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

I have every confidence you will be better at this than I am.

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.

Just a thought.

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

Curious. Did you really think philosophy was just talking about itself? What is responsible for this is analytic philosophy, which has gotten lost, endlessly trying to squeeze new meanings out of familiar mundane thinking. They have, as Kierkegaard put is, forgotten they exist. Philosophy should begin with encounter, not some entangled string of thought. This comes afterward.

Of course, gravity sounds a lot like God, then. For God is, sans the troublesome history and narratives, a metaethical, meta aesthetic metavalue grounding of the world.

You may not agree with the above, but for me, I think you are on to something. Gravity, I will repeat, never really was "gravity", for this is a term of contingency, See Rorty's Contingency, Irony and Solidarity for a nice account of this. When the matter goes to some grand foundation of connectivity, are we not in metaphysics? Or on its threshold?

[

Let me call it Scientific Logos.

Consider the following parallel,

As a crystal chandelier is a workup (constructive metabolism) from a handful of sand, so a conversation between two humans is a workup (constructive metabolism) from a moon orbiting its planet (earth_moon).

Under the implications of the above parallel, consciousness is an emergent property of two (or more) interacting gravitational fields. Thus a conversation, such as the one we're having, is the deluxe version
(replete with all of the bells and whistles) of the moon orbiting the earth and causing the tides and global air currents that shape earth's weather.

Language, being the collective of the systemic boundary permutations of a context or medium, cognitively parallels the phenomena animating the material universe.

That we humans have language suggests in our being we are integral to a complex surface of animate phenomena via intersection of gravitational fields. Action-at-a-distance elevates the self/other, subject/object bifurcation to a living history with unified, internally consistent and stable points-of-view better known as the selves of human (and animal) society.

Under constraint of brevity, a good thing, let me close with a short excerpt from my short essay on the great triumvirate of gravity-consciousness-language.

There is a direct connection between human consciousness and the gravitational field.

Gravitation is the medium of consciousness.

One can say that the gravitational attraction between two material bodies is physical evidence that those material bodies are aware of each other.

Under this construction, consciousness is an emergent phenomenon arising from the gravitational field.

This tells us that the study of consciousness (and especially the hard problem of consciousness) begins with the work of the physicist.

Gravity waves, the existence of which has been established, can also be called waves of consciousness.

Since matter is the substrate of consciousness, one can infer that the material universe is fundamentally configured to support and sustain consciousness.

Just as there can be geometrization of gravitation through relativity, there can be geometrization of consciousness through gravitation. This is a claim held by astrologers dating back to antiquity.

The (material) universe itself is a conscious being. — ucarr

There is something here. but the language has to change. First, remove the science-speak, for you have stepped beyond this, for keep in mind that when consciousness and its epistemic reach is achieved by identifying object relations as gravitational in nature, and then placing the epistemic agency in this, as you call it, logos, you are redefining gravity as a universal, not law of attraction, but connectivity and identity, and I do remember thinking something like this was a way to account for knowledge relationships: identity. The distance is closed because there is no distance between objects that are not separated. And I mentioned that Husserl did hold something like this, but the "logos" was not scientific, it was a phenomenological nexus of intentionality. And since gravity is at this level of inquiry a strictly naturalistic term (to talk like Husserl), the description of what this unity is about has to go to a more fundamental order of thought, phenomenology. Gravity is now a phenomenon, an appearing presence. Ask a phenomenologist what a force is, what the curviture of space is, and you will first have see that these are conceived in theory and they are terms of contingency. One doesn't witness space or forces, but only effects from which forces are inferred and the names only serve to ground such things in a scientific vocabulary.

Not gravity, with its connotative baggage, but phenomena, for this is all that is ever witnessed, ever can be witnessed. If it is going to be a universal connectivity of all things, I do think you are right to note that there is this term gravity that abides in everything and binds everything. I would remove the term and realize this connectivity does not belong to a scientific logos. It must be a term that is inclusive of the consciousness in which the whole affair is conceived and the epistemic properties are intended to explain. And this consciousness is inherently affective, ethical, aesthetic, and so on. For the nexus that connects me to my lamp and intimates knowing-in-identity is always already one that cares, in interested, fascinated, repulsed, and so on. A connection of epistemology not only cannot be conceived apart from these, it must have then as their principle feature, because these are the most salient things in all of existence.

