I think that perhaps physics does show promise of being about the world and not limited to an idea only. The other special sciences are different in crucial respects. — Manuel

Who knows. I don't see the promise, though. There is only one true "undiscovered country" and this lies with revealed philosophy, with revealed phenomenology, which is already in our midst. the whole enterprise of what we are and do has only one dimension that survives deconstruction: affectivity. That is, foundational questions like, what is it all about? are questions about value, affect, a reduction of suffering, procuring happiness, and the like. "Knowledge" is mostly pragmatically incidental to this foundation of what we are.

You're describing the experience of zoning out. — baker

And you remain mundane, as always.

I have always understood religion to include epistemology, and other philosophical disciplines.
Granted, some religions are more explicit about this than others.

In regard to this, I've had strange experiences with some religious people. For example, when I asked a Christian what the self was, he told me that this was the field of psychology, not religion. He preached eternal damnation to outsiders of his religion, yet he thought it is psychology that decides what exactly it is that burns in hell forever. Bizarre! — baker

Christians are the MOST compromised in their clarity of thought. You might as well ask a child. Christians are my pet peeve because they think dogmatically, the enemy of inquiry. Kierkegaard went on and on in his distain for this kind of thing. Popular religions are messy things, and I don't care about this boring dimension of our lives, the way we manufacture entanglements. Might as well be a politician.

Beneath all of this, where the primitive beginnings are and the world, the "originary" world, shows itself, this is philosophical. Here you find foundational indeterminacy, which reveals itself as a wonder and horror of our being here. One has to step OUT of texts to witness this.

I think the inner nature of nature (pardon the redundancy) will remain a secret, beyond our understanding. But, that's idiosyncratic. — Manuel

Just to say, I know you are not fond of postmodern thinkers, but your recognition of this redundancy is the kind of thing that puts language itself on the foreground of, well, suspicion. The nature of nature is an excellent redundancy, because it forces the hand of inquiry: what can this possibly be if not a reference to itself? Do our ideas EVER reach a world that is not "idea"? This kind of thing puts "aboutness" in serious peril.

vacuous quip. — 180 Proof

Talking out of your hat. Dissing Kant, then saying nothing at all about this. You know, the pragmatists are all closet phenomenologists, if you give pragmatism is full due. Rorty was a big fan of Kuhn, the professed Kantian, as well as Heidegger and Derrida. Dewey, a naturalist, but what does this mean to a pragmatist? It means that Kant's empirical reality, minus the noumena, is all there is to talk about. Like Quine, he gets his empiricism from a hundred and fifty years of talkin, indirectly or otherwise, about Kant.
All analytic philosophers know they work in his shadow, that rises and falls, and takes many forms, but never disappears. Analytic philosophy always begs an essentially Kantian question: that of epistemology.

This really makes no sense. You say "I know that things are", but "are" you say, has a completely indeterminate meaning. How can you possibly know that things "are", when you cannot know what "are" means. Your statement is basic contradiction "I know that things "are', but I don\t know what 'are' means". — Metaphysician Undercover

Take my cat: The term 'cat' is arbitrary: you know, the noise we make and the knowledge we have of those furry living things never gives us something indubitable, not that is is wrong to think of it as a cat, but that this kind of knowledge has no determinate foundation. It is up in the air when questions about it are the most basic.
But what happens when we remove ourselves from this, if you will, ready to hand environment of knowing and we ask ontological and epistemic questions, not just in academic curiosity, but existentially, apart from the text, IN the world? Can we meaningfully say that because our language is indeterminate, then, say, my cat does not exist? So here: there is something intuitively absolute, "pure" even, about the givenness of the presence of the cat that is not language bound, and this is a kind of "knowledge" that exceeds the usual contextualized knowing.

Is that all that language does is ‘say’ what ‘is’? Doesn’t language PRODUCE what is rather than merely express an already extant ‘it’? By language we don’t have to limit ourselves to words. Derrida said there is nothing outside of text , but he didn’t mean
symbolic language. He meant to include pre-linguistic perception , affect and valuation. This self that comes back to itself via a detour through the other is already a kind of pre-verbal language game. Could not the divine or the Good reproduce itself always differently through this enacting of subjectivity? — Joshs

If I take you correctly, since there is no interpretative standard that can stand as a center to deny one over ay other perspective, then each perspective is thereby no less real or proper or privileged than any other, and I find this kind of stunningly right. BUT: value, ethics, affectivity, aesthetics: this dimension of the world is, using the best term available, absolute. "Centers" are interpretative variables. My sprained ankle is, qua painful, not an interpretative event.
The divine reproduce itself differently? I don't think I follow. Things, affairs can always be different from what they are. Accidents, is the old term. But it is impossible, I hold, that pain can be recontextualized out of its, as best one could say, badness.

