You’re right, phenomena are not a sufficient ground for all rational belief. Something else is needed to ground beliefs that are not known to be true if and only if a certain phenomenal condition is met. I believe that we have such a something in motivations which impel us to draw conclusions that do not follow from their premises. However, such conclusions are not, strictly speaking, knowledge, even if they are partially grounded in experience, which is why I initially excluded inductive judgments from consideration in my epistemology.
I suppose a reasonable objection to my epistemology may be, “What good is it, if it doesn’t affirm the truth of inductive judgments from empirical premises upon which all the technical achievements of mankind are based?”, to which my reply would be that I think such inductive judgments have been our only demonstratively successful way of grounding speculative theories about the world in observable facts, so I recognize the dignity of empirical science even though I don’t think that we know its hypotheses to be true.
Regarding epistemology, I still find the idea behind Cartesian Doubt appealing.
I am not very updated on cutting edge epistemology, but personally, for now, I have settled with something which I may call "epistemology based on doubt".
Basically, I rank beliefs and ideas based on how difficult it is doubt coherently. The more difficult it is doubt X the higher it is ranked (or 'scored').
Then I use higher ranked beliefs to deductively infer other beliefs.
Deductively inferred beliefs can share roughly the same rank as its premises because I consider deductive principles themselves as one of the most highly ranked beliefs - something that seems epistemically as certain as can be.
Phenomenality\appearance ("cogito"), or even more generally beingness of "being" in some fashion or another, is another belief that I may hold at the highest regard. To doubt is to affirm the
doubting - so it's hard to coherently ponder the possibility for there being no appearance or even more radically there being no being at all).
This principle can be supplemented by the Wittgensteinian insight - the more radical (extreme) one's doubt becomes, the less sense the very doubting start to make.
Then I can accept a lower ranked belief if it is;
{1) fairly hard to doubt
or (non-exclusive or)
2) it is something that needs to be constantly assumed for pragmatic sake,
or
(3) if it is a Moorean common sense
AND
if it is clearly conceivable and intelligible - not just a 'bad' unquestioned common sense.)}
AND
(4) if it doesn't contradict a higher ranked belief or something inferred from them.)
I can accept induction at this level (relatively lower ranked than deduction, but much higher ranked compared to many other beliefs) for the sake of pragmatic utility and such.
I don't think induction can be justified in terms of something simpler without circularity. It is something to be taken as a fundamental axiom IMO.
I don't think we need much justification for it; in a sense as one the greatest skeptics, Sextus Empiricus himself may say, nature necessitates us to do induction; thus we may just do that.
Now we can again infer other beliefs BASED on these principles and continue in the construction of the Quine's "web of beliefs".
If someday by some reasoning, something inferred from a higher ranked belief X is found to contradict a lower ranked belief Y which initially may have seemed to be higher ranked than not-Y, then we much re-rank. We must elevate the rank of not-Y above Y. Thus the hierarchy of beliefs in my system of epistemology is open for revision and refinement.
Since it is oriented more towards pragmaticism and less towards absolutism (having absolute incorrigible knowledge - though I suppose knowledge of phenomenality comes close) it need not fear skeptical hypothesis or the critics of the methodology of Cartesian doubt who argues how we cannot find any foundation because we always may have prejudices or biases, or how there may not be any way out when you question everything even your own sanity and ability to reason.
For the sake of flexibility, I keep, for every belief, a room for change based on the discovery of some inferred belief and contradictions or something - even for the most fundamental beliefs that are almost certain (or totally certain) to be true, because yeah why not.
Since I've never had such exotic experiences, I suppose I'll have to take your word for it—or not. As Schopenhauer said, philosophers can convince others by appealing to objective conditions, but mystics cannot.
But the philosophical mystic (or even an astute philosophical non-mystic) can explain what those experiences point towards in terms of common intersubjective phenomenal experiences.
However, regarding some of these, there are also empirical evidences, proposals for empirical investigation, and precise methodologies to cultivate these kinds of experiences for any normal human being.
