Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Stormy]

It is the mind that makes sense of it, that is were philosophy comes in, not all scientists are philosophers; therefore the just of it speaks for them, they will not commit beyond the information on the outside, yet the information on the inside is what led them to the sense in it to begin with. Theirs indeed is a just cause, yet it is what we make of it through the imagination, that brings forth fruit, and feeds the world that can imagine.

[Maldon007]

To illustrate, if you take a cooking class that teaches you some science and empirical information regarding making meals for yourself and presumably enjoying the food you will learn to cook, it does not necessarily make a claim whether this food is real...

Great analogy, may I use it?


I guess this is why I have always been more of a fan of applied science than pure science. Fundamental/pure science seems too close to philosophy.

[Hereandnow]

Half-Six, I am not clear on this: "What he did criticise is the notion of the mind being a representation of reality, “a mental mirroring of a mind-external world” as the Stanford entry puts. It isn’t, so there isn’t this problem how things get from out there to in here." Things inthe mind not being a mental mirroring of things outside the mind means that if one posits that there are "things" out there in Cartesian sense (modified to accommodate modern sensibilities on space and time) then it certainly is a problem explaining how what is out there gets in here. Nonrepresentational means the one does not in any way present the other. The other remains wholly other.

[Z3RO]

Hereandnow, would you elaborate the reading of Manuel Levinas?


I'm quiet interested, Now being cruel to others as we pursue them,


do you think humans in general are innately evil or corrupt?

[Hereandnow]

Levinas is hard for everyone. He is a phenomenologist who's teacher was Heidegger (literally??). I cannot go on about the complextiy becasue I cannot not him justice yet. At the end of the summer I hope to. But so, I am so amazed to find someone who looks at the world the way I do and can help me articulate my thnking.I think, and I hope not to get maudlin about this, that Being, the presence of presence, as H has put it, Being qua Being,is not some hidden "out there" that we can never access; you know the thing in itself, the eternal isness that we intuit but cannot find clarity in. The mystery of Being is here, in this room; it permeates my consciousness, this cup on the table, this banana peel. I make this claim because, first, I intuit this. And there you have my extravagance that philosophers often mock these days.; and second because I find that the boundaries that would have us separate finitude and eternity to be arbitrary: Being in eternity does not end here and begin there. This cup is eternal. Very weird, I know; I sound like Walt whitman. So, Levinas, what I have read so far, takes this seriously. What is outside is the other that presents itself to us through encounters with other people. He is a WWII victim, his family; so he is very much much, I believe, the philosoper of suffering--the Face of suffering enters our world and this awakens within us something deeply profound. It, to use an existentialist's term, authenticates us. I think there is something profound in this. I think the human conditon is essentially a religious one, sans all the invented elaborations of public religions. This goes on and on. Thanks for asking. Forgive the touchy feely philosophizing. For me, this is where it all gets interesting. Not the endless intellecual ruminations.

[Maldon007]

edit: sorry, this was to some of the earlier posts, had it on my screen & didnt read the last few posts yet!


We know in general how things out there, get in here, senses/cognition. I have no idea, not being a brain specialist, what missing links there are in our understanding... but I assume there are a few. 1,000 years ago we had less of an idea, didn't know there were nerve cells transmitting sesory info. Not idea photons bounced off things and caused reactions in our eyes. No idea how the brain worked at all... So we have come considerably closer, in the last 1,000 years, to understanding.

I assume we will have it mapped out fairly soon, hell the info may already be out there, just not put together in a solid way. Of course, if we are seeing it all wrong, none of that matters, cause none of it is "true". But then, at that point, does anything matter?

I think assumptions/guesses/theories have different weights, and to assume we are seeing/feeling it wrong or worse, making it all up, is a weaker assumption than assuming we are getting a usefull representation of reality/what is out there.

I think some bits of evidence we are getting a good picture are- The agreement between different individuals on observations/perseptions, especially concerning constants. Minds are different, very little is agreed upon between individuals really but perceptions match pretty closely. If I weigh a liter of filtered water on my scale in the US, it says 1kg. If I get on the phone and ask my friend in france to weigh a similarly filtered liter, on his french scale, it says 1kg. And while on the phone we may find out we are both watching the same movie, the one with that tall red head, and while we disagree on her atractiveness, we agree her hair is red & she is tall.

The predictability of outcomes is another bit of evidence, drop a 20oz. hammer on your bare foot, and it hurts, every time. Seasons happen on time, dogs will bark when upset, turn on a fan & feel the wind every time. Maybe the representations are false, but the sensations resulting from the actions are predictable... So if the hammer is not exactly what I think it is, it is still there, it still hurts.

The correlation between brain injury/abnormality and a disconnect of agreement to perceptions. People with properly working brains agree on perceptions to within a small %, while brains with measurable differences can percieve things differently. Of course this depends on us trusting our perception of abnormal brains... and what my french friend is saying... and weather the hammer and the pain are anything other than mental constructs... if "mental" even exists!

