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[Gertie]

thrasymachus

Sorry for the delay!


I'd like to try to pin down our fundamental differences if you're up for it?  Rather than picking away at points.

I'd say we can agree that science and physicalism are built on assumptions which we both want to get to the bottom of, but our methods for doing that are different.

Mine are rooted in epistemological scepticism.  This is scepticism about what I can know for certain, which ends in some form of solipsism. I'll lay it out as best I can -

I believe there is a real difference in meaning between Epistemologically knowing something, and something Ontologically existing as a something in itself. 
[I think you may dispute this difference on the basis that the difference can't be contextualised by anything 'outside' of experiential knowing, and is a linguistic construct - but I still don't believe this escapes the epistemological solipsism issue when broken down - in my framing at least]

I believe this difference between epistemological knowing and ontologically existing as something in itself, can be quasi-metaphorically understood within the philosophical tradition of 'substances'.   

Mind-substance - to clarify I mean  phenomenal conscious experience or 'something it is like to be' -  by its nature encompasses 'knowing'.  I can't experience something without knowing what I experience.  Hence the existence of my conscious experience can't be doubted, and neither can its content, because the experience IS its content. To put it another way,  experience is always about something,  aka 'intentionality'.  This  Knowing-ness and Content-ness (intentionality) is  just a brute fact about  nature of phenomenal conscious experience, and is indisputable imo. 

In short, Experiencing IS Knowing, and Experience IS its Content.
[I think we'd agree on this, tho you would call phenomenal conscious experience 'Being', blurring into one its epistemological and ontological nature?]

From my position above, it's easy to recognise that any further ontological world-building is based on ASSUMPTIONS drawn from the content of my experience.  Which turns out to be a whole  package of sensations, emotions, memories, sensory observations, the linguisticthinky voice in my head, etc correlated with a body located in time and space,  with a first person pov, within a world of trees, gravity, and other people like me with minds like mine.  But this world of  trees, brains,  gravity, other people etc can't be known to ontologically exist in the way my first person 'direct' 'experiencing is knowing'  conscious experience does.  I can't doubt the conscious experience content exists, but I can't know if this experience represents something beyond itself existing.

The Physicalist position, based on inter-subjectively falsifying observations, is one way of building an ontology rests on the bedrock  ASSUMPTION that my experience represents me interacting with an ontological something-which-is-not-me, 'out there'.  Like-wise Idealism is based on the ASSUMPTION  other minds ontologically exist evidenced by me experiencing interacting with their bodies.  Kant picks and chooses which ASSUMPTIONS he believes to ontologically exist in some form.  And so on.  Some  say that this ASSUMED ontological reality 'out there' is so beyond our flawed and limited human access and comprehension it's impossible to sensibly speak of.

I very basically get the thinking behind all of those metaphysical/ontological positions, any could be correct, or none. I can't know, because every ontological position  beyond solipsism (this-here-now experience exists) is inevitably based on its own set of UNTESTABLE ASSUMPTIONS. 

I believe this is inevitably where we're at epistemologically, because of the nature of conscious experience which I laid out above.  And is about the best way I can think of  in getting a rock bottom handle on the nature of Knowing and Ontologically Existing. 

I'm open to better ways of conceptualising ontology and epistemology, I'm still learning.  I can see the frameworks  and reasoning behind positions like physicalism, panpsychism, idealism, mysterianism - and can identify the ASSUMPTIONS they rely on which inevitably lead back to the  solipsistic nature of conscious experience imo. Hopefully you can see why I think this?  And that I do address the nature of knowing and existing as meaningfully different, even if it turns out something like solipsism is true, where in practice they would actualise as the same thing. 



But.  I still can't pin down what your Phenomenological framework and reasoning is? 


And by avoiding being explicit, in the ways these other metaphysical positions are, you dodge laying open to critique  what  ASSUMPTIONS you rely on.  While pointing out that eg Physicalism relies on this or that ASSUMPTION.  Do you see the problem with that? 

It seems to me this means that either Phenomenology is not a  position built on a metaphysical/ontological/epistemological framing, and makes no such claims. In which case it's a methodology with no conclusions, a different angle to think about the nature of conscious experience - which is fine in itself.  Just say so. Or you are taking an epistemological/ontological/metaphysical position, but  not explicitly stating it, and so avoid seeing your own ASSUMPTIONS, while you're pointing at the assumptions other metaphysical claims make.

My sceptical framing rooted in the nature of conscious experience, as I laid it out above, puts all such claims to the same sceptical test of what ASSUMPTIONS they rely on. Phenomenology is no exception.

