our conscious experiences is fine, and will be what I mean here.) I'm not disputing that, in fact I think it more and more likely. But I need to be convinced that we really have done our "bracketing" as carefully as we can, and really considered what the experience is -- or isn't! -- like, apart from what we think it must be like, based on some psychological theory.

Roughly speaking, I think none of this is any of philosophy's business. In the 18th century, before we could do the sort of research we can do now, it may have been acceptable to speculate about how the mind works and how we distinguish perceptions from memories and so on, but it's rather foolish in the 21st century — Srap Tasmaner

I'm sympathetic to curbing philosophy's enthusiasms, but I think this goes too far. Or perhaps I still haven't made clear what I mean. I'm really not interested at all in "how the mind works." (Not in this thread, that is.). Asking, "How do I know that a mental image is a purported memory?" is not a "how-the-mind-works" question. It's a question about my relation to, my experience of, how the mind works.

Now you'd suggested earlier that this is a false distinction -- that "my experience," even if up one level from the content of that experience, so to speak -- is still a question about how the mind works. And a hardcore believer in scientism can construe it that way. But I don't think you replied to my objection to that: Are you saying, then, that there is no question we can ask that separates phenomenology from psychology? Earlier, you talked about "what's that like, for something to be present to the mind as a memory? Fine, and that's headed back toward phenomenology. (What we do, rather than how)" -- so I assume you do think some distinction is valid. Indeed, when you say "what rather than how," that's very close to my own dubiety about "how". So why may I not draw the distinction as I do, leaving first-level "how" questions to psychology? Phenomenology has to start somewhere!

In any case, if my use of "how" has misled you, I'm sorry. I mean the "how" to translate as "by virtue of what experience".

I'm just riffing here, but maybe it links back to Nietzsche too. — Stuart Roberts

Kubrick undoubtedly knew that the music he selected for the monolith's appearance was from "Also Sprach Zarathustra", Strauss's tone-poem based on Nietzsche. I'm sure the connection was deliberate.

Yes, the law of identity (a=a) is a logical principle—a tautology that belongs to the structure of thought and language. It tells us something about the consistency of our terms, but not about the ontological self-sufficiency of particulars. To read it as a statement about the intrinsic metaphysical identity of beings is to conflate logic with ontology. — Wayfarer

Exactly.

The modern statement “A is A” or “x = x” comes from a much later tradition, shaped by formal logic and set theory, not Aristotle’s ontology of substance and form. To read Aristotle as if he were simply asserting the self-contained identity of particulars is to read him through a modern lens that doesn’t fit. — Wayfarer

And this.

"A = A" can tell us nothing about what we ought to substitute for A. It's not about being or ontology at all.

Thanks for going into all this. You're a good writer and you make it vivid and understandable.

I think (and thought so even before I heard of aphantasia) that successful communication is better understood in terms of situational compatibility of individual meanings than in terms of similarity of the individual meanings involved — Dawnstorm

Yes, good observation.

This is a pretty dogmatic response, stating that the reason we can write such equations at all is that their effectiveness is dependent on or justified by the logic of identity, that accepting your argument would be tantamount to claiming that identity signs in physics are ambiguous and equivocal. Pretty harsh. My response to ↪J suffered from something like this, and perhaps Tim might say something similar. Are physical equations really that precise? — Banno

Yeah, that was the direction of my wondering, but I'm definitely out of my depth when it comes to how chemists and mathematicians regard questions of identity, so I'll continue to follow your discussion with @Richard B.

we do it on purpose, some of the time, and automatically, almost all the time, and we never stop. That's "remembering", not "becoming aware of a thought and labeling it a memory". If that happens at all, it's probably rare, unusual at least. A thought, if it's a memory, comes to us as a memory, period. — Srap Tasmaner

This is fascinating, because it's so contrary to my own experience. Yes, I'm familiar with the idea of a conscious "remembering" when we try to remember something, on purpose, or else it comes to us automatically because we're in a context where we expect a memory. I agree that presents a different, if overlapping, set of problems. But I am constantly being bombarded with unbidden mental images, randomly, and often triggered by things I'm barely aware of. Far from unusual, it's much more common for me than deliberately seeking out some memory, or expecting one.

So there we are. I suppose you've had this happen sometimes, at least? My question would then be, When it happens, are you instantaneously aware, as best you can tell, that the thought/image is a purported memory? And if so, how?

what reasons could you muster to judge a thought to be a memory? What could you possibly rely upon as you worked out the inference that this indeed is a memory? — Srap Tasmaner

Well, exactly. "Reasons" doesn't sound right, nor does "inference," and yet we make the identification. You want to say that this is a kind of reductio of the idea that we do anything when we recognize a memory: "It is the fundamental form of knowledge." And so it may turn out to be, but I'm not yet sure. Or are you perhaps wanting to say that when we recognize a sensual perception as such, it is also a fundamental form of knowledge?

