Heidegger

What is a Phenomenological Reality?

Differentiating the Experiencer and the Experience.

>3. What is the difference between the experiencer and the experience?

>in the phenomenon of experiencing, the experiencer is this
>(first-person view) or that (third-person view) which experiences (via
>some mode of experiencing) the object of the experience.

>Jud: The experiencer is NOT *a first person view*

you’ve misunderstood. I was contrasting ‘this’ and ‘that’.

Heidegger defines daSein from a third person point of view, that
‘being-there’, but says that any daSein should self-refer using the
first-person. any daSein which does so would have to translate
‘being-there’ to this ‘being-here’.

similarly, in my answer to your question, I gave the first-person and
third-person variations. in the first person one might say ‘I, *this*
which experiences, am an experiencer’ while in the third person one
might say ‘an experiencer is *that* which experiences’.

>[Jud]: Therefore on what basis precisely do you posit an ontological
>difference betwixt a putative *I* and the catenulate conjunctive
>complex of combinatorial causative neurons that consist of:

>[Joe]: I certainly do not posit an ontological difference in the
>Heideggerian sense of that phrase.

[Joe]: in humanese, where ‘ontological’ is restricted to referencing
>realities of reality type 3,

>Jud: Being an Englishman I prefer English please.

Joe: as an American, so do I; but, that said, I prefer the precision of
humanese english over the ambiguity of vernacular english.

>Jud: What in the name of Jesus are realities?

Joe: relative to a linguistic frame of reference wherein ‘reality’ is
the root predicate, ‘reality’ and ‘realities’ perform the same function
as ‘existent’ and ‘existents’ perform relative to a linguistic frame of
reference wherein ‘existent’ is the root predicate.

>Joe: it is possible to coherently posit a relation between an
>individual entity and a collective entity; for example, between being
>(the particular) and Being (the collective).

>Jud: No such *relationship* exists

in humanese, ‘ontological reality’ and ‘existential reality’ are defined
to be mutually exclusive. so no ontological reality exists and no
existential reality is a being. more simply, no being is an existent and
no existent is a being.

in humanese, no one is prohibited from positing a relation between the
individual and the collective versions of being/Being; but, this
relation is not the ontological difference that Heideggerians speak of.

>Jud: the difference between a (macro) individual and its collective of
>separate constituent cells is a mereological classifaction which has
>nothing at all to do with the human, elephant or star system concerned.

>[Joe]: however, Heideggerians deny that this relationship is the same
>as Heidegger’s concept of the ontological difference; and, I agree.

>Jud: Why? This mereological difference is NOT an ontological difference
>it is merely a human classificatoy difference. The ontological
>difference is the so-called difference betwixt *pain* and a *Painful
>toe.*

[Joe]: the difference between pain and the damaged toe, in my
terminology, the difference between the phenomenal reality (the
*experience* of pain (ie. the QUALIA)) and the meta-phenomenal reality
that causes the pain — in this case, an existential reality, the
damaged or injured toe.

[Joe]: I’m not convinced that the difference between the phenomenal and
the meta-phenomenal is same as the ontological difference as understood
by Heidegger. in the unlikely event that the Heideggerian ontological
difference is just the difference between the phenomenal and its
meta-phenomenal correlate(s), then it would turn out to be true that I
am advocating (in different terminology) what Heideggerians call an
ontological difference.

>[Jud]: Why separate out a pronominal self-referential *I* which is a
>linguistically communicative symbol concerned with exterior interaction
>with others rather than with interior survival strategies from the rest
>of the body? How is a *reasoning* *I* or *self* any different
>existentially from the sensorially equipped, physically proactive -
>reactive, cellularly cooperative, somatically diverse, protectively
>evaluative, neurologically dynamic meaty actioning reasoner.

>[Joe]: it depends on how you disambiguate the ‘I’ of vernacular english
>when translating the claim in question into humanese english using its
>subscripted pronouns.

>Jud: It has nothing at all to do with *humanese English* - The question
>is quite simple does the pronoun *I* take for its nominatum the
>sensorially equipped, physically proactive - reactive, cellularly
>cooperative, somatically diverse, protectively evaluative,
>neurologically dynamic meaty actioning reasoner, or does it take the
>mediavalistic *mind* as it nominatum?

due to the ambiguity in vernacular english as to the reality type of the
referent of ‘I’, the answer to your question depends on how your
noun-based terminology, ‘mediavalistic mind’, is disambiguated when
translated into the first-person pronoun based terminology of humanese
english.

remember that, in humanese english, subscripted pronouns are defined so
that they may only refer to a referent of the reality type indicated by
the subscript. here is a question that may or may not help with
differential diagnosis: which reality type is ‘mediavalistic mind’
defined to refer to? is it its own substance?

if ‘mediavalistic mind’ refers to a meta-phenomenal entity (or alleged
meta-phenomenal entity) of reality type 3, then the appropriate pronoun
to use is ‘I-3′.

do you imagine that ‘mediavalistic mind’ refers to something that is
composed not of res extensa but res cogitans or some other non-physical
’stuff’, then you are defining ‘mediavalistic mind’ to refer to
realities of type 3.

>[Joe]: I-2 suspect that you would say I-1 experience afterimages
>whereas I-2 would say I-2 experience afterimages.

>[Joe]: so, from your point of view there is no difference between the
>’I’ that reasons and the existential reality correlated with the
>experience of thinking. for me it is not so simple.

>Jud: What is the *existential reality*? Where is THAT located?

which existential reality? the one corresponding to the I-2? I-2
previously indicated that I-2 have no idea as to the location of the
I-1, the neurological correlate of the experience of self-awareness;
and, you replied that it did not matter to you that scientists have not
yet identified the neurological correlate of the self-awreness that I-2
— that any I-2 — undoubtedly experience.

>Jud: If there is no ontological difference then you are not a trannie
>you are a full blown physicalist.

I-2 am most certainly not a full-blown physicalist. I-2 believe we
already established that in discussing afterimages. I-2 use ‘afterimage’
to refer to the patch of color I-2 experience seeing; but, you use
‘afterimage’ to refer to the brain state I-1 have while I-2 experience
seeing that patch of color.

>[Jud]: As a self-confessed, out of the cupboard transcendentalist

>Joe: according to your definition of ‘transcendentalist’, about
>99.99999% of the population are transcendentalists. remember all it
>takes is the belief that ‘afterimage’ refers to a patch of color rather
>than to the neuro-electrochemical correlate of that colorful experience.

>Jud: I do not count that as a viable argument for the 99.99999% are not
>all capable of understanding what the hell we are talking about and
>they have not had the question put to them in simple enough terms - in
>fact tahy have not had the question put to them at all.

so, put the question to *them*. I’ve already answer it when I told you
that I refuse to accept your injunction to speak only about brainstates
and never about qualia.

Joe

–
Philosophy is, after all, done ultimately in the first person for the
first person. — H-N Castaneda

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Posted on Sunday, November 2nd, 2008 at 7:00 am
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