This is why I keep annoying you by asking about your ontology. And why answers like 'consider the experiencing of looking at the cat and how that is contextualised in linguistic and other ways' which I'm fine agreeing with to an extent, doesn't get to the bottom of what your ontology/epistemology/metaphysical position is.  Thus avoiding being explicit about your own ASSUMPTIONS and having to examine them, in the way you critise Physicalists for not recognising.

[Pattern-chaser]

The point of referring to solipsism is that it's a dead end. It's not disprovable- we can't know that it is false - but it's a useless idea.

I think it has one use — to remind us that it is "not disprovable", and therefore, it *could* be [not "is"] true and correct. There are a myriad such things that could be true — but perhaps not all at the same time? — and this, IMO, is the valuable lesson that solipsism carries.

[Gertie]

Solipsism has to be dealt with by Epistemology  because the way we Know things is via conscious experience.  And my conscious experience is only certainly knowable to me. That includes the content of that experience, and even its existence.  And I can't be mistaken about the existence or content of my own conscious experience, because experiencing IS knowing. That's the only certainty I have. 

Everything else I believe is rooted in the content of my conscious experience, but doesn't have that certainty of directly knowing in that way.  So I might believe a tree exists in front of me, I can see it, touch it, measure it,etc.  But I could be mistaken about the tree being green, being solid and 10 metres high, even that it exists at all.  Because I can't have that first person experiential knowledge of the tree, like you can't have first person experiential knowledge of me. 

That's just how conscious experience is.

To escape solipsism, I have to assume the content of my experience  (eg experiencing seeing the tree) is referencing or representing an actual something I call 'a tree' exists as something 'out there', which isn't just my experience.  I can't test that assumption tho, because all I can know directly/certainly is my own experience

Once we establish that, we can see that our ontological 'world-building' begins with  this one basic assumption - namely that the content of my experience refers to/represents real 'not-me' stuff.  There is a real ontological world out there.

From there we can begin to think about what the nature of that stuff 'out there' might be. 

And there are lots of potential answers to that, each following its own reasoning or intuition.  Some common ones which crop up in philosophy - Physicalism, Idealism, Dualism (substance/property), Panpsychism, Neutral Monism, Transcendental Idealism,  Mysterianism, and so on.  Such  positions can be internally reasoned, evidenced and consistent, and can be argued back and forth on that basis.  But not validated outside of their own assumptions. There's no omniscient, all seeing and knowing pov available.

So there's no way to test which is correct.  And again this is because the way of Knowing anything, is by Experiencing.  And even when I make the assumption that the thing I call a tree, or gravity, or pattern-chaser exists - I can't Know those things exist in the direct/error-free I know my own experience and its content.  Even if I ask you if you see the tree over too, and we measure it and get the same answer (which is essentially the scientific method) - we might be prone to the same human errors.

So all these metaphysical positions I've mentioned, while being internally consistent, can only safely be called ways of modelling the ontological world on the basis of the content of our conscious experience, which being limited to lots of individual first person povs, is inherently limited and flawed.

And if we accept that our human logic and reasoning arise from our experiential observations of how the world works in 'law-like' causal ways - then we really should be humble about all the ways we create our ontological models.

Now thras thinks there's another way to approach this epistemological/ontological dilemma via Phenomenology.  He says Phenomenology asks us to question our assumptions in a different way, starting by examining the nature - content and architecture - of our conscious experience (or 'being').  Great.  So where does that lead?  He says we can throw out  of his ontology such tools for model building as Causality, Gravity  and Science, but things we call 'objects' like  'trees' do exist in some form.

I think he believes there is no difference between knowing/experiencing the tree, and the tree 'being'. Or rather, that 'seeing the tree' is the knowing/existing event. . And the world he models, is simply a series of such events. (Tho I'm not sure ''series'' is the right word, as I'm not sure if Time exists in his model).

Anyway, if I'm about right on what I think thras's position is, then I still view this as an ontological claim about what actually exists/happens. Which still needs to be justified, like any of the other claims I mentioned.

