Phenomenology shows us that the ‘outside’ is already an idealization constituted within transcendental consciousness. In other words, the very distinction between outside and inside is an artifact of the naive thinking of the natural attitude. — Joshs

I’d agree with that. The example of ‘looking out the window’ was simply to make a distinction between naturalism, which only considers what is seen, and phenomenology, which also takes into account the act of looking.

If I understand the aim of your OP correctly, you’re trying to get to the bottom of the relation between subject and world — Joshs

I very much appreciate your remarks. But what motivated the essay is the sense that objectivity, what is objectively the case, is the sole criterion of truth. That whatever really exists is ‘out there somewhere’ as the saying goes. I think that will become clearer in the following sections.

By understanding what an object is for a bacterium… — Joshs

We will have a much better grasp of the nature of cognition generally, agree. But to me the principle subject matter of philosophy is the human condition.

Is there more to the nature of things than this? — Joshs

Whatever that might be may not be made subject to propositional knowledge, which already is a matter of implicit consensus, but it may be a subject of insight which is conveyed symbolically or by gesture or in art. Besides, this is where I feel that Husserl’s ‘wesen’ (essence) is significant. Granted they’re not self-existent platonic forms, but they’re still an underlying reality in some important sense, that are not grasped by objectivism. (I will come back to that.)

Whether I exist to subjectively experience it is irrelevant to the fact that the objective notions and proofs can be taken, learned, and concluded in the same way by any being with the necessary minimal intelligence. — Philosophim

‘Any being’ presumably meaning a ‘human being’, in that so far as we know, we are the only beings with such capabilities.

We do not have truth, we have knowledge. — Philosophim

Knowledge is not truth. — Philosophim

Those are rather sweeping statements. As it happens, I do believe that the grasp of, insight into, what is truly so is attainable and is the proper subject for philosophical contemplation.



Further to the distinction between the structures of subjectivity and the merely personal, a snippet from the IEP article on Phenomenological Reduction (a very detailed and deep article, I will add, and one I’m still absorbing)

Thus, it is by means of the epochē and reduction proper that the human ‘I’ becomes distinguished from the constituting ‘I’; it is by abandoning our acceptance of the world that we are enabled to see it as captivating and hold it as a theme. It is from this perspective that the phenomenologist is able to see the world without the framework of science or the psychological assumptions of the individual. — IEP

The same distinction I made between the subjective and the merely personal.

Thanks all for the very constructive feedback, I’m away from desk for today look forward to further remarks and criticisms.

Part 2 | Phenomenology Rescues the Subject


Phenomenology, a transformative philosophical movement that emerged in the early 20th century, seeks disciplined insight into the nature of lived experience by returning to ‘the things themselves’— referring to the direct experience of phenomena as they appear to the subject, rather than through their abstract, symbolic representation in thought. Founder Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) realised that the starting point for philosophy is not analysis of the objective world ‘out there,’ which is properly the role of natural science, but insight into the ways in which this world is disclosed to consciousness through paying close attention to the nature of experience, moment by moment. Husserl saw that rather than being a passive recipient of external data, the mind actively participates in the process of knowing shaped by underlying structures of consciousness. Through the method of the epochē, or ‘phenomenological reduction,’ Husserl reveals how these structures shape not only experience but the very foundation of our understanding of the nature of existence.

In contrast to the outlook of naturalism, Husserl believed all knowledge, all science, all rationality depended on conscious acts, acts which cannot be properly understood from within the natural outlook at all. Consciousness should not be viewed naturalistically as part of the world, since consciousness is precisely the reason why there was a world there for us in the first place. For Husserl it is not that consciousness creates the world in any ontological sense… but rather that the world is opened up, made meaningful, or disclosed through consciousness. The world is inconceivable apart from consciousness. Treating consciousness as part of the world, reifying consciousness, is precisely to ignore consciousness’s foundational, disclosive role. For this reason, all natural science is naive about its point of departure, for Husserl. Since consciousness is presupposed in all science and knowledge, then the proper approach to the study of consciousness itself must be a transcendental one — one which… focuses on the conditions for the possibility of knowledge.⁷

Husserl showed that every judgment about the world, even those based on scientific observation, depends on interpretive acts, must be understood as constituents of the ‘lifeworld’ (Lebenswelt)⁸, the domain of immediate experience that underlies theoretical abstractions, which had been previously ignored by an over-emphasis on the objective. The Lebenswelt is where objectivity and subjectivity interact — it is the shared foundation that makes objective inquiry possible. Husserl, in effect, had realised anew the role of the scientist in the pursuit of scientific knowledge.

