(May 29, 2017 at 2:55 pm)Alex K Wrote: More or less. I still have a problem with your insinuation that what you call the "This Experience" would be called "the material world" by a default materialist. From what you say, it appears to be something else since your definition alludes to experienceL:You're real close. You're right. A default materialist might call This Experience "a brain image" or "a subjective experience" or a "qualia world" or something else. But those are loaded phrases that come right out of the materialist dictionary. We need a neutral phrase. That's why I use This Experience. To me it's also very important that it's something the average non-philosopher can relate to. Also, by using a new phrase, it carries along with it the idea that I'm trying to get at something different from the materialist-idealist debate. Not even close.
As soon as you say "subjective experience," for example, you're up to your knees in the materialist paradigm. The flood gates open and all the concepts, ideas, images, theories, etc. relating go "subjectivism" come flooding in.
I experience red there. And an itch in my leg there. And the sound of a siren over that way. And if I lost my leg I might experience an itch or pain where my leg "used to be." That's this experience. Take everything I experience - colors, sensations, smells, tastes, sounds, along with their (apparent) spatial aspects - put 'em in a big box and label it "This Experience."
Imagine a ten year old. He knows nothing about worldviews, paradigms, etc. You wave your hands and say, "What is this." He doesn't think, "Oh are you referring to a brain image ......" No. He'd just say, "The world." What he calls "the world" - that's This Experience.
The point is to find a way to refer to whatever this colorful, sensuous experience is (as free from any worldview as possible), to hold that idea in one hand, and then to hold in the other hand the abstract concept of a material world as a world of objective space, etc.. We've got to keep them separate to think about them clearly. This is by no means a semantic game. But the only way we can do it is with words.
