Idealism affirms that everything in the we encounter is idea. Phenomenology affirms it as reality. — Constance

Phenomenology affirms that idealism is accurate? So phenomenology is a monist view which dissolves the dualistic fallacy of mind and body?

How does phenomenology affirm the above?

[reply="Tom Stmaturation.

Oh, are we highly aware or our ignorance? Or do we have so much pride we can't believe we're asinine?

I feel it's the latter. We are so satisfied with our progress -- we think so ridiculously highly of it -- that every fool is a wise man by virtue of possessing the human form.

We can't get to truth due to pride that denies reality.

Isn't this what they call the hard problem - How does manipulating information turn into our experience of the world? The touch, taste, sight, sound, smell?
— T Clark

No. — frank

This from "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness."

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. that unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience. — David Chalmers

Because your neurons are connected to your fingers, your tongue, your eyes, your ears, your nose. And more.

Phenomenal consciousness and metacognition constitute the hard problem. There is something it is like to be you (or me) what is this? (And no, I'm not looking for an answer.) — Tom Storm

I'm not sure how that is different from what I wrote. And no, I'm not looking for an answer either.

He's not suggesting that information processing gives rise to subjectivity. He's point out that it's two different things. There's functional consciousness such as seeing, and there's the experience of seeing.

Computers can see and process visual information. There's no accompanying awareness, though. Providing a scientific explanation for the experience that accompanies function: that's the hard problem.

Providing a scientific explanation for the experience that accompanies function: that's the hard problem. — frank

I just don't see what the big deal is. I think it's just one more case, perhaps the only one left, where people can scratch and claw to hold onto the idea that people are somehow exceptional.

The universe actually is utterly bizarre. But you refuse to color outside the lines, and then feel entitled to proof of the abstract.

I just don't see what the big deal is. I think it's just one more case, perhaps the only one left, where people can scratch and claw to hold onto the idea that people are somehow exceptional. — T Clark

Since Chalmers imagines that once we have a working theory of consciousness, we'll be able to predict what it's like to be a bee, this clearly has nothing to do with human exceptionalism.

Chalmers is one of the most influential philosophers of our time. Seems like you'd be more interested to discover what his views actually are.

Humans aren't an exception. Were just abstract and bizarre as anything.

Chalmers is one of the most influential philosophers of our time. Seems like you'd be more interested to discover what his views actually are. — frank

:100:

There's been very little discussion of the actual issue.

There's been very little discussion of the actual issue. — Wayfarer

True. It's good to see you. Hope you're doing well!

Or do we have so much pride we can't believe we're asinine? — neonspectraltoast

Sounds like you are running some kind of back story with those cryptic references of pride. Why pride? Do you have some citations, or is this just some opinion?

The true issue is, how do you observe the human brain and invoke the totality of everything?

There is no there there. Nothing about gray matter that is ever going to seem like consciousness.

And that's right.

I just don't see what the big deal is. I think it's just one more case, perhaps the only one left, where people can scratch and claw to hold onto the idea that people are somehow exceptional. — T Clark

Even though you've quoted the salient passage, you're not demonstrating insight into what the issue purports to be. The argument is about the first-person nature of experience - 'what it is like' is an awkward way of describing simply the nature of 'being'. Chalmers is pointing out that 'experience' or 'state of being' must always elude third-person description, because it's third person.

Whereas Daniel Dennett, who is Chalmer's antagonist in such debates, says straight out:

In Consciousness Explained, I described a method, heterophenomenology, which was explicitly designed to be 'the neutral path leading from objective physical science and its insistence on the third-person point of view, to a method of phenomenological description that can (in principle) do justice to the most private and ineffable subjective experiences, while never abandoning the methodological principles of science. — Daniel Dennett, The Fantasy of First-Person Science

So, Dennett is claiming that science can arrive at a complete, objective understanding of the human from a scientific point of view. There are many philosophers who have claimed this is preposterous - (Galen Strawson has said that he ought to be sued under Trade Practices for false advertising.) Among other things, this leads to Dennett's insistence that humans really are no different to robots, and that what we perceive as intelligence is really the consequence of the 'mindless' activities of billions of cellular connections that generate the illusion of intelligence (never mind that even an illusion requires a subject capable of suffering illusion).

Dennett's book Consciousness Explained was parodied as 'Consciousness Explained Away' or 'Consciousness Ignored' by many of his peers - not by your proverbial man-in-the-street but other philosophers, one of whom said that Dennett's claims were so preposterous as to verge on the deranged.

Nagel's review of Dennett's last book says:

Dennett asks us to turn our backs on what is glaringly obvious—that in consciousness we are immediately aware of real subjective experiences of color, flavor, sound, touch, etc. that cannot be fully described in neural terms even though they have a neural cause (or perhaps have neural as well as experiential aspects). And he asks us to do this because the reality of such phenomena is incompatible with the scientific materialism that in his view sets the outer bounds of reality. He is, in Aristotle’s words, “maintaining a thesis at all costs.”

Dennett is situated squarely in the middle of 'the blind spot of science' - there is something fundamental to philosophy that he is incapable of comprehending. So while I don't agree with Galen Strawson's solution, I certainly agree with his assessment of Daniel Dennett.

Hope you're doing well! — frank

Well, thanks! (although one of the reasons I had stopped posting for six months was because of this debate, I am continually mystified as to why people can't see through Dennett.)

