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Direct Experience

Started by Prelate Diogenes Shandor, May 27, 2016, 06:24:21 AM

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Prelate Diogenes Shandor

A lot has been made by philosophers of how we can never truly experience the world directly, that we can only experience the input of our senses as interpreted by the mind. The implication is that we would understand the world better if it could somehow be directly perceived. This is not necessarily the case however, as I recently realized that there is one thing that we do experience directly, to wit, the biological processes of the brain. And we don't know shit about them. It's only since we've developed means of examining them from the outside in that we've gained what little understanding we have of what they do and how they work.
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The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Prelate Diogenes Shandor on May 27, 2016, 06:24:21 AM
A lot has been made by philosophers of how we can never truly experience the world directly,

This is why philosophers starve to death on the daily.
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POFP

Quote from: Prelate Diogenes Shandor on May 27, 2016, 06:24:21 AM
A lot has been made by philosophers of how we can never truly experience the world directly, that we can only experience the input of our senses as interpreted by the mind. The implication is that we would understand the world better if it could somehow be directly perceived. This is not necessarily the case however, as I recently realized that there is one thing that we do experience directly, to wit, the biological processes of the brain. And we don't know shit about them. It's only since we've developed means of examining them from the outside in that we've gained what little understanding we have of what they do and how they work.



Disregarding some misconceptualization, you seem to be on to something that has already been discussed many many times. Long before we had a decent understanding of the brain.

As long as you can refrain from going all "THE BARSTOOL ISN'T REAL," I'd look into Alfred Korzybski. Don't listen to modern General Semanticists, though.

As Roger stated, they are starving.
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Prelate Diogenes Shandor

I think this is more neoumenon vs. phenomenon than territory vs. map (though admittedly there's a lot pf overlap bteween the two dichotomies)
Praise NHGH! For the tribulation of all sentient beings.


a plague on both your houses -Mercutio


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrTGgpWmdZQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVWd7nPjJH8


It is an unfortunate fact that every man who seeks to disseminate knowledge must contend not only against ignorance itself, but against false instruction as well. No sooner do we deem ourselves free from a particularly gross superstition, than we are confronted by some enemy to learning who would plunge us back into the darkness -H.P.Lovecraft


He who fights with monsters must take care lest he thereby become a monster -Nietzsche


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhrZgojY1Q


You are a fluke of the universe, and whether you can hear it of not the universe is laughing behind your back -Deteriorata


Don't use the email address in my profile, I lost the password years ago

MithridatesXXIII

If you are still interested in this topic you may want to listen to lectures by Searle. Not analysis of him, but his actual lectures by him, as his most outspoken critics are almost uniformly terrible. Searle is a strong proponent of naive realism. He makes strong distinctions between objective and subjective experience by breaking it down further to what he calls the ontologically and epistemologically objective and subjective. I have my quibbles with it but it is most definitely worth a listen if you are tired of philosophers promoting ideas which point to a solipsistic nightmare.

Rev Thwack

I've never been able to get any philosopher to explain exactly how one would directly experience and observe reality without the use of a biological apparatus designed/evolved for the purpose of experiencing and observing reality.
My balls itch...

LMNO

I may be wrong, but it sounds like you may be a bit off track.

As far as I understand it, the question isn't about directly experiencing reality, it's about wholly experiencing reality.  The mechanisms so far developed limit the experience rather severely (Cf: BIP).

MithridatesXXIII

Quote from: Rev Thwack on January 10, 2017, 03:10:43 PM
I've never been able to get any philosopher to explain exactly how one would directly experience and observe reality without the use of a biological apparatus designed/evolved for the purpose of experiencing and observing reality.

Most likely because that statement sounds like "How can something detect without means of detection or means to parse what is detected".

I'm not trying to be snarky, but if there's some nuance I'm not capturing, I'd be interested in a reformulation of the idea.

Rev Thwack

@LMNO

It's not that I'm off track, it's that I like to nitpick what people say. I've talked to people who have said that we can't know the nature of reality because we can't directly experience and observe it. They were trying to imply that we needed more precise input methods, but that's not how they phrased their claims. Yes, I've talked to some who simply say that the limits of our senses hinder our ability to understand... I'm totally fine with people making that argument. It's the ones who are trying to push some narrative about how we can't make any claims about understanding because our observations are not precise enough are the ones I take issue with, and the ones I verbally poke at.


@MithridatesXXIII

No, that's actually what the statement is... I'm asking what non-detector detector they want to use to detect that which they claim can only be detected without a detector. It's a response to being told "We can never understand the nature of reality until we can experience it directly".
My balls itch...

MithridatesXXIII

When most people advance such claims they are usually trying to claim that we're perceiving our perceptions vice an object.

Rev Thwack

Yep. I'm totally fine with people making claims like that, as long as they have some outstandingly strong supporting logic, or they're going to admit they've been drinking bongwater peyote cocktails. I'm up for either way, but at least be honest to yourself about your path.
My balls itch...

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: LMNO on January 10, 2017, 03:48:06 PM
I may be wrong, but it sounds like you may be a bit off track.

As far as I understand it, the question isn't about directly experiencing reality, it's about wholly experiencing reality.  The mechanisms so far developed limit the experience rather severely (Cf: BIP).

So this is sort of my bailiwick, both as a neuroscientist and having taught two terms of Perception and Sensation.

It's really both; we experience the physical world indirectly, through the interface of our senses, and we construct our perception of reality in our brains. That's just how it works. People get all shoegazey about it, but in my mind it's simply a practical matter of "how do you get an organism to interface with the material world?". You have to have sensory inputs, and some kind of processing center for making sense of the sensory input, and some means of responding to it.

At the same time, our sensory inputs are limited, in that no organism has sensory inputs for all possible physical stimuli. So,  there is a great deal of physical reality that we have no sensory receptors for (such as UV light) and must instead infer from what we CAN sense.

So, what we do sense of the world, we must construct in our brains, and also there is much we are unable to sense.

We don't directly experience the biological mechanisms taking place in our brains; we experience the summation of those mechanisms after they have been processed into something we can makes sense of.
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Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Oh, and there are many, many excellent modern philosophers, most of whom have been trained in one of the philosophical disciplines we call "sciences".
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


LMNO

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on January 10, 2017, 08:03:49 PM
Oh, and there are many, many excellent modern philosophers, most of whom have been trained in one of the philosophical disciplines we call "sciences".

O SNAP