What's the point of philosophy any more?

[bennyboy]

yes, but like all sensory information, it can be wrong. For example, we have a sense of the 'continuity of the self'. In actuality, the continuity is an illusion of after-writing in the brain. In reality, many different 'selves' from different areas of the brain combine to give the 'sense of self' and they are not always working, or working in tandem.

I don't think experiences have to be representative of truth on any other level in order to be valid. The experience is its own validation, unless you are trying to draw inferences from it. If I'm in the Matrix, and the feeling of warmth from the sun in the morning is really just a digital signature, no matter: the sensation of warmness is what it is.

The same goes for the sense of self-awareness. I'm not talking about self-identity, just the vague understanding that there is sensation rather than a lack of it. I don't really have to be factually right about it in order to say that experience is going on, in some form. The terms "I" and "self" are just labels added post-production for the purpose of communicating about that more subtle reality.

[polymath257]

yes, but like all sensory information, it can be wrong. For example, we have a sense of the 'continuity of the self'. In actuality, the continuity is an illusion of after-writing in the brain. In reality, many different 'selves' from different areas of the brain combine to give the 'sense of self' and they are not always working, or working in tandem.

I don't think experiences have to be representative of truth on any other level in order to be valid.  The experience is its own validation, unless you are trying to draw inferences from it.  If I'm in the Matrix, and the feeling of warmth from the sun in the morning is really just a digital signature, no matter: the sensation of warmness is what it is.

The same goes for the sense of self-awareness.  I'm not talking about self-identity, just the vague understanding that there is sensation rather than a lack of it.  I don't really have to be factually right about it in order to say that experience is going on, in some form.  The terms "I" and "self" are just labels added post-production for the purpose of communicating about that more subtle reality.

OK, I can agree with that. But going further and interpreting those experiences as representing some other truth than simply the truth that those experiences exist is going past what can be strictly said.

And, let's face it. Nobody really lives as a solipsist.

[bennyboy]

If this doesn't satisfy us, then we haven't observed electricity, or temperature, or any other x in-kind either...and we find ourselves in the conceptual black hole all over again.

Temperature isn't really a thing or a property of a thing except at the macro level, so let me skip that. Electricity, though. . . that is something very interesting indeed. We can catalogue massive amounts of data around and near it. But the thing itself-- that is more elusive than ever before.

It is my belief that science, good hard science, has reached a point where it's much better at telling us what reality ISN'T than what it IS, n'est-ce pas? I can say that to a very large degree my ideas about mind and the Universe are closely connected to my first inquiries into QM maybe 30 or so years ago, and that newer science seems to be taking us farther and farther into a wilderness of uncertainty.

[The Grand Nudger]

The consistent use of present tense language with regards to experience is inconsistent with any mechanical or functional reality in which it is a post process data summary.  Experience, in those systems, isn;t something that -is- happening.  That you -are- experiencing.  

In this way that time itself conspires against qualia.

[bennyboy]

And, let's face it. Nobody really lives as a solipsist.

That's what all the figments of my imagination keep telling me!

[The Grand Nudger]

Temperature isn't really a thing or a property of a thing except at the macro level, so let me skip that.

Could the same not then be said of some other thing..like your experience?  This is all I hope to achieve in a thread about the point of philosophy, lol.  Regardless of whether or not we agree that some x is truth, we could both agree that consistency is a base requirement of our positions on truth. This is something we learned from philosophy.

Electricity, though. . . that is something very interesting indeed.  We can catalogue massive amounts of data around and near it.  But the thing itself-- that is more elusive than ever before.

-and yet no less discernible or detectable.  Voltmeters work.  A painometer would be no different.  

It is my belief that science, good hard science, has reached a point where it's much better at telling us what reality ISN'T than what it IS, n'est-ce pas?  I can say that to a very large degree my ideas about mind and the Universe are closely connected to my first inquiries into QM maybe 30 or so years ago, and that newer science seems to be taking us farther and farther into a wilderness of uncertainty.

That may be, maybe we live in a fundamentally uncertain universe, at least on some level, even.  The truth of this..though, wouldn't and doesn't endanger the truth of things on what you referred to as "the macro level". Assuming fundamental uncertainty or randomness or even lack of cause at the smallest level of organization, at larger levels...many possibilities or probabilities reduce and reduce and reduce to the point of improbability or impossibility. Too many blocked roads..as it were, and the remaining open paths describe the distribution of the states of affairs that we then see.

