• Art48
    485
    Matter is not what we experience. Rather, matter is our explanation of what we experience.
    We experience only sensations: physical sensations, emotional sensations, and mental sensations.
    Other explanations of experience include Descartes' Evil Demon, hard solipsism, brain in a vat, etc.
    Matter is a very good explanation of what we experience.
    Newtonian Mechanics is a very good explanation of what we experience.
    Newtonian Mechanics is not true. Perhaps, the matter explanation is also not true.
    Thoughts?
  • Paine
    2.7k

    You presume what you might conclude. If 'matter' is not a something we encounter in experience, then it has been shuttled off into another ward.

    No need to speak ill of it or praise it.
  • Janus
    16.8k
    We give the name 'matter' to, and arguably derive the idea of matter from, that which we understand to constitute the things encountered by the senses. We also speak of "subject matter" and what "matters", and I think the underlying idea is one of substance and of what is substantive.
  • NOS4A2
    9.5k
    We experience only sensations. We sense only experiences. We see only sight. We feel only feelings. We think only thoughts.

    In grammar it’s called nominalization. It’s also known as “zombie nouns”, because by adding the suffix and removing the active function from its verb-form you take the life out of the word. Like matter, yours are explanations as well, except they’re circular.
  • Gregory
    4.8k


    Maybe the senses don't exist, as you understand them. Can you point to them? An ear is matter. So is a nose. Sight is miraculous in that you can *SEE* something you aren't touching. The eyes are shamans. The senses are labels
  • hypericin
    1.7k
    Matter is not what we experience. Rather, matter is our explanation of what we experience.Art48

    Matter is both what we experience, and the explanation of our experiences.

    When we see a tree, we experience visual sensations. These visual sensations are experiences of a tree.

    The word "experience" can refer to the phenomenology, or to the cause of the phenomenology. When I go to a concert, I experience sounds, and by doing so I experience the instruments, and the players. When I visit Prague I experience a beautiful city, and I experience all the sights sounds and smells this city induces in me.

    It's just that one, the phenomenology, is an "experience of" the other, the object.
  • Gregory
    4.8k
    we see a tree, we experience visual sensations.hypericin

    I think it's more true that we experience an Other than that in that moment we experience subjective sensation, Husserl be damned. Empiricism trades clarity for cozy tingles not useful for knowledge, Locke be damned
  • Art48
    485
    When we see a tree, we experience visual sensations. These visual sensations are experiences of a tree.hypericin

    In a mirage, we experience visual sensations of water but we do NOT experience water.
    The point of the original post is we can be 100% certain of the sensations we experience but we can not be 100% certain of the cause of the sensations.
  • DifferentiatingEgg
    224
    The point of the original post is we can be 100% certain of the sensations we experience but we can not be 100% certain of the cause of the sensations.Art48

    Have you tried analytic philosophy? A good deal of it is about overcoming this very notion which means very very little in the grand scheme of things. Fact is you cannot be 100% certain wtf is in your mind is your own either...

    To assume so, just means you're a solipsist as per Wittgenstein's account of solipsism.

    Cause thoughts come when they want and not when you wish they do. Which means something can be feeding you everything including fake experiences.

    More or less, the mind isn't the end all be all. "I can't be certain this tree is a tree." Okay well, when you figure it out let me know mate.

    The whole matrix solipsism thing is just like... "were really still discussing this ?" / simulation theory

    Such a boring scifi gimmick imo.

    And Newtonian mechanics are true, btw. His work isn't something you just get to toss aside cause you're a solipsist. You're quite bound by the mechanics he points out. Try going against them, you may not find yourself living very long...
  • T Clark
    14.2k
    Matter is not what we experience . . .Art48

    No concept, word, is what it refers to. When we say "matter" it's not an explanation, it's just a label, a finger pointing.
  • hypericin
    1.7k
    The point of the original post is we can be 100% certain of the sensations we experience but we can not be 100% certain of the cause of the sensations.Art48

    It might be the case, but this is not what you posted in your op. Your original claim was that we experience sensations, not matter.

