I say it's controversial because it challenges realism, which is the ingrained tendency of the natural outlook — Quixodian

It calls this attitude into question:

From a phenomenological perspective, in everyday life, we see the objects of our experience such as physical objects, other people, and even ideas as simply real and straightforwardly existent. In other words, they are “just there.” We don’t question their existence; we view them as facts.

When we leave our house in the morning, we take the objects we see around us as simply real, factual things—this tree, neighboring buildings, cars, etcetera. This attitude or perspective, which is usually unrecognized as a perspective, Edmund Husserl terms the “natural attitude” or the “natural theoretical attitude.”

When Husserl uses the word “natural” to describe this attitude, he doesn’t mean that it is “good” (or bad), he means simply that this way of seeing reflects an “everyday” or “ordinary” way of being-in-the-world. When I see the world within this natural attitude, I am solely aware of what is factually present to me. My surrounding world, viewed naturally, is the familiar world, the domain of my everyday life. Why is this a problem?

My theory is that secular culture works very hard to normalise this attitude, and to discourage anything that calls it into question. And as a staunch defender of secular values and common-sense realism, you feel duty bound to follow suit. Fair comment?

Quite the contrary, I post materials and ideas from many different sources in support of idealist points of view, and for more than ten years, your only response has been to shoot them down. — Quixodian

This is not true at all. What you call "shooting them down" I call "raising legitimate questions about them". From my perspective it seems you very often just stop responding when the questions become too penetrating or difficult to address.

You should know by now that I'm not pushing any particular view but rather raising what I see to be the salient and often difficult question entailed by any view. I give as much critique of naive realism as I do of naive idealism.

My theory is that secular culture works very hard to normalise this attitude, and to discourage anything that calls it into question. And as a staunch defender of secular values and common-sense realism, you feel duty bound to follow suit. Fair comment? — Quixodian

There is no one "secular culture" in philosophy in my view. Or to look at it another way, I think theology is not philosophy, or at least it is only one small area of philosophy. I am not at all a "staunch defender of commonsense realism" and your saying that makes me think that you don't actually pay attention to what I say. I support neither realism nor idealism; I see them as the two main imaginable metaphysical speculations, both of them under-determined by evidence or logic.

I understand that you personally believe in intellectual intuition, which is fair enough, but I think it cannot but be a faith-based view. I'm not saying it's wrong to hold faith-based views, we all do, but I do think it's wrong to assert that such views can be supported by evidence or logic, and it is mainly such attempts that I call out when I see them.

It is part a problem of terminology. On the one hand, a wavelength of 420nm is a different colour to a wavelength of 470nm, but on the other hand, even though we can distinguish them, we perceive them both as the single colour blue. — RussellA

The point though, is that no specific named colour can be defined simply with reference to a particular set of wavelengths. This is because the sensation of colour is far more complex than simply detecting particular wavelengths. The richness and aesthetic beauty of colour is a feature of combined wavelengths, just like harmony in music. Add to this, the way that the eyes have evolved to break down the combined wavelengths into distinct parts, and then the brain reunites the distinct parts in a form of synthesis, to produce one colour, and you have a very complex system for sensing color.

Clearly, we do not perceive two different colours as "the single colour blue". We perceive them as different colours, and call them by the same name, "blue". It is a matter of categorizing the two as the same type, not a matter of perceiving them as a single colour.

Well, the fossil record tells us they did, and if the Universe is older than the human race then it follows that it existed prior to us and our points of view. — Janus

It seems to me that we living human beings now, when we think of the time before human cognition, can only project the-world-for-us in a way that doesn't exactly make sense. Part of the messy issue seems to be that world-for-us is (must be) just the world. It's as if we tend to talk around what seems like an inescapable anthropocentrism. The world that we know and talk about is the one that's given through sense organs and brains that are strangely part of that same world.

I guess I reject scientific realism if understood in terms of a truly independent object. I challenge it as semantically troubled.

It seems to me that we living human beings now, when we think of the time before human cognition, can only project the-world-for-us in a way that doesn't exactly make sense. — plaque flag

That’s getting close to what I’ve been trying to say. It’s the tendency to forget that ‘scientific realism’ still relies on an implicitly human perspective. (Which is very much something Husserl was saying, isn’t it?)