Could you please elaborate on that claim. — Agent Smith

Take pragmatism, the Dewey, Peirce, James, and then Rorty. Take Rorty: a thoroughgoing naturalist, like Dewey (like Quine), in many cases. But behind this there is a kind of phenomenological pragmatism. All pragmatists are, and I think there is no way out of this, idealists. Even Dewey comes to this, no? After all, meaning issues from experience; it is an experiential "event". How does meaning encounter the world? Though problem solving. How is problem solving "about" the world? Well, if the world is taken as a problem to solve, then it is history, the retained resources of problems solved, that one is "dealing with".

But where do they get their authority from , for the later Wittgenstein? I would suggest only through a particular language game in which that sentence is being used. Its authority would thus be contingent and pragmatic.
The above sentence , for instance, would be a tautology that doesn’t actually tell us anything — Joshs

It is a reflection of an intuition. Take causality, a very strong sense that something cannot be a spontaneous event. The strongest I can think of, this "apodicticity". I cannot say wath this is, or even imagine what saying so might even be. But this intuition itself is not a language game, nor is, I claim, injunction not to do something in the intuition of the experiencing o suffering. Twist my arm, and it is not language that I "see".
What to do with that which is not language yet cannot be accounted for by denying that it is language is, again, as I see it, getting to a genuine foundation. Causality? Who cares, really? But affectivity, ethics, this kind of thing is inherently what matters, even if I don't have a language to say what it is. even if I were, as Foucault put it, being ventriloquized by history, there is this foundation of actuality that has a palpable "presence", beyond what a language game can say. Witt said in Nature and Culture that "the good" was his idea of divinity.

All that's left to do is make systematic guesses, oui? Without the possibility of ever knowing whether we go it right or no. — Agent Smith

That is the fallacy of scientism. Making systematic guesses is science's job. But philosophy's "guesses" are thematically different.

You misread my meaning again, sir. Kant's anthropocentric fiat isn't even false (i.e. metaphysical, and in the manner to which he objects) as evident by knowledge derived through fundamental particle physics / astrophysics, evolutionary molecular biology, pure mathematics (e.g. Lie Groups, Number Theory, Axiomatic Set Theory), as examples, which we cannot perceive directly (via "intuition") and are "beyond" human experience. The CPR is a masterpiece of metaphysical (subjectivist) fiction IMHO. — 180 Proof

Not to ruffle feathers at all! But this here sounds like the fiction to me.

What do you mean by ‘logicality’? The ‘S is P’ propositional structure? Belief statements? — Joshs

I mean that the insistence of ideas like, one cannot conceive of a thoughtless world, retain all of their authority.

"Not that ‘before’ we came along that it didn’t exist"

"IT"??? This is the problem.

I'm refering to the uselessness of self-mortification practices. — baker

Perhaps not so useless; after all, it is not something to be measured by how it looks in the dress, the posture and behavior, and so on.

The moment we 'pull away from the participation', we stop being religious.

What use is the 'broader context' to a religious person? — baker

Well, the broader context is philosophy's world: pull away from mundane affairs and ask more fundamental questions, like what does it mean to know something, not about the weather of if the couch is comfortable, but anything at all. But when you arrive here, you face indeterminacy, which is a term I lifted from others to use place of metaphysics.
When you face indeterminacy at the foundation of all of our affairs, you are where religion begins, and where philosophy should be. The former is fiction, largely, the latter analysis.

Well, I find "intuition" as an equally faulty word, because that word as we normally use it, has mental experience implied within. — Metaphysician Undercover

But this line of thinking simply denies that there is anything "there" in some emphatic, irresistible way. I may not know what things are, but THAT they are, notwithstanding "are" being interpretatively indeterminate, is impossible to deny.

“… the logical edifice of the Tractatus came tumbling down and with it the whole notion of ‘logical form' that.played such a central role in Wittgenstein's — Joshs

Really? Tumbling down? As I understand it, the picture theory of language was abandoned, but the insistence of logicality was not. For me, no one has ever convinced me that idealism of some kind is wrong. How does anything out there get in here? I just don't see it. Why am I not listening and observing activated "neuronal networks" ONLY?

Yes, a priori, this kind of conjecturing must be projections and imaginations. We can still try to "describe" it. Like if I say, "What do you think a dog's perspective is like" and you say, "It has a lot to do with smells, patterns of reward, belly rubs, and such" I can still meaningfully gain some insight into this from my limited human perspective without actually "being" a dog myself. Of course, I am never going to have the POV of a dog, but it can be discussed like anything else.

I'm just saying not to use Witty to weaponize any inquiry on metaphysical or epistemological conjectures. Sometimes it's more about how to view a subject matter, not necessarily getting at "it" directly. We all know that there is a contradiction in thinking about non-perspective, but the dialogue surrounding such ideas is not thus a non-starter, it's just keeping in mind that it can only be conjecture. — schopenhauer1

I would agree if it just wasn't for that pesky absence of -perspective that is at the center of the issue here. The whole idea is to imagine the world/universe as if we were not there to conceive of it. Ever since, long ago, Rorty said he didn't know how anything out there got in here (pointing to his head) I have never been able to get around it. As counter intuitive as this sounds, it simply seems beyond refutation: either I am now "looking at" my brain's interior, or consciousness of the world is not brain bound.
But quite right, this kind of thinking often intrudes where unwelcome.

