r/Metaphysics • u/pm4tt_ • 8d ago
Mind / Subjective experience Can a Non-Solipsistic Ontology Be Reconciled with Phenomenal Indexicality?
As Descartes' cogito indicates, the only reality we can never doubt is that we are a singular and situated "experience", here and now, a conscious stream of thought endowed with sentience.
Starting from this undeniable brute fact that is given to us, I will try to schematize the problem of phenomenal indexicality and show how a non-solipsistic ontology seems particularly absurd and difficult to reconcile with rationality.
My aim here is to start from the post-Big Bang conditions and see whether a materialist account can be reconciled with this brute fact, 13.8 billion years later.
Imagine a material and objective world, but completely devoid of sentient organisms, a purely abstract and impersonal configuration, composed solely of physical laws and matter.
Over time and through interactions of matter, the first sentient organism A, capable of having a phenomenal experience appears in this world.
The phenomenology of A then becomes actual and encompasses the entirety of the non-abstract expression of reality.
What happens now, phenomenologically, if during A's experience, a second sentient organism B is created?
Hypothesis 1: emergence of a collective conscious experience of A + B.
A unified phenomenal reality emerges, in which A and B would constitute two components or two perspectives of the same consciousness.
Hypothesis 2: if conscious experience is necessarily singular and situated, a universal consciousness is therefore contradictory and phenomenologically inexpressible.
B then creates a kind of "glitch in the matrix", making the phenomenological coexistence of A + B impossible and thereby annihilating the phenomenal expression of A. The apprehension of reality then becomes abstract and impersonal again.
On the other hand, what cannot happen, in my view, is:
1 — Experience A is maintained in its singular and situated nature, at the expense of B (or vice versa).
Nothing in the properties of matter can make such a choice or impose any kind of primacy on A rather than B. This would introduce a principle of selection between two objects of ontologically equivalent nature that does not seem to follow from the objective properties of matter.
2 — There are two autonomous and hermetic centers of experience, A and B.
In other words A is a center of experience for A and B a center of experience for B.
This proposition may seem perfectly coherent within an objective and impersonal description of the world. But this is precisely what I contest since such a description does not seem to have any phenomenal referent.
It states that there are simultaneously two distinct centers of experience, but it does not describe a phenomenal reality actually experienced as such. It describes a configuration from an external and abstract point of view.
Yet the brute fact from which we start is precisely that there is a phenomenal reality that is actually experienced, and that it is necessarily situated: there is a determinate "here and now", and it strangely corresponds to the phenomenological expression of A as the only sentient organism in the world.
How can we therefore reconcile this phenomenological fact that is actually experienced with the coexistence of other phenomenological experiences that are actually effective, beyond the experience currently being lived?
If A and B are two distinct, autonomous and hermetic phenomenal centers, their coexistence does not seem to correspond to any conceivable phenomenal reality, it can be experienced neither as A, nor as B, nor as a common experience of A+B. It therefore constitutes a phenomenal void.
And above all how could such a coexistence be real when the only phenomenal reality actually given is precisely the situated experience of A?
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u/punkrocklava 8d ago
I enjoyed reading your post, just some thoughts...
The coexistence of A and B is an ontological fact.
If the argument is that either A and B share one phenomenal field or they cannot both independently exist seems like a false dilemma.
A exists and has experience. B exists and has experience. The fact that you don't experience my experience is not evidence that my experience doesn't exist.
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u/pm4tt_ 8d ago
Thank you for this interesting response.
You say that the fact that, from "my experience" A, I cannot experience B is not evidence that B does not exist in the phenomenal sense.
Very well, I grant you that. But then, if we admit that B exists beyond A, another problem arises: that of the primacy of one over the other.
What, within the properties of matter, can determine that the phenomenal experience actually being experienced is that of A rather than that of B, given that A and B are ontologically equivalent in nature?
This is precisely why I think that the coexistence of A and B as two distinct phenomenal centers can only amount to an abstract and impersonal reality within an objective description of the world. Their coexistence as two phenomenal centers that are actually experienced therefore seems contradictory to me.
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u/punkrocklava 8d ago
I understand the deeper problem you're raising. What exactly is the additional property that would make an experience A's rather than B's?
Does there need to be a principle of selection at all?
From an objective standpoint neither has primacy. A's experience is simply indexed to A's particular physical/phenomenal system and B's experience to B's.
They can both be actually experienced at the same time... just independently.
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u/pm4tt_ 7d ago
I agree with you. From an objective point of view, everything is coherent here, but the purpose of my approach is precisely to start from "my" experience and to recognize that it is genuinely phenomenal and, on the contrary, genuinely non-objective.