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

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

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

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

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

You suggest gravity is inherently epistemic?

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Again, how does this span the epistemic distance?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[

I agree with all of that. I think the quest for a theory of consciousness will be a grand adventure. It's fed by a lust to know. Maybe it will generate technologies that allow some aspect of subjectivity to be recorded and that could be used for medicinal or artistic purposes.

Every step of the way, someone will be pointing out that we're fooling ourselves and the truth we're finding is relative to a particular culture? That's ok. That's always how it is, right? — frank

Philosophers have talked themselves into believing experience isn't "really happening" by framing the claim that something is happening in metaphysics. Of course, this is a very loose way to speak, but I am not trying build an argument. One has to "close in" on the existential foundation of existence by, in the long run, ignoring language and culture (see Kierkegaard on this, his Concept of Anxiety) and allowing the disentangled gravitas if just being here to announce itself. Then one realizes that terms like being, existence, and reality are just abstractions of what is there, and shouldn't be discussed like this (and Wittgenstein would agree). Being is always already some impossible "value-being" and the primordial self is a value entity first and foremost. I see the cup on the table, and the question for epistemological interest is not about S knows P. It is about S values P and knowing is value-knowing. It is the interest in P, the fascination, the adoration, the loathing, the desire, and so on. Language is inherently analytical, that is, it takes the world apart, dividing what is, again, some impossible primordial unity; but it is always an interested analysis, curious, seeking consummation, affirmation, and it is this desire dimension that seeks fulfillment that rules here. The purely cognitive end of this is like Wittgenstein's "states of affairs", entirely absent of "the good" as he called it.
I think following Husserl's reductive method closes in on something genuinely revelatory. Ask Siddhartha Gautama, the master of the reduction. This grand enterprise called philosophy is not looking for, heh, heh, "propositional knowledge". It has to realize this. The proposition is almost incidental. Language is tool, says Quine.

That's a novel interpretation of Witt, isn't it? I think he was pointing out that when we propose to know transcendent facts, we're positing a vantage point that we don't have. — frank

Or better, one that cannot be had at all, which makes the difference.

Analytic philosophers like to say that that which must be passed over in silence is really nothing at all, and the entire mistake lies with language going where it has no business, because there is no business to be had. The Tractatus does not agree. I don't want to labor the point, because I am well aware this book does not exhaust his thinking, but then, if the question is about the "hard problem of consciousness" one has to go where the issue is met, and what makes consciousness a hard problem is its encounter with, call it, the "other side" of language. I talk about my cat, but the talk about cats, their size, dispositions, and all of that ignores something that underlies all of this: its existence. Witt calls this mystical, not nothing. And he holds the same regard for ethics and aesthetics and their "value" dimension. Russell called him a mystic not because he was just disagreeing, but because Wittgenstein actually called himself this, implicitly.

This lays out the question pretty well, although in different language than I would use. One thing I disagree with is equating the world of experience with the empirical world. As I noted in my previous post, I think it's possible to directly experience noumena, the Tao. It's just not possible to speak about it. When I start talking, then it becomes phenomena. Then I can measure it, name it, and conceptualize it. — T Clark

I think that is an interesting way to put it because it identifies this historical ontological distinction as hermeneutical, merely. And I think this is close to right. Wrong thinking is interpretative error, and it can construct imposing towers of meaning that become internalized in a culture and its history, and when you are in it, it is second nature, so to speak. Phenomena, by this thinking, is a term that is part of a construct created by philosophizing subsets in our cultural. Heidegger thought like this: We make truth, and the importance of things along with the "measuring, naming ,conceptualizing" rests with historical possibilities. I think I am aligned with you in that I think these historical possibilities cover up "something" that is revealed in a reduction that removes implicit knowledge claims from the "moment" of encounter. This something is inherently, what could you call it, value-cognitive, where the cognitive part refers to the fact that the understanding is engaged.