But as I'm sure has been said a million times, if we can't trust any input, if it is all suspect or no more trusted than what we imagin (or imagine we are imagining), than why argue any of it? None of it has a point. How can you question your senses, when you need your senses to question them?

[Hereandnow]

Of course, what you say makes good sense. As you say, it is this notion of a mental construct that is in play here. I don't mean to be tedious, but consider this rather obvious account. If I see the flower before and trace the stream of information from the flower to my brain, it goes something like this: flower has a surface that has a distinct nature to reflect light's many wavelengths in a certain way. So if the flower is red, then it is clear that the low end of the electromagnetic spectrum is being reflected adn the others absorbed due to an agreement between that wavelength and the reflective surface of theflower. That part of the light is then trasmitted to the eye where there is all of its sensitive aparatus: lens, rods and cones near the entrance of the retina that detect intensity and color, etc. There the light waves stop and this is all translated into a neuronal counterpart, if you will. Down the optic nerve, into axonal fibers then on to huge constellations of neurons where the phenomenon red is produced. Any first year med student knows this. But clearly, what is out there was lost at the point where light wave became the medium of transference. And neuronal fashioning of brain impulses; you know, that is what you see. The thing out there never got close to your apprehension of red, or really, of the thing. It applies for all of the senses. Even Space and Time.

[Maldon007]

Opps! Wrong thread

[Jklint]

But clearly, what is out there was lost at the point where light wave became the medium of transference. And neuronal fashioning of brain impulses; you know, that is what you see. The thing out there never got close to your apprehension of red, or really, of the thing. It applies for all of the senses. Even Space and Time.

When you say "but clearly", can you be a little more explicit as to what got lost? It couldn't have been the information conveyed by the medium of light otherwise that epic journey and processing of stimuli to and through the brain you have mentioned could never have happened. It seems you not only reject the so-called qualia of the object denoted (the information dispenser) but the object itself. I know you're trying to make a point but in the manner expressed it's the point that's getting lost.

What one is capable of seeing or acknowledging depends on the mental spectroscopy of its owner. I can imagine that there may be life forms "out there" that may "see" Black Holes which we are forced to infer by other means. Everything is referenced by Information which must be "contextualized" to be useful. The brain is that contextualizer in whatever organism it resides. It absorbs disparate streams of information and creates a functional reality out of it. Nothing ever gets lost; it gets translated.

[Maldon007]

A point on that, we suck at doing much that nature can do very well. inefficient as hell at most super-human-machine-reqired tasks. (flying, going fast, making light or heat, etc.) but we have become pretty damn decent at mechanically sensing things accurately... We can take video of something and have it so real it is hard to say which is memorex.

Given this, why expect our senses/brains to not work well? Obviously nature (or whoever) intended us to use these sesnses for survival, it took billions of years to evolve them, they are comparable to the senses of other animals that kick ass at dealing with outside things...

My point is, since we can copy it so "easily" why would nature have sucked at making it top-notch in us?

[Hereandnow]

Hello Jklint, so you noticed that there is something amiss here. That means you understand it. I actually has a name. It is called the hermeneutic cirlce: whenever I try identify a thing, see it for what it really is, I bring my constitutive mind with me and can only see what this mind produces. One can never get beyond this. Thus, I see the flower, but ask what a flower is, all I can give you is more phenomena, more descriptions of my mental processes. The reason we have to think there is something there at all is due to an extrapolation: I never see it, but there is an event that is consistent; I see the same things all the time; my cat comes and goes and it is always my cat, same color, sound. Only a consistency that is equal the consistency I observe can account for what is out there. But you never get to see it, the "thing." Think of the car fender dent: there was an event where the car hit the guardrail and the car drives away with the dent. The car does not know the guradrail because it has a dent caused by it. IT is the same here: the brain does not know the flower just because the eye registered light waves, the cones and rods were causally influenced, etc. You know, I have looked at this many times and I am convinced: what is out there never gets in here. Period. So how can one "know " it? There is a way. though. After all your "qualia" as you said: there something here that is not trying to get at something out there; namely, the immediacy of exerience. It could be, and I hold this as well as others, that there is a nonrepresentational subjectivity that can apprehend things in themselves: that would be you, the real you understood in the hereandnow.

-- Updated July 18th, 2012, 9:17 am to add the following --

Hello Maldon007. A thought. We suck so much? Why do you say this? I thought we were pretty damn good at lots of things.

-- Updated July 18th, 2012, 9:26 am to add the following --

Hello Maldon007, Why do you say we have it all wrong? Cleary we do not snce we are good at adapting. Our brains give us space to deal with possibilities, make tools, develop social systems: we are amazing! It is never a matter of questioning how well things work. On the contrary, things work very well from an evolutionary standpoint. No, I would only say that if one has pause to ask philosophical questionsabout the way things are and puts whether or not it works aside, and one asks the existential questions: what is Being? what is a self? What is knowledge? etc. That is where things fall apart. why do it? Huge question. I am interested, but are you? If so let me know.

