Can we have understanding of natural phenomena without a model?

[untermensche]

What does it take to say you have at least some understanding of natural phenomena?

This is specifically aimed at those who claim we can have an objective understanding of consciousness, but it is general as well.

Can we claim to have any understanding of a natural phenomena without at the very least a model?

What natural phenomena do we have some understanding of yet have no model?

And to be clear a model of consciousness is just some kind of explanation for how some kind of activity could result in the phenomena of having the ability to have a conscious animal experience.

A model is also something that can be tested and compared with collected data.

 

[DBT]

Our conscious experience of the world and self is a model.

 

[Kharakov]

Can we claim to have any understanding of a natural phenomena without at the very least a model?

Yes, but you'd probably be wrong.

What natural phenomena do we have some understanding of yet have no model?

Quale. You can't model quale, they are. Of course, without the linguistic concept of quale, you can't have understanding of them, so... there you go. You have a model of them in order to know them.

And to be clear a model of consciousness is just some kind of explanation for how some kind of activity could result in the phenomena of having the ability to have a conscious animal experience.

A model is also something that can be tested and compared with collected data.

The type of models you refer to are mental maps of reality, that might or might not have 1 to 1 correspondence with various aspects of reality.

You're grasping for some form of subsymbolic™ knowledge- intuition or something. I don't normally think of intuition as understanding, rather it is a feeling that something is some way, probably based on an incomplete model of reality.

*a registered trademark of the Subsymbolic LLC

 

[untermensche]

Our conscious experience of the world and self is a model.

We do not experience the self.

We are an animal self that can experience.

 

[untermensche]

What natural phenomena do we have some understanding of yet have no model?

Quale. You can't model quale, they are. Of course, without the linguistic concept of quale, you can't have understanding of them, so... there you go. You have a model of them in order to know them.

IMO this half-baked idea called "quale" is a distraction.

We have experiences.

And an experience has a quality to it.

What needs to be modeled is how a brain creates both an experience and that which can have the experience.

When this is done so-called "quales" will be explained as well. If you understand how an experience is had and by what it is had you will understand how the qualities of that experience are created and experienced.

And I disagree with your notion that we have already have some understanding of this notion of "quale". We know nothing about it. Defining something arbitrarily based only on subjective experience is not understanding it. Gross models that cannot be tested with any collected data is not an understanding.

The type of models you refer to are mental maps of reality, that might or might not have 1 to 1 correspondence with various aspects of reality.

Models are what chemists and physicists use to make predictions.

They are not mental images.

They are spelled out ideas and equations.

And you can test collected data with them.

Newton's model that gravity is a force of attraction between two bodies is both equations and the necessary explanations to make sense of them and test them.

The model was not totally accurate but it was something that could be tested and something that yielded predictions.

It proved there was at least some understanding.

Without a testable model how is even a sliver of understanding of natural phenomena proven?

 

[DBT]

Our conscious experience of the world and self is a model.

We do not experience the self.

We are an animal self that can experience.

You have no experience of self awareness while going about your daily activities?

 

[untermensche]

Our conscious experience of the world and self is a model.

We do not experience the self.

We are an animal self that can experience.

You have no experience of self awareness while going about your daily activities?

The self is that which experiences.

Memories are not the self. They are something the self can experience.

Sensations are not the self. The self is that which experiences them.

Vision is not the self. The self experiences it.

A way of behaving is not the self. The self has some control over behavior but is controlling an animal with reflexes and drives and survival mechanisms and social needs.

 

[DBT]

You have no experience of self awareness while going about your daily activities?

The self is that which experiences.

Memories are not the self. They are something the self can experience.

Sensations are not the self. The self is that which experiences them.

Vision is not the self. The self experiences it.

A way of behaving is not the self. The self has some control over behavior but is controlling an animal with reflexes and drives and survival mechanisms and social needs.

I see that you have your own model of the world and self..in a way answering your own OP question. But a bit of work is needed with the semantics, a statements such as ''the self is that which experiences'' is far from clear in meaning.