[thrasymachus]

Gertie wrote

I believe there is a real difference in meaning between Epistemologically knowing something, and something Ontologically existing as a something in itself.
[I think you may dispute this difference on the basis that the difference can't be contextualised by anything 'outside' of experiential knowing, and is a linguistic construct - but I still don't believe this escapes the epistemological solipsism issue when broken down - in my framing at least]

Solipsism will only arise if there is posited a metaphysical dualism, like mind and body, mental existence and physical existence (Descartes' res extensa and res cogitans); I mean, you can't run into a crisis of being unable to escape one, the mental world, if you don't have some other "place" that one needs to escape "to". So when Rorty says he no more "knows" there is a cup on the table than a dented car fender "knows" the offending guard rail, he is removing from consideration everything that standard ideas about philosophy has to say, then takes the naturalist position simply because he thinks science is the only wheel that rolls, and not because he really believes there are houses and trees and coffee cups independently of perceptual systems generating experience. How can he do this?? It sounds like he is contradicting himself, right? A naturalist view certainly does hold that those objects are there independently of perception, yet he denies this; that is, he denies this at the level of metaphysical affirmation. There are no such affirmations for Rorty (and Heidegger). He is simply stepping out of the assumptions that make metaphysical claims possible. How can there be solipsism if all things are reducible pragmatics? Is there a house across the street? Obviously, but there being a house across the street analyzed down to its most basic assumptions gets one to a pragmatic ontology: what IS is what works, and calling it a house and the rest works in this language and culture. All ideas are contingent, meaning it depends, and nothing is free of context.

Nothing is outside the text, says Derrida, meaning there is NO determinate center which provides a basis for truth that cannot be gainsaid. Nothing like this. As Rorty said, truth is MADE, not discovered. Does this mean I "make" this house when I perceive it? Yes. But does this mean there is nothing that is not made? No, but truth is propositional, and there are no propositions across the street in that "house". Truth is also alethea, though. Look this up some time for an insight into Heidegger, who is agreeing with Rorty, but saying so much more. Rorty is not a phenomenlogist. He's a pragmatist, which is close.

I believe this difference between epistemological knowing and ontologically existing as something in itself, can be quasi-metaphorically understood within the philosophical tradition of 'substances'.

Quasi-metaphorically understood. This would be fine if I understood what the term 'substance' means such that it allows for any kindof metaphorical relation. I mean, a metaphor requires both that which is being metaphorized and that which is doing the metaphorizing, if I have these terms straight. I say your child has been a lamb during your absence, and I already know lambs and I know children, but substance: what is this prior to the metaphor?? Also, 'Substance' does, of course, carry with it a considerable place in language already established. Things "have" substance, but do ideas, feelings, anticipations, recollections, moods, and so on? Are numbers things of substance? The word imposes an ontological division, and then talk about metal substance and physical substance arise, without ever pinning down what the word means at all, save a term used as a place holder for actualities with real "substantive" qualities. In itself no more than this generality that subsumes things that are not at all substances, like the qualities a rock or mineral has or the mathematical abstractions of scientific quantifications.

Using 'substance' as a term for foundational ontology invents problems and pseudo solutions, like arguing for God's omnibenevolence in some theodicy without first making clear what God is and why God is like this. To cleanse philosophy of bad metaphysics like this, one has to make the only sane reduction, that to what is simply "there". And then move forward analytically with extrapolations.

Mind-substance - to clarify I mean phenomenal conscious experience or 'something it is like to be' - by its nature encompasses 'knowing'. I can't experience something without knowing what I experience. Hence the existence of my conscious experience can't be doubted, and neither can its content, because the experience IS its content. To put it another way, experience is always about something, aka 'intentionality'. This Knowing-ness and Content-ness (intentionality) is just a brute fact about nature of phenomenal conscious experience, and is indisputable imo.

See above for a few comments on mind-substance. But to your clarification: You are talking like Husserl, and Husserl had Cartesian problems, and these make for a fascinating study. Here I am the there is a cup on the table and I know it. What stands between me and the cup is the epistemic problem, and phenomenology is not trying to make a physicalist connection, but simply assumes the cup is there be because this the descriptive bottom line, its simply being there. I know it, so how is this possible? One has to look at the nature of knowing, and this is intuitively built into the object, that is, when one sees the object (noema) there is this knowing (noesis) that is always already there, and this makes the object an "eidetic" unity. See, there is no physical distance to cross to make the epistemic connection, for it is already crossed in the givenness of what is there. This is the point I want to make: naturalism creates this epistemic disaster that is without any real basis, for the way to approach the most basic analytic of the world is to allow what is simply given to "speak". It is there and I know it, and at this level we have to suspend or "bracket" ideas that are merely derivative to get to a proper foundation. Science is derivative. It works, obviously, but notwithstanding Rorty and Dewey, pragmatism is not primordial. The givenness of the world is primordial.