So my argument is not that the universe doesn’t exist sans perspective, but that any meaningful sense of existence entails a perspective, so it’s a mistake to take it as an invariant truth, as a truly ‘observer-independent reality’. That is the assumption of naturalism, not a metaphysical principle.

That’s getting close to what I’ve been trying to say. It’s the tendency to forget that ‘scientific realism’ still relies on an implicitly human perspective. — Quixodian

Yes, I think we agree that some philosophers don't give subjectivity its due. [ On the other hand, many go too far, till the subject is no longer intelligible as such. ]

(Which is very much something Husserl was saying, isn’t it?) — Quixodian

Let me offer a quote from §52 in Ideas. (I add emphasis to sense as meaning near the end and break up a long paragraph for clarity.)

We carried out the last series of our deliberations chiefly with respect to the physical thing pertaining to the sensuous imaginatio and did not take due notice of the physical thing as determined by physics, for which the sensuously appearing (the perceptually given) physical thing is said to function as a “mere appearance,” perhaps even as something “merely sub­jective.”

Nevertheless it is already implicit in the sense of our earlier statements that this mere subjectivity ought not to be confused (as it is so frequently) with a subjectivity such as characterizes mental processes, as though the perceived physical things, with respect to their perceptual qualities, and as though these qualities themselves were mental processes.

Not can it be the true opinion of scientific investigators of Nature (particularly if we keep, not to their pro­nouncements, but to the sense of their method) that the appearing physical thing is an illusion or a faulty picture of the “true” physical thing as determined by physics. Likewise the statement that the determinations of the appearance are signs of the true determinations is misleading.

Are we then allowed to say, in accordance with the “realism” which is very widely accepted: The actually perceived (and, in the primary sense, appearing) should, for its part, be regarded as an appearance of, or an instinctive basis for, inferring something else, intrinsically foreign to it and separated from it? May we say that, theoretically considered, this something else should be accepted as a reality, completely unknown by acquaintance, which must be assumed hypothetically in order to explain the course of mental appearance- processes, <accepted> as a hidden cause of these appearances characterizable only indirectly and analogically by mathematical concepts?

Already, on the basis of our general presentations (which will be greatly deepened and undergo continual confirmation by our further analyses), it becomes evident that such theories are possible only as long as one avoids seriously fixing one’s eyes on, and scientifically exploring, the sense of a physical thing-datum and, therefore, of “any physical thing whatever,” a sense implicit in experience’s own essence — the sense which functions as the absolute norm for all rational discourse about physical things. If anything runs counter to that sense it is countersensical in the strictest signification of the word; and that, without doubt, is true of all epistemological theories of the type indicated.
...
The perceived physical thing itself is always and necessarily precisely the thing which the physicist explores and scientifically determines following the method of physics. — Husserl

To me this is something like a sophisticated direct realism. The scientific image is not 'under' everyday objects. For Husserl (roughly, from my reading so far), reality makes no sense except in relation to human experience. We don't know what we are talking about otherwise.

So my argument is not that the universe doesn’t exist sans perspective, but that any meaningful sense of existence entails a perspective, so it’s a mistake to take it as an invariant truth, as a truly ‘observer-independent reality’. — Quixodian

In my opinion, the tricky part here is the relationship between the individual human and the time-binding cultural community that (in some sense) thinks through or with the brain of the individual. Culture is software that runs on the crowd, and knowledge is a social product. The scientific image (and arguably the philosophical image) is intentionally independent of any contingent human being. That's it's job. To be the truth, not just your truth or mine.

But it's all too easy to let this image float away from subjectivity altogether. I mean we can lose ourselves in our models and forget their dependence on a living brain and the thousands of years of transmitted research and development that went into training it. [Husserl's later work wrestles with cultural sediment and how it matters in the subject's coconstitution of reality, or so I'd put it at this moment. I am made of ghosts and mud.]

The scientific image (and arguably the philosophical image) is intentionally independent of any contingent human being. That's it's job. To be the truth, not just your truth or mine. — plaque flag

The issue with the (modern) scientific image is the assumption of separation between observer and observed. That itself is not a product of science but a consequence of the tendency towards modern individualism which was a defining feature of the culture gave rise to science. But the way that it showed up in modern science, was that the subject was excluded by the process of separating primary and secondary attributes - the primary being just those attributes measurable by the sciences, the secondary being associated with qualitative perception. That was the modern scientific equivalent of the 'self-abnegation' of the sage or mystic but with the cardinal difference that the latter maintained the qualitative dimension, whereas in the scientist, the qualitative dimension was equated with the (merely) subjective, and the separation of subject and object was the basic stance (leading to the state of 'cartesian anxiety').