Experience 1:
That which makes consciousness of something as consciousness is the aspect of 'witnessing' (witnessing here doesn't only mean visual witnessing, but it refers to general mode-neutral awareness of any object - including mental sensations).
Identification is a mental activity based on thought-feeling complex. Sometimes a thought may appear - but without 'identification' - it may then seem like a 'hallucinationatory voice', or as an 'intrusive thought'.
The question is what makes '
my thought' (thoughts with mine-ness sense of being produced by 'me' - the thinker as opposed to
ONLY being the perciever of the thoughts) distinct from 'intrusive mental voices or images' or perhaps the talks of a dream character (which are essentially thoughts presented to the mind but not identified as mine - the dream avatar to which the identifying activity may be direced at the moment).
And who is behind this 'identification' at any moment? Is there a substantial self that identifies?
Is there any evidence in appearance itself that it is the witness (mode neutral witnessing aspect) that propitiates the thoughts that appear to be 'possessed by some subject' as opposed to there only being appearances of thoughts that simply appears to be possessed by some kind of mental concept of subject/self-image. And what constitute this posessor? where to find it? I won't go into too much details here. By we can do phenomenal and philosophical analysis on the structure of witness and its relationship to the contents.
There are also psychological states where identification considerably weakens (depersonalization) and there are empirical evidence for them. Plus empirical experiments to show how identification can be manipulated with fake body parts and such.
In short, we can point to the fact that the witnessing-ness may not necessarily possess anything as a personal being beyond mere perspectival possession. Phenomenology gives no evidence for such. As such the witness can be considered abstractedly without considering it as a subject with will, intention, thoughts or such, but more as a place 'basho' where will, thoughts, intention arises - the witnessing itself being somewhat unmoved, still, and transcendent in character (because there can be no witnessing of unwitnessing, witnessingness appears timeless - i.e - changeless through time. This is only a phenomenological truth though - who knows about the metaphysics. Though mystics often seem to make metaphysical statements out of it - I have found no reason to do so).
From the vantage point of seeing oneself as this mere 'witnessing', everything is possessed by the witness only in the perspectival sense (in the sense that it is appearing it the witnessing). As such from the point of view of being this witness,
the 'bird' out there is as external as one's own 'thoughts'.
The mystic experience is simply a more direct experiential realization of this.
Experience 2:
As you yourself said that the subject is the whole - the unity of apperception - whereas the objects are the part. Yet the parts aren't distinct from the whole. The multiplicity exists only in unity. They aren't completely distinct.
As Santaraksita pointed out ages ago, non-sentient objects are non-sentient i.e they cannot make to appear. For objects to appear it needs to be given a phenomenal aspect. The only way that can be done is by making consciousness to represent the objects in a phenomenal form in consciousness itself.
To be conscious of an object the consciousness has to, in a sense, become that object to itself.
To appear is to be infused with appearance-ness (consciousness) -i.e to become one with consciousness.
When the intuition doesn't identify the self with particular contents within an experience (like thoughts, feelings, body) but the very appearance-ness (or witnessing-ness), and then it may realize how this apsect of witnessing or phenomenality is infused and immanent in everything. As an ancient Indian sage once said, it is like salt mixed with water.
This is the fact of non-distinctness of the subject and object in the experience itself.
The mystic experience is the experiential realization of the union of subject and objects something which can be philosophically understood as well. In other words, it is to see that there is no 'distance' between subject and object in appearance.
Experience 1 is the realization of the transcendence of witnessing. Experience 2 is the realization of immanence.
In some way, mystic experiences can have a transformative character that mere intellectualization lack, but sometimes I suspect that the knowledge gained from basic reasoning and some intellectualization has a sort of strength that may be missing on many mystical experiences.
Experience 3:
In experience 1, there is still an identification of being the 'witness'. But the whole 'identification'-ness itself is a mental object - something that appears in the witnessing but not central to the witnessing. The whole idea of being a subject of object - the whole intentional structure is also itself appearing as an object. And as I explained earlier it doesn't make sense of a subject over and above the experiencing itself.