Nonsense in the Wittgenstein meaning of it? If let's say Earth is no more, what of the universe? That's an event that can (and will) happen. So how is that nonsense? There was a universe "before" humans and "after". So why the hostility? It's not nonsense, you are just unreasonably miffed by the subject. Wittgenstein's idea of "nonsense" isn't a license for shutting down all inquiry in the name of calling out "Nonsense!". — schopenhauer1

Well, not hostile, just in disagreement.


Witt writes:

Thus the aim of the book is to draw a limit
to thought, or rather—not to thought, but to
the expression of thoughts: for in order to be
able to draw a limit to thought, we should
have to find both sides of the limit thinkable
(i.e. we should have to be able to think what
cannot be thought).
It will therefore only be in language that
the limit can be drawn, and what lies on the
other side of the limit will simply be nonsense.


One cannot think of a limit to thought for one cannot conceive of the opposite of thought. It takes thought to conceive. He knows that to have an idea at all in mind is to have logic in play already. One can't imagine a logic-free "world". Having a perspective is exactly the same thing in this matter here.
Imagining a universe before humans is, of course, a conception. When we talk about a Big Bang, it is a projection of what the world is processed in logic and experience. Take away this latter, the BIg Bang is just meaningless.

This just sounds like a complaint without content. If there are no sentient beings. What then? I'll try to use as little words that you don't like as possible here... — schopenhauer1

It's is just an argument from nonsense. To talk about perspectivelessness is nonsense.

Your idea of "bad metaphysics" was just asserted without any jumping from your claim to your conclusion. A philosopher can't just write an article "Bad metaphysics. The end".

But anyways, you seem to be answering your own objections.. Yes, a universe has no privileged perspective on its own. But my question is what is a universe without a perspective? I mean literally, what does that look like? The only thing I can posit that people might say (especially information-enthusiasts) are localized interactions somehow inhering in the universe. But I don't really know if I buy that. — schopenhauer1

Bad metaphysics is metaphysics that has no grounding in analysis of experience. Talk about God as omniscient, omnipotent and so on--one asks, for evidence and it isn't forthcoming. Talk about God as, say, a grounding for ethical affairs that are inherently incomplete due to undeniable features of the given world, then metaphysics is not entirely a fiction.

If there is no privileged perspective, then the term 'perspective' stands in its meaning only against other perspectives, and loses meaning entirely in talk about "a universe without a perspective". Anything you say is already "perspectival"; to speak at all implies perspective; to say "without perspective" is itself a perspective.

I think the idea of the blind spot is a metaphor for the failure to recognize a bias held by our own position - humans often assume a god-like, objective understanding of reality when it is actually a perspective with limitations. In this I think the notion is appropriate and I think Wayfarer states the problem well. — Tom Storm

The idea of a blind spot implies that we re blind to something, something there that we cannot "see". If it is conceived as a metaphor, then it has to be such that both sides of the metaphor are known. I have brought this up earlier: a metaphor only makes sense, as in, Ingrid such a tiger in political conversation, if one knows about tigers and Ingrid. Both. Witt argued that one sided metaphors are nonsense. So the blind spot in this context, would be a one sided metaphor. Blind, but blind regarding what?

I am not discussing knowledge versus other experience here. Rather, I am asking, what is a universe without any perspective? We imagine a universe independent of humans, but that imagining takes on the character of what "we" perceive it as. — schopenhauer1

Yeah, but I think you know where this goes: In order for the "without any perspective" to make any sense at all, the concept of perspective has to make sense. Of course, a perspective only makes sense vis a vis other perspectives. There is no single, privileged "perspective" except in the "mind of God" and this puts the idea clearly in the area of bad metaphysics. This is nonsense.

I’d take time to read that article carefully, it has sound provenance. — Wayfarer

You are right, and I hadn't read it all the way. So now I've read it, and I do appreciate the direction it takes. But my views on this run rather radical, perhaps you've noticed. Take this: 'Our experience and what we call ‘reality’ are inextricable."

I put it quite differently: Our experience IS reality, and this is not an idealist claim. It is just to say that whether you want to talk about what is out there and in here or not, experience is not such that it is to be compared to or set apart from what is real. Then the matter takes its epistemic course: The cat considered out there has no "proximity" to me, since there is nothing about out thereness that is at all intimated. But the presence of the cat there, just as it is, this is where the "real" gets its meaning; this is the "originary" locus where talk about the real begins. It is not "in here" but simply "there". It is the intuitive presence of the cat as well as the eidetic presence of the thought that conceives it, these are, I would argue against others, direct and unassailablein their presence, whatever that means, which brings me to the problem: I say "whatever that means" because meanings distort presence, and the word 'presence' is itself embedded in a system of thought, which is freighted along with the simple utterance.