Now, if you want to ask, what's that like, for something to be present to the mind as a memory? Fine, and that's headed back toward phenomenology. — Srap Tasmaner

I think phenomenology can also handle what I believe is a previous question, namely whether something occurs for us between the image and the identification. I'm asking, What's it like for something to be present to the mind before it is recognized as a purported memory? I hope you can agree that, at least sometimes -- rarely for you, frequently for me -- that is a thing that happens.

But what we can't do is go looking for criteria that we consciously use to identify memories or distinguish them from other thoughts. — Srap Tasmaner

This is quite possibly right. I rather doubt the process is conscious, which is part of why I raise the question in a phenomenological, "what's-it-like" context. We may decide it's like nothing at all.

Pretty clear that ⟨Ek⟩=2/3kBT is an equivalence. The "=" bit. — Banno

Pardon my math deficiencies, but I assume this means we can isolate T on the right side of the equation, giving a description of temperature in terms of kinetic energy?

. . . the "Epistemic Stances . . . " thread. I thought those two philosophers did an excellent job making big issues clear within a smaller, manageable discussion. Would you be willing to read them, perhaps guided by some of the comments in the thread?

That makes sense. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Great. I'll watch for any comments you may post to that thread.

truth is primarily in the intellect. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't really understand that. It's a metaphor, yes? So, truth is "in" the intellect, in the same way that ___ is in ____? Could you fill it out? Also, sorry, but what is "the intellect"? Faculty of reason, perhaps?

"If a Truly True sentence is supposed to be one that is uttered without a context, I don't know what that would be." - J

We might ask, what is the "context" you refer to? A "game?" A formal system? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think "game" is overused, and can be misleading, but interpreting it charitably, then yes, a game could be a context, and so could a formal system. Really, though, I mean "context" in the good old-fashioned way. Sentences are spoken or written. This has to occur somewhere, done by somebody, in some sort of intersubjective discourse, etc. That's the context. Can you write a sentence for me that is free of context?

the Borges story, the Library of Babel — Count Timothy von Icarus

Glad to know you're a Borges fan! His story, "Funes the Memorious" would be very pertinent to the ongoing thread about memory. And "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" may be the best philosophical short story ever written.

Fair enough. The difference I'm seeing between "yellow," on the one hand, and "self" or "past" or "true event" may not be genuine. But shouldn't the fact that "yellow" results from a direct sensual perception/interaction make it different from the others, which do not, but rather rely on constructs of some sort? (Maybe not "self" -- or maybe so!)

a sense of recollection — Outlander

OK. If there is a "sense" of recollection, though, the philosophical/phenomenological part would be: What is it? What does this actually mean, experientially?

I thought I was just slow. It never occured to me that others might just have visual experience to go along with the narration. — Dawnstorm

Wow. You describe this very well. If you don't mind my asking into it some more: Has this created problems for you in your interactions with people, or does your brain come up with workarounds that facilitate communication?

What if the problem was your perception in that moment: that is, it's not your memory that's wrong - as it's accurate to what you've experienced - but it's your experience that wasn't accurate to the moment. — Dawnstorm

Yes. It's like the puzzle about what happens when our taste in coffee changes. (I think this is attributable to Dennett?). We used to like Folgers, now we like Bustello and find Folgers bitter. So . . . remembering how Folgers used to taste to us, are we remembering accurately? Or was Folgers a bitter-tasting coffee even then, only we misperceived it?

I wonder if he'll have the massed missile launchers and tanks, like his comrade, Putin. — Wayfarer

He unquestionably will. And I'll bet good money that he'll have the parade route lined with large portraits of himself (held by "private individuals," of course). They are already up on walls, four stories high, and in front of public buildings, in Washington DC, paid for by . . .? https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/05/22/trump-lincoln-national-mall-usda/

the deceptiveness of memory — Wayfarer

Yes. This is part of why I find the OP question interesting. It would be one thing if memories were 100% reliable, such that to recognize one was to recognize its accuracy as a memory. But since that's not the case, I'm left wondering what it is that allows the "purported memory" identification. As I wrote, the only thing I can liken it to is our ability to utter a sentence without asserting it. We can recognize that sentence as a truth-apt utterance without claiming that it is true.