[bennyboy]

The consistent use of present tense language with regards to experience is inconsistent with any mechanical or functional reality in which it is a post process data summary.  Experience, in those systems, isn;t something that -is- happening.  That you -are- experiencing.  

In this way that time itself conspires against qualia.

I had a pretty interesting day in the hospital, once about a month ago, and then again about a week ago.  I went in for a gastro endoscopy, and they gave me some kind of sleep drug.  But before the procedure, the doctor told me I'd be able to respond to verbal commands and to move around a little bit.

The idea of that recalled things I heard about anesthetics: that in some cases, a person may live through an entire world of suffering, but is just paralyzed.  Then, when they wake up, they have selective amnesia, meaning they are completely unaware of the hell they may have (in theory) just lived through.  Now, this may be an urban legend, but it gave me food for thought.

Anyway, back to my procedure.  What I actually experienced was this: nothing.  Then, a flurry of sensation in my throat, like a big freaking dildo was going in and out of it about four times.  Then, I opened my eyes and was fully awake.  What I THINK happened was that the drug did something to my sense of time, and I experienced the entire procedure in what was about 5 seconds in subjective time.  Basically, I was in fact conscious in a scientific sense, but I'm not sure in what sense I was or wasn't conscious in an experiential sense.  It's totally possible that I experienced the whole thing, and just had a false sense of time as a memory after the fact (like they say we do in car crashes).

It made me wonder about philosophical zombies.  Maybe I was one.  Maybe my grandmother, who just passed but lived about 15 years with increasing dementia, didn't actually experience ANYTHING even though she seemed to, because her short-term memory was so rotted that she couldn't have had the kind of sense of time that I was just talking about.

Spooky stuff, tbh.

---

Electricity, though. . . that is something very interesting indeed.  We can catalogue massive amounts of data around and near it.  But the thing itself-- that is more elusive than ever before.

-and yet no less discernible or detectable.  Voltmeters work.  A painometer would be no different.  

I don't think we use a voltmeter to verify a philosophical position, though.

It is my belief that science, good hard science, has reached a point where it's much better at telling us what reality ISN'T than what it IS, n'est-ce pas?  I can say that to a very large degree my ideas about mind and the Universe are closely connected to my first inquiries into QM maybe 30 or so years ago, and that newer science seems to be taking us farther and farther into a wilderness of uncertainty.

That may be, maybe we live in a fundamentally uncertain universe, at least on some level, even.  The truth of this..though, wouldn't and doesn't endanger the truth of things on what you referred to as "the macro level".  Assuming fundamental uncertainty or randomness or even lack of cause at the smallest level of organization, at larger levels...many possibilities or probabilities reduce and reduce and reduce to the point of improbability or impossibility.  Too many blocked roads..as it were, and the remaining open paths describe the distribution of the states of affairs that we then see.

To people like Matthilda, I'd say this. In a fundamentally uncertain universe, what is knowledge? We don't know what an electron or a photon really are, and yet. . . there's no room for philosophy?

[The Grand Nudger]

We do use the metaphoric (and actual) voltmeter to test propositions.  

-for soundness.

@"What is knowledge" - hey..it;s a good question..but, again, whatever a person says it is is all well and good as an answer..but there is a requirement to be consistent to that answer after having given it. There's plenty of room for philosophy...absent sound propositions, consistent application of principle, and unambiguous descriptive language.... it's just noise, though, not philosophy. It's that kind of "philosophy", I think, that leads people to sour on philosophy.

[I_am_not_mafia]

To people like Matthilda, I'd say this.  In a fundamentally uncertain universe, what is knowledge?  We don't know what an electron or a photon really are, and yet. . . there's no room for philosophy?

I actually think that there is room for philosophy, and in fact I stated in the OP that some really useful papers that I often refer to turned out to be published in journals with 'philosophy' in the title. But my main point is that philosophy could actually be more useful as an overview of the different branches bringing together recent findings with a view to painting a bigger picture of what's going on and communicating this back to the scientists doing the specialist grunt work. At the moment the scientists are the ones doing the most useful philosophy and this isn't even seen as philosophy any more but science.

[The Grand Nudger]

Most lit reviews take that form, don't they?  Summarize the subject body, identify potential issues with varying positions, suggest undeveloped areas as potential places for improvement. Still need a few philosphers working on the systems themselves, though. Pure philosophy-as-blue sky analog...as you suggested earlier.