You aren't operating over my head. I understand what you are saying.
The first thing, is that you are thinking of phen exp from the human perspective. This is problematic because the human does not solely experience the qualitative nature of environmental features. You, as a human, frame or couch your experiences into a introspective, analysed, conceptual world-view. This is more than pure phen exp.
No ... I'm not. I disagree that the human experience is that separate from say my dogs experience - I think we have very ordinary, everyday access to pure phenomenal experience - I dont always couch or frame my experiences into an introspective, analysed, conceptual world-view - that is a very cerebral way of operating and I think some people do spend all or most of their time in this mode -
I can go back and look, I think in part 5, you made a stronger version of this - that humans couldn't relate to that kind of experience, but I disagree, I think we experience what other animals experience, I recently posted that I think "what it is like to be a bat" may not be all that different than I thought, although I think it still makes Nagel's point - we have a lot of non-conceptual experience, just every day - when we move around and do things and respond to our needs, we don't always live in our heads the way you describe. As I understand it, dasein is this kind of human way of being animal.
"But that evaluation assumes the experience in the first place! As the stimuli grow more complex and rapid ... an experience of them "emerges" in order to sort them all out - but what is the reason that that evaluation has to occur at the level of phenomenal experience?"
The phrase, "in order to sort them all out" is putting the horse and the cart the wrong way round. Experience doesn't emerge to sort out anything. Rather, it is what comes into being because of the sorting: it is individuated and qualitative and chaanging on a moment by moment basis... that is what experiencing the world is. That is the condition that Humans have given the 'phenomenal expeirence' label to, namely the thing that we are in that is individuated and qualitative... and then we humans label everything in this world-view as that thing with that quale, or this thing with this quale. I am saying phen consc is that process
OK, I got that wrong way around - but I get what you are saying here -
Experience doesn't emerge to sort out anything. Rather, it is what comes into being because of the sorting: it is individuated and qualitative and chaanging on a moment by moment basis... that is what experiencing the world is. That is the condition that Humans have given the 'phenomenal expeirence' label to, namely the thing that we are in that is individuated and qualitative... and then we humans label everything in this world-view as that thing with that
quale, or this thing with this quale. I am saying phen consc is that process
First off, I would say - then just say that in the first place! I read two different modes of communication from you - when you are on the forum you write very clearly, when you write formally, you are difficult to read. I want to say "affected" but not in an insulting way - there is a lot in what you say about philosophers writing to be difficult, if you wrote somewhere between the forum style (including the passion) and the formal stlye, I think you would hit it dead on - for me.
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Now isn't the above just an identity theory? When you say "it is what comes into being" that is saying "emerges" right? And then you say that (it (what comes into being because of the sorting) is individuated and qualitative and changing on a moment by moment basis)) -
phen consc is that process, ie nerves firing is phen consc? thats identity theory
that process, that sorting, is the neurophysiological processes or operations and you are saying when all that sorting reaches a certain point, phenomenal experience comes into being, "what it is like" emerges? and or just is a brute fact? that is just what it is like to have all that processing going on? is that correct?
@smcder @Soupie
re The slug argument response from smcder:
“phen consc
is that prcoess, that sorting, is the neurophysiological processes or operations and you are saying when all that sorting reaches a certain point, phenomenal experience comes into being, "what it is like" emerges? as a brute fact? that is just what it is like to have all that processing going on? is that correct?”
The term “process” is fraught. It disguises what it is, so it is a word that I would generally try to avoid—I know I brought it up (perhaps I should not have). It also has computational connotations. Similarly, the term “sorting” sounds like computation and I am opposed to computational approaches. ‘The process’ is not a neurophyiological process because that expression does not reflect the hierarchical nature of the mechanisms involved. And there is not “a point” at which phen exp comes into existence. That is the way the question is not the way I would put it. So... How would I wrestle with the “brute fact” accusation. With some difficulty:
Below is a list of propositional stances from my paper. (my list of 21 questions, which died a death in the thread because each proposition got hacked to pieces. But the paper argues each propositional point. It is not that each point can be argued the toss, for I recognise that each point has counter arguments and deficiencies. Rather, the argument is, if you like, one of
conceivability in the absence of proof)
1. innate physiologies are qualitatively relevant. Section 1
2. There is a representational correspondence between innately acquired biochemical mechanisms and the environment. Section 2
3. cells institute primal directives (through biochemical mechanisms) to maintain biochemical balances. Section 4 (how? ask the biochemist and biologist)
4. neurons act as transcellular conduits linking the motivations of primal directives with qualitative assimilations of the environment. This modulates the efficiency of the afferent–efferent relationship across an organism structure. Section 4
5. Points 1 to 4 are species specific only, and not individuated for each individual member of a species.
6. neural mechanisms have the potential to effect comparative evaluations of qualitative assimilations (how? ask the neuroscientist).
7. When this happens, everything about organisms tell us that these evaluations lead to responses to environment that are both individuated (individual not species specific) and therefore unique to the individual, and qualitatively relevant, and that the individuated behaviour is entirely dictated by that ongoing relationship between the quality of the environment (as represented) and its particular motivational needs.
8. If you take the field of view at t=0 to comprise numerous visual features that are weighted biochemically in terms of how much they instantiate excitement, interest, exploration, focus, attention (biochemically as per Section 3, and point 3 above), that view is weighted for its priority to satisfy primal directives through a feedback (again, a neuroscience question). At t=1 the behavioral response (e.g. a head movement changing the field of view slightly) may have negatively or positively reenforced the primal directive. t=3 thereby entails the modulation of the behavior to change the weighted distribution of visual motivations in favor of stabilizing the primal directive. This ongoing relation changes the individual’s relation to the visual field and their motivations in response, but importantly, creates a “moving landscape” of changing qualitatively motivated actions.
9.These qualitatively motivated actions are time sensitive: one might loosely describe them as requiring memory (or creating memory) in virtue of ‘comparative evaluation’. And they are space sensitive, describing a qualitatively relevant spatial landscape.
10. that this landscape is always changing and is spatiotemporally individuated, is to say,
as a brute fact, that such an individual is phenomenally experiencing the world as a world of qualitative meanings. It has a qualitative spatiotemporal world-view (by whatever biochemical and neurological mechanisms maintain these cyclical functions).
11. This is all preconceptual representation and takes place in the absence of introspection. It does not incorporate the unique human perspective on phenomenal consciousness.
12. The biochemical and neurological mechanisms can vary substantially in their sophistication such that one might have increasing prereflexive stances and delineated (classifiable) affectations to particular stimulus types.