So when you say 'the truth, not just yours or mine', that's what I mean when I refer to THE mind, not your or my mind. You and I are examples or instantiations of the cultural- and species mind. Individuation is an attribute of only the very topmost level of that mind. But that is the mind which the world is not independent of or apart from - not your mind or mine, but THE mind. It's almost like 'mind at large' but it's important not to objectify or reify it.

I am made of ghosts and mud — plaque flag

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul — Gen2:7

General commentary, or, the fine line between critical thought and throwing Jello at a wall. As says, philosophy is thinking for oneself, carrying the tacit implication that he’s not being stupid about it.

…..our deliberations….did not take due notice of the physical thing as determined by physics….for which…. (the perceptually given) physical thing (…) is said to function as a “mere appearance,” perhaps even as something “merely sub­jective.”…. — Husserl

Are we then allowed to say…..(the) actually perceived…..should….be regarded as an appearance of…..something else, intrinsically foreign to it and separated from it? May we say that, theoretically considered, this something else should be accepted as a reality, completely unknown by acquaintance, which must be assumed hypothetically in order to explain the course of mental appearance- processes? — Husserl

…..such theories are possible only as long as one avoids seriously fixing one’s eyes on, and scientifically exploring, the sense of a physical thing-datum and, therefore, of “any physical thing whatever,” a sense implicit in experience’s own essence, the sense which functions as the absolute norm for all rational discourse about physical things. — Husserl

The perceived physical thing itself is always and necessarily precisely the thing which the physicist explores and scientifically determines following the method of physics. — Husserl

————-

Apparently, the physical thing determined by physics is other than the perceptually given thing of mere appearance.

What does it mean for the actually perceived to be regarded as an appearance of something else?

How can that appearance of something which is or should be accepted as a reality, at the same time be completely unknown…..by acquaintance?

While it may be the case the physical thing is separate from its mere appearance, it does not follow from the separation, that it is intrinsically foreign to it, which casts dispersions on the claim the appearance is of something else than the physical thing determined by physicists.

If theories for the course of mental appearance-processes hypothetically assumes the reality of the something else of mere appearances, a sense implicit in experience’s own essence, which presupposes it must be known by acquaintance, to then claim the perceived physical thing itself be always and necessarily the thing the physicist explores, is self-contradictory.

Husserl 1929: the origin of transcendental logic is predicated on the content of judgements being genuine objects which “mental appearance-processes” require, re: phenomenology;
Kant 1787: the origin of transcendental logic is predicated on form alone, irrespective of the empirical content “mental appearance-processes” would require, re: pure a priori synthetic propositions.

And so it goes….

I take Husserl to understand the scientific image as a mere enrichment of the manifest image. It should not be understood as a mathematical analogy for something that lurks under or behind the manifest image. The table is the one I got from my uncle, and it's also made of atoms. The table is a 'transcendent' object that is never given to my eyes all at once. Nor do I grasp its essence all at once. Reality has depth and horizon, not given immediately in all of its fullness, but we are not cut off from it. Sense organs are real and not absurdly their own product.