Hard to put this succinctly; there is a premise lurking in the shadows of all this: the point of philosophical work is not to arrive at propositional truth. It is to realize value; it is liberative (which is why I take Eastern thinking seriously. I suspect philosophy's issues were solved long ago, sitting under a fig tree) Value rules inquiry, not thought; and thought is pragmatic, a utility, to achieve value. We think to make things happen, but thought cannot "deliver" reality any more than a hammer can deliver a house. Language has use value. Talk about universals vs particulars, e.g., is simply more talk about meanings and how they converge, reflect, straddle, agree with, and so on, each other. And this is a big point: Concepts will never converge with the real, but they themselves are real. One simply has to abandon the scientific insistence on a fiction called materiality. Thinking is not disputable as a "presence"; what thinking is about is entirely different. Of course, I did just say that all language is like this, distorting or interpretative, so it has to be explained how a "direct" intuition unassailable in its affirmation, while the language's nature is inherently something assailable.

Anyway, this is where my thought begins on the matter of what is real. Bringing inquiry back to the foundation of all things, the actual presence of the world. One has to ask, then listen at the intuitive center, where, as Eugene Fink puts it, the "being-tendency (enworlding)" is revealed. One discovers, again, I argue, something alien and profound vis a vis our naturally lived lives.

The problem is in the ambiguity of the concept of consciousness. For example, a computer is able to react to the presence of a person or even to the expression of her face. Can we call this consciousness? If the answers is yes, then consciousness is everywhere, because everything is able to react to anything. If the answer is no, then it becomes extremely difficult to show the difference. When I say “extremely difficult”, I refer also to Chalmers’ expression “hard problem of consciousness”. Obviously, anybody is able to show that their position is not stupid, since the very existence of the “hard problem of consciousness” is impossible to prove.
In order to talk properly about consciousness we need first to admit this ambiguity and confusion. The first problem about consciousness is in using the word “consciousness” as we knew what we are talking about, while actually we are in the middle of the deepest confusion and ambiguity. — Angelo Cannata

Frankly, consciousness is not the hard problem, as I see it. It is the one thing IN consciousness (all things are, no?) that is worse then hard; impossible. And that is valuing, our affectivity.

Philosophy can even be considered ridiculous, hypocritical, stupid, in its efforts to assign to quantums and neurons and structures and molecules the task of building a good relationship of man with himself. Pascal taught us not to escape ourselves through the "divertissement", through diversion.
We can even consider noble, honourable, this pseudo-science, because science is research that, as such, improves human knowledge and human condition.
It is an easy fact, though: how can we think of "understanding" ourselves, our consciousness, our being "I", by identifying it as a "hard problem of consciousness", or a matter of quantums and electrons? This is still the typical, prehistoric, rough, mentality of solving problems through "understanding", which means grasping, conquering, destroying, sacking, war.
What I am talking about is not morality, it is knowledge, a different approach to knowledge. You cannot gain knowledge of consciousness through quantums and relativity, because consciousness is you, the subject, the one who is waiting to be met. You cannot meet yourself through quantums and metaphysics. Rather, what Pascal suggested was "esprit de finesse", spirit of fineness, or we can just say spirit. — Angelo Cannata

Teetering on the edge of phenomenology.

Science cannot be the "measure of man/woman" because it is an abstraction that merely quantifies the world, and, as I think you are saying, a person is not some quantifiable mass with weight, density, velocity, acceleration, gravity, temperature, chemical composition and so on. A brain, a body, is this, but a person is falling in love, and off cliffs, and worrying insanely, and wondering, and fabulous, and wretched, and personality, and irony and on and on.

Two VERY different sets of descriptive criteria. The latter, I would argue, subsumes the former. Science is not science until someone comes along, has an interest, invents vocabularies, thinks, and the rest.

And that's the blind spot. — Wayfarer

But of course, all there is, is blind spot, for positing what is not blind would issue from what is blind.

In the Blind Spot sits experience: the sheer presence and immediacy of lived perception.
This statement is LOADED with problematic talk about something that is "blind". One has to wonder how blindness, us, can produce its opposite to set such a thing against itself. I don't think this is impossible, frankly, but it will not be done via any model science can provide.

Yet humans at least act as though we have a privileged perspective to being close to what is “really going on”, more than other animals at least. Now take away humans, take away animals. We get a view from nowhere. Here is true metaphysics. — schopenhauer1

True metaphysics is an idea established by OUR deficit. Take away the deficit, then there is no metaphysics, nor physics. To think of an "absolute" metaphysics is just bad metaphysics.

And it can be reasonably argued that the measure of superiority between species is not about what one knows. One could have all the factual knowledge there could be and still it could be objected: so what? It is not knowledge that is the measure, but value. The depth and breadth of affectivity.

I wonder what all that elephant brain's 257 billion neurons actually do; certainly not philosophy. But perhaps some glorious, unfathomable sense of well being. A world of extraordinary experiential depth and breadth, I would hazard, is there.

:rage: I used to positively hate emojis. Now I see their value.

-Again chronicling is irrelevant. What Rand believed or not is irrelevant. Objectivity stands on its own merits. Objectivity has been an established criterion way longer than Rand's takes on its importance. — Nickolasgaspar

Sorry Nickolasgaspar. I mean no disrespect, but you are starting to sound like a nitwit.