But you know there are problems with this: Is the self's phenomenality really so removable from "noumenality"?; if language's categories are responsible for this division only, and to think at all is to think categorically (in a finite totality of meanings), then it is thought that holds us captive to this illusory separation and the method chosen to remedy and redeem has to be one that ultimately removes us from the bounds of thought. But what of the self? Hasn't the self been reduced to a Jamesian infantile "blooming and buzzing"? And what of experience as a self-belonging set of affairs? What happens when the strictures of thought are removed and the self is truly decentered; is it not thereby dissolved altogether?

When I think of the meditative "method", the allowing of thought content to fall away from consciousness, while sitting quietly, I am struck by its annihilative nature. It really is the most radical thing a person can do, one could argue, this annihilation of the world. But if language falls away, so does understanding and knowledge, and agency is lost, and one is no longer "there" to witness anything. Perhaps the "direct experience of noumena" should not be so radically conceived. This term 'noumena' I am not that comfortable with because of its Kantian association. I prefer "pure phenomenon" for the act of reducing what is there, in our midst to what is strikingly "other" than the language that conceives it, but the what-is-there doesn't go anywhere. As I apperceive a rock, the "noumenal" rises to awareness as the language falls away, but that singular event is still your event. The purity of the perception occurs IN the historically embodied apperceiving, and it was there all along (like the Buddhists say when they claim the "Buddha nature" is never absent).

We need to make a distinction between the claim that the world is out there and the claim that truth is out there. To say that the world is out there, that is not our creation, is to say, with common sense, that most things in space and time are the effects of causes which do not include human mental states. To say that truth is not out there is simply to say that where there are no sentences there is no truth, that sentences are elements of human languages, and that human languages are human creations.

Truth cannot be out there—cannot exist independently of the human mind—because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there. The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not. Only descriptions of the world can be true or false. — Tom Storm

Rorty did understand this. you will find in a footnote in this book an emphatic denial of non prepositional knowledge, and I take this as simply the same thing I am saying here: once you put something out there in a statement, a thesis, you have, and this is really what Wittgenstein was on about in the Tractatus, you commit it to the finitude of language. I take issue where it is flatly denied that we can, through the understanding's conceptual pragmatic architectonics acknowledge the world as meaningful. Rorty decided to teach literature instead of philosophy for just this reason, for literature "shows" us the world rather than explaining it. But on the other hand, phenomenology is descriptive/analytic, and what I talked about is an actual part of our existence. After all, language never could exhaust the the world's presentative content.

But you are only able to say this from the perspective you have chosen. For many philosophers there remains a Kantian distinction between appearance and reality as it is in itself. Can we just make this go away simply by using different words or concepts? How is this different to saying that we can solve the problem of the origin of life just by saying God created it? It's only solved if God is 1) real and 2) God created life.

If I say from now on I am a monist, that very act does not do away with the hard question even if it satisfies me, right?

But maybe I've missed something in your response? — Tom Storm

I can put something out there, but you won't like it. One has to understand that there is a whole other philosophical world that continues in Germany and France that is not popular in Anglo-American philosophy. I read this, often enough with genuine understanding I would say, but it is an acquired ability. Joshs seems pretty solid on this.

It is not a matter of just rearranging words. One has to argue. What is that Kantian distinction really about? Always one must go to the things that are given to see what there is that can provide justification. Kant had to talk about noumena; why? Either it is nonsense, or there is something in the witnessable, phenomenological (empirical) world that insists. This is where we have to look: what is it in the world we know that intimates noumena? What is there in the presence of things that is the threshold for metaphysics? How does one talk about such a threshold? One cannot say it, for it is an absence, and yet it is an absence that is in the presence of the world.

Of course, this sounds confusing, but metaphysics is not just nothing at all, like an empty set. This absence is intimated in the world, so it is part of the structure of our existence, and so, it is not outside of our identifiable existence as Kant would have it, but in it, saturating it, if you will, and it is staring you right in the face in everything you encounter. In the analysis of what it is to experience the world, it is clear that the language used to "say" what the world is is radically distinct from the existence that is being talked about. The cup is smooth to the touch, and warm, and resists being lifted, and so on, but all this language I use to describe the cup takes the actual givenness of sensation up IN a language setting. I call it a cup, but the calling does not, if you will, totalize what is there in the language possibilities because there is something that is not language in the "there" of it. It is an impossible other-than-language, and because language and propositional knowledge is what knowing is about, the understanding encounters in the familiar day to dayness of our lives something utterly transcendental. The cup is both clearly defined as long as I can keep it contained within familiar language, and, utterly impossible, because it is there, radically unknowable, for to know is to be able to say. Wittgenstein put it simply: It is not how things are that is mystical; but THAT is exists.