This insight reframes the question of ‘things as they truly are.’ If all experience is mediated by consciousness, then objectivity itself is always bound to the structures of subjectivity. Far from being an impediment, the subject is implicit in any coherent philosophy⁹.

To clarify this distinction, consider the act of looking out a window. Naturalism concerns itself with what you can see outside: the objects, events, and phenomena unfolding in the world. It aims to describe these with precision and detachment, focusing solely on their objective characteristics. Phenomenology, by contrast, is like studying the act of looking itself: the awareness of the scene, the structures of perception, and the way the world is disclosed to you as a subject. While naturalism investigates the external landscape, phenomenology turns the lens inward, asking how that landscape appears to and is interpreted by the observer. So it is characterised by a certain kind of detached self-awareness. This shift in focus introduces a self-awareness that naturalism, in its strict adherence to objective fact, often neglects.

Husserl’s phenomenology was to become the wellspring for many later developments in European philosophy, in particular that of Martin Heidegger and other existentialists. But it hardly need be said that Husserl was not the first or only philosopher of the first–person experience. For that, we can look back into the annals of philosophical spirituality. (That will be the subject of Part 3.)

------

7. Routledge, Introduction to Phenomenology, p139

8. The term Lebenswelt, translated as ‘lifeworld,’ refers to the pre-theoretical, lived world of everyday experience. For Husserl, this is the foundation upon which all scientific and objective knowledge is built. The Lebenswelt encompasses the cultural, historical, and experiential context in which phenomena appear to us and is often taken for granted or overlooked in the pursuit of abstract objectivity. A related concept is the Umwelt, introduced by biologist Jakob von Uexküll, which describes the subjective world as experienced by an organism, shaped by its unique sensory and perceptual capacities. Both terms emphasize that our experience of reality is always mediated by our cognitive and sensory structures, situating objective knowledge within a broader subjective context.

9. This was made abundantly clear by the ‘observer problem’ of quantum physics.

Additional references:

The Phenomenological Reduction IEP

Key Ideas in Phenomenology: The Natural Attitude

Kuhn’s paradigmatic model does not rely on personal perspective in the sense of a subjective representation of reality. — Joshs

Also wanted to add - yes, of course you're right about that. It was carelessly expressed on my part. But he does insist on the primacy of scientific paradigms, which are in some important sense, conceptual constructions.

Subjectivity — or perhaps we could coin the term ‘subject-hood’ — encompasses the shared and foundational aspects of perception and understanding, as explored by phenomenology. The personal, by contrast, pertains to the idiosyncratic desires, biases, and attachments of a specific individual.

It is difficult for me to understand this. Isn't it some kind of a big mind or trascendental ego? By the way, The essential structures of a transcendental ego are essential because they are discovered in an eidetic reduction of psychology. In such a case we are talking about an essence that belongs to every human being. But there is a continuity with what I am saying: the reduction is the product of an imaginary variation (method of phenomenology). It is a process that leads us to a repetition, finding this structure in all people, don't you think? It is something that we discover as repetition through a neutralization (imaginary variation).

This is too deep in fenomenology, you can ignore me. — JuanZu

I think you're on the right track in one way. The reason I introduced the distinction between the 'merely personal' and the 'subjective', is because of the way that the latter gets dismissed as being the former. What I meant was, Western culture has principled respect for the individual as 'freedom of conscience' - but at the same time, principles which are not objectively verifiable are treated as being subjective or personal, which kind of trivialises them. So yes, I'm pointing to something like the transcendental ego of Kant and Husserl. You get that right.

But I don't know if you're on the right track with the phenomenological reduction. I'm not expert at that subject, but it is not at all to do with repetition or the socialisation of belief. However, I will postpone responding to that, because Part 2, which I might as well go ahead and post soon, because it is already being anticipated in the commentary, will explicitly bring in phenomenology.