ITs irrelevant to this topic but you can always google it. Well here is the first link I got.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-metaphysics/ — Nickolasgaspar

Nickolasgaspar, just say it. Why do you think Kant is just metaphysical speculation? Proof is in the pudding. Give me a paragraph, your assignment: Write in one paragraph a concise statement on why Kant's CPR is speculative metaphysics.
I'm not going to say up front that it isn't. It's just, if you know it, you can explain it. so explain it. Who knows, maybe you've got something there, but we will never know until you properly say it.
People who have something to say, say it. Spell it out Nickolasgaspar. I'll help you:

In Kant's CPR, he argues.............It is his claim that .......that I argue is merely metaphysical speculation, because........................

-And.....? its the same way. We observe people's brains like we observe all environmental phenomena. We gather systematic information for every aspect of that organ and its factions. That is a text book example of special pleading and an argument from ignorance fallacy.
Our ignorance of specialized knowledge on how the brain works doesn't justify to assume supernatural explanations. — Nickolasgaspar

You have to understand that philosophy's business is necessitated by the real condition in human affairs, which is its foundational indeterminacy. This cannot be ignored since that would mean ignoring a condition in plain sight, and science will not permit this. This would amount to ad hoc dismissal. So we apply the scientific method: What has to be the case, in order for what is the case before us to be what it is. Usually in science, this works out fairly well, no? One's sees mountains' irregular features and asks, why? What caused this? And theory of weathering is born, so to speak.

But what if the question about something has no empirically observable response? As when we ask, what is knowledge? You should see first that this is not a merely speculative question. One encounters the question as one would encounter a any other phenomenon's question. Only here, the question goes to the observer and the act of perceiving, and this is a foundational question, applicable to all things, for all things are first presented as knowledge claims before they are taken up as empirical claims.

If you take up the question of the nature of a knowledge claim, you are thrown into a problem that is unique, for anything you can say is itself the problem, that is, it too presupposes knowledge claims. To think at all presupposes what is inherently part of its own problematic.

Now this is NOT an invented issue. So all that you want to put out there in favor of what science has to say is not even on the table, because, of you will, the putting anything on the table at all is included in the problematic.

Look, at this point, any reasonable person has to see this. So, I don't take issue AT ALL with anything science has to say, any more than science would reasonably take issue itself. So spare me all this endless droning on about what science has to say. Try to put it aside, because after reading your comments, I am truly beginning to suspect you might have a problem, one very unbecoming of a scientist: dogmatism. Consider philosophy a paradigmatic challenge, and you have to switch the mode of your analytical approach. The question presents itself whether or not a knowledge claim

So, sorry for not going tit for tat with you in all you said. It would be pointless. I mean, I read it, but you have to make that fundamental shift away from what an empirical argument would look like; or better: Remember entirely what empirical arguments look like, but ask a question about them, which goes to their basic epidemic indeterminacy. You are invited then to analyze the structure of the epistemic relations, and this is inevitably gogin to be just as question begging as empirical science, but at least here, in the Husserl, Heidegger, and so many others, here one has brought the natter to its most basic analysis, because the work here done is specifically about the revealed features of the knowledge relationship, and this is as far as inquiry can go.

It is because philosophy takes things to this level that you find it disturbingly without content. But this IS the foundation of being human. Underneath the assumptions of all science there are all questions, nothing definitive.

You like to call this an argument from ignorance, but then, all science goes this way! Before there were theories about stellar composition based on spectral analysis, there were questions about what stars were that were unanswered, I.e., ignorance.

No one has mentioned "god" claims. This is your doing.

And intellectually unevolved. What's particularly dangerous isn't Rand herself, but the cult-like following of her. She's only somewhat responsible for that, but not entirely. I think she herself would mostly be against the dogmatism and zealotry of her followers. Having once given her due attention, I've since moved beyond her -- although there are still aspects I like. I like that she echoes Aristotelian virtue ethics, for example. But her views on ontology, epistemology, and politics is very limited indeed. — Xtrix

People are pretty clueless about this sort of thing. Back in the 40's, The Fountainhead was made into a movie starring Patricia Neal and Gary Cooper, a kind of celebration of the capitalist ubermensch, the guy whose talent placed him far above the pettiness of normal people's affairs. Everyone else was a parasite on his genius. Rand thought herself like this.

American Christians were so full of themselves and worshiped the corporate gods of capitalism, and so afraid of communism, they never understood that she was telling them all they were just a bunch parasites to the rich and famous, to whom they should all bow low. And Rand was a professed atheist! They bowed anyway.

-Nothing really except his critique. I only pointed out that no matter how great the name of philosopher, a metaphysical speculation is just that. — Nickolasgaspar

Details, Nickolasgaspar, details. What, exactly in his Critique is metaphysical speculation?