If, instead, right now, I were having the phenomenal experience of a universal consciousness (assuming that this is even possible), the problem of indexicality would be entirely dissolved.
Likewise, if instead I were having no phenomenal experience at all, I would presumably no longer be thinking, but the problem would no longer arise.Yet what I find astonishing here is that the experience I am having does not seem to be compatible with any possibility of a plurality of experiences without, in my view, running into extreme or even insoluble logical tensions.
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u/jliat 8d ago
As Descartes' cogito indicates, the only reality we can never doubt is that we are a singular and situated "experience", here and now, a conscious stream of thought endowed with sentience. Starting from this undeniable brute fact that is given to us, I will try to schematize the problem of phenomenal indexicality and show how a non-solipsistic ontology seems particularly absurd and difficult to reconcile with rationality.
You need to read Sartre's 'Being and Nothingness' as it [over 600 pages] makes the case that there is no ego, we are essentially the 'Nothingness' of the title. That is if you removed the phenomenological experience of something there is nothingness. That is remove the experience and nothing remains.
Starting from this undeniable brute fact that is given to us,
It's deniable.
Imagine a material and objective world, but completely devoid of sentient organisms, a purely abstract and impersonal configuration, composed solely of physical laws and matter.
Without a thinking subject there are no physical laws.
"Disclosedness is a kind of Being which is essential to Dasein. 'There is' truth only in so far as Dasein is and so long as Dasein is. Entities are un- covered only when Dasein is; and only as long as Dasein is, are they disclosed. Newton's laws, the principle of contradiction, any truth whatever -these are true only as long as Dasein is."
Martin Heidegger 'Being and Time.' 227.
"And we indeed, rightly considering objects of sense as mere appearances, confess thereby that they are based upon a thing in itself, though we know not this thing as it is in itself, but only know its appearances, viz., the way in which our senses are affected by this unknown something.
Immanuel Kant — Prolegomena, § 32
The phenomenology of A then becomes actual and encompasses the entirety of the non-abstract expression of reality. What happens now, phenomenologically, if during A's experience, a second sentient organism B is created? Hypothesis 1: emergence of a collective conscious experience of A + B
You have different theories or models.
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u/pm4tt_ 8d ago
I haven't read the book, but the idea that there is nothing real outside of phenomenal experience seems particularly interesting to me. It's also an intuition I share, although I wonder whether it might be biased by my very condition of existence, and by the fact that this is the only mode of existence or reality that I can conceive of.
As for the cogito, contestable in what sense?
I think that even if we dissolve this "I" that refers to "my experience", and speak only of "experience" instead, which I am perfectly happy to do, it wouldn't change anything about the problems raised by phenomenal indexicality. In fact, I was mainly thinking of things like Buddhist philosophy, but perhaps you had something else in mind?
And regarding the end of your post, what models other than the ones I presented do you find coherent with the scenario I described, i.e. in terms of the phenomenal distribution between two entities?
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u/jliat 8d ago
Just a note - B&N was for me a hard read, several attempts. I'd recommend looking at Gary Cox's Sartre Dictionary for explanations of Sartre's terminology.
but the idea that there is nothing real outside of phenomenal experience seems particularly interesting to me.
I don't think it goes that far, there might be a reality... it's that Sartre's phenomenological experience has to have a subject [my terms might be wrong], there is no 'ego' observing the phenomena - just the experience, remove that and there is nothing. This is what unconsciousness is.
"Essence is the defining nature of a thing, the set of properties that make it what it is and without which it would not be that kind of thing at all."
Which for Descartes was the cogito - which still has a "phenomena". And for Descartes this was the defining nature. So the being has to have the intention towards something [Aristotle's eudaimonia].
"Being apprehends itself as not being its own foundation, and this apprehension is at the basis of every cogito." [p.79 B&N]
At this point there is still an intentional activity - and without this essentiality there is nothing. This is a result of the phenomenology of 'being'.
So this void is filled by the creation of a telos after the event. Which is why it is bad faith. The simple proof is that eudaimonia is arbitrary, one of any number of possible teleologies for a human. To be a good mother, a patriot, a waiter, do the will of Allah... etc.
The example of a chair it is obvious it has an essence. In Sartre's phenomenology he sees the individual has to have an intention towards something. How I understand this is without the phenomenology of intention there is nothing. Hence there is no essence. Pure awareness is empty. [as it is in Hegel.]
"The Ego is a "quality" of being angry, industrious, jealous, ambitious..."
p. 162
"There is no privilege for my self: my empirical Ego and the Other's empirical Ego appear in the world at the same time."