The current subject of many animated philosophical debates is whether we humans are able to see ‘things as they truly are’. At issue are the perennial philosophical questions: What is real? and How can we come to know it? These are questions fundamental to philosophy and science alike.
— Wayfarer

Certainly we are able to see things as they truly are. There is no way the world is ‘in itself’ The world shows itself to us in our practical engagements with it. This world that we are already deeply and directly in touch with is the only world that will ever matter to us. — Joshs

Consider an allegory. Three men are viewing a parcel of land. One is a real-estate developer, one an agriculturalist, and one a geological surveyor. They all have different uses for that land, and would all develop it in different ways, with very different consequences. If what that land is, is entirely determined by the use it is eventually put to, does that mean the land itself has no reality independently of those uses?

Of course, this is only an allegory, but it raises the question: do these different perspectives fully exhaust the nature of what the land is? Or is there something more to it?

There needs to be a concrete conclusion, even if it is provisional — Leontiskos

Think of this part as the introduction. It is the statement of the issue. The ensuing sections will look at various ways to address it.

If there is, in fact, a state of affairs prior to any mind apprehending it, then that would be 'natural'. For that reason 'objectivity' seems to be a concept which could only apply to consensus. — AmadeusD

This was discussed in another thread, Why is Nature True? What is 'natural' turns out to be quite a difficult thing to nail down

Objectivity only exists if a subject exists to promulgate it. But that which is being objectivized may exist (have independent reality) without subjective explanation/inquiry and hence without objective explanation.

Maybe too simplified? — kazan

It’s certainly one aspect of it.

Good points.

The theorem transcends and become "objective" by repetition and neutralization of particular genesis. — JuanZu

So if I understand you correctly, you're saying that objectivity isn’t just about consensus, but about how an insight is tested, repeated, and confirmed across different contexts until its original, subjective or cultural genesis is no longer relevant. In that sense, objectivity emerges when a claim is validated to the point that it 'transcends' individual perspectives and particular origins. Would you say this is close to what you mean?

When two persons perform the same proof of the theorem both are neutralized and it can no longer be said that they are the raison d'être of the theorem. — JuanZu

I think it's a mistaken notion of 'subjectivity'. Subjectivity doesn't only pertain to what is specific to a single individual. Later in the essay I distinguish the subjective from the personal:

we must... differentiate the subjective from the merely personal. The subjective refers to the structures of experience through which reality is disclosed to consciousness. In an important sense, all sentient beings are subjects of experience. Subjectivity — or perhaps we could coin the term ‘subject-hood’ — encompasses the shared and foundational aspects of perception and understanding, as explored by phenomenology. The personal, by contrast, pertains to the idiosyncratic desires, biases, and attachments of a specific individual.

This development, with Trump openly supporting Putin, is by far the most serious international and foreign policy crisis since 9/11.

I guess you prefer that ideology to such an extent that you can't even listen to eyewitness testimony. — Leontiskos

Your self description. One radical anti-vaxxers word. You're trolling, over and out.

Your inability to fairly interpret Gold's statements is quite remarkable. — Leontiskos

But she's obviously lying. I hadn't heard of her, so I googled her and found the Guardian article:

"Simone Gold is a toxic purveyor of misinformation, now actively contributing to rightwing extremist rhetoric" said Dr Irwin Redlener of Columbia University. — Wilful ignorance': doctor who joined Capitol attack condemned for Covid falsehoods

She's a notorious liar, propagandist and vaccine skeptic. Why should I waste time listening to her? 'Oh, some guy on the internet says she's smart' :roll:

I think you can say that it is a hard problem, yes, but not the only one. — Manuel

He didn't say it was. In fact, the paper is called 'Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness'. It only came to be called THE hard problem later.

I don't have to listen to liars, and I'm done talking to you about it.

Yes, but note

Several GOP senators balked at Trump’s anti-Ukraine rhetoric and have spoken out in defense of Zelenksy, treading a careful line not to alienate the U.S. President.

How much difference do you think that is going to make?

I think this is a good opportunity for you to do some critical thinking rather than just jumping to the conclusion that folks are outright lying. — Leontiskos

SO, you think I should listen to a notorious liar and propagandist, and that decisions made on the basis of the media coverage and the January 6th Commission are 'preconcieved notions'?

And, answer the question!

I started watching it, up until the time she said January 6th was peaceful, kumbaya. Direct quote. Don't you think that might, just might, be a cause for suspicion that one is listening to bullshit, and respond accordingly?