Very good. You're right to press me on this. Let me see if I can respond.

here I am, here comes the mental item, here's me identifying it (seemingly instantly) as a purported memory.
— J

Convince me that's either (a) not already a theory about how mental life works, or (b) it's a good theory, a reasonable theory. — Srap Tasmaner

My question here would be: If this is already a theory, could there ever be a phenomenological reduction? What would you propose in its place, granting phenomenology?

you seem to have the idea that the "mental item" might have causes, and those fall within the purview of psychology, but your identifying the mental item as a memory (or a fancy or a perception) does not, is not itself another sort of mental item, and does not fall within the purview of psychology. I can't imagine why you would think that. Surely identifying a thought as a memory is as much a psychological event as the thought so identified. — Srap Tasmaner

A subtle point. Yes, the act of identifying a thought as a memory is a mental item, a psychological event; it occurs at T1 and is presumably caused, as much as any other mental event is caused. But we're in the habit of making a discrimination here. "Here comes the mental item" is meant to appeal to a cause understood as not within my conscious control. (Again, a reminder that this whole example refers to unbidden images coming to mind.) When we ask for a cause or an explanation, we need to invoke psychology, at least to some degree: Why are memories formed? How and why do they emerge into consciousness? What reliability must they possess? What correlations with brain activity are important? etc.

But the "Why?" of "Why do I identify an image as a (purported) memory?" is different -- unless we are thoroughgoing physicalists. We believe, generally, that an explanation here is going to involve some reference to reasons, to conscious activity. We aren't dealing with a brute fact about neuronal activity, though arguably the reasons must supervene on such activity. Here we're asking, "How is it the case that my experience is what it is?" No doubt there will always be a psychological, causal story that can also be told about this, but it doesn't answer the same question.

This is really a version of my response to your first objection. If there is such a thing as phenomenology, then it must be separated from psychology in some meaningful way. Perhaps there is not. In which case all mental items are indeed on a par, and we shouldn't try to find alternate descriptions of them beyond the physical.

Is this a complete response to the points you raise? I don't think so. But tell me where you see the weaknesses.

The point is that we assume that there are real things, and that the thing's identity, i.e. what the thing is, inheres within the thing itself, not in our descriptions or interpretations of the thing. — Metaphysician Undercover

But that's just what I'm questioning. It's precisely our interpretation of what "Jill" is going to encompass that will tell us what the "real thing" is. I assume you're not saying that there is some correct construal of "Jill" that is independent of interpretation. But in any case, I'm glad to see you backing off from the idea that identity has to include "all properties, essential and accidental".

All true. And this kind of discussion really does help to make the border between psychology and phenomenology a little less fuzzy. Ideally, I'd want any description I gave of what it's like to identify a mental item as a purported memory to be consistent with several psychological theories about how memories are formed, stored, etc. The description itself is meant to be "bracketed" in the classical sense. Just examine the phenomena: here I am, here comes the mental item, here's me identifying it (seemingly instantly) as a purported memory. What has happened, or what have I caused to happen, to me? (Not so much "What has happened to cause this mental event?"). What must be the case about experience in order for me to do this?

Hence the suggestion of moving to temperature, which is less ambiguous. — Banno

Good. Should we say that temperature is (brute identity) molecular energy? Or better to say that temperature measures that energy? I don't know how a chemist would respond. As a philosopher, I'm slightly inclined to say that this is not a type of supervenience. But that raises a larger question -- what does the concept of "measure" involve? Is the measurement of a distance simply that distance, full stop? Something both right and wrong about that. After all, we can speak about a distance we haven't measured -- just not very precisely. And if this is a supervenience relationship, we'd need to specify what grounds what. I guess the (unmeasured) distance grounds the measurement of that distance, in that you can't have the latter without the former, but beyond that I'm not sure what to say. A measurement just doesn't seem like a feature or a property that can supervene . . . too "added-on" somehow.

Here's my hypothesis: When I'm saving a present event in my neuronal network, the stored event gets a timestamp and a "true event"-mark. — Quk

Maybe there are certain qualia that accompany such marks. — Quk

That's a good filling-out of my "feature" idea. I wish I could identify the qualia, though. The problem is that I know what I'm talking about when I refer to a "yellow quale" (controversial though this may be), but I really don't know what the "self-quale" is. Do you have any idea?

Thank you, very good article. I hope we can use it as a touchstone on TPF to ground discussions of positivistic metaphysics, as it's very fair. Looking at the six "enduring influences," at least two -- #1 and #5 -- seem like a good thing to me, on balance. That is, more likely to do good than harm, in their normal uses. My main gripe, personally, is with scientism. I love science, and hate to see it misunderstood in the way that scientism does.