Rolling Philosophy

... he seems to think that if a problem is expressed in terms that don't chime with natural language usage, then the problem, and the whole research programme behind it, are *necessarily* meaningless.

Surely to wonder what the sonar sensory experience of a bat is like, and if it is anything like vision, or anything like hearing, or something completely different, is perfectly simple, and understandable, and legitimate - regardless even of whether or not one is committed to the idea of qualia.

I see Dennett is mentioned in that article but really the dude needs to engage with what Dennett says rather than just bollocksing on and ignoring it.

I've never seriously engaged with Dennett meself. I'm a big qualia fan so I really should find out how he thinks he can explain them away.

Just argues that everything can be explained by biological process iirc. Agree.

Aye well. That's the leap I struggle with. Biological processes, or anything material, to conscious experience. I know this potentially makes me sound like some kind of horrendous dualist or epiphenomenalist. But could you find out what a bat's sonar sensory experience is *like*, just by inspecting the biological process?

The desire to find out what an experience is like, and the experience of feeling that likeness, seem totally explainable via brain function to me. I think the argument against is the harder case at this point in history.

Like, why add on an extra layer of mystery above and beyond the observable?

my experience is an observable!

What is it that's doing the observing?

Just argues that everything can be explained by biological process iirc. Agree.

Explain to who, though? To language using creatures who ineliminably see a world in intentional terms, or to unimaginable creatures who *know* it's biological process all the way down?

I mean how do they *know*?

Explain to human beings thinking about being human beings. Intentionality really has nothing to do with it, this feels like basic Occam's Razor stuff to me.

Dualism is such a busted flush.

Lucky you, so...

To say that *I think* my experience can be explained in terms of biological process - by which i take you to mean law- governed, predictable? - seems a performative contradiction to me. There can be no 'I' thinking this, if what the 'I' thinks is the case.

xp

I don't think there is an I in the sense you mean. A theoretically predictable law also leaves room for tremendous difficulty of prediction, maybe up to the point where prediction is only a theoretical possibility rather than a practical one.

There can be no 'I' thinking this, if what the 'I' thinks is the case.

Explain to human beings thinking about being human beings

Any human beings? Could you 'explain' vision, in terms of biological processess, to a blind person?

... yes?

I mean no obviously I couldn't give a blind person the experience of vision through any kind of explanation. I also couldn't give a paraplegic the experience of playing Dance Dance Revolution, but I could still tell him how the game works.

GCSE Biology iirc

I'm down with Davidson here - monism, but dual-aspect, or some such. Perhaps engaging in philosophical thought when I have to leave the house in one minute is not a good idea.

Why can't it be thinking this as part of a biological process?

May it can be, maybe it is in some ultimately real way, but it can't 'think' this, if 'thinking' means what it thinks it means.

'Maybe it can be'

I mean no obviously I couldn't give a blind person the experience of vision through any kind of explanation

well y'know to me that seems like a pretty big explanatory failure.

I begin to feel like this is almost a religious position - in the sense that those on one side just *feel*, intuitively and strongly, that there is something that the scientific picture leaves out, and those who seem to feel that there is nothing in need of explanation.

No there is plenty in need of explanation, it's more a case of believing that it's explicable vs believing in magic.

Obligatory douchey dichotomy there, soz.

well y'know to me that seems like a pretty big explanatory failure.

I'm very skeptical about the capacity of language to explain any phenomenology, let alone a phenomenology of vision

i'm kind of being facetious

Expressibility thru language feels like a red herring here tho, since nobody's claiming that language = the totality of brain function I don't think.

I think phenomenology is basically outwith the capacity of explanation, it is something that can only be understood through experience. This may or may not be controversial.

Actually i think bernard's DDR paraplegic was interesting. Is that a simple and mundane example of something non-phenomenological that cannot be 'explained'? Or is it phenomenological at its core?

I think it's telling that all of us who can see "understand" the experience of sight phenomenologically (even if we aren't conscious of it) and very few of us could explain scientifically the processes of light and the biological basis of seeing. Even a complete full case of the latter doesn't give the former (and, obv, vice-versa too).