Do you have objective evidence of mind properties rising independent of a functioning biological brain (natural process).
If you do have you then you should make some space on your shelves for a Nobel Prize...
That is a pseudo philosophy. — Nickolasgaspar

What makes the case of the brain so unique is that while exterior events are forthcoming for observation, the brain itself is problematic, because the only way to confirm its existence is through its own operations, thus, one would have to establish how the brain can be its own source of verification, and this can only be done through the very brain processes in question. Put clearly: all that experience is, is brain phenomena, and the only way one can confirm the brain's existence is through these very phenomena. How is it that one can stand apart from the brain and observe it apart from the very phenomena that are posited as brain generated? All you ever get is the phenomena; you can never achieve that Archimedean point to truly witness the brain.

This, of course, problematizes all witnessed events, for how does one ever witness what is NOT a phenomenon? You need that perspective from another position that is not phenomenological.

Good luck with this. If you can respond in a way that shows the phenomenon can be bypassed, and an observer can jump into the "real" world that is not conditioned and constructed by thought and experience, not only will you win the Nobel Prize, but you will have discovered God's omniscient providence.

First of all your answer doesn't really address any points made in my first paragraph. We don't have a way to be sure whether our feedback of an invisible underlying reality is accurate or not. What we can verify is that in different scales of reality we observe different characteristics that are quantifiable and verifiable.
What Kant or any philosopher says about metaphysical aspects of ontology is IRRELEVANT and an argument from false authority since there aren't any experts or authorities in metaphysical claims! — Nickolasgaspar

I have no idea what this is about. What makes you think Kant talks about metaphysics??

Of course they have. If you talk about mind properties non contingent to natural processes or "post modern Theology" or accept unfalsifiable metaphysical statements as foundations for your philosophical views then both of my labels are justified in this conversation!
Those terms just point out that the promoted ideas do not carry epistemic foundations sot they can not be used as tools for the understanding of the world (not that they are wrong). — Nickolasgaspar

But none of this applies. You are having a discussion with yourself. Mind properties not contingent to natural processes? But of course they are. All I ask you is, what are natural processes? And how can one separate ontology from epistemology? Do do this would require the most egregious metaphysics, as if one could identify something epistemically detached from one. There is nothing metaphysical about asking the simple question: what connects S to P in the equation, "S knows P"? Are you suggesting we should ignore this question? Is this what you call science, ignoring glaring questions contradict your paradigms? I suspect you're heard of Thomas Kuhn? What do you think he would say about this? Do you understand the scientific method? Think this through: it is a method that connects knowledge with the world. How do you think this happens, magically? This has to be explained, and you don't turn away because it is difficult. You engage it because it is difficult, but it is not the job of a scientist. It is the philosopher's job. It is NOT a metaphysical question. It simply accepts that the objects before us cannot be conceived apart from the experience in which they are found.
It is, in its essential justification, that easy. Science is very good at describing objects in the world. This is given. It has no clue at all as to how to describe the intuitive foundation that constitutes that-which-is-being-taken-up by science nor can it speak of epistemic relations, THE foundational relation upon which all science rests. One does not reach into absurdities to do this. One simply observes the relationship and analyses the structure of experience. Nothing metaphysical at all. these are just reflexive responses you have to things unfamiliar.

- Is it? Are they? Maybe you are right.
Two problems.
1. What do you mean by reading philosophy? Chronicling? Finding out who (philosopher) said what?
Do you really think that Chronicling is Philosophy or that it will help you to promote a metaphysical statement to an epistemic degree of value, by knowing about it?
The fact that those conclusions have never being evaluated or used to produce abbitional knowledge or wise claims that we can act upon..... doesn't raise any flags for you?
Sure some great names made some metaphysical claims that you agree with...this is all you have!
The question is What makes you think that they are philosophical or at least meaningful?

2.People in science are generally philosophically clueless....meaning that they are really bad in Chronicling. THis is because they ignore ideas that are not proven Wise and with zero epistemic potential.
They are only familiar with Philosophical ideas that are epistemically and instrumentally valuable. (Naturalism, Objectivism, Humanism, Situational ethics etc etc etc ).
So at least in my case I don't give much attention to philosophical claims that do not achieve the goal set by Philosophy itself....to provide Wise claims about our world on solid epistemic grounds.
Sorry If I sound condescending...that was not my intention. — Nickolasgaspar

Chronicling? You would have to say what you mean. Are you talking about recording history?

There is only one goal set for philosophy--only one: to examine the world at the level of the most basic assumptions. Period.
On condescension: All is forgiven. Sometimes I fail to realize that people simply do not know what philosophy is. The presumption of knowing without, well, knowing, is common.

So never mind, then, and put all this aside. Have a lovely day!

Ayn Rand devotees are cute. — Xtrix

And dangerous. Like libertarians, morally unevolved.

How I this an arguement against anything I said? You need to rephrase. — Harry Hindu

By calling something accidental, you are implying purpose. By implying that inanimate objects, like the universe, have accidents you are projecting purpose (anthropomorphism) onto things that have no purpose. There is no purpose outside a mind's own goals, therefore there are no accidents outside of some mind's goals. — Harry Hindu

You are saying there are no "accidents" in the world apart from the mind that conceives such things. Calling something an accident is simply saying it is contingent. All things are contingent, most philosophers would say, and this means they are not "stand alone" in the meaning they have. Meanings are contextual, and nothing that can be understood, stands outside of a context.
"The world" is contingent; to say otherwise is just bad metaphysics, with one exception. Value. And this really isn't an exception at all. Or is it? Value is where things get interesting.

