Atla wrote: ↑September 17th, 2020, 12:40 pm
I think there is pretty widespread agreement among modern philosophers (hardcore naive realists excepted) that the phenomenal world, the world we experience, is a conceptual model of a hypothetical external, "noumenal" world which we can never experience directly.
Luckily, free thinkers don't have to be as inept as Kant and his followers.
There is no fundamental divide between the phenomenal world and the noumenal world.
You might explain how you understand the term "fundamental" (which term you also use problematically in the quote below). You probably also don't understand what the "noumenal" world is (it is not the external, physical world described by science).
The term "fundamental" is usually meant to denote something irreducible to anything simpler. But the phenomenal world is not reducible to the noumenal "world," even in principle --- because we have no knowledge whasoever of that "world" ("realm" is a better term for the noumena; "world" has misleading connotations). Hence we can't derive any phenomena we might experience from it, or equate them with it.
Meaning that the phenomenal world is a model of the external noumenal world, and also one with it (continuous with it), at the same time.
That is incoherent. If it is distinguishable from it then it cannot be "at one with it at the same time." Nor can we say that it is "continuous" with the noumenal realm, since we don't know the extent of that realm. And, again, you seem to be confusing the "noumenal world" with the external, physical world described by science. You might try reading Kant more carefully.
The phenomenal world is already direct experience, it's a bit of the 'absolute reality'.
Yes, the phenomenal world is the world we perceive, experience. The noumeal realm is a realm of existence we
hypothesize to exist to explain, supply a cause for, our percepts and other experiences --- no cause for them, or even for our very existence, being apparent
within experience.
Atla wrote: ↑September 17th, 2020, 3:57 pm
As for the Hard problem, you have to turn it inside out to 'resolve' it. They always try to figure out how experience arises from something as fundamental as physical stuff. But it's experience that's fundamental, and the idea of physical stuff occurs within it. Our idea of physical stuff is also a qualia, an experience.
Yes, experience is fundamental (as above defined), but it still requires an explanation --- some cause for it. Else we are trapped in solipsism. But you make a sound point with, "idea of physical stuff occurs within it. Our idea of physical stuff is also a qualia, an experience." "Physical stuff" is indeed itself a conceptual construct. So we're trying to use mental constructs to explain themselves. Not a promising endeavor.
BTW, I myself used the term "conceptual model" in a misleading way in the quote above. A "conceptual model" is one consciously, deliberately constructed by us. The world described by science is a conceptual model. The model I described earlier is not a conceptual model; it is created subconsciously by our brains, becoming coherent in the first few months of life, and presented to us automatically. It becomes the world as we know it. Perhaps we can call it a "cognitive model."
Also, the term "qualia" is used by most (though perhaps not all) to refer only to the distinctive, singular sensations elicited by sensory inputs, which allow us to distinguish among them (colors, odors, flavors, sounds, etc.). Other mental phenomena, such as thoughts, knowledge, ideas, memories, etc., while raising many of the same issues as qualia, are not qualia.
Physical stuff is simply a cognitive overlay, a map consisting of 'things', like protons and fields. We use this map to talk about the terrain. But the terrain is actually void of 'things', 'thing'-ness is a feature of human thinking.
Well, your "terrain" there sounds much like Kant's noumenon. But we can't say anything about that "terrain," not even that it is "devoid of things."
Imo physical stuff is maybe best thought of as a structural description of the world. But a structural description of the world is not the world itself, that's why the Hard problem is kinda silly. Also, that's why it's insufficient to simply say that the spatio-temporal coordinates are different, when trying to solve the Hard problem.
The Hard Problem is hard when addressing it scientifically, because scientific methods presuppose, and were developed to investigate, objective,
public phenomena. But qualia and other mental phenomena are intractably private, and not accessible to empirical methods. They are beyond their reach.