A little more Husserl, from the same section: §52. Supplementations. The Physical Thing as Determined by Physics and the “ Unknown Cause of Appearances
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We need only understand it correctly. By no means ought we to fall into either the picture-theory or the sign- theory, the fundamentally wrong theories which we considered ear­ lier without particular regard to the physical thing as determined in physics and which we likewise refuted in a radically universal manner.66A picture or a sign refers to something lying outside it which would “itself5be seized upon were we to go over into a different mode of objectivation, into that of presentive intuition. In themselves, a sign or a picture do not “make known” the designated (or depictured) affair itself.67 The physical thing as determined by physics, however, is nothing foreign to what appears sensuously “in person;” rather it is something which makes itself known originaliter in it and, more particularly, apriori (for indefeasible eidetic reasons) only in it. Accordingly, even the sensuous determination-content of the X which functions as bearer of the determinations ascribed in physics is no clothing foreign to these determinations and hiding them: rather, only because the X is the subject of the sensuous deter­minations is it the subject also of the determinations ascribed in physics which, for their part, make themselves known in68 the sensuous determinations. According to what has been set forth in detail, it is necessary that a physical thing, and precisely the physical thing of which the physicist speaks, can be given only sensuously in sensuous “modes of appearance;” and the identical appearing in the changing continuity of these modes of appearance is what the physicist subjects to a causal analysis69 in its relationship to all experienceable (thus perceived or perceivable) concatenations which can be considered as “circumstances,” an exploration with respect to its necessary real connections with them. The physical thing which he observes, with which he experiments, which he continually sees, takes in his hand, puts on the scale or in the melting furnace: that physical thing, and no other, becomes the subject of the predicates ascribed in physics, such as weight, temperature, electrical resistance, and so forth. Likewise, it is the perceived processes and concatenations themselves which become determined by means of concepts such as force, acceleration, energy, atom, ion, etc. The sensuously appearing thing, which has the sensuous shapes, colors, odor- and taste-properties, is thus anything but a sign for some other thing; rather it is, so to speak, a sign for itself.

Only this much can be said: The physical thing appearing with such and such sensuous determinations under the given phenomenal circumstances is, for the physicist, who has already carried out in a universal manner for all such physical things, in phenomenal concatenations of the sort in question, their determination by means of concepts peculiar to physics, an indicative sign of a wealth of causal properties belonging to this same physical thing which, as causal properties, make them­ selves known in phenomenal dependencies of familiar sorts. What makes itself known here — by being made known in intentional unities pertaining to mental processes of consciousness — is obviously something essentially transcendent.

According to all this it is clear that even the higher transcendency characterizing the physical thing as determined by physics does not signify reaching out beyond the world which is for consciousness, or for every Ego functioning as a cognizing subject (singly or in an empathic context).

Indicated in a universal way, the situation is this, that the thinking pertaining to physics establishes itself on the foundation laid by natural experiencing (or by natural positings which it effects). Fol­lowing the rational motives presented to it by the concatenations of experience, it is compelled to effect certain modes of conception, certain intentional constructions required by reason, and to effect them for the theoretical determination of sensuously experienced things. Precisely because of this there arises the contrast between the physical thing as object of the sensuous imaginatio simpliciter and the phys­ical thing as object of the physicist’s intellectio; and, for the latter side, all the ideally inherent ontological formations produced by thinking accrue which become expressed in the concepts peculiar to physics and which draw, and should draw, their sense exclusively from the method of natural science.
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Note that Husserl uses transcendent in his own way. The object transcends all of its adumbrations as something like their intentional unity. I walk around the same tree but what is given to my eyes is constantly different as I keep looking at it in its singularity.

So when you say 'the truth, not just yours or mine', that's what I mean when I refer to THE mind, not your or my mind. You and I are examples or instantiations of the cultural- and species mind. Individuation is an attribute of only the very topmost level of that mind. But that is the mind which the world is not independent of or apart from - not your mind or mine, but THE mind. It's almost like 'mind at large' but it's important not to objectify or reify it. — Quixodian

I wrote a little essay on my biolinked website that casts the embodied species-essence as the [ entangled ] genuine transcendental subject. I say that we are forced by logical decency to 'reify' it in the sense of understanding it as flesh in an encompassing world. Möbius striptease.

Subjectivity is meaningless apart from embodiment in an environment. The whole tradition of methodological solipsism (Hume, Kant, ...) absurdly makes the sense organs their own product and misses that the intelligibly of a subject which is only given a mediated reality depends upon taking ordinary reality as unmediated and mostly trustworthy.

The task is to do justice to the genuine importance and even centrality of subjectivity without going too far and talking nonsense.

I like the quote from Genesis. Timebinding sentient mud. As Feuerbach saw, the qualities of reason are not-so-coincidentally the qualities of God. [He also saw the importance of sensation and how the individual mattered even though thinking is essentially done trans-individually (by the inherited software or ghosts.)]

The rational or theoretical assimilation and dissolution of the God who is other-worldly to religion, and hence not given to it as an object, is the speculative philosophy.
...
The essence of speculative philosophy is nothing other than the rationalised, realised, actualised essence of God. The speculative philosophy is the true, consistent, rational theology.
...
The proof of the proposition that the divine essence is the essence of reason or intelligence lies in the fact that the determinations or qualities of God, in so far as they are rational or intelligible and not determinations of sensuousness or imagination, are, in fact, qualities of reason.