So you didn't finish watching the video. — Leontiskos

Gold is a notorious liar and propagandist. She is not worth listening to.

Answer the question:

But surely you can't be saying that the January 6th riot and insurrection was a fabrication? That this subject's testimony is the real fact of the matter, and all of that reporting and those eyewitness accounts are fabricated? Is that what you're saying? — Wayfarer

Is that what you believe?

Doing a bit more digging on this Simone Gold: she was arrested for participating.

A key conservative doctors’ group pushing misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines faces growing fire from medical experts about its woeful scientific grounding, while its leader, Dr Simone Gold, was charged early this week for taking part in the 6 January attack on the Capitol.

The development comes as the US faces warnings its pandemic death toll could hit 500,000 next month, in part because conspiracy theories and baseless skepticism – especially from rightwing groups – have hampered efforts to tackle it.

Gold, who founded America’s Frontline Doctors last spring with help from the Tea Party Patriots organization, was arrested on Monday in Beverly Hills, where she lives, and faces charges of entering a restricted building, violent entry and disorderly conduct. Prior to her arrest, a headshot of Gold holding a bullhorn that she used to give a talk inside the Capitol appeared on an FBI flyer headlined “Seeking Information” about suspects in the Capitol attack. The group’s communications director, John Strand, who writes for the conservative Epoch Times and was with Gold in the Capitol, was also arrested in Beverly Hills and faces similar charges.

A 55-year-old emergency room physician, Gold did not respond to calls and text messages asking about her role in the attack and why she baselessly calls a Covid-19 vaccine an “experimental biological agent”.

"Simone Gold is a toxic purveyor of misinformation, now actively contributing to rightwing extremist rhetoric" said Dr Irwin Redlener of Columbia University.

Gold first acknowledged her presence at the Capitol and voiced “regret” to the Washington Post, after a video surfaced of her walking inside the Capitol along with Strand. Gold told the Post she thought entering the Capitol was legal, and she didn’t witness violence, even though dozens of Capitol police were hurt and five people died.

Last May, Gold’s group gained fast attention as several allied rightwing organizations, including Tea Party Patriots and the FreedomWorks Foundation, began a well-funded publicity drive attacking state lockdowns and downplaying the risks of the pandemic. — Wilful ignorance': doctor who joined Capitol attack condemned for Covid falsehoods

she's just a big old liar — Leontiskos

A 'notorious liar' would be more accurate. You want to be careful who you're lending your credibility to, Leontiskos, if you wish to retain your own.

But surely you can't be saying that the January 6th riot and insurrection was a fabrication? That this subject's testimony is the real fact of the matter, and all of that reporting and those eyewitness accounts are fabricated? Is that what you're saying?

That's not true. Republicans are speaking out now. — RogueAI

Anything you can point to? I've seen a couple of low-profile Senators grumbling about it, but overall, State Department and all the heavy hitters are toeing the line.

Do you think she was lying? — Leontiskos

Yes. One account, completely contrary to all the voluminously reported facts.

Subjectivity is never outside science. It is always in its genesis. What happens is that subjectivity is neutralized by phenomena such as repetition. That is, someone once invented the Pythagorean theorem, but through different mechanisms: language, writing, and repetitive processes that lead to its fulfillment, the theorem went from being the subjective invention of a person to a broader field of existence. It is a process of objectification. The same happens with sciences such as physics where experimentation becomes repetitive and theories are confirmed over and over again transcending the subjectivities always necessary to make the experiments. — JuanZu

That's an interesting analysis, although I don't think that 'subjectivity is neutralised by repetition' really holds water. As for the Pythagorean theorem, the age-old question is, invented or discovered? I believe it is the latter. The theorem concerns something that would be true, even it were never discovered.

So I suppose what you're saying is that when only a single subject has such an insight, then it's subjective, but that as it becomes more and more widely known and accepted, then it is seen as objective. That is an interesting way to consider it. I'll think that over.

This is Part 1.

Students at Mount St. Mary’s University in Maryland are calling for the resignation of philosophy professor Joshua Hochschild because of an article he wrote earlier this month for The American Mind, a publication of the Claremont Institute, a conservative advocacy organization.

