Ben_Hyink
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Fly,
You're right that if a portion of the brain or CNS had "awareness" or even reflective "consciousness" then the united apperceptive "subject of experience(/thought/action)" might be completely unaware of it. I think the connectionist philosophers Gerard O'Brien and Jon Opie have mentioned that possibility, though I don't think they suggested there was any reason to believe that to be the case. They have written some interesting papers speculating on the evolutionary development of awareness and consciousness. (Btw, Kant acknowledged that animals without self-awareness might still be expected to have similar apperceptive unity, they just lacked the ability to abstractly reflect on their experience or develop logical proofs to show their access... (read 444 more words →)
Calderon,
As I said, you can accomplish quite a lot without delving far into the subject but writing it off may leave you with a less-than-optimal framing of reality that just might leave you vulnerable to reaching inaccurate conclusions about important topics like whether to state "all perception is illusion" instead of qualifying the claim before an eccentric who buys it draws conclusions from that premise which make him or her less inclined to try to model reality accurately or act in ways that presume a lawful external world.
Of course we bring knowledge and skills to the problem that are obtained in part through the senses and stored in memory (explicit... (read 868 more words →)
Caledonian,
Philosophy has developed quite a bit since the Greeks started the Western tradition and I wasn't invoking Greek traditions but I don't recall the ancient skeptics getting very far.
The saying "Scientists need philosophy of science [and epistemology] like birds need ornithology" is true in a practical sense but dismissing the whole topic as irrelevant is unwarranted. Ignoring epistemological issues may be pragmatic depending on one's career but lack of attention doesn't resolve epistemological issues.
Through reason we can use our senses to discover flaws in our sensory systems and intuitions about the world (as well as empirically confirm the existence of cognitive biases). However, we could never have begun to make such discoveries... (read 503 more words →)
Cases of apperceptive agnosia, and to a lesser extent brains split at a mature stage of development, provide examples of how apperception, and the apperceptive "I" is in fact relevant to performing typical cognitive functions. I try to be careful not to make sweeping blanket statements about features of experience with a variety of uses or subtle aspects (e.g. "self = illusion"; "perception = illusion"; "judgment = illusion"; "thought = illusion"; "existence = illusion"; "illusions = ???" ...now let's just claim that "sense-data" grounds scientific methodology and knowledge, somehow... ).
The fact that information doesn't converge in a single location in the brain does not imply that a functionally coherent "I" is not... (read 383 more words →)
Clearly it's a waste of time to try to have a reasoned debate with someone not even willing to consider one's arguments but rather intent on misrepresenting them as directed toward purposes for which they never were intended to serve (e.g. a fleshed-out psychology or comprehensive analysis of the perceptual system).
It's a shame you haven't read Hume's skeptical critiques of empirical claims of "fact," but as I said before, deep epistemology isn't of interest to everyone and isn't relevant to the vast majority of scientific claims that can be made.
Peace.