@Soupie, I'm still hoping that you'll engage these more immediate questions I asked a few posts back.
[slightly edited] "Can you explain what you mean in more detail? How can the 'brain' experience
phenomena -- the phenomenal appearance of things?
I've already explained above my understanding of how the organism experiences the environment by way of being an intentional system.
@Pharoah 's HCT explains this quite well in my opinion, if you're still not sure what I mean.
However, I don't believe organisms experience
phenomena. This would imply that organisms experience
experience. Such thinking leads to confusion in my opinion.
Rather than suggesting that organisms can and do experience experience, I think it's more helpful to think of it as conceptual thinking, which introduces concepts/symbols such as self and other.
It's easy to see how conceptual thinking leads to such confusion. For example, if one, looking in the mirror, thinks something as simple as the following: "That is my body," it leads one to the intuitive conclusion that the conscious, observing self and the body are distinct. What's more, if we consider that perception of the body is a mental content, then we intuitively feel that the observing self is distinct from this mental content as well.
On my current view, all experience is intentional information embodied by processes in the organism; and the conceptual distinction between a (mental) self and other
is intentional information (despite strong intuitive feelings to the contrary).
experience phenomena through direct sensual acquaintance and contact with that which appears in their vicinity. They also reflect on and gradually recognize the nature of their own experience in terms of its partial access to the being of 'things' through their openness to the phenomenal appearances of things. Eventually conscious beings like ourselves think about the meaning and consequences of this relation between the subjective and objective aspects of reality bodied forth -- realized -- in our experience. These are all activities grounded in consciousness and mind. What is grounded in the three-pound brain in itself?
I'm not sure what you're asking. What is grounded in the brain?
The physical organism physically interacts with the environment. These interactions produce physical perturbations in the organism. These perturbations inform the organism about the environment.
Some of these perturbations share an identity with conscious states.
What is the nature of the 'information' with which the brain works if not the tangible, sensed, and felt information obtained in and through direct experience in the environment and in the increasing self-awareness of conscious beings?"
You seem to be blending the physical and the phenomenal here.
The nature of the information with which the brain works is a plethora of various physical stimuli in the environment: chemicals, radiation, vibrating molecules, etc. These stimuli—in themselves—are not information. However, when they perturb the organism-system, these perturbations
inform the organism-system.
For example, if light waves of a particular wave length are received by an organism, these waves will cause a particular perturbation within the system. This particular perturbation will inform the organism-system that a particular stimuli exists within its environment. It's my contention that this informational perturbation will be
subjectively experienced by the system as, say, phenomenal green.
Moreover, we shouldn't say the organism is experiencing
green. Rather, we should say the organism is experiencing
light waves; and that experience is green.
Now, not all intentional perturbations within the organism-system share an identity with consciousness. Some (most) intentional perturbations remain subconscious. Why that is remains an exciting mystery.