The article, “Once Upon a Presidency,” is an attempt to sympathetically convey the perspective of supporters of Donald Trump (including those who were at the January 6th attack on the Capitol), portraying the ignorance, question-begging, conspiracy-theorizing, hypocrisy, and anti-intellectualism common to Trumpism as reasonable or understandable. While absurd, it is at the same time actually a useful look at recent events through a mindset many readers of Daily Nous will find alien.

The article caught the attention of Mount St. Mary’s students, who have launched a petition calling for Professor Hochschild’s resignation. Brea Purdie, the student who authored the petition, writes:

I find it repulsive that Hochschild calls for respectability and humanity when the actions of Trump supporters on January 6 proved to be less than that. I find it telling that he asks for decency when there are prominent white supremacists rubbing elbows at the same event as he, and proudly boasting racial symbolism along with the American flag. Lastly, I find it incriminating that he went to such frivolous extremes to weave a narrative in which he is the victim of attending an event where people lost their lives, and white supremacy ran rampant. For him to call for respect in a situation where his peers call for the eradication of my being, yet he claims to uphold pro-life, is bigotry. I refuse to accept or respect this. — Mount St. Mary’s Students Call for Resignation of Philosophy Professor

I don't know the upshot of all that, as it took place in 2021, but I will acknowledge being extremely dissappointed that this scholar, of whom I had formed a positive opinion, would go in to bat for such a dreadful event in American history. I can only ascribe it to malign influence that Trump is exerting on American culture, much to its detriment.

What does it mean to "have an opinion" if there is no subject to judge? — J

This is addressed in the subsequent sections.

I don't know what point you're trying to prove. Are you defending the January 6th riot, when the Capitol building was attacked by protestors, windows smashed, and rioters broke into the building chanting Hang Mike Pence and Where's Nancy? I listened to that interview right up to where the speaker said 'it was completely peaceful'. She says, as a witness, no violence, kumbaya. But there was absolutely abundant real-time footage and photographs of violence, many police officers were beaten with flagpoles and other objects, resulting in several deaths (there were also later deaths from suicide amongst the attending police.)

This speaker said she entered the Capitol, and strolled around, and gave a speech - twice! But some actual photographs of the day were like this:





So - is this speaker actually claiming that those photographs were staged? Faked? That the riots didn't happen? That nobody was injured, that nobody broke forcefully into the Capitol building and assaulted law officers?

I don't understand how that can be the case. Perhaps you might be able to explain it. Because from where I sit, what I'm seeing is indeed a conspiracy - and I'm no conspiracy theorist - to whitewash the January 6th abomination, so as to exculpate the role of the now President and his violent supporters and to re-write history in terms favourable to him. And for some completely unfathomable reason, people are prepared to believe it.

I think this is a helpful and concise outline of your project, Wayfarer. — Leontiskos

Thank you!

In general, though, I am always left with the question of what exactly your thesis is. — Leontiskos

Well, it's only part 1!

I would hope that the reach of the argument is more than simply 'scientism', although that is certainly as aspect of it. I question the way you're interpreting it. The point about objectivity first appearing in the early 1600's is significant. It is the beginning of a different kind of awareness or consciousness with the beginning of the modern period. It's by no means a bad thing, but it has a shadow side, which is precisely that sense of outside-ness, otherness, alienation or disconnection. Max Weber wrote of the 'great disenchantment', to describe the character of a modernized, bureaucratic, secularized Western society. In Western society, according to Weber, scientific understanding is more highly valued than belief, and processes are oriented toward rational goals.' (Wikipedia) That is also the subject of the New Left's criticism of the 'instrumentalisation of reason'.

This niche is where I agree with your project, but I disagree when you go farther and make X = Realism. — Leontiskos

We'll get to that.

without an account of subjectivity, nothing homo sapiens may allegedly learn about the world and themselves can have any claim to justification -- there can be no reasons, since reasons are not part of the objective world. This seems to rule out any view of h. sapiens that purports to be true. — J

Hence - nihilism. Nothing is true, nothing really matters, and so on. I don't think nihilism always manifests as something dramatic or obviously awful. It can be a shrug, a 'so what?' Also very big part of the shadow of modernity.

I guess that gets us into philosophical anthropology - what is man (sorry for the gender specificity) in the greater scheme? We'll get to that, too.

