AlexW wrote: ↑Fri Oct 02, 2020 2:42 am
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Oct 01, 2020 2:39 pm
Hello, AlexW. Nice 'meeting' you
Hi, nice meeting you too.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Oct 01, 2020 2:39 pm
And "directly" is an out. Is there a superiority in observing directly?
To observe/experience something directly means to see, hear, taste, smell or feel something, but not wrap it up into concepts and then believe in the idea of actually experiencing something that is actually never experienced.
What do you mean "feel" something? Do you mean tactilely, or emotionally "feel" it? To "see, hear, taste, smell..." those are all material properties. So are you a strict Materialist, or do you think there is something real and experienceable other than the merely material?
Take the term "observer." An "observer" isn't an eye,
per se. He HAS an eye, but an eye without the "observer" behind it would not be capable of "observing" anything, no matter how much light it channelled through its pupil, its iris, its rods and cones, or the optic nerve. A "seeing" observation is not a function of light. Instead, it's an interpretation of light patterns detected through the neural matrix by an entity we call the "observer."
If Materialism is true, then there can be no "observer," no consciousness behind cognition. Instead, what
appears to be cognition is no more than the contingent actions of material reactions that were, in principle, set in motion long ago, prior even to the Big Bang, by whatever action started the universe. But then there IS no "observer." There are only odd (yet, in principle, predictable) material causes and effects.
Is that your view?
The direct experience really has no intrinsic, conceptual qualities, it simply is, its not right or wrong or anything else really - its only once we attach our mental ornaments to the direct experience that it "inherits" certain qualities.
That certainly
sounds like very basic Materialism. But I'll wait for your confirmation on that.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Oct 01, 2020 2:39 pm
So there's something possibly missing from any easy or immediate assumption that "observation" is simply impossible.
That something is observed by a separate observer is never directly experienced - what is being experienced is "taste of apple", but not a "taster" nor the process of observation. The observer and the observation are made/thought up - they actually do not exist anywhere but in conceptual thought.
If Materialism is true, then conceptual thought itself doesn't exist in reality either. It's what philosophers of mind call an "epiphenomenon," which is essentially a word meaning, "weird side effect we Materialists cannot find any adequate way to explain."
You can easily see this for yourself - simply investigate your own direct experience - its perfectly obvious
I don't find it obvious at all, I must confess. I'm surprised at the confidence of your expression, actually, Alex. It doesn't seem apparent to me that I can find a way to dismiss things like consciousness, rationality, selfhood, identity, personhood, morality, and so on...all of which are immaterial realities that seem very compelling to me. So I'm afraid my intuition on that doesn't agree with yours at all...that is, if I'm understanding your point.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Oct 01, 2020 2:39 pm
I don't think that's quite the right way to think of it. What happens, I would say, is that "observing" becomes a different thing.
Not sure what you are pointing at... Can you elaborate?
I'm pointing to the fact that "observe" is not merely a synonym for "see." It is also a synonym for "apprehend," or "cognize," and that one can observe indirectly or through relationship things with respect to which the observer is himself ordinarily oblivious, even about himself.
For example, if I observe that people ordinarily laugh at my jokes, though I think them very ordinary, or I observe that they recoil at my jokes as disgusting, though I think them very clever, can I not learn something from that about myself...a thing I was not able to "observe" in myself, perhaps? Could it be that I am, unbeknownst to me, a natural comedian (in the first case), or could it be I am a tactless social boor (in the second)?
And yet, "the OP says that the observer cannot be observed".

However, it seems to me the recipients of my jokes have observed me, and I have observed myself better through observing them. So in what sense is it true that the observer cannot be observed?
It's not clear to me that that OP wording makes any sense....especially, as I say, because it's worded in the passive voice, which is very often an indicator that the speaker doesn't know as much about his topic as he needs to, or has failed to communicate as clearly as he should, because he allows his readers to remain uncertain of who the doer of the proposed "observing" actually is. If he knew who was doing the observing, he should specify it, using the active voice.