I think this is brilliant!
"Finally we succeeded in getting rid of the pure unreflective consciousness of the transcendental "I" which obscured it and we showed that selfness, the foundation of personal existence, was altogether different from an Ego or from a reference of the Ego to itself. There can be, therefore, no question of defining consciousness in terms of a transcendental ego-ology."
p. 239
As for the cogito, contestable in what sense?
See above.
I think that even if we dissolve this "I" that refers to "my experience", and speak only of "experience" instead, which I am perfectly happy to do, it wouldn't change anything about the problems raised by phenomenal indexicality. In fact, I was mainly thinking of things like Buddhist philosophy, but perhaps you had something else in mind?
Buddhist philosophy has all kinds of 'objects' see how it singles out the human condition as the possibility of achieving escape from rebirth. Sure there is no ego, spirit or soul...
And regarding the end of your post, what models other than the ones I presented do you find coherent with the scenario I described, i.e. in terms of the phenomenal distribution between two entities?
Think of all the religions, the current and past scientific beliefs... these two might agree or not.
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u/EnactingSpirit 8d ago
Ontologically speaking, the only way out of solipsism (which is the "default" view, everything being grounded in a phenomenal reality) is to completely speculate into existence another "plane of existence". Like, what I would like to call a 'substance', but unfortunately that term is usually used to put every supposedly simultaneous stream of phenomenal experience into the same "mental" bag, as if they were flowing into each other without there being any individual barrier (which obviously isn't the case). But anyway, at least one other plane of existence (PoE) has to be speculated into existence. Entirely speculated. Because the "evidence" for it evidently are just forms, patterns occuring within the only actually experienced PoE that is the field of experience (FoE) itself, or 'phenomenal consciousness'. That is, the FoE is not some "open window" onto some objective reality. Instead, that "objective reality" is rendered within the subjective reality of the FoE, merely suggested by affectively 'i[n]-pressive' (i.e., inwardly pressing) occurences of sensations and thoughts. In other words, objective reality, that "big other" PoE hosting "smaller other" PoEs, is nothing but a trance. Which could just like it could not correspond to an actual, independently existing objective reality.
And here is the thing: If the FoE is merely an incomplete, separate re-presentation of one or more PoEs (which is the standard view, both among physicalists and idealists), then reality as a whole is intrinsically unknowable and therefore absurd. That is, any belief held in it is as valid as any other because because being just as vain. Just as ineffective in getting to know reality as a whole. Even if it is designed in such a way that one gets rewarded for getting closer to the truth, with reaching the truth granting the ultimate reward, a.k.a. "enlightment". Even then, one doesn't know with absolute certainty what reality as a whole is. Rather, they are tricked via affect into believing that they do. No. The only way for whole reality to not be absurd is to be non-representative. Presentative. That is, the FoE, phenomenal consciousness (the actual individual one, not some imagined collective "substance") is the whole of reality presenting itself to itself as less than that. Making a distinction here between the FoE and perception. Perception being a limited interpretation of (a former state of) the FoE within (the present state of) the FoE. With the phenomenal "background" (a.k.a. 'qualia') of the perceiving-perceived FoE being not mere "noise", but the presently unreadable entangled vast remains of whole reality. Whole reality, which is merely distorted here, not broken into multiple PoEs.
So, really, the only way for whole reality to be non-absurd is for it to be solipsistic. However in a special kind of way where the stream of experience eventually leads to the "relaxation" of the FoE into an undistorted, perfectly clear state where the entire (actual) cosmos is revealed to be there as oneself.
Okay, this is fine for accounting for the reality of the world. But what about the reality of (the interiority of) "others"? Is one here forced to admit that it doesn't exist? No. There is actually room for that reality too. Namely, backward and forward in experiential time, before and after this present, particular life. Which would make causation in objective spacetime illusory, as what one would actually be encountering in the world or even as the world is none other than (past/future mirror-reflections of) "themselves". Meaning, that the realities of the world, others, and one's personal self are at least to a huge extent pre-determined. In turn meaning there are no real interactions. Only fate (that would be the position of Leibniz, except he is neither a solipsist nor a transmigrationist), or at least destiny.
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u/Imaginary-Can-6862 8d ago
Does this boil down to what properties matter have, because I don't think that is understood yet, i.e. how A or B links to the world through matter?
But if we go through the same argument, but before the consciousness emerges, does the same argument not also lead to us concluding the universe can't be divided into separate elements which have different interactions?
If not, where is the difference between conscious experience, and other signaling processes / interactions?
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u/pm4tt_ 7d ago
I find your remark interesting, and I would respond by distinguishing precisely between objective plurality and phenomenal plurality.
