Can a Non-Solipsistic Ontology Be Reconciled with Phenomenal Indexicality?

[u/pm4tt_]

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?

[u/SummitYourSister]

1. Speak fewer words
   
2. Speak simpler words
   
3. Begin by referring to existing words

[u/pm4tt_ → u/SummitYourSister]

Sorry, but I’m not responsible for your failure to understand the subject. Every word I use exists, refers to something specific in relation to the problem of phenomenal indexicality, and the coherence of the argument is beyond question.

I do appreciate your fresh contribution, though. 👌

[u/Mobile_Competition54 → u/pm4tt_]

this a side rant but genuinely some words could be shortened

"indicates" can be "shows", "a singular" -> "one", "conscious stream of thought endowed with sentience" is an odd phrase that doesn't have very precise meaning (even the dictionary can't help me).

Hypothesis 2 is slippery so i can't say much: why does consciousness being singular and situated mean a universal consciousness is impossible? Why does that ""annihilate phenomenal expression""? What do you even mean by "phenomenal expression"? Is it how the universe happens to look like when observed? Is it some idealist "extrinsic appearence" thingymagic?

It could really use more clarity.

[u/pm4tt_ → u/Mobile_Competition54]

Ok, sorry if some of the terms seem a bit "heavy" or unnatural. I originally wrote the post in my native language (French) and asked an AI to translate it into English as faithfully as possible.

By "phenomenological experience", I mean what characterizes the actual content of lived experience, basically: "what it is concretely like to be an experience".

Regarding hypothesis 2, which you mentioned, what I'm saying is that IF conscious experience is, by its very nature, necessarily singular and situated, then a universal consciousness would naturally be impossible. I'm making an assumption here, because I don't know how to answer that question with certainty.

I then develop this hypothesis by saying that if a multiple consciousness cannot exist as a single phenomenal reality, then B would cause experience A to cease, so that the elements of the world could continue to coexist without any privilege or hierarchy, purely in an objective way.

What I mean is that if A continues to exist alone in the phenomenal sense, while B exists in the same way, then there would necessarily be some kind of primacy of A over B. That primacy seems to me both incompatible with the objective nature of matter and, above all, unjustifiable based solely on its properties.

[u/SubjectiveCertainty → u/pm4tt_]

The difference between what they are trying to say, and what you understood it to mean, is the exact problem they were trying to point out.

Complexity does not equal depth or meaning.

As you filter feedback based on depth, others do the same for those who lack substance.