    We can experience things without being 100% certain of them. I experience you via this interaction, but I am not 100% certain of your existence, as you might be a LLM. I can doubt you in a way that I could not if we were speaking face to face. But that does not mean I am not experiencing you and your communication (assuming you are real).
  • Art48
    485
    Your original claim was that we experience sensations, not matter.hypericin
    We do not directly experience matter. Matter might be the cause of our sensations, but we don't know that it is. We know we experience sensations. Matter is one explanation for the cause of those sensations. Other explanations of what we experience include Descartes' Evil Demon, Brain in a Vat (the thought underlying the movie The Matrix), the Simulation Hypothesis, and Hard Solipsism. Didn't Kant make the point that we experience phenomena but cannot know the noumena, the cause of the phenomena?

    As an analogy, we are like security guards watching monitors. We see and hear what we believe is occurring on, say, a loading dock. But we are not allowed to leave the monitoring room, so we have no way of verifying the sights and sounds are coming from an actual, real, existing loading dock. Perhaps, a computer is generating sights and sounds we perceive, but no actual loading dock exists. Perhaps, the loading dock once existed and the sights and sounds were recording and are now being replayed. We cannot leave our monitoring room so we can never directly experience the loading dock. We experience only phenomena (the sights and sounds of the loading dock) but we cannot experience noumena (the apparent loading dock itself.)

    This video makes a similar point: .https://youtu.be/1mW3nrQEJ8A
  • hypericin
    1.7k
    We do not directly experience matter.Art48

    But this I agree with. Your original claim was that we don't experience matter at all.

    Your argument is with the direct realists, not with me. But, that one was long, exhausting, and done with.
  • jkop
    948
    We experience only sensations: physical sensations, emotional sensations, and mental sensations.Art48

    Sensations may arise when you see a cat, for instance, but what you see and sense and thus experience is the cat, not sensations. To say that we only experience sensations is plainly false. The cat is not a sensation.
  • Corvus
    4.2k
    Matter is a very good explanation of what we experience.
    Newtonian Mechanics is a very good explanation of what we experience.
    Newtonian Mechanics is not true. Perhaps, the matter explanation is also not true.
    Thoughts?
    Art48

    There are different levels of experience. When you think about X, which is not present in front of you, X is just a mental image or concept. You can imagine about X, think about X, and reason about X.

    If X is a physical object located in space and time, then you can actually go to X, and see, touch and feel X with your own bodily sensation. If X is something that you have never seen before, and it is the first time of your encounter with X, then X may appear as matter to you, in which case you could measure the size and even weigh on the scale. In this case, all you get is just the measurement of the size and weight of X.

    Let's say X is a familiar object, such as tree, cup or a person. You know X by all the available properties given to you via your bodily sensation i.e sight which gives the shape, size, and the name i.e. tree, cup, a person etc. Not only you can perceive them in vivid sensation, but also you can interact with them. You can climb up the tree, make coffee and pour into the cup, or say Hi to the person etc etc. You experience them in reality with vividness and forcefulness.

    Hence, it doesn't quite make sense, just to say you cannot experience matter. You must also think about what level and type of experience or perception you are having with the matter or object. All the debates on idealism and realism are meaningless in that sense, because they never think about the type of perception or experience which are also the critical factor in the idea of existence and sensation.
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    13.5k
    We see and hear what we believe is occurring on, say, a loading dock. But we are not allowed to leave the monitoring room, so we have no way of verifying the sights and sounds are coming from an actual, real, existing loading dock.Art48

    This is why we do scientific experiments. We poke and prod the thing and see how it responds. But this raises the following question. If it is true that "we are not allowed to leave the monitoring room", then what gives us the capacity to poke and prod the thing?

    So I think that premise, that we are not allowed to leave the monitoring room is not true. We do interact with that world which is explained by "matter". And from our interactions we produce the explanations. But this raises a number of further questions, like how do we judge our explanations, and what inclined you to separate yourself from what you experience, in the first place. Why do you believe that your self is something more than your experience, so that the explanation is proper to your self, and what you experience is something other? What happens if the explanation itself is part of the experience?
  • Philosophim
    2.8k
    You may be interested in reading this then. There's a summary the next post down to help. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14044/knowledge-and-induction-within-your-self-context/p1

    Basically you're noting a difference between knowledge and truth. Truth is what is. Knowledge is what we can logically ascertain that does is not contradicted by the truth.
  • MoK
    972

    If matter is not what the mind directly experiences then it is something else, let's call it X. X has to exist objectively though otherwise the experiencing is not possible. X however has properties that cause our experiences to have features, so-called Qualia.
  • Mikie
    6.9k
    The point of the original post is we can be 100% certain of the sensations we experienceArt48

    What’s interesting about posts like these is the psychology that motivates it.

