View attachment 4515
I am not a good reader ... working in a library has re-inforced that.
I have to re-write and sometimes read aloud, record and
listen.
Phenomenal experience is the term used to describe the rather subjective ‘something it is like’ aspect of experience. Examples of phenomenal experience include what it is to experience depths and shades of colours, the variety in the subtlety of aromas, the character of sound clusters, or the pleasantness of tactile sensations. Whilst being a fundamental aspect of the way we relate to the environment, the phenomenon of our subjective experience has ineffable qualities that evade objective analysis. Phenomenal experience is the experience that individuals identify as the subjective experience of consciousness.
smcder "Phenomenal experience" refers to the 'something it is like' aspect of consciousness.
smcder I deleted "rather subjective" - because "something it is like" seems to be entirely subjective ... I could have written:
"Phenomenal experience" refers to the subjective, 'something it is like' aspect of consciousness.
Examples of phenomenal experience include what it is to experience depths and shades of colours, the variety in the subtlety of aromas, the character of sound clusters, or the pleasantness of tactile sensations. Whilst being a fundamental aspect of the way we relate to the environment, the phenomenon of our subjective experience has ineffable qualities that evade objective analysis. Phenomenal experience is the experience that individuals identify as the subjective experience of consciousness.
smcder Examples of phenomenal experience include what it is to experience depths and shades of colours, the variety in the subtlety of aromas, the character of sound clusters, or the pleasantness of tactile sensations. Whilst being a fundamental aspect of the way we relate to the environment, the phenomenon of our subjective experience has ineffable qualities that evade objective analysis. Phenomenal experience is the experience that individuals identify as the subjective experience of consciousness.
smcder this is confusing because
"the phenomenon of our subjective experience" isn't the same thing as "phenomenal experience"
and here:
the phenomenon of our subjective experience has ineffable qualities that evade objective analysis
we need an example of those ineffable qualities ... or some elaboration
2. The Phenomenon of Experience and the Phenomenon of Consciousness
Hierarchical Systems Theory claims to be a reductive explanation of phenomenal experience that uses principles in systems dynamics to illustrate and describe an evolving emergent system’s hierarchy. This dynamic hierarchy explains the behavioural and physiological characteristics, and evolutionary dynamic of creatures that possess phenomenal experience.
smcder illustrate and describe, yes, explain ... no ... I think throughout your writing this has caused me (and it may be just my problem) problems ... you asked a while back about if there are levels or kinds of explanations and I think there are. I wrote as clearly as I could that what I wanted out of an explanation was a step-wise progression from what I know to what is being explained ... so that the thing being explained has to be phrased using the same axioms ... a mathematical or logical explanation. The example I used is Newtonion physica - a handful of laws, particles and (later) fields describes the whole of classical mechanics (in this part of the universe, anyway).
Aquinas says:
Human intellectual knowledge is developed step by step; man advances from what he knows to what, at the start, is unknown.
The process of human learning is exampled in the manner in which we prove a theorem in geometry.
This way of thinking things out, step by step, is called discursive thinking or reasoning. Now, if, in the light of some master truth, we could see all that is implied in our thoughts, we should not need to work out knowledge by discursive thought. We should not, for example, need to work out the theorem in geometry, for we should instantly take in the whole demonstration and understand it thoroughly without effort.
Often I feel your writing has been written for an angelic audience:
An angel actually has this type of knowledge. An angel does not require discursive thinking. In whatever area of its natural knowledge the angelic intellect is employed, it sees the whole picture; it beholds the thing thought about together with its implications and consequences, and therefore has no need to move from point to point to round out knowledge.
And I think this is because you are the g-d of all your writing, you have "the light of some master truth" - but it needs to be shed more gradually on your humble reader!
I realized the piece if ten years old and you've said your writing has improved, but I think this may continue to be a problem. Which is why I think it's important to expose your writing to the light, to many lights!
What you say is very useful. I am taking it onboard as best I can.
I would give you examples of ineffable qualities... but the words escape me.
When you and Constance say you don't understand a piece of my work, it does remind me of the kind of criticism one might get in a music-playing context:
Four musicians may play a movement from a quartet by Beethoven. On its conclusion one of the musicians turns to the others and exclaims, "you were rushing" or "you were out of tune".
This is invariably not true. On closer inspection it turns out that from bars 35 to 38 the relative speeds differed, and in bar 80 there was a grating intonation discrepancy.
What this analogy is intended to illustrate is that issues of comprehension can be usually tied down to parts of sentences (rather than the whole thing) i.e. usually one loses understanding at a particular bit; and that it is a reciprocal thing where one individual might not understand one section whilst another individual might find problems with a different section.
A single comment like, 'facts are generally metaphysical whereas information is epistemological' is good because it is a focused, accurate criticism that demands I re-examine my (sometimes) generic and idiosyncratic use of terminology.
If you can be exact in your criticism that would be very helpful. I can imagine that many people don't read like me i.e. they get a flavour from a text whereas I read every sentence on its merits. I think my difficulty with some phenomenology writing is that I drill into the efficacy of sentences rather than let the concepts wash over me. Most of my sentences are very carefully considered - they never flow but rather are the culmination of an arduous exacting process.
Noumenon short version:
My ideas about noumenon assume a valid reductive explanation of phenomenal experience - so you might have a problem with my noumenon ideas.
I think what the paper says is,
1. phenomenal experience is what we know through experience - what it is like.
2. Noumenal experience is everything else that could be experienced - which I think includes the phenomenal experience of every individual in all existence and every kind of experience presently realisable or otherwise not.
3. The 'thing in itself', the substance from which there is or can be experience and reality is beyond the noumenal and phenomenal - it is always unknowable.
How does one realise the noumenal? in other words, how and why does the noumenal become one's actual phenomenal?
As a speculation, I relate these questions to quantum mechanics via the vector wave ideas - Our phenomenal consciousness does not know what phenomenal consciousness is to be its path; likewise a photon does not know the shortest path between two points; how could it? The photon explores every possible path, (every noumenal potential) and ends up going, as probability would have it, the shortest distance. Thus phenomenal consciousness emerges from the noumenal as a probable of many possibilities (which are influenced by the actual path taken - what we do influences what noumenal potentials become realised in the combined pool of human possibilities).
I know it sounds abstract and bizarre (the terms are inexact), but I have not devoted much to this and I am making it up as I go along.