Experience 1 may also involve some questionable idea of the witness being a separate transcendent being from the experienced objects or at least a sense of that. When The sense of identification completely disappears, even the subtle identification with being along with the sense of there being a witnessing over and above there only remains the objects - i.e - mere appearances without a sense of being a subject 'I' to whom they appear. This is different from experience 2, in the sense of lacking the identification with the objects. Experience 2 can feel like being an immanent witness not-separate from anything but there is still identification with the subject that experiences the union with objects. In a sense this may be considered as an even higher form of union, where there is not even the sense of being an "I" who have "united", but just the sense of there being this world expressing itself, a world belonging to no one, experiences occuring to no observer behind, and all the processes being impersonal. It can be an escape from the suffering of being a personal-self who wills. Because not anymore there is anyone to identify with the will. The will has become impersonal. It is not yours, but the world's.
Experience 3 naturally follows from some of the elements introduced in 1. If identification is indeed accepted to be simply a mental activity - a content of experience that is not essential to the experience or the witnessing, and if there are cases of alterations of sense of (personal) identification, it becomes a lot more plausible for there to be a case of absolute depersonalization (which won't be pathological because in that state there is no identification or association with any negative emotions either if there are any at all. Whereas usual depersonalization, as Miri Albahari argues in Analytical Buddhism accompanies identification with negative emotions like terror even when this identification may tighten itself to only a very few objects - like the negative feelings and not extend towards other objects like body, thoughts and such).
Experience 4: This one is the most tricky. I can't talk about it because I haven't had it yet. However, experiences like these or close to this are highly reported. If psychological disorders and states are to be taken as objective features based on reported experiences + brain states or whatever, one can take this as such too.
This is the experience of not having any experience yet still being 'awake', as far as I understand it. It is supposedly ineffable (but so is the taste of salt so I don't know)- the experience of pure phenomenality (phenomenality as such - without any 'particular' discernable quality to it - no feeling, thought, sensations). As far as I understand, there probably is still a lot going on, and there is a 'quality' to it, but it has to be understood very loosely - and it has to be understood to be unlike anything we can normally imagine. There may also be different variants of this kind of experience. Though it may technically not have the
sense of being 'subject' or 'witness'.
However, something close to philosophical exploration on the idea of consciousness by itself being a sort of absolute-nothingness may be found in Japan Kyoto School. The mystical experience may be considered thus as simply being the experiential realization of the philosophical realization of the essence of consciousness as the pure phenomenal voidness - the 'absolute nothingness' that allows all things to manifest.
Metzinger calls it MPE (Minimal Phenomenal Experience) and even proposes a possible empirical experiment to test some of his hypotheses.
I think it is. Intuitions of time and space are transcendental conditiones sine quibus non of the phenomenal representation of events in time and space. Moreover, I think that the transcendental conditions are not the brain and its neurons, but the brain is their objectification, the outward, partial appearance of what is inwardly and holistically experienced by the subject. Explaining consciousness merely as an activity of objects, as materialists do, begs the question since all objects are objects for some subject, whether this be a layman or a neuroscientist.
By transcendental, I meant (causal) conditions that are beyond phenomenology - Conditions that actively constructs phenomenology based on causal rules and laws of nature.
While there are some pretty certain conditions (as in conditions as features within or as imposed upon phenomenality) that seems necessary for there to be phenomenology at all, it may not imply anything about the nature of the noumenal stuffs that may actually construct and produce the phenomenal world.
For example, I may say it's trivially true that phenomenality is a necessary condition for there to be phenomenality. There cannot be a phenomenality without phenomenality.
Less trivially, I may also speak of self-luminosity (self-awareness or meta-awareness) to be a necessary element of awareness. All awareness is awareness of awareness, which can be argued if needed. But they are necessary structures within phenomenality not the noumenal things-in-itself that causally produces awareness and phenomenality in the first place; if they are produced in the first place (I am not assuming that these noumenal conditions exist, or if it exists if it produces or merely alters the structure)
I would consider space and time as more of grounding conditions for phenomenology rather than productive ones.
However, I have my doubts if space is necessary for phenomenology, considering experience 4 where supposedly there is no spatiality.