This is a hard idea to simply throw out there and expect to be well received. Nor do phenomenologists all agree with this. Heidegger held that language and existence were of a piece, and our existence is language, and I think this is right; but I argue (have read it argued, too) that IN this matrix of language-in-the-world, a transcendental affirmation is possible, and this affirmation occurs in-the-midst-of everyday affairs.

But the effort is worth it, reading phenomenology, that is. In this issue, the hard problem of consciousness, phenomenology is not just an alternative view; it is necessary and inevitable.

God is another issue, a metaethical issue. I hold that the impossible, the mystical Wittgenstein mentioned, is, as Witt agrees, is really about value, or meta-value.

This from "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness.

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

There is one fundamental premise that really should preside over the entire inquiry: all one has ever experienced, every can experience, and hence ever know, is phenomena. It reminds me of an issue I came across regarding Freud and the unconscious: The unconscious was considered to be a metaphysical concept entirely, and I thought, no, for there is an evidential basis for it. But the response was quick, pointing out that it was not that the unconscious had never been directly experienced, but rather that it was impossible for it to every be experienced, encountered, and this is why it belonged to metaphysics. Not just unknown but impossible to know. Why? Because the moment it comes to mind to consider at all, it is conscious, and references to the unconscious are only references to conscious events, which in turn were the same. The unconscious cannot be even conceived as a concept. It is nonsense.

Here, anything that can ever be conceived, even in the most compelling argument imaginable, simply cannot be anything but a phenomenological event, for to conceive at all is inherently phenomenological. Nonsense to think otherwise. Consciousness is inherently phenomenological.

There is no way out of this, for the moment the effort is made, one is already IN the problem; unless, that is, Husserl was right, and that it is possible to achieve an awareness of the intuited landscape of all things that is pure and absolute. This, then, is not a matter for science as we know it. It lies with the "science" of phenomenology. Which leads me to reaffirm that philosophy is going to end up one place, and it is here, in phenomenology. There is quite literally no where else to go.

Phenomenology affirms that idealism is accurate? So phenomenology is a monist view which dissolves the dualistic fallacy of mind and body?

How does phenomenology affirm the above? — Tom Storm

As I see it, all it takes is the removal of the word representation and using presentation or givenness instead. Michel Henry puts it like this:

Let us begin with indeterminacy. The first principle (of phenomenology) establishes a decisive correlation between appearance and being. This correlation impresses itself upon us with the strongest force because it is wholly immediate: when something appears, it happens to exist at the same time. This correlation is so powerful that it seems to be reduced [ramener] to an identity: to appear is thereby identically to be. When the principle says “so much appearing, so much being,” it intends neither the extension, nor in any fashion the intensity of phenomenological and ontological determinations that it brings together, but rather the common identity of their essence. It is to the extent that appearing appears that being thereby “is.”

There is no privileging of something unseen that is that which appears through the appearance, or that the appearance is a representation of. I observe the cup on the table and there before me in the appearance is the reality.

As to the dualistic fallacy, body, as opposed to mind, is nothing beyond what the appearance yields. All ontologies are reduced to the one status of what is simply there, before one's witnessing, analytic gaze. It is not "of" anything; but this does not mean the world is complete to the gaze. Taking the world up as it appears takes on a whole new set of analytical priorities. There is this indeterminacy and time is at the center of this: we are always on the cusp of an unmade future that calls for constant renewal, and seeing this is the what freedom is about. There are moods and fears and caring and all that is left out of science's paradigms are here given priority, for Being is not measured by quantifications on a space-time grid, but is measured phenomenologically, and here I follow Kierkegaard: qualitatively.

Science has never addressed the most salient feature of our existence, value. Phenomenology, I would argue, has this front and center.

Anyway, phenomenologists do say different things, but I think the above is a rough generalization.

How does this differ to idealism? — Tom Storm

Idealism affirms that everything in the we encounter is idea. Phenomenology affirms it as reality.