Chalmers is one of the most influential philosophers of our time. — frank

Ok. He's popular so he must be right.

The argument is about the first-person nature of experience — Wayfarer

I do understand that. I even understand why it's hard to imagine that that experience could be explainable in terms of biology and neurology. It's just so immediate and intimate. I can feel that, but I just don't get why people think that is any different from how all the other phenomena whirling around us come to be.

Things are ultimately their own finest definitions. If you're not speaking as an aside to the ineffable, you're confused and wrong. There simply cannot be a satisfactory, ultimate explanation.

The dilemma resides I'm humanity's pride

Dennett's claims were so preposterous as to verge on the deranged. — Wayfarer

And people on the other side think the same about Chalmers. It's not an argument, it's name calling. I know you are, but what am I?

Well, thanks! (although one of the reasons I had stopped posting for six months was because of this debate, I am continually mystified as to why people can't see through Dennett.) — Wayfarer

I'm really glad you're back, but but I know you don't think things have changed in the past 6 months.

Hope you're doing well!
— frank

Well, thanks! (although one of the reasons I had stopped posting for six months was because of this debate, I am continually mystified as to why people can't see through Dennett.) — Wayfarer

Dennett has a minority viewpoint. Don't sweat it. :grin:

Dennett gas a minority viewpoint. Don't sweat it. — frank

So we vote to determine the truth now? Majority wins?

:blush: I just worked 52 hours in the last four days due to the little triple pandemic of COVID, flu, and RSV knocking out our department. What's your excuse, Skippy?

I just worked 52 hours in the last four days due to the little triple pandemic of COVID, flu, and RSV knocking out our department. What's your excuse, Skippy? — frank

You only need an excuse for being wrong.

I just worked 52 hours in the last four days due to the little triple pandemic of COVID, flu, and RSV knocking out our department. What's your excuse, Skippy? — frank

Oh, wait. I have a better one:

You have fallen prey to the Who gives a shit logical fallacy.

You have fallen prey to the Who gives a shit logical fallacy. — T Clark

:lol: You said a mouthful, Cuz!

Things are ultimately their own finest definitions. If you're not speaking as an aside to the ineffable, you're confused and wrong. There simply cannot be a satisfactory, ultimate explanation.

The dilemma resides I'm humanity's pride — neonspectraltoast

Your points remains opaque - the sentences are incomplete, seem to be constructed around some unstated presuppositions and do not argue a case with evidence or references.

What, for instance does this mean? "If you're not speaking as an aside to the ineffable, you're confused and wrong.' What do you mean by speaking? What is an aside to the ineffable? What do you mean by ineffable? What is confused? What is wrong?

Maybe I'm wrong, but it sounds like you are just saying: "Reality's a mystery, man."

Oh, and how are things 'ultimately their own finest definitions?'

Well, you're right about one thing: reality is and shall remain a mystery. And if you can't give credence to an ineffable surface of things, your opinions are absolutely worthless, verbose as you may be.

You might as well have never lived as suffer the indignity of being you.

I even understand why it's hard to imagine that that experience could be explainable in terms of biology and neurology. It's just so immediate and intimate. I can feel that, but I just don't get why people think that is any different from how all the other phenomena whirling around us come to be. — T Clark

Not seeing the point of an argument is not a rebuttal, but flogging dead horses is also not productive.

I do understand that. I even understand why it's hard to imagine that that experience could be explainable in terms of biology and neurology. It's just so immediate and intimate. I can feel that, but I just don't get why people think that is any different from how all the other phenomena whirling around us come to be. — T Clark

I think it might be because many of the issues are conceptual and not empirical.

Phenomenology affirms that idealism is accurate? So phenomenology is a monist view which dissolves the dualistic fallacy of mind and body?

How does phenomenology affirm the above? — Tom Storm

As I see it, all it takes is the removal of the word representation and using presentation or givenness instead. Michel Henry puts it like this:

Let us begin with indeterminacy. The first principle (of phenomenology) establishes a decisive correlation between appearance and being. This correlation impresses itself upon us with the strongest force because it is wholly immediate: when something appears, it happens to exist at the same time. This correlation is so powerful that it seems to be reduced [ramener] to an identity: to appear is thereby identically to be. When the principle says “so much appearing, so much being,” it intends neither the extension, nor in any fashion the intensity of phenomenological and ontological determinations that it brings together, but rather the common identity of their essence. It is to the extent that appearing appears that being thereby “is.”

There is no privileging of something unseen that is that which appears through the appearance, or that the appearance is a representation of. I observe the cup on the table and there before me in the appearance is the reality.

As to the dualistic fallacy, body, as opposed to mind, is nothing beyond what the appearance yields. All ontologies are reduced to the one status of what is simply there, before one's witnessing, analytic gaze. It is not "of" anything; but this does not mean the world is complete to the gaze. Taking the world up as it appears takes on a whole new set of analytical priorities. There is this indeterminacy and time is at the center of this: we are always on the cusp of an unmade future that calls for constant renewal, and seeing this is the what freedom is about. There are moods and fears and caring and all that is left out of science's paradigms are here given priority, for Being is not measured by quantifications on a space-time grid, but is measured phenomenologically, and here I follow Kierkegaard: qualitatively.

Science has never addressed the most salient feature of our existence, value. Phenomenology, I would argue, has this front and center.

Anyway, phenomenologists do say different things, but I think the above is a rough generalization.