Nor is substance primordial. Looking exclusively at what appears before me, this horrible pain in my kidney is now free to be what it is, not possessed by some reduction to physicality (substance) which cannot at all allow it. Suffering, and the entire value dimension of our existence, is entirely absent in science's discussions about the world because it cannot deal with anything beyond quantified relations, that is, it is literally reductive to abstraction. This value dimension, affectivity, the bonum and the malum, is the most salient feature of our existence and of anything imaginable. Yet science cannot even mention it, and this makes ethics and aesthetics, as well as epistemology and ontology, altogether off limits to its abilities.

In short, Experiencing IS Knowing, and Experience IS its Content.
[I think we'd agree on this, tho you would call phenomenal conscious experience 'Being', blurring into one its epistemological and ontological nature?]

Look at it like Rorty, from a naturalist's pov (keeping in mind he is only a naturalist because he thinks this is the only wheel that rolls and not because he abides by the naturalist's metaphysics): I am here, and in this being here I have these events, and across the street there are things that are just what they are. All that is out there, those things, people, appear here, in this entity I call me and they never enter my locality any more than the street lamp enters the fire hydrant. That's physicalism, yes? And just as the reflection of the hydrant may appear on a sunny day in the metallic surface of the lamp's steel body, but the lamp itself not move an inch, these things I see never enter me, but I "see" them in me as physical aspects of my own existence, but this seeing is not representational, because to have representation you have to have some clear idea about what is being represented apart from the represntation and this is never forthcoming. The quasi metaphorical substantival idea jyou mention just doesn't work considering that a human brain is absolutely most emphatically nothing at all even remotely like the lamp, and this makes talk about the lamp outside of this physical feature of myself of my own existence impossible! Rorty is stubborn on this point, and there is a feud between Rorty and Putnam such that the latter mocks Rorty for saying he never actually encounters his own wife! Putnam's position is crystal clear, but is it stronger that Rorty's? I mean, how do even begin to deny that his wife is there? But Rorty's pragmatism just calls it like it is: brain events are not lamps, clouds or other people.

To me this stand off is one of the most important in philosophy. To me there is only one way to resolve it, and this is to affirm both, Putman DOES see his wife, and brain events are still not going to BE his wife. The conscious event in which his wife turns up is not a brain event. Because consciousness does not have its genesis in a brain-thing.

The question I have asked since early on is, how does anything out there in the world get into a knowledge claim? If a knowledge claim is a physical brain event, then it doesn't. It is not a physical brain event. Then what is it? What Rorty cannot do is make the turn to Husserl, who affirmed the transcendental ego. The world is not a brain event; it is conditioned by brain events in an interface between consciousness and its objects and the analysis of the world finds its bottom line in this study. What must be the case given the above?

From my position above, it's easy to recognise that any further ontological world-building is based on ASSUMPTIONS drawn from the content of my experience. Which turns out to be a whole package of sensations, emotions, memories, sensory observations, the linguisticthinky voice in my head, etc correlated with a body located in time and space, with a first person pov, within a world of trees, gravity, and other people like me with minds like mine. But this world of trees, brains, gravity, other people etc can't be known to ontologically exist in the way my first person 'direct' 'experiencing is knowing' conscious experience does. I can't doubt the conscious experience content exists, but I can't know if this experience represents something beyond itself existing.

I think I say mostly yes to a lot of this, except the last sentence. Tricky, because the issue turns on being, and being is the principal theme in Being and Nothingness, Being and Time, and all the things that come after in continental philosophy. It's a mountain to climb, or is it... You said, "...but I can't know if this experience represents something beyond itself existing" and I say drop the word 'represents' and replace it with 'is'. so it is a question of what is experienced BEING something beyond itself. The beyond lies not some Kantian noumena, but in the noumenal found IN phenomenality. After all, where did Kant get such an idea? From what he witnessed every day in the world and judgments about it.

See Husserl's epoche (Ideas I). See this lamp and all of the regional content that invisibly, like a "halo" (Husserl's term), surrounds it, referring to all the content about lamps that I have learned all these years, the kind of thing that comes up when one brain storms. This invisible body of assumptions must be explicitly dropped from the presence called a lamp, knowledge about lamp use, places commonly found, different styles and functions and old lamps, new lamps, and just everything you know about lamps; and the point of this is to discover the, well, the lamp "beneath" the lamp that hs all along been crowded out by usefulness and assimilating contexts. There are those who say that when this "method" of philosophizing is successfully done, one can then "see" what is there, that was always there, before your eyes for the first time. One sees ultimate reality, if you will (the Abhidhamma talks like this. Serious Buddhists are quintessential phenomenologists. After all, meditation is just this epoche, this reduction down to the "thing itself"). Husserl says when one practives the reduction, the world is vacant of familiar meanings , there are no words speaking meanings and familiarity itself is forgotten, and there is a radical sense of the palpable present. The world becomes a radically "other" of pure presence.