Chalmers proposes that things like neutral monism or the extended mind would help us get closer to a theory of consciousness. He's flexible. But strictly speaking, he's part of the analytical tradition, so the physicalism you're speaking of is not essential to analytical philosophy. — frank

Thanks for that. Then I will have to read Chalmers on the extended mind. But the more one speaks of such things, the more one leans phenomenology. After all, what is it that is "extended"?

If instead the semantics of scientific concepts were perspectival and grounded in the phenomenology and cognition of first-person experience, for example in the way in which each of us informally uses our common natural language, then inter-communication of the structure of scientific discoveries would be impossible, because everyone's concepts would refer only to the Lockean secondary qualities constituting their personal private experiences, which would lead to the appearance of inconsistent communication and the serious problem of inter-translation. In which case, we would have substituted the "hard problem" of consciousness" that is associated with the semantics of realism , for a hard problem of inter-personal communication that can be associated with solipsism and idealism. — sime

But phenomenology is not about first person experience. This is a notion that issues from the very scientific perspective in question: here is a perceiving agent, there is a stone, and if phenomenology rules our thinking in this, the perceiving agent never leaves her private phenomenal space. Phenomenology does not think like this. It takes appearance as Being. I am there and stones are there and their existence is fully acknowledged as other than myself. My scientific conceptual relations with them do not change at all. All that has changed is now we are freed from the absurd ontology of physical materialism that makes it, not hard, but impossible to describe epistemic relations, which are THE biggest embarrassment of analytic's naturalism. What is left for philosophy is clearer analysis of what makes appearance possible.

I don't want to get into a long discussion about how science has to proceed. I will say that there is no reason the mind would not be among entities amenable for study by science. You and Constance are just waving your arms and promoting a ghost in the machine with no basis except that you can't imagine anything else. — T Clark

Then the last word would be this: It's not my last word. All analytic philosophers know this. The distance between objects in the world and our knowledge claims about them given a physicalist model simply cannot be bridged through empirical science unless there is a dramatic change of thinking here. The first move will have to be an abandonment of an ontology of physical substance, for this pulls all things toward Dewey/Quine's (and obviously others I haven't read) and science's naturalism, and this simply does not work. Just ask Quine:

"When . . . I begin to think about my own verbal behavior in theoretical or semantical terms, I am
forced to admit that, here too, indeterminacy reigns. Philosophical reflection upon my own
verbal behavior, concerned with hunting out semantical rules and ontological commitments,
requires me to make use of translational notions. I then recognize that the intentional content of
my own psychological states is subject to indeterminacy: semantical and intentional phenomena
cannot be incorporated within the science of nature as I would wish.

From Quine (though he does remain true to his naturalism throughout, I have read) and others I am led to believe that an ontology of physical substance has to be replaced by one of radical indeterminacy. This frees our doxastic affairs dramatically, for at every turn we are not led to those absurd physicalist delimitations, as if "semantical phenomena" has its final vocabulary, as Rorty put it, in this primitive idea. At the most basic level everything is indeterminate, so we are left with what is given, and givenness is basis of Husserl's phenomenological ontology. The distance is bridged by concepts like 'proximity' and 'intuition' as there is no epistemic distance between me and this cup simply because the cup's being there appears without distance. Being IS what appears.

Of course, there is interpretative "distance" and this is a big issue. But then, distance, in the way it is talked about here, implies a distance from something, and one would have to posit that something to make sense of it. So, this implies our knowledge claims, the sound ones, intimate something of whatever-it-is that is there, undisclosed. THIS is where very interesting philosophy begins, in my thoughts: how to enunciate the appearances of the world to see if "Truth" possibilities of our propositions have any purport beyond their explicit propositional content.

"I can't imagine" is a pretty pitiful argument. — T Clark

And worse, simply not true. I can imagine it. It is just far away from empirical science.

You're basically describing the hard problem, the point of which is that science needs to grow conceptually in order to have the tools to create a theory of consciousness. — frank

I certainly agree. I am coming to believe phenomenology holds the key.

