It's very clear what we refer to when we use that term. It's just difficult to explain or define it using language. — Echarmion
We all know what thoughts are, it's just difficult to define using language. — Echarmion
But if what I suggest is of no interest to you, I would be curious anyway to know how you reconcile the two claims. — bongo fury
We might all know when we are thinking, but it doesn't follow that we know what thoughts are. Similarly, we know when we are digesting food, but that does not entail that we understand the process of digestion. — Janus
I see your point about 'existential anxiety', but is that any more significant than an atheist (like me) saying 'all religions are nonsense'? — fresco
As for 'the explanation of explanation', that may turn out to rest on a 'nested systems' approach, in which 'life processes as dissipative structures' (Maturana) can be applied at many levels, from the cell, to the society. — fresco
It's very clear what we refer to when we use that term. It's just difficult to explain or define it using language. — Echarmion
I would be curious [...] to know how you reconcile the two claims. — bongo fury
I don't see how these claims require reconciliation. Is an explanation using language constitutive for knowing what something is? — Echarmion
We might all know when we are thinking, but it doesn't follow that we know what thoughts are. — Janus
My question still stands...are we witnessing 'the demise of philosophy as we know it' ?
Or to put it another way, is 'neurophilosophy' any more iconoclastic than the issues raised by Wittgenstein, the Pragmatists, or the Post Modernists. — fresco
I don't agree that 'reason is sovereign'....'Life' is. — fresco
I would have thought it constitutive (or required) for being "very clear what we refer to". For being able to show examples of what we do and don't refer to. Which would be explaining and defining it, I would have thought. Ideally, as I say, finding a dividing line between what we do and don't refer to by the term.
Or, failing that, but still usefully, finding a common ground of clear cases and clear non-cases, and working from there. — bongo fury
The point about 'neuroscience' is that it tends to deflate 'thinking' as an epiphenomenon of 'neural activity'. We resent this, of course, but we cannot argue with some of the empirical research on which it is based. And it is that empiricism which sets it apart from other iconoclastic movements. — fresco
I am citing a particular concept of life proposed by the Santiago movement. This point would tend to displace 'reason' with 'rationality'. — fresco
I did know about the Buddhist connection but I put that down to holistic ethos surrounding autopoiesis. — fresco
Or, failing that, but still usefully, finding a common ground of clear cases and clear non-cases, and working from there.
— bongo fury
The problem is that conscious experience is so basic that there is no way to give examples. — Echarmion
If I gave you an example, like petting a cat, — Echarmion
that example would only exist within your conscious experience. — Echarmion
But I agree that 'domains of discourse' (perspectives) can be useful for the larger picture of philosophy with the proviso that those domains are not mutually exclusive — fresco
Yes! Please! What kinds of cat-petting experiences are clearly conscious and which unconscious? Let's play... — bongo fury
The "most immediate primal thing we have" is the sensed world, especially other people and our bodily, emotional and linguistic interactions with them, of course including our own bodies and their sensations and feelings. What we might call "conscious experience" is only a tiny part of all that.
I take on board your interest in embodiment, and I admit that I was over generalizing with my comment 'all religions are nonsense' (I should have said deism). It was stylistically useful to take a devils advocate stance when presenting the thesis, but other than scepticism, I don't think there is much that 'philosophers' can say against 'advances' in neuroscience, and I'm a sceptic myself !
If you are petting a cat right now, that's clearly a conscious experience. — Echarmion
If you remember petting a cat, that memory is also a conscious experience, — Echarmion
If you remember dreaming about petting a cat, that's a conscious experience that may or may not be based on another conscious experience, — Echarmion
Like... me petting, or holding, the cat while drunk or asleep... or, Alexa the automatic cat-petter petting the cat... or, Alexa the autonomous neural-network machine self-trained to pet the cat... or, the cat's mother petting the cat — bongo fury
At least, it probably marks an occasion when consciousness happened, although not necessarily consciousness of the memory, except on the slightly question-begging interpretation of remembering as "recalling to mind". I might be trying and failing to identify the relevant word or picture (etc.) of the scene, or just curiously disturbed by an unconscious association with the scene or those symbols. But of course, my consciousness while petting the cat is not necessarily of the petting, either. — bongo fury
Sure. Plenty of fascinating if potentially illusory data from introspection of transitioning into and out of "waking" consciousness. Man!
Equally, I desire to establish a common ground of agreed cases of non-consciousness. The project is slightl — bongo fury
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