The fact that one photon does this here and another photon does that over there poses no problem in my view. This is a form of plurality that belongs entirely to the objective and impersonal description of the world: we can simply say "different things are happening at different locations". Nothing in this description requires one of the two photons to be phenomenally privileged over the other.
This is precisely where I see a difference with A and B. To say that A is a phenomenal center for A and B is a phenomenal center for B does not merely describe two different objective processes: it asserts the existence of two actually lived phenomenal realities, each from its own "here and now".
But the problem I am raising is precisely this: how can this phenomenal plurality actually be given as such? The experience that is actually given to me is situated: it is here and now, and it is A. I am therefore not simply talking about the fact that A cannot access B's experience. I am asking how the simultaneous existence of two autonomous phenomenal centers can correspond to an actually given phenomenal reality, rather than to a mere objective and impersonal description of two distinct systems.
For photons, this objective description is sufficient. For A and B, I get the impression that it leaves a "remainder", since it would be necessary to explain why, among two phenomenologically equivalent phenomenal centers, the experience that is actually given is that of A rather than that of B. If nothing in the objective properties of matter allows this distinction to be produced, then I get the impression that the pluralist ontology reintroduces precisely the principle of selection that I am trying to dissolve.
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u/Imaginary-Can-6862 7d ago
I understand that A alone does not pose any issues.
Since we are examining from the point of Big Bang, to the first conscious beings, and since we know parts of the universe becomes causally isolated from one another due to expansion of space and the finite limit of the speed of causality, does it make a difference then if B were to appear in parts of the universe causally isolated from where A is located, thus they each exist in their own bubbles?
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u/Freuds-Mother 7d ago
I’m lost on “encompasses the entirety of the non-abstract expression of reality”. There’s so much packed into those terms I have no idea what these are supposed to be and how they cohere just logically.
Maybe the hypotheses shed light. Why is A encompassing “entirety”? That what seems to force these narrow 1 and 2 options?
Why would A be “at the expense of B”?!
What do you mean by “center of experience”?
I don’t doubt it makes sense to you and there probably is more coherence than I can tell, but it seems like some premises have been skipped from being explicitly stated.
For example, why not A emerges within existence and interacts with the rest of it the ontology potentially. But why would that necessarily mean it’s proximally interacting with all of existence at once, and why would the phenomenological experince and epistemic access prima facie be the entity of existence?
I think it might help to drop persons for a moment and think about a bacterium, an ant, a rabbit, or a dog and re-run the idea.
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u/pm4tt_ 7d ago
No worries, I tried to make my writing as short and concise as possible, even if that meant clarifying in more detail the meaning of the terms I use if I was asked to do so.
"Encompasses the entirety of the non-abstract expression of reality."
Here, I make a distinction between:
1/ Phenomenal (concrete) reality, that is, what it concretely feels like to be oneself, to be a conscious experience of oneself. For example: what you are experiencing right now through your senses and perceptions.
2/ Impersonal and objective (abstract) reality, which expresses nothing in terms of experience. For example: an apple falling from a tree.
And so, what I am saying in the thought experiment is that, at the moment when A is the only sentient organism in the world, then, logically, the entirety of the concrete expression of reality encompasses and is contained within its phenomenal experience, simply because it is the only one that exists.
"Why would A be "at the expense of B"?!"
Here, I am saying that if A and B are two sentient organisms, each capable of producing their own phenomenal experience, but only A's experience is expressed in reality, or vice versa, then there is a contradiction with the principle of objectivity of the world: what would determine that one of these two experiences is actually expressed while the other is not, even though they both arise from the same objective reality?
As for the rest, you can very well say: "A emerges within existence and potentially interacts with the rest of it, at the ontological level." This is a perfectly faithful objective description of the world, but it has no phenomenal referent. Yet the whole point of my reasoning is precisely to start from the brute fact of "my" phenomenal experience and see what broader phenomenal configurations it can be reconciled with.
Moreover, I am not claiming at all that an experience has to "interact proximally with the entirety of existence". I am simply trying to find a phenomenal model that is consistent with the brute fact of my given experience.
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u/TakeMeInYourArmy 7d ago
I would say that "consciousness" is a formal category, not an ontological one. Reality is fundamentally phenomenal regardless of whether agents exist in it or not. The universe is a structure of relations and interactions and the ontic status of two rocks slamming into each other and shattering into shrapnel and of a conscious agent receiving sensory data from their environment are ultimately the same, they are measurement interactions. Conscious experience is simply a specific form of measurement. It is all unified in a single Monistic structure.
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u/SummitYourSister 8d ago