These two worlds are modalities of one world, which we cannot imagine. But consider further that it is not merely the matrix of conceptual understanding that is suspended, it is time that is suspended, for all of that halo that rises to greet the perceptual encounter is inherently temporal. Close down conceptual identity, and time stops. For what is time if not subjective time, the personal and historical "database" that informs every moment of our existence? Call it the past. But then, the past is is never present to be witnessed nor is the future present to be witnessed, for these experience that gives them content vanishes instantly. The past occurs in a living recollection only and when it does occur, the thinking about the past is, like all thinking, an anticipation of what comes next, I mean, when I recall something, the recollection itself has a structure of anticipating the next recalled moment, and that moment arrives is full familiarity, only to anticipate the next, and this manifests in a seamless continuity Henry calls "life"

Michel Henry, whose Essence of Manifestation I am now reading, discusses two phenomena in one. One is the lamp, a phenomenological construct taken as a lamp for some purpose (or taken as, say, a weapon. Such is contingency), for reading, lighting th room, being part of the furniture, whatever, and then there is the thing taken as pure presence. Not really the same object, nor is it just sensory intuition (Kant) for it is not taken as sensory intuition. What it is, exactly, will not be put into speech, though this is just what we do to make the "intuition" of it being there complete, a complete eidetic presence such that one knows it, but also knows it is racially other then what can be represented in language. This radical other is the existential ground for all mysticism. Henry takes intentionality as an imposition on the primordiality of the pure appearance and thinks one needs to go all the way to an absolute fusion of consciousness and its object. Intentionality says consciousness is always OF something, meaning no object (of some kind), then no consciousness. Henry is a tough read. Worse than Sartre or Heidegger if you ask me. (Also, I hasten to add, if you have not grappled with these dense texts, it is never too late. I began by reading Being and Time ten years ago, when I was even then, not a young person at all).

The epoche is basic to phenomenology, this reduction that takes inquiry OUT of the ordinary and into the transcendental all in the same world. Though for Heideggerians, this notion of the transcendental is finitized.

The Physicalist position, based on inter-subjectively falsifying observations, is one way of building an ontology rests on the bedrock ASSUMPTION that my experience represents me interacting with an ontological something-which-is-not-me, 'out there'. Like-wise Idealism is based on the ASSUMPTION other minds ontologically exist evidenced by me experiencing interacting with their bodies. Kant picks and chooses which ASSUMPTIONS he believes to ontologically exist in some form. And so on. Some say that this ASSUMED ontological reality 'out there' is so beyond our flawed and limited human access and comprehension it's impossible to sensibly speak of.

So beyond? If the beyond is beyond comprehension, then it is the immanent that is the true source of this beyond, for where else can the beyond derive its meaning. Kant's problem is that when he conceives of noumena, he doesn't realize that this "beyond" can only have meaning if it is discoverable in the very finitude that is the source of observational insight. All perceptual systems are removed from my kitchen, so now, is there a kitchen?? Kant has to say no, but this entire senario is conceived in the finitude of kitchens, living rooms, etc. Thus, we can only conclude that the possibility of something lying beyond the kitchen, as some impossible substratum, is derived from what is there IN the finitude of the kitchen.

But. I still can't pin down what your Phenomenological framework and reasoning is?


And by avoiding being explicit, in the ways these other metaphysical positions are, you dodge laying open to critique what ASSUMPTIONS you rely on. While pointing out that eg Physicalism relies on this or that ASSUMPTION. Do you see the problem with that?

It seems to me this means that either Phenomenology is not a position built on a metaphysical/ontological/epistemological framing, and makes no such claims. In which case it's a methodology with no conclusions, a different angle to think about the nature of conscious experience - which is fine in itself. Just say so. Or you are taking an epistemological/ontological/metaphysical position, but not explicitly stating it, and so avoid seeing your own ASSUMPTIONS, while you're pointing at the assumptions other metaphysical claims make.

My sceptical framing rooted in the nature of conscious experience, as I laid it out above, puts all such claims to the same sceptical test of what ASSUMPTIONS they rely on. Phenomenology is no exception.

This is why I keep annoying you by asking about your ontology. And why answers like 'consider the experiencing of looking at the cat and how that is contextualised in linguistic and other ways' which I'm fine agreeing with to an extent, doesn't get to the bottom of what your ontology/epistemology/metaphysical position is. Thus avoiding being explicit about your own ASSUMPTIONS and having to examine them, in the way you critise Physicalists for not recognising.