Telling what? How do you go from the uniqueness of phenomena to separating them from an aspect of brain function?

I guess I also don't see what the basis is for putting such extreme burdens of explanation on a biological theory of consciousness that, as far as I know, would posit the inseparability of mental 'experience' and (for lack of a better word right now) behavior. Like, it is one thing to aggregate a number of empirical behaviors into one common phenomenon called 'sight'; it is another thing to posit that there is some 'experience' of sight which is shared by all people who have engaged in those behaviors; and it is still a third thing to insist that any explanation for the phenomenon of sight must also be able to make the 'experience' of sight accessible to people who have never engaged in any of the behaviors.

also I would maybe want to dispute this
all of us who can see "understand" the experience of sight phenomenologically (even if we aren't conscious of it)
on the basis of optical illusions, that internet video with the basketball-passing people, etc -- what we "understand" is how to utilize our eyes in many of the most common situations to achieve a desired end result, like reading a word or tracking an object.

I guess I'm not really sure what we're arguing about anymore (or are we arguing at all?). It seems to me like a mechanistic explanation of various phenomena will never fully account for the full phenomena. For instance, I'm not sure that science* (*I don't really know what this word means here either, but I imagine we're using some loose Enlightenment distinction) can explain why when I look at something sad its affect is transmitted and I experience sadness too. It can maybe point out the spike in a particular chemical in my brain, but it can't locate the genesis of that chemical outside my internal processes. When someone says something mean to me and my feelings get hurt, science can't trace that affectual spike through the air. To bernard snowy, tho, I'd definitely agree with his second option (that there is some 'experience' of sight which is shared by all people who have engaged in those behaviors) and I'm more skeptical about language's ability to transmit that experience whatsoever. I just worry tho that giving everything a mechanistic explanation is a way of ignoring parts of the phenomena that we know are real but that can't necessarily be measured.

never fully account for the full phenomenon*

"y sad things make u sad" seems like a unproblematic candidate for scientific explanation to me. mirror neurons, intention as representation, something evolution something, blah de blah. For me at least, I think it's purely the non-material, phenomenological quality of experience, which is not captured by current scientific thinking.

Here's where we reach the problem of what 'science' is. If it's just accurately predicting various phenomena, then yes, it can probably be used to explain something like transmission of affect. But if it's more determining mechanistic functionality (particularly rooted in physics/biology) then I think transmission of affect will always be a challenge to explain. But you could also say that we understand some non-material quality specifically through a (also Enlightenment) study of things like sociology, social psychology, and even continental philosophy that deals with phenomenology -- like what puts Husserl outside the science discussion (esp since science's pedigree runs through philosophy).

really the problem we're all dancing around here is internal time-consciousness

guess I need to read Sein und Zeit after all...

this guy hacker is oddly enough not ending up too far from deleuze and guattari in his definition of philosophy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yi7m9IqsAU

video mustve literally just got removed b/c I watched it a few minutes ago and now its gone

yeah, that is weird

it was the excerpt from the crying game

oh yeah, forgot that part

my eternal love to the term 'hypokeimenon'.

what y'all reading at the moment? i just started iain hamilton grant's on an artificial earth: philosophies of nature after schelling, although i haven't read enough to say more than 'seems pretty cool'. i don't know shit about german idealism, so this is step one (or maybe like one point five) in my movement towards being hip to the current academic trends.

dunno about anyone else but i'd still be interested in an ilxor philosophy reading group. hm? although my interest in doing after finitude has waned, in large part because of reading what i think is his most recent (or most recently translated) article, on immanence, and wondering why he's such a crazyman. albeit a provocative one.

Anyone have thoughts about Alasdair MacIntyre and whether After Virture is worth reading? I loved Short History of Morality.

(braces)

mdx — I've seen that book before, although it was just called Philosophies of Nature After Schelling (assuming they're the same one — continuum press?) — couldn't make much of what I glanced at tho.

I'm not really reading any 'pure philosophy' at the moment (Derrida maybe the closest thing?) — mostly history-of-philosophy type stuff (just started on Martin Jay's book abt the Frankfurt School, which looks to be grebt, and I'm not sure why I put it off for long), + uh, various forms of 'theory'