    “Certainty” somehow is important, and saying this string of letters or this particular group of sounds we make — “sensations,” “consciousness,” “being,” “reality,” — is the one thing we can be sure of indicates that value.

    Who cares about certainty in the first place? Or what’s true or real or fact? Maybe all of that is nonsense to begin with (which is what I think) and we’re just swimming aimlessly downstream from Descartes and Plato’s conceptions of the world.

    Why did Descartes care about finding something “certain” in the first place? Why do you?

    Sensations are no more certain than anything else. Sometimes just acknowledging that life is kind of groundless is good for you.
  • Art48
    485
    To say that we only experience sensations is plainly false. The cat is not a sensation.jkop
    So, in addition to the senses of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell, we have other senses?
    In particular, we have a special cat-sensing sense?
    And when we see an apple, we use our special apple-sensing sense?
    What we call a cat is a bundle of sensations.
    A material cat may exist which is causes us to experience the bundle of sensations which we call a cat.
    Or maybe we're a brain in a vat (as in The Matrix movie). Or we're hallucinating. etc.

    Who cares about certainty in the first place? Or what’s true or real or fact?
    Scientists care. The investigated the funny phenomena of rubbing fur on amber for centuries, which led them to eventually understand electricity, which led to the screen you are reading this on.

    If matter is not what the mind directly experiences then it is something else, let's call it X. X has to exist objectively though otherwise the experiencing is not possible. X however has properties that cause our experiences to have features, so-called Qualia.MoK
    Exactly.

    This is why we do scientific experiments. We poke and prod the thing and see how it responds. But this raises the following question. If it is true that "we are not allowed to leave the monitoring room", then what gives us the capacity to poke and prod the thing?Metaphysician Undercover
    This is a good point which shows the inadequacy of monitoring room analogy. See first response above about cat-sensing sense. My senses tell me I'm picking up a cat, petting it, etc. but everything I experience still all sensation, is it not? Cannot someone who is a brain in a vat or hallucinating, have the sensor experience of doing experiments and experiencing the results?
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    13.5k

    My spidey sense is tingling, something evil is underway here.

    Your senses don't tell you "I'm picking up a cat", that is a form of interpretation, done by your mind or your brain, something other than the sense organs.

    The "brain in a vat", or other explanations appear like alternative explanations, but they all involve problems. For instance, if it's a brain in a vat, where do the senses fit in? They are not part of the brain, and not part of the thing sensed, how do they fit into the brain in a vat scenario? There is a type of interaction problem which occurs if we try to make the brain the sole source of the sensations. In other words, we still have to account for how sensations are caused to appear to that brain. If the brain was creating its own sensations, wouldn't it know that it was doing this? Self deception appears impossible from this perspective, because there is only a brain and nothing else, therefore an evil demon is require. But how does the evil demon get the sensations into the brain without any senses?

    So the issue I pointed to, is that there is an "interaction" between the person (self, mind, consciousness, or whatever), and the proposed separate world. Placing "the cause" as completely on one side or the other, solely outside the self, or solely inside the self, are both, each in its own way, deficient ways of looking at things.
  • Harry Hindu
    5.2k
    This is a good point which shows the inadequacy of monitoring room analogy. See first response above about cat-sensing sense. My senses tell me I'm picking up a cat, petting it, etc. but everything I experience still all sensation, is it not? Cannot someone who is a brain in a vat or hallucinating, have the sensor experience of doing experiments and experiencing the results?Art48

    The "brain in a vat", or other explanations appear like alternative explanations, but they all involve problems.Metaphysician Undercover
    Unfettered skepticism that leads to questioning how, or even if, we experience an external world would create all sorts of problems for the brain in a vat idea. Brains and vats are material objects that are experienced, so if you're questioning the reality of your experience then that would include the ontological existence of brains and vats. It makes no sense to question the existence of the material world using a thought experiment involving material objects. By invoking the idea of the existence of the material objects of brains and vats, you're automatically implying that material objects exist and we can perceive them as they are - as brains and vats.
  • jkop
    948
    A material cat may exist which is causes us to experience the bundle of sensations which we call a cat.Art48

    The cat exists independent of your bundle of sensations. If you'd only experience sensations, then you'd never experience anything else. Yet you know of a cat, and publish the word, neither being bundles of your sensations. When I feed my cat, I feed the cat, not a bundle of sensations.
  • Moliere
    5.1k
    Didn't Kant make the point that we experience phenomena but cannot know the noumena, the cause of the phenomena?Art48

    We experience phenomena.