The trouble with pinning all of this down is that that which being pinned complicated. The assumptions one can "rely on" are embedded in a network of thinking. Even Rorty, whose pragmatism is surely not any kind of physicalist metaphysics, talks like a naturalist, as does Dewey. Philosophy takes one out of common sense, only to return to it. He's a kind of physicalist, pragmatist, phenomenology, al in one (he did think Heidegger, the great phenomenologist, to be one of the three greatest 20th centruy philosophers). Heidegger, who takes every mystical religious impulse we have and brings it down to a very grounded exposition of the self, dasein. Husserl's epoche is taken up in different ways.

As to laying out a critique, it would be more like an exposition with critiques strewn throughout. Phenomenology is essentially descriptive, which is why Husserl thought of himself as a scientist, rigorously laying out the phenomenological field and arguing what must be the case given what IS the case. Kant does this. Here are our judgments in the world. What is presupposed by their just being what they are? Apriori arguments are what philosophy is made of.

I think the paragraphs above sort of present the way these issues are handled. It is messy. Reading Henry, I had to read Sartre much more closely, and take "nothingness" as a necessary condition of experience, in the structure of the subjective encounter with the world. But Heidegger thinks Sartre is missing the point. Henry fights Heidegger and Husserl. It goes on and on.

[popeye1945]

If you think as a scientist would, how Willard Quine did, that naturalism, the spirit of empirically based ideas being the foundation for philosophical inquiry, then explain the following:

For me, it is the simplicity of philosophical issues that are striking. I put the question forward: ever hear of a physicist studying, Jupiter's moon's or carbon dating or whatever, who decides to begin the study with an account of the perceptual act the produces basic data? No. This is extraordinary. Such neglect is unthinkable in science, like neglecting the sun in the study of moon light. One looks at, around, all over this simple question and it becomes very clear that according to science, such data being about a world is impossible. This point is, nothing really could be more simple, but it is entirely ignored.

Of course we know why it is ignored. Because to study perception itself requires perception. It is impossible to study empirically. Literally impossible. But this changes nothing in terms of the "distance" that remains between claims about the world, and the things those claims are "about". Is this something that can be overcome?

Knowledge seems impossible. Because the "aboutness" of a knowledge claim must, to defensible, include how the perceptual act itself receives a world. There must be something "epistemic" about this connection. Can anyone say what this is?

Apparent reality/everyday reality is an emergent quality. It is the union of subject and object, which, if ever divided, would mean there would be nothingness. For energy, the essence of possibility and probability of all forms of matter/objects is biologically dependent, as is biology dependent upon the nature of energy; only together are there things/objects on a subjective level. Apparent reality then depends upon the nature of the energy and the nature/state of the subject's biology. Spinoza informed us how we come to know a world of objects, through the objects altering/changing the standing state of our given biology. Now, expand upon that in stating it is the nature of the energies that surround us, altering the subjects biology that gives us the world of objects or our apparent reality.

[popeye1945]

If you think as a scientist would, how Willard Quine did, that naturalism, the spirit of empirically based ideas being the foundation for philosophical inquiry, then explain the following:

For me, it is the simplicity of philosophical issues that are striking. I put the question forward: ever hear of a physicist studying, Jupiter's moon's or carbon dating or whatever, who decides to begin the study with an account of the perceptual act the produces basic data? No. This is extraordinary. Such neglect is unthinkable in science, like neglecting the sun in the study of moon light. One looks at, around, all over this simple question and it becomes very clear that according to science, such data being about a world is impossible. This point is, nothing really could be more simple, but it is entirely ignored.

Of course we know why it is ignored. Because to study perception itself requires perception. It is impossible to study empirically. Literally impossible. But this changes nothing in terms of the "distance" that remains between claims about the world, and the things those claims are "about". Is this something that can be overcome?

Knowledge seems impossible. Because the "aboutness" of a knowledge claim must, to defensible, include how the perceptual act itself receives a world. There must be something "epistemic" about this connection. Can anyone say what this is?

