That was a serious question and a serious reply thereto.

It makes no sense at all to bracket out the tree, when we're talking about seeing the tree.

What it's like to experience anything is determined - in large part - by the experiencing creature's thought and belief.

Thus, there is no single correct answer to what it's like to experience something.

We can still know what's common to all thinking and believing creatures' experiences by virtue of knowing what's common to all thought and belief.

If that’s the case you misunderstood then. The ‘existence’ of the tree isn’t the direct concern of the phenomenological investigation. The concern is subjectivity.

The subjective/objective dichotomy cannot take proper account of that which consists of both, and is thus... neither.

Experience is one such thing.

Is experience possible without self-awareness?

He felt quite strongly, so it appears, that the natural sciences were set up against subjective consciousness on firm yet not infallible grounding. — I like sushi

I would agree with Husserl in that regard...

Is experience possible without self-awareness? — Zelebg

Some. Not all.

The subjective/objective dichotomy cannot take proper account of that which consists of both, and is thus... neither.

Experience is one such thing. — creativesoul

In simplistic terms, yeah. It’s something like that. If we splice in Kantian terminology here, what we call ‘objective’ is intersubjectivity, the ‘subjective’ is the phenomenological reduction (epoche), and naturalistic sense of objects of perception is framed by negative noumenon - positive noumenon (the thing in itself) beyond comprehension yet assumed; hence the ‘negative’ being the only term of import to human consciousness.

Like many philosophical ideas it seems so bloody obvious that it’s easy to dismiss it and move on. I’d say phenomenology - in all it’s iterations - it the most ‘obvious’ I’ve come across.

The subjective/objective dichotomy cannot take proper account of that which consists of both, and is thus... neither.

Experience is one such thing.
— creativesoul

In simplistic terms, yeah. — I like sushi

Use that as a measure. Phenomenology is dead in the water.

No idea what that means? What measure?

Personally I see Phenomenology as a bridge between the historical opposition of Idealism and Realism. — I like sushi

Whereas I reject them all on the exact same ground. They all work from grossly inadequate notions of human thought and belief. They all employ some of the same inherently inadequate dichotomies as well.

There's no need for talking in phenomenological terms. It adds nothing but unnecessary complexity. It cannot account for that which consists of both subjective and objective things. Experience is one such thing.

Okay. But you I thought you said above that there was no subjective/objective dichotomy? That is essentially the position phenomenology works from, so I’m baffled as to what you’re referring to here.

You don’t have to like it. I’m just telling you what it is.

Some. Not all.

I'm failing to find sense in experience happening to someone who is not aware the experience is their own. I'd say 'to experience' is the same thing as being conscious, and I also fail to see how consciousness makes sense without self-awareness.

There’s no need to speak English, yet many people find it useful.

We experience tactile, auditory and motor, as well as taste and smell and many kinds of somato-sensory visualizations I would say. Well, at least that's my experience. I suppose it's not a given that we are all the same. — Janus

Yeah, I agree. We can actually see a lot of this happening in the brain. When you imagine a tree, the visual cortex is engaged in a very similar way to when you actually see a tree. What happens next is (I think) quite remarkable. Signals are sent to the eyes to move them in the direction the tree would be if it were there. The brain is assuming a tree is there (because you created an image of one) and 'sending' the eyes to check. What happens then is you get feedback from the part of the cortex which delivers the primary visual input to say "there's no tree here" and you update your model from "there's a tree in front of me" to "I'm imagining a tree in front of me". The whole thing is then rationalised post hoc as 'imagining a tree'.

Interestingly, it seems that this is (at least partly) what is wrong with schizophrenics. They do not have the same primacy mechanisms for visual input. They 'see' a tree with their imagination, their eyes go looking for it, see nothing, but the brain then places primacy on the image in the forward driving part occipital cortex, not the data delivered by the eyes.

Anyway, that aside, all I meant - way back - when I said about being able to imagine a box without sides, is that 'imagine' does not have to be about visual images, it can be about concepts, feelings, thoughts etc. I may not be able to 'see' such a box in my mind's eye, but I can imagine how it might feel to be in a world where such a thing existed. Apparently, time slows down (or is it speeds up?) for atoms accelerated near the speed of light such that they decay faster (or slower) than the same atom type at rest. I can't imagine what's happening there, no picture I can form of it represents what the scientists say is going on, yet I do live in a world where such a thing is the case. If, one day it's made into technology, someone might say "pop your pizza in the slow-down-time machine and it'll keep for years", and I'd say "sure, fine" without having the faintest idea what's going on. It's the same with the box. I can imagine someone saying "going on a long trip, just pop all your stuff in the box-without-sides, it'll store everything", "wow, how does that work?", "It's multi-dimensional", "uhh-huh...just show me where to put the stuff".

I thought you said above that there was no subjective/objective dichotomy? That is essentially the position phenomenology works from, so I’m baffled as to what you’re referring to here.

You don’t have to like it. I’m just telling you what it is. — I like sushi

I said I reject the dichotomy.

Also, understand that Husserl (“The father of Phenomenology”) was logician. He was very wary of historicism and psychologism. He aimed to bring the ‘subjective’ into the field of play — I like sushi

I've nothing further.

I'm failing to find sense in experience happening to someone who is not aware the experience is their own. I'd say 'to experience' is the same thing as being conscious, and I also fail to see how consciousness makes sense without self-awareness. — Zelebg

Consciousness comes before self consciousness. Self consciousness is being aware that one has thought and belief. Being conscious is having/forming thought and belief.