“God is the infinite being or the being without any limitations whatsoever.” But what cannot be a limit or boundary on God can also not be a limit or boundary on reason. If, for example, God is elevated above all limitations of sensuousness, so, too, is reason. He who cannot conceive of any entity except as sensuous, that is, he whose reason is limited by sensuousness, can only have a God who is limited by sensuousness. Reason, which conceives God as an infinite being, conceives, in point of fact, its own infinity in God.

Our flesh has evolved so that we are capable of hosting a kind of immortal time-binding 'species self' ('reason') that depends on no particular body but very much depends on bodies in general. Human culture runs on human flesh. Immortal ontology needs a series of mortal ontologists as hosts.

— plaque flag

Are we then allowed to say…..(the) actually perceived…..should….be regarded as…. intrinsically foreign to it…. — Husserl

“The physical thing as determined by physics, however, is nothing foreign to what appears sensuously”
-Husserl

Ok. One problem solved. The second just says the first should not be allowed.
————-

“What makes itself known here — by being made known in intentional unities pertaining to mental processes of consciousness — is obviously something essentially transcendent. According to all this it is clear that even the higher transcendency characterizing the physical thing as determined by physics does not signify reaching out beyond the world which is for consciousness, or for every Ego functioning as a cognizing subject.”
-Husserl — plaque flag

It is clear that the physical thing determined by physics as obviously something transcendent yet at the same time does not signify reaching out beyond the world which is for consciousness….disregards the concept of immanence, insofar as the domain in question herein, is determined physical things.

How does that which is made known in intensional unities pertaining to mental processes of consciousness, signifying a conjunction with such processes, have at the same time a higher transcendent characterization? There is no real difficulty, as long as one understands the use of transcendent as a characterization under certain conditions, conforms to the notion of transcendental characterization under generally similar conditions, albeit from a greater specificity regarding the method for appearance-processes, re: A288/B344.

Nahhhh….the real problem arises from the former, transcendent, characterizes determinations by physics hence contained in consciousness, whereas the latter, transcendental, denies the very possibility of any determination, hence to consciousness.

Husserl justifies the noumena Kant prohibits, by assigning a different quality and domain to transcendental logic.

I'm afraid that explaining the existence of the world is quite beyond my capacity. But do consider the Buddhist approach, which doesn't begin with the origin of everything, but with the origin of suffering (dukkha). — Quixodian

I see. When I read your remark about not needing a genesis hypothesis, I was reminded of Laplace's well-known rejoinder that his mathematical Science intentionally avoided any supernatural theories*1. Hence, my questions about alternative theories of origins --- other than "it is what it is". In the year 1784, Laplace could reasonably assume that the logical structure of the material world just exists eternally, with no need for an origin story. But today, our sky-watching scientists have inadvertently reopened the original can of worms, with their mathematical evidence for a time with no time or space --- nothing to measure. Thus, raising philosophical "why?" questions, where Laplace only saw practical "how?" questions.

Although I respect your Buddhist avoidance of vexing ultimate metaphysical questions --- focusing instead on proximate reflective Psychology --- my own approach to philosophy is closer to Cosmology than to Theology. So, I wasn't thinking in terms of traditional pre-scientific magic myths to explain how we came to be sentient beings in a world of both suffering and flourishing. Instead, I'm intrigued by the failure of scientists to devise plausible explanations for the contingent existence of the world. Multiverse & Many Worlds & Inflation theories merely assume, as did Laplace, that the temporal material world just-is (Nontology?), needing no further elucidation.

But philosophy is all about such imponderables, taking nothing for granted. So, for me, it's just a question of impractical curiosity : "Why" questions are about Purpose & Causation & Reason. Any answer to such queries is not likely to end the suffering of sentient creatures*2, but it allows us to scratch the itch of observations without reasons ; just irksome never-ending ellipsis . . . . .

For example, why not accept sensory Phenomena as-is, without grasping for extra-sensory Noumena? The elusive butterfly of imagination. Pragmatic scientists may be satisfied with naming what meets the eye, but philosophers are tantalized by what is not apparent, but seems to be logically necessary. For example, an on-going physical world without an initial impetus to impart momentum. Is without ought.

