Philosophy Now Forum

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Wed Jun 19, 2024 6:20 am

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Tue Jun 18, 2024 2:48 pm Calling VA. What causes the phenomena we experience?

Whatever are phenomena, they are observable and can be verified and justified via the scientific FSERC as the gold standard of credibility and objectivity.
Whatever the causes, they are explained therein by the scientific FSERC.

Also, what is it that experiences phenomena? It must itself be phenomenal, because there are no noumena. So the transcendental ego can't be a thing-in-itself. But then, how do we experience it through the senses and mental categories?

In modern philosophical use, the term phenomena means things as they are experienced through the senses and processed by the mind as distinct from things in and of themselves (noumena).

According to Kant, there is the empirical-self and transcendental-ego [apperception].
Re Descartes, Kant asserted there is only the "I-THINK' there is no the "I-AM" which is claimed to survive physical death. So there is no real existing noumenal self but one can think of it as a thought.

According to Kant as with Hume, the transcendental-ego [apperception] is merely an emergent from a bundle of activities [a priori and a posteriori] and when a person dies, there is no more such self because there is no more activities.

The transcendental-ego [apperception] (I-that-Think) experiences the empirical self i.e. from first-person experience or from the collective [psychology and science]. The empirical self can be regarded as the "phenomenal" self to one's transcendental ego or to the collective.

Analogy:
Say there is a symphonic orchestra comprising of 100 instrumental player.
When everyone is playing his instrument, the symphonic-orchestra emerged as an entity with consciousness and it aware of its own self and the parts of it plus being aware of it external environment.
When the orchestra stop playing and everyone keep their instruments leave their position, this entity with consciousness just vanish.

That is how the transcendental ego emerged out of 13.7 billion years of history.

Why philosophical realists want to cling to an absolutely independent noumenal self, noumenon or thing-in-itself is due to the inherent desperate psychology.
As I had challenged, there is no loss if we give up this belief and ideology. Why philosophical realists insist on clinging to it as an ideology is a psychological issue grounded on TERROR!

For example, the majority of philosophical realists as theists insist upon a soul [noumenal self] that exists after death due to the terrible terror of Hell.

The other non-theistic philosophical realists also fear the threat of terror albeit in a more subliminal form. This is translated to no objective moral facts.

The other non-theistic philosophical realists also fear the threat of terror albeit in a more subliminal form. This is translated to no objective moral facts.

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Wed Jun 19, 2024 6:26 am Analogy:
Say there is a symphonic orchestra comprising of 100 instrumental player.
When everyone is playing his instrument, the symphonic-orchestra emerged as an entity with consciousness and it aware of its own self and the parts of it plus being aware of it external environment.
When the orchestra stop playing and everyone keep their instruments leave their position, this entity with consciousness just vanish.

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Wed Jun 19, 2024 6:26 am Why philosophical realists cling desperately to the thing-in-itself [absolutely independent of the human conditions] is due to desperate psychology of TERROR!

Impenitent wrote: ↑Wed Jun 19, 2024 6:52 pm clingy to my thingy is almost lyrical...

I guess VA is a fan of Frozen...

"Let it go, let it gooooo"

-Imp