    We cannot know the noumena.

    But since we experience cause -- causation is one of the Categories which organize experience -- phenomena are governed by causality.

    We're tempted to say that the noumena causes phenomena because that makes sense of the noumena, but it's only a temptation. Once we have causality we are no longer talking about the noumena.
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    13.5k
    Unfettered skepticism that leads to questioning how, or even if, we experience an external world would create all sorts of problems for the brain in a vat idea. Brains and vats are material objects that are experienced, so if you're questioning the reality of your experience then that would include the ontological existence of brains and vats. It makes no sense to question the existence of the material world using a thought experiment involving material objects. By invoking the idea of the existence of the material objects of brains and vats, you're automatically implying that material objects exist and we can perceive them as they are - as brains and vats.Harry Hindu

    That's true, but I think the issue of skepticism is better represented as questioning whether things are as they seem to be. The conception of "matter" involves specific spatiotemporal references in relation to our perceptions. The "brain in a vat" scenario is just an example of how reality could be radically different from the way that we perceive it. So the example serves its purpose regardless of whether we conceive the "brain in a vat" as material, it still demonstrates that this entire conception of "material world", along with the brain in a vat aspect, could be completely wrong.
  • Pantagruel
    3.5k
    Matter is not what we experience. Rather, matter is our explanation of what we experience.
    We experience only sensations: physical sensations, emotional sensations, and mental sensations.
    Other explanations of experience include Descartes' Evil Demon, hard solipsism, brain in a vat, etc.
    Matter is a very good explanation of what we experience.
    Newtonian Mechanics is a very good explanation of what we experience.
    Newtonian Mechanics is not true. Perhaps, the matter explanation is also not true.
    Thoughts?
    Art48

    Yes, objective reality is an inference. So it really devolves into a question of certainty.

    My question would be whether cogito ergo sum represents (subjective) certainty of our own objective existence. In which case matter might get to go along for the ride.
  • Harry Hindu
    5.2k
    That's true, but I think the issue of skepticism is better represented as questioning whether things are as they seem to be. The conception of "matter" involves specific spatiotemporal references in relation to our perceptions. The "brain in a vat" scenario is just an example of how reality could be radically different from the way that we perceive it. So the example serves its purpose regardless of whether we conceive the "brain in a vat" as material, it still demonstrates that this entire conception of "material world", along with the brain in a vat aspect, could be completely wrong.Metaphysician Undercover
    It only seems to question whether we can trust our senses in a material world of brains in vats. The thought experiment still implies that brains requires sensory input from outside of itself. The brain in a vat needs to receive input through its sensory interfaces and would still be connect to the outside world in some way.

    I don't believe that our senses lie. They provide information about the world and it is our interpretation of what the senses are telling us that is either accurate or not.

    If we were brains in vats, what would be the purpose of us experiencing illusions, hallucinations or dreams? What would be the purpose of the experiment, or the reason why our brain is in a vat? Who put the brain in a vat - some entities that do see the world as it is? How would they know that they are not brains in vats? In the same way the "this is a simulation" thought experiment creates an infinite regress of how the simulators don't know they are in a simulation, etc., how do the mad scientists that put our brains in vats know that they are not themselves brains in vats? Why would the mad scientists allow us to even conceive that we might be brains in vats if the point was to fool us?

    So I don't see how the thought experiment is useful. It seems simpler to just say that we interpret our sensory input incorrectly when we make knee-jerk assumptions about what it is we are experiencing, but when we use both observation and reason over time (scientific method) we are able to get at the world with more accuracy. I think that many of these discussions regarding how we know the world do not take this into account. It seems to take examples where we only had one observation to go by - like seeing a mirage for the first time - and then running with that without taking into account that we eventually realize what a mirage is by making more observations over time and applying reason (puddles of water do not move further away when we move toward them).
  • Arne
    836
    And therefore?
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