Philosophy Now Forum

raw_thought wrote:Phenomenology is the study of what we refer to when.we use first person narratives. ...

I take it as providing a description of subjective experience that all can agree to.

Materialists deny first person narratives. ...

No they don't, they deny that non-physical explanations explain anything.

For example, if I bracket (a phenomenological term) all preconceptions, I am dealing with what the experience feels like (qualia).

Ever managed to achieve Husserl's reduction? I doubt it as he gave no techniques to achieve such a state, the closest you'll get is the Buddhists meditation and they claim that when you do so you find no subjectivity exists.

Another example, a phenomonologist will analize a cup. All the preconceptions (that it is a cup, used for drinking etc) are bracketed out, leaving only the experience.

You're just talking about sensation and that can all be explained by being a body with senses in an external world. What explanation can you give that does not involve material or physical causes?

raw_thought wrote:Even if they invent a scientific instrument that can translate neurons firing into the image of what you are visualizing, that has no effect on my argument. It is an interesting idea tho! :

The mind-reading devices / procedures which exist now involve the test subject first describing their thoughts and then a match is made with their neural patterns for predicting when those thoughts occur again. In turn triggering the display of drawings / simulations / photos on a screen for representing what was previously reported verbally. So yeah, it's not a direct capture of the first-person manifestation or private version of visual imaginings.

Arising_uk wrote:

raw_thought wrote:Phenomenology is the study of what we refer to when.we use first person narratives. ...

I take it as providing a description of subjective experience that all can agree to.

Materialists reject the subjective. There is nothing something feels like.

hammock wrote:

raw_thought wrote:Even if they invent a scientific instrument that can translate neurons firing into the image of what you are visualizing, that has no effect on my argument. It is an interesting idea tho! :

The mind-reading devices / procedures which exist now involve the test subject first describing their thoughts and then a match is made with their neural patterns for predicting when those thoughts occur again. In turn triggering the display of drawings / simulations / photos on a screen for representing what was previously reported verbally. So yeah, it's not a direct capture of the first-person manifestation or private version of visual imaginings.

Sense (for the materialist ) there is no first person narrative,the test subjects testimony about what something feels like.(for the materialist ) is gibberish.
If materialism is true, there can be no corroboration from a first person narrative.

Arising_uk wrote:

raw_thought wrote:Phenomenology is the study of what we refer to when.we use first person narratives. ...

I take it as providing a description of subjective experience that all can agree to.

Materialists deny first person narratives. ...

No they don't, they deny that non-physical explanations explain anything.

For example, if I bracket (a phenomenological term) all preconceptions, I am dealing with what the experience feels like (qualia).

Ever managed to achieve Husserl's reduction? I doubt it as he gave no techniques to achieve such a state, the closest you'll get is the Buddhists meditation and they claim that when you do so you find no subjectivity exists.

Another example, a phenomonologist will analize a cup. All the preconceptions (that it is a cup, used for drinking etc) are bracketed out, leaving only the experience.

You're just talking about sensation and that can all be explained by being a body with senses in an external world. What explanation can you give that does not involve material or physical causes?

1. How can you have intersubjectivity without subjectivity? Materialist's value hearsay over first person narratives! For them only 2nd and 3rd person narratives are real.
2. "Explain" in the sense of cause? I have not been talking about cause, I have been talking about definitions. Does the visualized triangle exist? Yes. Is it physical? No. Nothing physical has the shape of the triangle. Therefore, the triangle is not physical.
3. First person narratives describe qualia. It felt like this, it looked like this... Materialists deny that qualia exist. Dennett himself proclaimed that first person narratives are gibberish because to admit that they are meaningful means that qualia exist.
4. Phenomenology is based on bracketing. If you deny the possibility of bracketing you deny the possibility of phenomenology.

See #2 in the post just above.
I do not know what the visualzed triangle is. I dont have to. All I set out to prove is that it is not physical. If I do not know what a platypus is I can still say that it is not an elephant. I know what the wind in my face feels like even if I don't know that wind is air particles moving.

All I set out to prove is that it is not physical.

And for the hundredth time you have not proven it, merely stated it. And I'll point that out a hundred more times. Statements are not proofs.

You really think that my brain (or a part of it) forms into a triangular shape when I visualize a triangle???? That a very powerful sound amplifier will hear my thoughts.That my brain turns green when I visualize green??????
SCROLL BACK!
I suppose now you will say that the triangle is physical because neurons firing cause me to visualize a rriangle. ONCE AGAIN!!!!!!!!! Cause is not definrtion.
The definition of "broken vase" is not "throwing it ".
SCROLL BACK!!!
I have said over and over that I am not denying or embracing the idea that neurons firing causes me to visualize a triangle. It has nothing to do with my argument.
Please address my answers to your questions. Dont just keep repeating the same objection over and over and over.

Materialists deny qualia (that we experience things subjectively, privately ). Therefore, if I can visualize a triangle, others can look into my brain and see it. That is absurd. Therefore, materialism (that EVERYTHING is physically quantifiable ) is false.

Do you believe that you can feel pain? Do you believe that when a hammer smashes your fingers, your experience of that event is not identical to me knowing that you are in pain? If your answer is, "YES" then you believe in a quale and cannot be a materialist because materialists reject qualia.

I did not prove that my visualized triangle is not physical?
If it is physical,there is a physical object in my brain that has the form of a triangle.
If there is no physical object in my brain shaped like a triangle then my visualized triangle is not physical.

raw_thought wrote:Materialists reject the subjective. There is nothing something feels like.

Not quite I think, I think it more that there is nothing like feels.

The exact wordage both materialists and qualia believers use is, is there something pain feels like? Materialists say no. Qualia believers obviously say YES.

raw_thought wrote:The exact wordage both materialists and qualia believers use is, is there something pain feels like? Materialists say no. Qualia believers obviously say YES.

What does it feel like then?

Pain hurts.
Bed sheets feel smooth and soft.
Poetry would be gibberish if feelings did not exist.
Psychology would also be gibberish if feelings did not exist and therefore could not be expressed. Imagine telling your shrink, ". I feel my c-fibers firing" or I dont have any feelings for my wife, I only know that particular neurons are firing.