Paraphrasing

Spock (bleeding): I'm pondering upon the meaning of life.

Dr. Leonard McCoy (applying compression to the wound): Feeling philosophical, eh? That's what massive blood loss will do to you. — Agent Smith

Better: Morpheus: "Do you think that's air you're breathing now?"

That's what religiologists, culturologists, and the like do. Not what religious people do. — baker

I know what they do and how they think. Philosophy's job, as I see it, is to take this, and give a reflective analysis. What is going on when we pull away from the participation, and see it in a broader context?

By calling something accidental, you are implying purpose. By implying that inanimate objects, like the universe, have accidents you are projecting purpose (anthropomorphism) onto things that have no purpose. There is no purpose outside a mind's own goals, therefore there are no accidents outside of some mind's goals. — Harry Hindu

Still too slippery, Harry. How is this different from what I said?

Yes, it can look like this. It can also look like my uncle Raymond who has a phd in geology. Do better!

-You can never say that an objective set of observations can or cant mirror nature accurately!
You are using an argument from ignorance fallacy as an excuse to dismiss our only credible and objective source of knowledge and sneak in pseudo philosophical speculations as competitive ontological frameworks.
Again I am not saying that our observations are absolute true or the picture we receive is 100% accurate. I only pointing out that we can not evaluate the accuracy of our observation so we are forced to work with what we got (pragmatic necessity) either they agree with our metaphysical worldviews or not! On the other hand idealistic and supernatural claims fall outside our Cataleptic Impressions and our methods of observation so we have zero objective information about these speculations. — Nickolasgaspar

But reading Kant does not yield zero information. That is, well, silly. Not that he's right about everything. Not the point.

I don't read Tyson. He is too poetic for my taste and diluted in epistemology. Again phenomenology has many varieties. Some are philosophical but many are pseudo philosophical. This is the problem with Philosophy. Under the same umbrella term its possible to found good and bad Philosophy!
My statement "whatever it means" was my response to the claim "consciousness being fundamental".
ITs was not a cheep blow. I used that statement because consciousness in Neuroscience has a specific definition and pseudo philosophy/supernaturalism definitions are pretty vague.
What verify in science is in direct conflict with the proclaimed "role" of consciousness by pseudo philosophical views. — Nickolasgaspar

You toss terms like "pseudo" and "supernaturalism" around like you think they have some place in this disagreement. To me it is just the presumption of condescension usually found among those who are limited in their reading. People in science generally are philosophically clueless, which is to be forgiven; after all, they don't read philosophy, or, if they do, it ends up being the philosophy of science.
Generally, when I ask someone with your predilections, they really haven't read anything.

-What I personally think is irrelevant. In science we establish Sufficiency and Necessity between a causal mechanism and the effect by verifying Strong Correlations between a process and a phenomenon. So to explain this process in terms of your example.....an Environmental or organic stimuli (a drowning child or a pebble or a fish breaking the surface of the water etc) produces connections in the brain (surface ripples ) that in turn enables the emergence of mental conscious state with a specific conscious content( wave, bubbles, foam, distorted reflections etc). — Nickolasgaspar

Personally?? The idea here is that a CT scan is not a mirror of the mind in the truest sense of what a mirror is. We can talk like this, but this is a metaphor at work here. In the matter at hand, imagine you had a CT scan of something, but you were told you had to dismiss all familiar possibilities for its interpretation. So much for interpretation. But then, you do have what is there before you to be taken not as something impossibly beyond the phenomenon itself, but simply AS itself. That is where we are.

In this case there the phenomenon is all things. The relation in question is epistemic. If you want to declare the epistemic relation to be a causal one, then you will have a lot of explaining to do. For one thing, the very notion of causality itself would have to be causally accounted for.
The idea here is not to deny what science does, nor its conclusions nor its theorizing. It is to say something really quite simple and without argument: all science has to say rests with what lies before the perceiving intelligence. This is, if you will, a horizon of intuition. Nobody disagrees with this. The most devoted analytic philosopher understands that phenomenology cannot be refuted, only ignored by people why prefer to think of other things. Who cares? You may thematize the world as you please as long as the world has those themes there for the inquiry.

