AlexW wrote: ↑Thu Jun 24, 2021 2:47 am
Seems we have similar perspectives on most of the above, but there are 2 differences.
You said that:
You can think of vision as a kind of internal tv screen that consciousness, "watches."
If this is again only an analogy - as you have put the word "watches" in quotation marks - then fine, but direct experience contains no separate watcher/observer, but rather reveals that the watcher, which is meant to be separate from the watched/seen, only exists as a concept.
It is only an analogy. The conscious experience is the watching. I only use that analogy to avoid the view that the physical event/processes neurologists describe are not in themselves the conscious experience. Most physicalists simply deny the consciousness (viewing) of perception.
AlexW wrote: ↑Thu Jun 24, 2021 2:47 am
And, as the observer is purely conceptual, also the watched is only conceptual - in reality / direct experience there is no actual separation between the seer and the seen - meaning: the seen (the stuff one seems to be conscious of) actually is consciousness itself.
Probably true of all animals except human beings. You keep using the word, "conceptual," while ignoring the fact that concepts are held consciously, and are part of human consciousness. Perception is the total of an animal's consciousness--it is only conscious of whatever it is currently perceiving. Human consciousness includes all that is directly perceived, as well as all that is recalled from memory in the form of imagination, concepts, thinking, and choosing, including dreams and hallucinations. All are phenomena of human consciousness, and only exist as phenomena of consciousness.
AlexW wrote: ↑Thu Jun 24, 2021 2:47 am
And a bit further down:
what we are experiencing is an entity, our identifying it as an entity does not make it an entity, it only recognizes it
This is what we conventionally believe to be true - yet, it is again only a conceptual interpretation of direct experience.
The words you just wrote say the right thing, but I don't think it is what you intend. It's not at matter of convention or belief. The conscious experience we call seeing an entity is the experience we have, consciously identifying it (calling it an entity) is simply a way of recognizing that perception. You want to hold on to experience being direct experience, but deny it is direct experience of anything.
AlexW wrote: ↑Thu Jun 24, 2021 2:47 am
There is no guarantee that this interpretation is true and correct.
It's
not an interpretation. A concept only says, "this experience is an
akum," so I can refer to that experience whenever I have it as an, "akum," or even when I'm not experiencing it but want to think about it. You admit the actual direct experience is what it is. All a concept does is form a symbol that can be used to refer to that actual direct experience, even when one is not actually having that experience. The concept does not interpret anything or say anything about what it identifies, it simply indicates what it identifies.
AlexW wrote: ↑Thu Jun 24, 2021 2:47 am
When analysing direct experience one can only conclude that there are no such separate entities as they simply do not exist on this level of "reality"
Unless there are no different perceptual experiences, every experience is different and since concepts only identify those experiences (call them what you like), there either are, "separate," perceptual experiences (which are usually referred to as entities) or there aren't. If you say there aren't, then nothing exists and there is nothing to perceive and one ends as a solipsist.
AlexW wrote: ↑Thu Jun 24, 2021 2:47 am
RCSaunders wrote: ↑Wed Jun 23, 2021 7:34 pm
A concept of what? A bundle of attributes, like color, shape, size, texture, weight, ...? Where do these percepts of these attributes come from? Do the eyes just produce the points of color on there own? Don't those points of color have an origin?
The question of "origin" is one for the interpretations - for example: light reflects from object X, reaches eye, triggers a biochemical process, is converted to electric pulses, reaches brain and then... through some magic a picture appears in front of the minds eye... - direct experience reveals no origins or any other attributes. But yes, concepts are of patterns learned and recognised - mummy telling the toddler: "This is a square, this a triangle... this is yellow, this is red" - the concept "comes from" learning to speak using a language that is based on patterns (objects) having attributes, patterns that seem to be in specific relations to each other etc etc...
You have that backwards. Every concept has to be formed by someone. Most of the concepts we learn were formed by others long before we were even thought of, but for every one, someone had to have a perceptual experience which they chose to used a
symbol (word) as the means to refer to that perceptual experience. All the other things you talked about were discovered by means of reason about all those things identified by such concepts, by which all new concepts identifying those discoveries were identified.
Early learning begins with much more basic concepts than shapes and sizes. Most early concept are simple identifications of perceived things, like, "that's Bobby's cup," Bobby's ball," "Tina's doll," or "ear, nose, eye, mouth," etc.
AlexW wrote: ↑Thu Jun 24, 2021 2:47 am
RCSaunders wrote: ↑Wed Jun 23, 2021 7:34 pm
If there are no entities there are no attributes for consciousness to be aware of.
Agree.
That's also why consciousness is not "aware of attributes".
I have no idea what you are saying here. When I, and as far as I know, anyone else says they are conscious of something, they mean aware of it, that is, to directly perceive a color for example means to be directly consciously aware of the color. Furthermore, what I, and as far as I know, anyone else who uses the term means by a color would be an attribute.