[Spectrum]

I real Steven Hawkings latest and read that he was not at all pleased by the responses of the philosopical community to his opinions on the objectivity of science. Scientists tend not to think about philosophical issues and they don't understand how anyone could question their work.
But what if i challenged Hawkings by arguing that perceptions about time/space, about partical physics , indeed, any empirical claim whatever, was no more than a claim about the interior of the mind itself?
But I put on the table a simple but powerful statement made by Richard Rorty the Amercian pragatist: No one has ever been able to make clear how anything "out there" in the world independent of perceptual systems, could get in here, into the thinking, perceiving mind. Can anyone address this very counterintuitive claim that so resists attempts refute it?

I think the problem with the 'in or out of mind' issue is due to the 'container' metaphor that all humans has inherited via evolution.
This 'container' metaphor is definitely a useful basic facet of human life, i.e. the common sense and conventional perspective of life.

However to discuss 'reality' and 'mind' from the philosophical perspective, we need to shift gears and temporarily step out of the conventional paradigm into a specific philosophical perspective. An analogy would be, to understand QM one must step out from the Newtonian perspective. It is not question of abandoning one for another, rather to toggle between them where necessary to the contexts.

Reality is whole and continuous, not discrete and in distinct parts.
As such, in a 'higher' philosopher perspective, we should not think of a mind of a brain, in a skull and in a body.
Rather whatever a 'thing' is, it should be conceived as an emergent of reality as a whole.
This is the ultimate philosophical position.

However, when we need to specific, then will have to qualify the perspective used.
The red apple exists outside my body and house, to be qualified to the common sense perspective.
An electron exists, or whatever scientific truths, to be qualified to the scientific framework.
Etc. etc.
This is in line with Hawkings' model dependent realism, i.e. what is reality is relative to the model used which must be clearly qualified.
It is also similar to Nietzsche, there is no absolute truths, there are no perspectives.
And Foucault, games of truths, and
Wittgenstein's language games.

As for Rorty, he is actually qualifying his perspective for his philosophy, i.e. pragmatism. Point is, hopefully he is not claiming that is the only valid perspective or the ideal perspective.

[Hereandnow]

However, when we need to specific, then will have to qualify the perspective used. The red apple exists outside my body and house, to be qualified to the common sense perspective. An electron exists, or whatever scientific truths, to be qualified to the scientific framework. Etc. etc.

-- Updated July 19th, 2012, 2:11 am to add the following --

Of course: You sound like Stanley Fish when he gave an essentiallt pragmtist account in his "Is There a Text in This Class." As you say, one must specify; a text could be doorstop if that is what it is used for. Certainly Rorty, were he alive, would approve. All meaning is, is what works. Red apples an the like are not red or apples as some kind of fixed condition; there are no such things, though there this grand pragmatic unfolding before us that through life becomes differentiated, out of the "blooming and buzzing" as James put it.

-- Updated July 19th, 2012, 2:13 am to add the following --

It is also similar to Nietzsche, there is no absolute truths, there are no perspectives. And Foucault, games of truths, and Wittgenstein's language games.

[Spectrum]

-- Updated July 19th, 2012, 2:13 am to add the following --

Oops.. Re, 'Nietzsche, there is no absolute truths, there are no perspectives'

should read,

Nietzsche, there is no absolute truth, there are [only] perspectives

[Hereandnow]

Now these guys are exactly up Rorty's alley. But note: the claim is those Platonic/Cartesian/Kantian divisions are hopeless when we try to conceive of what the "other side" could be. So they simply remove it, in Occam's razor fashion, from meaningful discourse. It's a bit like talking about the present king of France being bald. Wittgenstein said, (paraphrase) that of whcih one cannot speak, one must be silent. So in that light, they don't talk about it. But then, imagine what it would be like if there were no question of of things in themselves; that is, if we were like software that could not in any way step beyond the parameters of our programming. Infinity would not be in our vocabulary, except in the abstract sense of, say, a number line. We could not acknowledge Being it itself, not would not, but could n ot. The answer to the question about the tree makeing a sound in the forest and no one is around would be a fixed "of course it would make a sound" because that is all your programming would allow. If this were so, then we would not be open ended thinkers; we would be closed and our theories would be fixed. But that is not how things are. This is wrong minded, i say. For the external impinges on the internal in ways that are profoundly important. It intrudes and insinuates itself, disturbing ourdogmatic slumber about what truth is, what reality is; it intimates that there is an unexplored spect that, contra Rorty, can be discovered. The question stands because the conditions, whle certainly can be ignored, are too imposing, if nebulous; too powerful. Rorty is just an intellectual, not a mystic. He's limited. Check out Emanuel Levinas, whom i am tryingto figue out right now. He boggles the mind.