The beginning of a theory of consciousness would just start with guessing at what kind of system could produce the experience of gazing straight ahead, being aware of sights and sounds in a seamless unity. — frank

The trouble is that on a physicalist model, and talk about nervous systems and axonally connected systems, neurochemistry, and the like, one is supposed to first get beyond a universal physical reduction. Of course, you can say, well, we just have to live with this and empirical science is the only heel that rolls, but I would disagree: A scientific idea has to have something to observe, and here, this would be self's interiority. This is not objective and empirical and science can't touch it.

Now Husserl called what he did a science because he was flowing the scientific method: observing descriptive features of thoughts, relations, phenomenal intuitions and so forth. Perhaps on the cutting edge of discovery is this century ago phenomenologist.

Exactly that ethics is in the doing. — Banno

You have have just missed the proverbial barn door, I think intentionally. Your issue is not with me. It is with Witt.

Integrated information theory is a stab at creating a theory grounded in direct experience. It's a beginning. — frank

Okay, I'll look into it, but it would have to be something like an alternative to causality. The only way this can work would be two very radical ideas: S knows P is the issue. One cannot disentangle P from justification, and it really looks like P and the justification are the same thing, that is, the nexus of the epistemic connection is not to be separated from P itself. Causality (perhaps you've read some of the proffered solutions/failures to those Gettier problems, the severed head, the barn facsimile, e.g.s) does not, of course, carry P to S, to put it plainly. P is lost instantly in the causal sequence describing the knowledge connection. One radical solution is to say S and P are bound in identity: In some describable way, P is part of S's identity, and the brain/object separation has to be dismissed. Another way is come up with the magical connectivity that allows S and P to be altogether independent entities, yet epistemically joined.

The former is in the bounds of what a phenomenologist might defend. All things I witness are witnessed in sphere of my personal totality. I suppose we are in Kant's world here, or some derivation. Husserl had to address the issue of solipsism. For clearly when I know P, P cannot be foreign to my powers of apprehension; it has to be IN this somehow. For objects to be MY objects justifying my knowledge claims, there must be a "belonging" that intimates P AS P, and not P as something that is not P. If P belongs to my own epistemic constitution, then the intimation is possible.

Then, working with a physical model seems hopeless. I actually suspect that the brain does not produce conscious experience, but rather conditions it. Experience exceeds the physical delimitations of the physical object, the brain. Call it spirit??

That science has not explained. I see no reason to believe it can't. — T Clark

In order for science to do this, there must be in place at least some working concept of epistemic relations that is grounded in observational discovery. I can't imagine.

I can't make sense of that. — Banno

What do you suppose Witt had in mind when he said this?:

It is clear that ethics cannot be put into words. Ethics is transcendental

So what is it you can't say, show or do? — Banno

Read what I wrote, with underlining:

What is meant by pre-predicative is very simple: There is in the world, that which is not language. Just this. You can say language is joined at the hip with perceived objects, and I think this is right; however, it is clear as a bell that, say, a spear to the kidney is not a language experience. I know the pain, and afterward I can tell you about it, and this telling will be an illustration of the way experiences are inherently understood in language. But this possession of the language counterpart of the speared kidney does not preclude the understanding of the pain "as pain", rather than pain as accounting, describing, explanation. Knowledge may be propositional, and if the world really were "just the facts" as is found in Wittgenstein's grand book in his Lecture on Ethics, then the matter would end here. But we all know that the most salient feature of pain is the pain itself, "prior" propositional assignment.

And "pain' is just a term, granted. But in the language that announces it, there is the mysterious and impossible "more" and "other".

But showing and doing are not ineffable; they are as much part of our speech acts, our language games, our form of life, or whatever other term one prefers, as are sentences and texts. — Banno

It is the ineffability in question. You say showing and doing are not ineffable, but is what is shown and done exhaustively effable? This was the point: no.

If what is meant by "pre-predicative" is showing and doing, then what you say might work. But showing and doing are not ineffable; they are as much part of our speech acts, our language games, our form of life, or whatever other term one prefers, as are sentences and texts. — Banno

What is meant by pre-predicative is very simple: There is in the world, that which is not language. Just this. You can say language is joined at the hip with perceived objects, and I think this is right; however, it is clear as a bell that, say, a spear to the kidney is not a language experience. I know the pain, and afterward I can tell you about it, and this telling will be an illustration of the way experiences are inherently understood in language. But this possession of the language counterpart of the speared kidney does not preclude the understanding of the pain "as pain", rather than pain as accounting, describing, explanation. Knowledge may be propositional, and if the world really were "just the facts" as is found in Wittgenstein's grand book in his Lecture on Ethics, then the matter would end here. But we all know that the most salient feature of pain is the pain itself, "prior" propositional assignment.