Again you are making an argument from ignorance (because we can not disprove that there is an addition level of reality responsible for mental states we can dismiss or ignore Neuroscience's epistemology without evidence against it and without any evidence for the suggested idea)!
This is NOT how the burden of proof works. This is not how we identify a Default position(Null Hypothesis) .
This is fallacious reasoning! We can not throw out of the window our objective observations and frameworks that make testable predictions (diagnose pathology) and real life technical applications (accurately read complex thoughts, surgery and medicinal protocols)...just because some believe a fallacious claim!
By definition the truth value of a fallacious claim is unknown so we are forced to dismiss it as pseudo metaphysics. — Nickolasgaspar

Not to ignore neuroscience's epistemology. To realize that this epistemology is based upon something more foundational: intuitive givenness. Science is left alone since no one is denying its claims. It is a different world of inquiry altogether.
If you are looking for evidence, and you want to be a good neuroscientist, consider how you would you would translate neurological events into events that are not neurological. There is no assumed ignorance. Just do it. If I asked you to do this in any other case of identifiable connectivity, you wouldl be appalled at the presumption that one could make a scientific claim with out this connection in place. So, just make it. If you cannot, and you can't, you may continue on in your fashion. But you would be thoroughly disabused about the foundational validity of your claims.
Or you can exercise your curiosity and ask questions like, how is it that ideas and object are related? I cannot apprehend an object apart from the understanding, so is it that objects cannot be considered as a "stand alone" presence? What does stand alone even mean at the basic level of inquiry? And on and on.
Pseudo metaphysics? Yes, I despise this sort of thing. I am interested in authentic metaphysics.

-I think I understand what you want to say. You are misusing the term "observation" and that creates a miscommunication. To set things straight , of course we can observe the act of believing and knowing by many methods. We can either compare brain scans in relation to specific stimuli, check blood profile , behavior etc.
What we can't observe is how others individuals subjectively experience those states. This is because it is a subjective experience!
Our goal is not to experience other peoples experiences!!!!! Its nonsensical to even suggest it! What w can do is to verify the processes responsible for the experience. We can do that with objective methods of investigation. — Nickolasgaspar

You have to read more carefully, and then think more carefully. I did say, "even in one's interior observations." I do suspect your problem is that you don't have a capacity to think beyond the models provided the science text. Observe the thought, the experience rising within. Observe that YOU are in a believing state. To observe this is an obvious and simple matter. You have beliefs and you know this. So, there you are believing the sun is out or the cat is sleeping, and conviction is, say, upon you. Now ask, how is it this belief state has verification? That is, clearly you believe and trust your belief, but what is this trust grounded upon? It is purely an intuitive presence of belief that determines this, but because this is given without a justificatory grounding, then it sits there, indeterminate, believing, but at its basis, indeterminate. Of course, you can say, this indeterminacy is the best we can do. We do not live in the mind of God, and so all knowledge claims are like this. And I say, brilliant. This is our indeterminacy.

The more time you spend trying to see this, the more you understand that this condition is not remote from our existence. It is only remote FROM the pov of the presumption of knowing, which is pervasive in all things, like passing the salt and taking a bus. This philosophical perspective is THE perspective: a suspension of the "pass the salt" affairs in order to examine things at a level where presumption itself can be interrogated. Philosophy asks, what is belief?

The "knowing of anythings" is the process of interacting with the world and composing objective descriptions about it. Knowledge is any claim that's objectively in agreement with current facts and carries Instrumental value. Everything gets in our brain by empirical interactions. If you have ever observed babies growing up, you will see that in their early years they know nothing about the world. By interacting with it and testing their assumptions (this is why they are prone to accidents lol) their small brains construct a mental model. This process is called Learning. We can see the changes in the brain and how learning things affect size and function. — Nickolasgaspar

This is just evasion. Or you really can't understand the question. Empirical interactions? But this is exactly what is being questioned. You can't say, oh well, these are just the way of it. Is this how science works?? Is a cloud just a cloud, with no care given to its anatomical analysis?

The think is we are talking about the knowledge on a phenomenon that is studied by a Scientific discipline so "understanding philosophy" or better listening to pseudo philosophical ideas on the mind or consciousness is irrelevant.
When we need to learn things about the causal mechanisms of a biological phenomenon....we study science.
When we want to understand the implications in real life of this knowledge, its value and meaning for our lives...then we use philosophy.
WE NEVER use philosophy to assume magical ontologies that are Unnecessary, Insufficient and Unfalsifiable.
Its not like they are the products and conclusions of our observations!! Someone made up an magical realm and placed his idea in a safe place away from falsification without any epistemic foundations! — Nickolasgaspar

Quite the opposite. What is magical are unexamined assumptions. You are fond of the world magical. This is a sure sign of a dogmatic personality. There is therapy for this; it is called reading outside what dictates your thoughts. It is not magic your fear. It is the unknown, the disconnect from the ready grasp, the letting go of certainty and familiarity, this frightens you. Understandable. It is disquieting to learn that the world is, at the basic level, alien to your ability to know.

-"This is an epistemic relation, not a causal one."
-Correct....observing doesn't cause the event you observe....where exactly do you see a problem???
I don't get what problem do you see in an event (volcano) and an observer observing the event (which is a different event on its own).
Could you point out where the problem is???? — Nickolasgaspar

It is the question that has been there throughout. "Observing doesn't cause the event you observe," THIS is just massively naive. What, is causality suspended to account for how you, the perceiver, can "reach out" to that over there? Remember, I am not thinking like aa phenomenologist at all here. I am thinking like an empirical scientist. Witness two distinct events and say the one has a relation to the other, it MUST BE a causal relation. Unless you have something else in mind for objects and there relations? Whatever it is, it will be reduced to a causal accounting.