Apparent reality/everyday reality is an emergent quality. It is the union of subject and object, which, if ever divided, would mean there would be nothingness. For energy, the essence of possibility and probability of all forms of matter/objects is biologically dependent, as is biology dependent upon the nature of energy; only together are there things/objects on a subjective level. Apparent reality then depends upon the nature of the energy and the natural/state of the subject's biology. Spinoza informed us how we come to know a world of objects, through the objects altering/changing the standing state of our given biology. Now, expand upon that in stating it is the nature of the energies that surround us, altering the subject's biology, giving the world of objects or our apparent reality. Humanity will never acquire self-control unless it acknowledges that it is life, or biological consciousness, that creates meanings about a meaningless physical world, a biological readout of its reactions/experiences of the alterations of its biology. When one alters one's biology, one alters/changes one's apparent reality. Biology is the instrument of the energies of the cosmos.

[thrasymachus]

popeye1945 wrote

Apparent reality/everyday reality is an emergent quality. It is the union of subject and object, which, if ever divided, would mean there would be nothingness. For energy, the essence of possibility and probability of all forms of matter/objects is biologically dependent, as is biology dependent upon the nature of energy; only together are there things/objects on a subjective level. Apparent reality then depends upon the nature of the energy and the nature/state of the subject's biology. Spinoza informed us how we come to know a world of objects, through the objects altering/changing the standing state of our given biology. Now, expand upon that in stating it is the nature of the energies that surround us, altering the subjects biology that gives us the world of objects or our apparent reality.

So it seems you have divided reality into two, energy and biology. But you know the problem that lies in this: YOU, the theorizer, the thinking being putting together ideas and solving problems, you are on the biological side. How is it that an agency that is biological can conceive of an "outside" of what you are? That is, reach out beyond your biological nature into that which is not biological and make a affirmation about what this "other" IS?

And I am assuming that you are positing a reduction to biology for human existence, hence the reason for bringing this in to this discussion. If I am wrong, tell me what it is you do think about the essence of being human vis a vis this talk of basic ideas. There is, I think, the suggestion that there is much more to our existence than biology can say.

[popeye1945]

popeye1945 wrote

Apparent reality/everyday reality is an emergent quality. It is the union of subject and object, which, if ever divided, would mean there would be nothingness. For energy, the essence of possibility and probability of all forms of matter/objects is biologically dependent, as is biology dependent upon the nature of energy; only together are there things/objects on a subjective level. Apparent reality then depends upon the nature of the energy and the nature/state of the subject's biology. Spinoza informed us how we come to know a world of objects, through the objects altering/changing the standing state of our given biology. Now, expand upon that in stating it is the nature of the energies that surround us, altering the subjects biology that gives us the world of objects or our apparent reality.

So it seems you have divided reality into two, energy and biology. But you know the problem that lies in this: YOU, the theorizer, the thinking being putting together ideas and solving problems, you are on the biological side. How is it that an agency that is biological can conceive of an "outside" of what you are? That is, reach out beyond your biological nature into that which is not biological and make a affirmation about what this "other" IS?
And I am assuming that you are positing a reduction to biology for human existence, hence the reason for bringing this in to this discussion. If I am wrong, tell me what it is you do think about the essence of being human vis a vis this talk of basic ideas. There is, I think, the suggestion that there is much more to our existence than biology can say.

No, it is not a divided reality, apparent reality that is, for the union of subject and object is our everyday reality or apparent reality. Think of the universe as a field of energies that contain all possiablities and probablities this in the absence of biological life, biological consciousness is utterly meaningless and unknown, this is ultimate reality, a place of no things just energy. Biological life depending on its form only senses a particular part of the spectrum of all the energies of the universe, that which we can sense provides us with our reality as those energies alter/changes the state of our biology giving us experiences which we then bestow onto the world as meanings, a biological readout of our experiences makes biology the measure and the meaning of all things. Apparent reality is our projection and it is not possiable to prove that it exists without us, subjective knowledge is the only way we know a world at all.

[thrasymachus]

popeye1945 wrote

No, it is not a divided reality, apparent reality that is, for the union of subject and object is our everyday reality or apparent reality. Think of the universe as a field of energies that contain all possiablities and probablities this in the absence of biological life, biological consciousness is utterly meaningless and unknown, this is ultimate reality, a place of no things just energy. Biological life depending on its form only senses a particular part of the spectrum of all the energies of the universe, that which we can sense provides us with our reality as those energies alter/changes the state of our biology giving us experiences which we then bestow onto the world as meanings, a biological readout of our experiences makes biology the measure and the meaning of all things. Apparent reality is our projection and it is not possiable to prove that it exists without us, subjective knowledge is the only way we know a world at all.