I doubt that conjuring hypothetical explanations for the existence of the world is beyond your capacity. It's just a story to give meaning to the ellipsis. What's hard is actually conjuring a world from nothing. How could that happen? My un-scientific hypothesis begins with "let there be information (logic, form, causation)". :smile:



*1. Laplace's Mathematical World :
"a famous statement by the French mathematician Laplace is constantly misused to buttress atheism. On being asked by Napoleon where God fitted into his mathematical work, Laplace, quite correctly, replied: 'Sir, I have no need of that hypothesis.' Of course God did not appear in Laplace's mathematical description of how things work, just as Mr. Ford would not appear in a scientific description of the laws of internal combustion. But what does that prove? That Henry Ford did not exist? Clearly not. Neither does such an argument prove that God does not exist. Austin Farrer comments on the Laplace incident as follows:'Since God is not a rule built into the action of forces, nor is he a block of force; no sentence about God can play a part in physics or astronomy ..
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Nave-html/Faithpathh/Laplace.html

*2. How do animals deal with suffering?
In simpler animals with small numbers of neurons, such signals activate behaviors through reflex actions that are tuned to escape or defend against harm. In larger-brained animals, things get considerably more complicated.
https://www.aaas.org/why-do-animals-experience-suffering
Note -- In humans, we often treat our suffering by thinking about something else. Psychogenic pain can be ameliorated by "going to your happy place". Meditation & Prayer may be means of avoiding conscious awareness of suffering, by distracting attention from bodily sensations to dis-embodied imagination. Temporarily insentient.

Husserl justifies the noumena Kant prohibits, by assigning a different quality and domain to transcendental logic. — Mww

While Husserl himself may not be entirely consistent or definite in his meaning, in my experience those strongly committed to some kind of 'indirect realist' dualism (as perhaps you are) have trouble understanding what I'd call a phenomenological direct realism, which is not naive but sophisticated, as in the Hegelian reaction to the absurdity of a Reality that is essentially hidden from us. Kant makes the sense organs their own product. He's still a genius, but like all of us mortals (and like Husserl), there are blunders and rough edges.

I still very much stand with the critical spirit of Kant (as opposed to the metaphysical trying to save the essence of his religion somehow.) The gist worth polishing is, in my view, roughly an anthropocentric ontology that sees how easily humans spew out stuff that sounds good but is semantically challenged, museum of round squares and fuzzy liquids, magical gems like the cognition of objects as they 'really' are apart from human cognition, or their description as they are apart from all description. We know nothing of a world apart from the one given to our timebinding cultural flesh, though this same flesh can daydream about pure ur-matter or pure fleshless subjectivity, forgetting itself as a condition of possibility for that daydream -- often for 'good' reasons in a practical sense where the individual subject is usefully transparent.

We know nothing of a world apart from the one given to our timebinding cultural flesh, though this same flesh can daydream about pure ur-matter or pure fleshless subjectivity, forgetting itself as a condition of possibility for that daydream — plaque flag

Which reflects back on that age-old dilemma….the body is certainly necessary, but it is not itself sufficient for such subjectivity. What is given to the cultural flesh is useless without that which has the capacity to do something with it, and even if cultural flesh is merely a euphemism for the brain, the knowledge how regarding subjectivity, is still as missing as it ever was.

I get my realism directly, I’m here to tell ya, got the scars and assorted blemishes to prove it, which is very much the same as reality not being hidden from me. How it is understood may be incorrect, but I can still go through the motions.

Subjectivity is meaningless apart from embodiment in an environment. — plaque flag

Yes. We humans reify our own subjective perspective with the noun label "Self". Since the Self exists invisibly & implicitly inside a vehicle of mud matter, we have no cause to worry about its substance or provenance : the Self is simply Me, and always has been. Moreover, my embodiment is known directly via internal perception (proprioception -- the sense of self-ownership).

What is cause for questioning though is other beings that behave as-if they know what they are doing (self-awareness). Yet, we don't know what is going on inside that other animal, so we cannot experience its self-sensation or self-concept first-hand. But, we can reason that, due to superficial similarities in flesh & behavior, the other body must also possess a motivating Self : a source of causal Will power, to move & guide the body toward its own self-interest within the non-self environment.