And "pain' is just a term, granted. But in the language that announces it, there is the mysterious and impossible "more" and "other".

Yes, being embroiled and otherwise interacting with X has some conditions of possibility of involvement with X, but there's no guarantee that those render the articulation of X and its conditions of possibility from within that involvement impossible. You can't get outside of the involvement, but you don't need to to articulate within the involvement. In fact, you'd need to interact with X someone to give an account of it - that also holds for the mechanisms by which accounts are given in general and their presuppositions. Like space, time, history, culture, language, perception...

It reads close to one of those "we have eyes therefore we cannot see" arguments! — fdrake

Yes, you can articulate the involvement, but only within the involvement. Outside the involvement, there is no X. This is why familiar models fail to grasp the issue.

I disagree with this. Scientists don't generally say that biology is nothing but chemistry. In the same way, mental processes, including consciousness, are not nothing but biology. But they are bound by biology in the same way that recorded music is bound by a CD or MP3 reader or radio. Music is not nothing but electronic equipment and electrical processes. — T Clark

The difference here is that compact disk's relation to musical sounds is clearly explained by the science. Here, it is precisely this relation that science cannot explain.

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

Thanks! Got it just now on Kindle. I'll give it a good read, but the prospects are dim for this kind of thing. As i see it, if one goes by a physicalist model, there can be nothing but brain awareness of brain awareness, and, of course, all of this is NOT brain awareness at all, because the very idea of brain awareness is itself lost in the reductive process to the "impossible". Rorty thought like this. To break with this requires an entirely different paradigm of knowledge relations; radically different. Can't imagine a neurological approach finding this. Talk about brain cells, axonal fibers and so on, begs a question that, not only has not been addressed, but cannot be addressed in any concept I can imagine in the closed systems neurological functions.

Elsewhere he says different things. I'm not interested in these when the OP is "The ineffable".

This may well be accurate. But there's an assumption that seeing the world with clarity matters. What's the goal? You've already hinted that madness awaits. — Tom Storm

Well, isn't that why they call the whole affair ineffable? Ineffability is entirely in the abstract until it is realized that it literally saturates our knowledge claims and therefore living itself.

One has to actually climb Wittgenstein's ladder out, and this takes a working through the Tractatus, and implicitly attending there are Kierkegaard, Tolstoy, Schopenhauer....and not to forget, a suicidal drive to understand the world. To see things with genuine clarity, one simply has to be a bit insane, for the world is NOT, as the world, something that conforms the ready-mades of our understanding.

f

I have always hated Imagine - its been used as a secular hymn for decades here in Australia and its mawkish tone suits this era where sentimentality dominates. Religion hasn't had much of a role in public life here since the 1960's, but it had a small revival of sorts a few years ago with a stunted, evangelical, Trump-lite Prime Minister (2018-22). He turned out to be one of this country's most ethically compromised and unpopular leaders. I think many people today more correctly associate religion with coercion, poor moral choices and shifty politics. — Tom Storm

Better, though, than that ode to aggression, The Star Spangled Banner: the music was lifted from a once a popular drinking song To Anacreon in Heaven. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydAIdVKv84g


But on the matter of religion, not to forget that religion, beneath the robes of pomp and pretense, is metaphysics, and metaphysics is not nothing.

Neuroscience believes it is beginning to make headway, — Joshs

I would be fascinated to read about this.

By the way, I question whether religion ever satisfactorily provided solace or explanatory power. Religion was a compulsory, even totalitarian backdrop to human life for centuries and made many people unhappy. It was feared and obeyed, and although it dealt with tragedy and loss and meaning - the ostensibly ineffable - it generally did so in the most brutish of ways (obey God's will; have faith, etc) and seemed to make demands rather than provide consolation or integration. — Tom Storm

See the above