Consider a change in the state of a physical, S1 to S2, which occurs at time t1 and t2 respectively. Assume that the physical in the state of S1 has the cause power to cause the physical in the state of S2. Physical however is not aware of the passage of time. Therefore, the physical in the state of S1 cannot know the correct instant to cause the physical in the state of S2. Therefore, the physical in the state of S1 cannot cause the physical in the state of S2. Therefore, the change is not possible in physical. Therefore, physical cannot be the cause of its own change. — MoK

The argument makes a mistake of assuming that for a physical system to cause a change in itself, it must know when to do so. But physical processes don’t require knowledge or awareness to function—they follow natural laws and causal mechanisms.

Hint: try using AI to sharpen up your arguments. Not to write but to review and proof.

The Red Line: - as is well known, many of Trump's executive orders are being challenged in the Courts. This includes his blatantly unconstituional freeze of Congressionally-approved expenditures, withholding monies that the Government had already agreed to disburse. This has been challenged - on the face of it, successfully - by a couple of lawsuits which have ordered the Adminstration to release the funds. However the Government has found ways of not complying with these orders, based on further arguments. But it is very close to the red line - which is that when the Government begins to deliberately defy or flout the Courts. This has not definitively happened yet, but it looks pretty certain that it's imminent in the next few days. Which will mean the Government will defy the judiciary - something which has happened only rarely in the past. Read more here:

Trump comes close to the red line of openly defying judges, experts say

Is the United States in a Constitutional Crisis?

my intuition and observations suggest (to me) that life is intrinsically meaningless — Tom Storm

Well, we are creatures of our times. I am trying to show that this is a natural implication of the 'cartesian division'. Which reminds me of the phrase I often quote, that of the 'Cartesian Anxiety':

Cartesian anxiety refers to the notion that, since René Descartes posited his influential form of body-mind dualism, Western civilization has suffered from a longing for ontological certainty, or feeling that scientific methods, and especially the study of the world as a thing separate from ourselves, should be able to lead us to a firm and unchanging knowledge of ourselves and the world around us. The term is named after Descartes because of his well-known emphasis on "mind" as different from "body", "self" as different from "other". — Richard J Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis

Vervaeke says that this division is a fundamental aspect of our 'cultural grammar'.

Why is experience not physical? I agree that things "outside the mind" - outside consciousness itself are physical things and hence mediated through experience. What I don't quite get is why experience is not physical? — Manuel

Might I add that one can easily portray sensory experience as physical, in that it can be understood in terms of physical stimuli and physiological responses. We possess five primary senses - touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste - and they can be understood through cognitive science and physiology. What I think @MoK is getting at, is what David Chalmers describes as the problem of consciousness (usually called 'the hard problem') - that even though all of these processes can be described in physical terms, the experience of them - what it is like to see red, smell a rose, hear a sound - is not so amenable to physical description, because it has an experiential quality.

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

It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does. — Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness, David Chalmers

Personally, I think the solution lies in the problem, which is that physical science has always bracketed out or excluded the subject, as I've presented in another thread. I hope I'm correct in saying that this is what MoK is driving at, as the 'hard problem' has been mentioned previously. So that while experiential states have a physical aspect, the subjective experience can't be completely explained in physical terms.

Expect some fire many firings. A fanatical partisan and another manifest threat to democracy.

I am following your posts and reading them carefully. I think we can agree that experience is a phenomenon that cannot be explained within physicalism. Therefore, there exists a mind with the capacity to experience. — MoK

:up:

Americans need to know that Russia has infiltrated their President. I wonder if they know they voted to make Russia great again.

But I can't tell how they so quickly single out individuals to be fired. If it is other than competence, is it by tweets? — magritte

Strictly by the numbers, so far as I can tell. ‘Fire all your probationary employees’ (because they have less tenure.) ‘Reduce your staff by 80%’. The vetting for Trump Loyalty is made for new hires, as I see it. MAGA loyalists among those being let go will be by-catch. But if anyone wants to join the public service, they better answer that they know the 2020 election was stolen.

Good idea, it’s the subject of an essay I’ve written recently.

Close! I was nine!

I’ve argued that it’s not feasible, for reasons that you haven’t refuted. But I will admit, my engagement in this thread was addressed to the series of arguments you gave in the post I responded to, rather than the OP itself.