Acknowledgement of that other Self/Soul obligates us to treat its mud-made apparatus as-if it too represents an invisible Subjective experiencer of objective Reality. Thus the moral rule of "do unto other selves as-if they are your-own-self". Morally, the immaterial sensing Self is more important than the animated body, but since the essence is dependent upon the substance, we have no alternative to treating Body & Self as a unique composite entity : matter/life, brain/mind.

However, we learn from scientific experience that dissection of a frog results in cessation of froginess. So, we induct a general rule that body/self is an integrated system, with holistic qualities (Life & Mind) that don't exist, in any meaningful sense, in the isolated body parts. The matter is still there, but where did the mind, self, soul disappear to? The Body without the Self is simply meaningless meat. Yet, some imagine that the meat is the more important partner in the Game of Life. :smile:

PS___But important to whom : the Self, the Body, or the Other?

I guess I reject scientific realism if understood in terms of a truly independent object. I challenge it as semantically troubled. — plaque flag

:up: I agree.

As ↪Janus says, philosophy is thinking for oneself, carrying the tacit implication that he’s not being stupid about it. — Mww

I can only aspire not to be stupid about it, and hope that I'm not being (too) stupid about it. :smile:

I agree. — Janus

Nice. Ever look into Meillassoux ? I disagree with him, but he's fascinating.

In this book, Meillassoux argues that post-Kantian philosophy is dominated by what he calls "correlationism", the theory that humans cannot exist without the world nor the world without humans. In Meillassoux's view, this theory allows philosophy to avoid the problem of how to describe the world as it really is independent of human knowledge. He terms this reality independent of human knowledge as the "ancestral" realm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_Meillassoux

Perhaps Meillassoux is correct in France, where the influence of Heidegger is strong. But in my experience our (?) correlationism is not subjective enough for some and not objective enough for others. As I see it, I'm a true empiricist. I know nothing of experience independent of this mortal flesh --of experience without an experiencer. Though I naturally model the world in terms of objects that will survive me, remaining mostly as they are for humans that survive me.

We humans reify our own subjective perspective with the noun label "Self". Since the Self exists invisibly & implicitly inside a vehicle of mud matter, we have no cause to worry about its substance or provenance : the Self is simply Me, and always has been. — Gnomon

In my view, the self is primarily and not incidentally flesh. But (to be fair), the timebinding cultural aspect of the self, largely its linguistic aspect, is a graveleaping ghost. Metaphorically speaking, this or that individual body is its temporary host. As a philosopher, I, as mortal self, take up the grand conversation as I inherit it and hopefully push it along, leave a worthy footnote. We seem to operate both cooperatively and adversarially. We cooperate by challenging one another in rationality's second-order ontological tradition. We expect to be corrected. We expect to synthesize various partial truths into a less partial truth, etc.

Morally, the immaterial sensing Self is more important than the animated body, but since the essence is dependent upon the substance, we have no alternative to treating Body & Self as a unique composite entity : matter/life, brain/mind. — Gnomon

:up:

I agree in the sense that Milton said that bookburning was worse than murder. I don't think the human spirit is truly immaterial anymore than our data on the cloud is. But it is so mobile, leaping from server to server, that it's as thin as the air that rattles the leaves on the trees. The philosopher learns how to die by learning how to live more and more in Popper's World 3 or its analogue. Disidentification with the petty self looks to be an honorable flight from death into the only plausible (and only relative) immortality.

I think the self is composite in the sense of having different aspects. As I see it, all reality is one in some important sense. But as practical sense-making beings we need our distinctions, our imaginary atomizations (useful fictions).

Which reflects back on that age-old dilemma….the body is certainly necessary, but it is not itself sufficient for such subjectivity. What is given to the cultural flesh is useless without that which has the capacity to do something with it, and even if cultural flesh is merely a euphemism for the brain, the knowledge how regarding subjectivity, is still as missing as it ever was. — Mww

Just to be clear, I don't deny the strangeness of subjectivity. We aren't just meat. The world 'depends' in an elusive way on our subjectivity.

At the moment, I like to think of consciousness as the being of the world for an individual subject. I am aware of the world and not of my image of the world. Others who doubt my claims may talk of my perspective. This metaphor is reasonable. We all look on the same world through or with eyes that are in different places. What I think we can't talk about is the world as it is apart from us. We know nothing of such an entity. It's a mere fantasy.

