Comment by naasking
3 years ago
I am arguing that subjective experience is not what we perceive it to be. The qualities that we perceive of it are deceptive, and not necessarily reflective of anything real.
3 years ago
I am arguing that subjective experience is not what we perceive it to be. The qualities that we perceive of it are deceptive, and not necessarily reflective of anything real.
>The qualities that we perceive of it are deceptive, and not necessarily reflective of anything real.
This claim only makes sense given a particular definition of "real", but if (the qualities of) our subjective experiences are outside of that definition, why should we take (the qualities of) subjective experience to not be real, rather than the definition to be impoverished? What is real should encompass every way in which things are or can be. The qualities of subjective experience included.
The problem isn't with taking subjectivity to be real, but with taking everything that is real to be object based. There are no qualia "things" in the world. But we should not see this as implying there are no qualia.
Would you take a "day job" to be ontologically real? It is a way in which the aggregate of particles that make up your body regularly behave on a semi periodic schedule. That would seem to fit your definition of "encompassing every way in which things are or can be".
If it is real, isn't there still a need to distinguish ontological primitives from aggregate properties like the above? Why shouldn't this be what we mean by "real"?
>Would you take a "day job" to be ontologically real?
I do. I'm quite pluralistic with what I deem "real". Quarks are real as well as chairs and day jobs. Roughly speaking, I take all fundamentals and all invariants in space and time over the fundamentals to be real. Invariants seem to be attractors in conceptual space that are apt to be picked out and labeled by cognitive systems like us. These invariants play various explanatory roles in our conceptualization of the world, and so they are real.
>If it is real, isn't there still a need to distinguish ontological primitives from aggregate properties like the above? Why shouldn't this be what we mean by "real"?
Definitely. I just use the qualifier fundamental to make that distinction. Real is a term that plays a key explanatory role in our conceptualization of the world and so how we define it for the purposes of theory should respect this pre-theoretical usage. The idea of ontological primitives distinct from everyday existence is a result of theory and so should use a distinct term. When people say chairs exist, they mean it in this broad pre-theoretic sense. There's no reason to blow that up.
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