But how does this avoid the issue? The concepts in play, that of energy, biology, apparent reality, field of energies: these are all conceived IN "biological consciousness" according to your account. Take energy. This is a concept conceived in the language of physics. Of course, it is found in common use as well, but when I say I don't have the energy to finish the race, and the like, I am speaking loosely and in an everyday sense. A physicist will tell you that this basic concept is really an unknown, like the term 'force' is at the basic level of inquiry, an unknown. But on the other hand, what informs the meanings that surround this term, and invests it with its connotative values, is science, and science is by no means capable of reaching beyond this connotative (and denotative, considering how freely the term is used) context.

A term like 'energy' or 'force' is derivative of contexts in which meanings are clear and determinative, and the way you apply this term here takes it to a "place" entirely outside of possible determination: Energy, consider, is conceived entirely inside biological life; where else? So again, how does biological life reach into that which is prior to its existence and affirm it at all?

Also, biological consciousness makes for the kind of talk that wants to go beyond what is categorically permitted by a term like 'biological," fpr this term is empirical and consciousness possesses nothing "in" it that is demonstrably biological. Thought, for example, or affectivity, or mood, attitude, or perception as such, and on and on, these are in no way biological just for the obvious reason that they do not exhibit at all anything that can be empirically discovered. They are discovered entirely differently.

The only way out of this is to drop biology and physics as the bottom line for philosophizing. They never were useful for this and their vocabularies are misleading. Scientists don't care about this kind of thing.

[Pattern-chaser]

There is, I think, the suggestion that there is much more to our existence than biology can say.

More than a suggestion, IMO. Nicely put.

[thrasymachus]

Pattern-chaser wrote

More than a suggestion, IMO. Nicely put.

Quite right. As if, say, Ravel or Joni Mitchell could be reduced to talk about....brain circuitry!? What??

[popeye1945]

It is my expanded concept of what Spinoza taught us about how we know the world of objects. We know them because they alter/change our standing biology; this is what we call experience; the judgment of experience is what we call meaning. Biology is the measure and meaning of all things. Energy seems to be a problem here. How about we say energy is all things in motion, or energy is that which maintains all things in motion? As Bertrand Russell said when asked what electricity was, his answer was: "Electricity is the way things behave." At any rate, it is pretty hard to escape the idea that our apparent reality is a biological readout, and there is no way to prove that the objective world exists in and of itself. Just as there is no sound in the real world or that of color, so too, in the absence of a conscious subject, there is no object, subjectively speaking, for that is the only way to speak.

[Pattern-chaser]

Quite right. As if, say, Ravel or Joni Mitchell could be reduced to talk about....brain circuitry!? What??

Well, I suppose that "Ravel or Joni Mitchell" *could* "be reduced to talk about....brain circuitry", just as biology can be reduced to chemistry, which in turn can be reduced to physics. Or like Microsoft's Word executable can be reduced to a sequence of bytes. But the point here, I think, is that, once we have carried out such a reduction, we have lost the meaning of the whole. The gulf between the reduced fragments and the whole is just too huge to bridge.

For humans, at least, it is not really possible for us to appreciate Joni in terms of quarks, say. Yes, she is made of quarks, according to our understanding, but that does not tell us anything about her music, or the way she delivers it. I think this logic applies to ... almost everything, doesn't it?

[Gertie]

thrasymachus

Can you answer a couple of questions -

You claim that the things we call 'cats' and 'cups' are real things which exist, but causality and time don't exist.

- These are ontological claims - how do you decide what ontologically exists and what doesn't?

- And as what do the things we call 'cats' and 'cups' exist? What are they comprised of? (I'm not asking a context/linguistic question, I'm asking what is the reality of the thing which gives rise to our contextualised/linguistic model of it?)

[thrasymachus]

Well, I suppose that "Ravel or Joni Mitchell" *could* "be reduced to talk about....brain circuitry", just as biology can be reduced to chemistry, which in turn can be reduced to physics. Or like Microsoft's Word executable can be reduced to a sequence of bytes. But the point here, I think, is that, once we have carried out such a reduction, we have lost the meaning of the whole. The gulf between the reduced fragments and the whole is just too huge to bridge.

For humans, at least, it is not really possible for us to appreciate Joni in terms of quarks, say. Yes, she is made of quarks, according to our understanding, but that does not tell us anything about her music, or the way she delivers it. I think this logic applies to ... almost everything, doesn't it?

Yeah, they could be so "reduced" but this would "about" something else entirely, and not about Joni Mitchell at all. To make a discussion about quarks is certainly a meaningful thing to do, but here you find entirely other things to talk about. You might as well be talking about the geological fossil record or black holes at the center of galaxies. Nothing whatever to do with the musical phenomena.