The irony here is that you made a point which I assumed was an attempt to sum up phenomenology, but was actually a refutation of phenomenology.

There is no ‘subjective’/‘objective’ dichotomy in phenomenology. If there was I’d reject it too. There reason there is so much jargon is because it is needed for precision. I’m giving you a brief summary here.

What do you propose instead as an approach to discuss ‘experiencing’?

Read my posts here in this thread.

From a more objective standpoint, it’s not an ‘illusion’, but an alternative subjective experience of the same reality. — Possibility

No, it's not just an alternative, it's the model which minimises variance. You're making the same unwarranted presumption Terrapin made about artists. The experiments about updating predictions in the light of ambiguous data conforming to Bayesian models was not done exclusively with non-artists. The mathematics behind free-energy limits based on requirements for self-organising systems to reduce entropy against probability gradients do not only apply to non-artists.

I can see how an artist might actively look for some alternative way of seeing something, Terrapin gave the example of the child drawing a table rectangular, whereas an artist would draw a parallelogram, knowing that a parallelogram (or trapezium) on the 2d page represents the table best. But the model of the table isn't more real in the artist's mind nor are these alternative models in the same field, one is how to negotiate the object in our spatiotemporal environment, the other is how to make marks on a page to best invoke such a table. Two different models with two different variance-minimising results.

The experiment involved the subjects observing two specific objects being placed into a particular container/box. There was more than one container. They showed their own surprise when they looked for themselves into the box and did not find what they were expecting to find.

Then, under similar enough circumstances(I suppose), they observed another looking into the wrong box and showed that that bothered them in some way. The speaker claimed that such displays proved somehow that they recognized that the other had a mind???

I found it rather odd that they chose some experiments/games which are not even capable of showing in humans what they are wanting the same experiment to show in non humans? — creativesoul

What experiment would you set up to show that humans had this feature?

Provide a link?

We experience tactile, auditory and motor, as well as taste and smell and many kinds of somato-sensory visualizations I would say. Well, at least that's my experience. I suppose it's not a given that we are all the same.
— Janus

Yeah, I agree. We can actually see a lot of this happening in the brain. When you imagine a tree, the visual cortex is engaged in a very similar way to when you actually see a tree. What happens next is (I think) quite remarkable. Signals are sent to the eyes to move them in the direction the tree would be if it were there. — Isaac

On what ground does one make this last claim?

What metric does one use to distinguish between eye movements and eye movements in a particular direction for a particular purpose? How can signals be sent to move the eyes to see a tree that is nowhere to be seen? If it is nowhere there is no way to move the eyes in that direction.

The same could be said of any and all eye movement that may happen during the experiment. That's a problem isn't it?

The rest of that post seems to rest upon this notion of "signals sent to the eyes to move them in the direction of a imaginary tree."

Being conscious is having/forming thought and belief.

But if there is a thought without "self" isn't that just the same as philosophical zombie or a computer?

What experiment would you set up to show that humans had this feature? — Isaac

I've been watching, reading, and listening to quite a bit.

Which feature?

Being conscious is having/forming thought and belief.
But if there is a thought without "self" isn't that just the same as philosophical zombie or a computer? — Zelebg

Not on my view...

Click on my avatar. The site provides a good one. Read through some of my own topics on thought and belief, meaning, and truth... There's a common theme in all of them, if I've been consistent. That is an aim of mine.

I’ve had a look. Given that it was your posts that made me mention phenomenology I think I’ll stick to thinking you don’t quite understand what phenomenology is. Maybe you simply prefer the hermeneutical version - that was why I brought it up.

I can at least assume you’re not a fan of Heidegger given that you hate jargon? There is certainly a number of peopke who take Wittgenstein to be someone who leaned toward the phenomenological take on language - I agree, it is about as blatant as can be if you read Philosophical Investigations.

I don’t think we’re on the same page though so I’ll leave it.

GL

On what ground does one make this last claim?

What metric does one use to distinguish between eye movements and eye movements in a particular direction for a particular purpose? How can signals be sent to move the eyes to see a tree that is nowhere to be seen? If it is nowhere there is no way to move the eyes in that direction.

The same could be said of any and all eye movement that may happen during the experiment. That's a problem isn't it?

The rest of that post seems to rest upon this notion of "signals sent to the eyes to move them in the direction of a imaginary tree." — creativesoul

The experiments were done with appearing and disappearing dots of ambiguous contrast with cameras facing the eyes that track movement. Subjects were first asked to focus on where they thought the dots appeared and followed a predictable pattern. the eyes tracked the expected appearance of the next dot before it appeared, or even when the dot was not in fact at the expected location. The subjects were then asked to imagine a particular layout of dots on the blank page and their eye movements mirrored those seen in analysing and predicting the real dots.

Every experiment is only moving us toward a better model, one better able to make predictions, a more elegant one, or one with fewer assumptions. You can tear anything down using "but how do they really know". If there's some alternative explanation you'd rather believe, then you're welcome to it. Personally, I think you'll run into contradictions with other models in other areas, but at the end of the day, I can't precis the whole of cognitive neuroscience here (though I appear to have tried) such that you'd be satisfied the explanation is a good one one respect to other experimental results, other working theories etc.

You can either accept it into your world-view, if you like it, take it on advisement as "oh that's interesting", if you remain unconvinced, or reject it entirely if it conflicts with views you hold dear. What I don't think is rational is to reject it on the grounds it hasn't removed all doubt. Nothing does.