Even in other experiences, it seems possible to experience things not as something distinct outside of us (spatially distant) as a subject but instead as being us.
Furthermore, the sense of spatial-ness becomes less distinct when we consider things like feelings instead of more visual appearances. What about the moments when concentration focuses solely on the aspect of some sensation or feeling withdrawn from visual elements? I have only just started on Kant, so I don't know what Kant had to say about it.
Even time is said to be 'gone' in the moment of 4th experience. Time, as conceived as succession, maybe indeed missing in a sense. However, my understanding of time is atypical - I don't consider the time to be merely succession. So I wouldn't call experience 4 as timeless. But I shall wait until I have experienced it for myself. Though I am not sure, I haven't experienced something similar in certain moments.
Kant did say, IIRC, that it may be possible to have phenomenology without space-time but that may not be something that any human experiences. In that sense, one may say that the peak of yogic experiences, maybe indeed, in some sense,
inhuman. In these experiences, the human being is no more.
Moreover, I think that the transcendental conditions are not the brain and its neurons, but the brain is their objectification, the outward, partial appearance of what is inwardly and holistically experienced by the subject.
IMO, the brain as we know it is merely an indirect appearance. An appearance that partial correspond to some appearance (even if its own internal appearance) and dispositional rules defining behavior and change. Since the brain is only seen within seeing, it is only an indirect appearance. The phenomenology of others is simply represented as the structure of neurons in the phenomenology of another. The brain itself is an internal representation of the external aspect of the internal representation.
As such the real brain - the noumenal brain is completely unknown. What we have is merely an interface as presented to us, not the thing-in-itself.
Certainly, but this is a philosophical dead end.
Not necessarily if one isn't seeking absolutism. One can just say "sure bro", and move on using the epistemology as described earlier. As Galen Strawson said, we give far undue attention to skepticism. We don't have to argue them to be wrong, or their possibilities to be impossibilities. We can simply consider them to be implausible, or just commit to a bit of pragmatism. The ancient skeptics (the lineage of Pyrrho) were quite pragmatic in a sense. They not only involved themselves in questioning everything - being the 'universal doubter'. But they also proposed a method to live as a skeptic (a seeker). Skeptical hypotheses can also be very useful in ranking beliefs in my Cartesian-doubt inspired epistemology.
Certainly, but this is a philosophical dead end. The theory that the subject does something analogous to what its objectification in the human brain is doing stands a much better chance of reconciliation with the findings of empirical science than the theory that appearances just sort of happen, now this way and now another, though I do often wonder what analogous subjective differences correspond to differences between brains and other objects.
However, one can still argue from a panpsychic or idealistic stance. From that stance, if everything is considered to be experiential, then there is no non-experiential aspect to cause appearances. There are still experiential conditions conditioning other experiential conditions nevertheless. If panpsychism or some form of protopanpsychism is true, the brain may not exist as a separate productive condition for consciousness but it can be strictly identical to consciousness. The only reason for the brain to appear different from consciousness is because the brain as it appears is simply a representation of phenomenal information corresponding to some other field of appearance. It may be an imperfect representation which is why neurons don't seem united whereas the appearance corresponding to it is (binding problem). But it is still an causal interface - a wrapper - through which other causal forces (like will, intention, and such) can influence the other field of appearance. In some sense, it can be an even minimal and simpler metaphysics (no two radically different 'types' of substance - only one kind - experientialism). However, I have no reason to believe in simplicity if there is no pragmatic utility (like testing and such). So I can stick to more skeptical or epistemically pessimistic standpoints where I refuse to speculate the noumena - all I can say is that there are appearances - there may be other appearances not appearing here (avoiding solipisism) - they can interact (abductive assumptions + empirical evidence) - portions of brains can represent portions of other appearances in here (empirical evidence) and this representation is an interface to alter others appearances (empirical evidence) - and so on - with all that one can live a practical functional life and do all kind of science to map brain states with appearances, and create other representations (like represents brain states in terms of images, sounds etc. in our own appearances).....without speculating about what is going in between in the transcendental noumenal realm.
This Bhattacharyya seems like my kind of philosopher. This is definitely worth a look.
