Kevin's Watch

Z - does not your 'exist' situation mirror the conciousness one in that it also must be directed toward something eg in this case your computer. I can't make the mental sepparation that you seem to be able to, between the aspect of your computers existance and knowing what it is that exists. I can understand what you are saying, sure - but for me the existance and the what it is that is existing are one and the same [unless I'm considering the concept of existance in a moment of reverie in the bath]. Try this; try to take the computer aspect out of "I'm aware that my computer exists". Without the computer in it the mental construct dissapears in a puff of smoke and all you are left with is "I'm aware that existance exists". Is this the 'thatness' of which you speak? [ Sorry about......errr......that! ]

[Quick question pertaining to V.'s post; are there other colours outside the spectrum of visible light. I know the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum we can see is tiny and that bee's and things are supposed to be able to see the ultra-violet end of the spectrum that is invisible to us - but are there colors of which we have no concept arrayed up and down the length of the spectrum that 'aliens' or animals with different types of 'receptor cells' can see. Are there really only colours within the range of the 7 we can see in the spectrum - or are there trillions of existant colours beyond the range of our perception that are forever denied to us?]

Ultraviolet and infrared are colors - to those with eyes that can perceive more of the spectrum than we can. We can't describe what those colors look like any more than we can explain what blue looks like to someone who cannot perceive blue.

Fist and Faith wrote:Ultraviolet and infrared are colors - to those with eyes that can perceive more of the spectrum than we can. We can't describe what those colors look like any more than we can explain what blue looks like to someone who cannot perceive blue.

Yep. I THINK [someone can correct the details, I'm sure I'll get some wrong]:
Most peoples color vision is tri-chrome? [there's a word for it, I don't feel like checking]...three basic color cones with specific sensitivity ranges, which mix/contrast to create the number of colors we see---which is something like 10 million. [that seeing is apparently partly physical, at the eye-level, and partly mental, at the processing level.]
Fairly recently, I saw a blurb that some tiny number of people---almost all of them women---might be tetra-chrome [4 different color cones], and see 10 times [or more] as many different colors.
I believe it is known that some animals [some birds? some dogs? some other things? I'm pretty sure squid or octopi see far into the red end, the birds and others far into the blue] are both tetra-chrome AND the basic range of the cones is different wavelengths than human.

Something synchronistic, connected to the topic:

"Passive Frame Theory" suggests that the conscious mind is like an interpreter helping speakers of different languages communicate.

"The interpreter presents the information but is not the one making any arguments or acting upon the knowledge that is shared," Morsella said. "Similarly, the information we perceive in our consciousness is not created by conscious processes, nor is it reacted to by conscious processes. Consciousness is the middle-man, and it doesn't do as much work as you think."

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150623141911.htm

peter wrote:Z - does not your 'exist' situation mirror the conciousness one in that it also must be directed toward something eg in this case your computer. I can't make the mental sepparation that you seem to be able to, between the aspect of your computers existance and knowing what it is that exists. I can understand what you are saying, sure - but for me the existance and the what it is that is existing are one and the same [unless I'm considering the concept of existance in a moment of reverie in the bath]. Try this; try to take the computer aspect out of "I'm aware that my computer exists". Without the computer in it the mental construct dissapears in a puff of smoke and all you are left with is "I'm aware that existance exists". Is this the 'thatness' of which you speak? [ Sorry about......errr......that! ]

I see what you're saying. For existing objects, you're right, they are inseparable. As I was saying, they reinforce each other, so that our awareness of something's existence increases in proportion to knowing what that something is. That's why cats (or even primitive humans) can only be vaguely aware of the stars' existence, even when they look up and see them. A pinprick of light is quite a bit different from a ball of fire millions of times larger than our world. Knowledge *is* awareness of reality. Ignorance takes you deeper into Plato's cave.

However, we can analyze them separately in our thoughts. We can understand the difference between a computer that exists and one that does not ... for instance a quantum computer or one that runs faster than any computer today, or a computer from the 90s that you've thrown away. Those are all very different from the one in front of you. Existence matters.

It is difficult to separate the "computer-ness" from the computer before me and think only of its existence. However, it's quite easy to grasp the difference between the computer that's before me and one that isn't present or doesn't exist. Suddenly, in that context, the that-ness of this computer is quite clear. In that way, we have just separated out these concepts in our understanding.

And in this way, we approach an understanding of Being itself, through the existence of beings. By going through mental exercises like this, we make explicit general concepts such as "any computer whatsoever," as well as "any being whatsoever," and thus Being itself. All these are mixed up and intermingled in our experience of the world. They are constituent features of any world whatsoever, as well as any experience whatsoever. As we analyze them, especially with tools like phenomenology, we come to grasp the universal in the particular, the existential structures of our reality.

Does phenomenology cover things like qualia? We mention the color blue above, and it occurs to me that it might have no existence in reality, but really be only a product of the perceiving brain that experiences it. How if this is the case did evolution provide us with the tools to invent it? I can't invent a hitherto unseen color, but it seems I might have done so seven times in the past.

Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object. An experience is directed toward an object by virtue of its content or meaning (which represents the object) together with appropriate enabling conditions.

Phenomenology as a discipline is distinct from but related to other key disciplines in philosophy, such as ontology, epistemology, logic, and ethics. Phenomenology has been practiced in various guises for centuries, but it came into its own in the early 20th century in the works of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and others. Phenomenological issues of intentionality, consciousness, qualia, and first-person perspective have been prominent in recent philosophy of mind.

plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/

That's a very usefull link Z. and plugs a serious error in my understanding; I'd never seen phenomenology as one of the major sub-divisions of philosophy but yes - of course [on relection] how we experience is going to be just as fundamental as [and intimately related to] how we know, how we should act etc. I will read this from the comfort of an armchair in due course.

peter wrote:I'd never seen phenomenology as one of the major sub-divisions of philosophy

Husserl envisioned it as the foundation of all other philosophy, and even science. He thought this is where we should start, and build everything else on top of that. In fact, he thought of it as a kind of science of phenomena, or science of consciousness and its content ... which is really the sum total of everything we encounter in life.

I tried reading some of the article and found lots of redundancy. I notice that it has been significantly revised recently. I remember it being better. It describes phenomenology accurately, but these descriptions don't really give the sense of what they're talking about until you really get into it. For me (taking a course on it in college), phenomenology was almost like meditation. Turning your attention to the very structures of your consciousness was philosophy as I'd never experienced it.

One of the most exciting things I found about Husserl was that he resolved the long-standing tension between empiricism and rationalism, which had stood as a major division in modern philosophy, going back to Spinoza/Leibniz on one hand and Locke/Berkeley on the other. Kant tried to resolve this, and while his effort was monumental and original, it was unsuccessful. Husserl is the man who solved it.

And then phenomenology moves into existentialism with Heidegger, which is the other main "school" of philosophy that I find most significant and relevant to my own views.