What you just said can only have meaning if you have your own unique definitions of consciousness, awareness, and attribute. Now, there is no reason you cannot do that, and I do not believe anything true is determined by how many people agree with or believe something, but if you are going to use terms generally understood with a certain meaning with a different meaning of your own, it would help to explain those differences.
AlexW wrote: ↑Thu Jun 24, 2021 2:47 am
Agree, but entities also do not exist independently of the concepts that define/create them.
This is why it is so important to understand that concepts do not do anything except identify what exists as it exists. Using a concept is exactly like pointing at something and saying, "that!" The concept does not create anything, describe anything, or define anything. In order for someone to know what existent a concept identifies, a definition is used only to describe or explain what existent a concept refers to (identifies), but the concept is not the definition and does not mean the definition, it means (refers to, identifies) an existent, and nothing more.
AlexW wrote: ↑Thu Jun 24, 2021 2:47 am
I think it is important to actually define what we mean with "consciousness".
As I see it, consciousness is whatever is actually "real", whatever can be directly experienced and not only imagined/thought of.
Everything that exists in "fundamental reality" is what consciousness actually is, everything that exists in "conceptual reality", in the world of knowledge and ideas, whatever can not be directly experienced, is also not "part of" consciousness (and insofar actually "not fundamentally real").
I've already addressed this above:
Probably true of all animals except human beings. You keep using the word, "conceptual," while ignoring the fact that concepts are held consciously, and part of human consciousness. Perception is the total of an animal's consciousness--it is only conscious of whatever it is currently perceiving. Human consciousness includes all that is directly perceived, as well as all that is recalled from memory in the forms of imagination, concepts, thinking, and choosing, including dreams and hallucinations. All are phenomena of human consciousness, and only exist as phenomena of consciousness.
I think you are also making a metaphysical mistake. If what you mean by, "fundamentally real," is whatever exists and has the nature it has independent of human consciousness or awareness of it, that is, whether or not any human is conscious of it, that is what is referred to philosophically as ontological existence. A physicalist believes that is all that exists and may refer to it as physical, material, or natural existence, and also believes everything can ultimately be explained or understood in terms of the physical properties of physical existence, including life, consciousness, and human minds.
Most non-physicalists, called dualists, believe there is some fundmental difference between the physical, and either some or all of life, consciousness, and human rational consciousness, and attribute the latter to something that is above or different from the physical, material, or natural existence, which is sometimes referred to as transcendent or super-natural.
I do not agree with either of these views, but do believe there is a difference between ontological existence (material existence that exists independently of human consciousness) and all that exists only in and by human consciousness (all knowledge, language, reason, science, history, purpose, meaning, etc.) and that it is a great mistake to say what exists only because of human consciousness is not real.
AlexW wrote: ↑Thu Jun 24, 2021 2:47 am
You seem to add a good part of "conceptual reality" to consciousness - such as volition, intellect, rationality, past, future etc - which, I believe, makes it difficult the distinguish between conscious experience and "imagined" experience. It is, in a way, important to get that right, as otherwise there is no clear line between reality and "illusion".
I don't, "add," anything. Those things all exist and have specific identifiable natures just as all physical things do. All conscious experience is, "real," that is, individuals actually have those experiences, including dreams and illusions. Denying they are real is not the way to understand them. Dreams and illusions differ from direct perceptual consciousness and from rational consciousness and only by identifying how they are different can they be identified as dreams and illusions.
AlexW wrote: ↑Thu Jun 24, 2021 2:47 am
RCSaunders wrote: ↑Wed Jun 23, 2021 7:34 pm
It is not possible for a human being to live without knowledge
I am not saying humanity should - but I believe it might be beneficial to understand what this type of knowledge can do and what it can't (thats why I asked previously: would you change a lightbulb with a hammer? of course not! yet we believe that knowledge is a tool that can do it all... I just would like to point out its limitations... but maybe to a society that worships
knowledge like a God that counts as heresy?)
If you think any society, past or present, ever worshiped knowledge, you live in a different world from mine. Today, almost every academic, pseudo-intellectual, media personality, "educator," and, so-called authority repudiates the possibility of any certain knowledge or the efficacy of reason to discover it. From cultural Marxism and post modernism to every ideology, reason is replace with intuition, revelation, inspiration, superstition and irrationalism, like consensus or statistics, completely taking the place of the pursuit or rational knowledge. Nobody wants to know the truth.
What you do not seem to want to know is that there is a material existence that is and has the nature it has independently of any organism's consciousness of it or any human being's awareness or knowledge of it. It is that material existence all consciousness is directly conscious of (perceives) and that perceived existence that all knowledge is of and about.