jpbrooks

Hi, Laurentius.

You and Tronvillain have certainly raised some interesting points.
I'm not certain how Tronvillain's claim, that it is obvious that he is not generating his perceptions, can be cogently disputed. How, for example, could you convince him that it is not obvious that his perceptions of you (trying to convince him of something) are not all generated by him?
However, I also think you are making a good point about how much we may be actually aware of when we perceive things. I'm just not certain that the experiments that you cited above really show that there is a second "self" within each of us that has its own faculties of perception distinct from the five "senses" of our conscious awareness. The most that these experiments seem to show (assuming that they were well designed to eliminate other possible influences on the results such as unconscious "cues" from the experimenters, and that the experiments were repeated on the subjects so that the results come from more than one trial) is that we don't (or can't? -- a question that calls for further research) consciously focus on all of the perceptual information that is fed into our brains through our senses.

[ June 27, 2002: Message edited by: jpbrooks ]</p>

Laurentius

AVE


I've said it,
and I'll state it again:

My initial wonder was whether the absolute is philosophy’s fundamental problem.

The external world to be known may or may not be the way we know it. Here's what the Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy says about this:

In philosophical discussions, the external world is the realm of objects outside and independent of an independent self. The external world can only be examined and known through sensory perceptions. It is presumed that the eternal world is a unified system, mirroring our unified perceptions. Skeptics argue that our knowledge is limited to our perceptions, thus there is no knowledge of this external world itself.

There are three traditional accounts of our perception of the external world. Direct realism, says that the physical world is as it is perceived. Representationalism holds that the external world causes our experiences, and that the object being perceived cannot exist outside of how it is perceived. For Russell, that nothing in the external world we perceive is what it seems. Phenomenalism is the view that all we know are phenomena, and we know nothing of the external things causing the phenomena.

For Hobbes the external world involves both the external movement of objects and the internal movements within the perceiver. Any change in these movements corresponds to an interaction, thus perception. Locke, Berkeley, and Mill held that sensations of the external world cannot be selected by the perceiver; only our ideas spawned from those perceptions can be selected and controlled.

The ability to comprehend the external world involves the ability to interpret, distinguish, and relate what seems to be singular things or, at least, singular groups of things. Comprehending the external world is a process of forming interconnections between these singular things.

So far I haven't really engaged in a discussion on how perception constructs rather than reveals the external world since. I could do it, of course, but only as a digresion from my main preoccupation:

Is the absolute (knowledge) philosophy's fundamental problem?

AVE

tronvillain

The only definition of the absolute you've given is "all that exists in itself, separately and independently from any other object." What exactly is that supposed to mean? It's a rather vague, which makes answering your main question somewhat difficult.

Still, we may gain some insight from one particular paragraph:
So, you seems to be asking something like: Is the point of philophy to obtain complete knowledge about reality? I suppose it could serve as sor t of an "ultimate goal" but philosphy is useful even if such a goal is never achieved. In other words, philosophy has more immediate goals.

Also, did you mean to use <a href="http://dictionary.msn.com/find/entry.asp?search=caduceus" target="_blank">caduceus</a> in that sentence? It's just that I can't make sense of it.

Laurentius

AVE

tronvillain

Also, did you mean to use caduceus in that sentence? It's just that I can't make sense of it.

Sorry, I meant caducous (= likely to collapse, kind of).

The only definition of the absolute you've given is "all that exists in itself, separately and independently from any other object." What exactly is that supposed to mean? It's a rather vague, which makes answering your main question somewhat difficult.

And yes, absolute knowledge would be the process through which the subject could get the idea of what the object really is beyond any subjectivity, the object being the whole external world, the existence itself.

I've read and been told that this is supposed to be philosophy's ultimate goal. I've also heard that learning the human nature may be it. Or knowing yourself. Or...

Is there any final, single fundamental problem of philosophy?
And if so, is it absolute knowledge (as defined above)?

AVE

tronvillain

Is obtaining absolute knowledge philosphy's ultimate goal? Yes, in the sense that have absolute knowledge would mean philosophy was done. No, in the sense that it would just be the result of solving all the smaller problems along the way.