But this does not make the world-for-us a mere dream, for our subjectivity only makes sense if understood as localized in world-encompassed flesh. Hence the radical bone-deep entanglement of subject and object and something like Hegelian direct realism.

our subjectivity only makes sense if understood as localized in world-encompassed flesh. — plaque flag

Ehhhh…..subjectivity is just another in a series of useful fictions and makes sense only in speculative metaphysics, a useful fiction which has its location in pure reason, a useless fiction itself….and the fictional circle is enlarged and self-sustained by the quantity of useful fictions contained by it. As such, its locality is irrelevant….even metaphorically….when elucidation of its purpose is all that can be expected of it.
————

I can only aspire not to be stupid about it…. — Janus

Aye. You, me, and hopefully all those who “rise to the height of speculation”.

It's hard to make sense of your talk of all of those useless fictions. Is anything real ? If not, then 'fiction' is meaningless.

Are you really (earnestly) claiming that human bodies experiencing the world aren't real ? What can 'real' even mean in such a context?

Is anything real ? — plaque flag

Of course. Just shouldn’t mix the empirically real with the logically valid.

Are you really (earnestly) claiming that human bodies experiencing the world aren't real ? — plaque flag

Human bodies are real;
Experience is a condition of an intelligent subject;
The body is not an intelligent subject;
Bodies do not experience.

Human bodies are real;
Experience is a condition of an intelligent subject;
The body is not an intelligent subject;
Bodies do not experience. — Mww

OK. I take it that you endorse something like an immaterial discursive subject ?
Correlated with the body ? Or what ?

Speaking more carefully, I'd say the subject is just a person, a total human being. We typically say a person 'has' a body because of our profound timebinding conceptuality and, as Brandom takes from Kant, the profound normativity of the discursive subject. Basically the personal subject lives, as discursive and rational, in a ( normative ) space of reasons.

So I'll concede that, strictly speaking, bodies do not experience.

But (to be fair), the timebinding cultural aspect of the self, largely its linguistic aspect, is a graveleaping ghost. Metaphorically speaking, this or that individual body is its temporary host. — plaque flag

Poetically expressed. But I'm not sure what you are implying. "Graveleaping ghost" sounds like reincarnation. I've seen that notion portrayed fictionally in movies : for example a man's soul gets transplanted into a woman's body, and has to learn to deal (comically) with the different physicality of its new host. But I'm not aware of any real-world souls escaping the flesh prison, and taking up residence in some other soul's body. Such ideas make amusing fiction & fantasy, but is there a factual basis? Is my soulful dog the new body of an expired blues musician? If so, how would I know?

Of course cultural immortality is a common way to speak of a writer's or artist's mind, as incarnated in objective forms, continuing to "live-on" in the minds of other embodied souls. But such an unexperienced "life" may be cold comfort to the dead or disembodied soul, with no sensory organs plugged into the non-self system. :smile:

“I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.”
― Woody Allen

Of course cultural immortality is a common way to speak of a writer's or artist's mind, as incarnated in objective forms, continuing to "live-on" in the minds of other embodied souls. — Gnomon

And of course that's precisely what I'm referring to.

But such an unexperienced "life" may be cold comfort to the dead or disembodied soul, with no sensory organs plugged into the non-self system. — Gnomon

The issue is perhaps whether one identifies more with the cultural self or its host. To read a great writer is to assimilate, to some degree, the spirit crystallized in the work. I think the marks are themselves 'dead,' but as traces of life they can guide living flesh [or the discursive normative self 'inside' this flesh ] to the same insights that inspired their inscription.
Like anyone, I'm attached to my own flesh. But I can make a respectable empathetic leap as I imagine a young man, with fresh sense organs [my eyesight ain't what it used to be], coming to certain glorious realizations all over again. Maybe, if the gods love me [just an expression --- if I'm lucky, I mean ] , I can even contribute a little footnote to the canon of worthy traces, a slight clarification of the essentially social and universal ontological enterprise -- a noble-seeming aspiration at least.

I'd say the subject is just a person, a total human being. — plaque flag

So no subject/object dualism?

So I'll concede that, strictly speaking, bodies do not experience. — plaque flag

So tacit acknowledgement of subject/object dualism?

There is no right or wrong here. Just whatever one favors, er…..subjectively.