 

[fromderinside]

"Maezel, what are quale, and a self is that which experiences?" "WhY, Johnny, they are things a homunculus would see because we weren't just machines as is so self evident" said the disembodied self model of which dualists are so fond.

Actually friends, we are things that evolved the capacity to interpret red as a particular energy of light which the dualist mystics call quale and we also evolved the capacity to empathise with other's who have the same capacity which leaves the illusion of self which experiences.

yawn.

 

[untermensche]

You have no experience of self awareness while going about your daily activities?

The self is that which experiences.

Memories are not the self. They are something the self can experience.

Sensations are not the self. The self is that which experiences them.

Vision is not the self. The self experiences it.

A way of behaving is not the self. The self has some control over behavior but is controlling an animal with reflexes and drives and survival mechanisms and social needs.

I see that you have your own model of the world and self..in a way answering your own OP question. But a bit of work is needed with the semantics, a statements such as ''the self is that which experiences'' is far from clear in meaning.

You have not even tried to address the OP.

I of course have an opinion on the OP. And will change my mind only if convinced. Not because you have no arguments.

There is nothing wrong with saying the self is that which experiences. If you cannot comprehend it that is another matter.

Experience is two things. That which is experienced, vision and sensations and thoughts and memories, etc.

And that which experiences them all. The self.

- - - Updated - - -

"Maezel, what are quale, and a self is that which experiences?" "WhY, Johnny, they are things a homunculus would see because we weren't just machines as is so self evident" said the disembodied self model of which dualists are so fond.

Actually friends, we are things that evolved the capacity to interpret red as a particular energy of light which the dualist mystics call quale and we also evolved the capacity to empathise with other's who have the same capacity which leaves the illusion of self which experiences.

yawn.

What is this "we" you speak of with such little knowledge as if it is nothing?

What are "we"?

Not what species are we.

What are the "we" you are howling at the moon for?

 

[fromderinside]

Human rats in the race only wee and squeak/sheesh

 

[untermensche]

Human rats in the race only wee and squeak/sheesh

Rats are not desperately trying to say they understand the brain of the rat.

Thinking and thoughts.

If they are not decided upon freely to defend them is utter folly.

 

[DBT]

I see that you have your own model of the world and self..in a way answering your own OP question. But a bit of work is needed with the semantics, a statements such as ''the self is that which experiences'' is far from clear in meaning.

You have not even tried to address the OP.

I pointed out that your experience of the world and self is a mental model of the external world/natural phenomena being generated by 'your' brain......which addresses your OP question - ''can we have understanding of natural phenomena without a model?'' - in the negative; at the most fundamental level of experience, no, we cannot.

 

[untermensche]

The color blue is not a model.

It is a complete transformation of incoming information into a specific product that is not related to the incoming stimulation.

That is a whole different process from modeling.

Modeling is what we use to try to understand phenomena.

The color blue gives us no understanding of the external stimulus that caused the brain to create it.

 

[Juma]

The color blue is not a model.

It is a complete transformation of incoming information into a specific product that is not related to the incoming stimulation.

That is a whole different process from modeling.

Modeling is what we use to try to understand phenomena.

The color blue gives us no understanding of the external stimulus that caused the brain to create it.

No no no...you got it backwards:it was the evolution that created the model. Seeing black is not modelling. It is USING the model.

 

[untermensche]

The creation of color is not a model.

It is the transformation of a stimulus into an arbitrary product that is experienced.

Nothing is known about black or what causes it by experiencing it.

A model is an explanation. It is something humans invent to try to explain phenomena.

 

[fromderinside]

Human rats in the race only wee and squeak/sheesh

Rats are not desperately trying to say they understand the brain of the rat.

Thinking and thoughts.

If they are not decided upon freely to defend them is utter folly.

It's not that rats don't have thoughts, it's that humans don't know anything about rat language or thought. Udder studies are for bovines.

 

[untermensche]

Human rats in the race only wee and squeak/sheesh

Rats are not desperately trying to say they understand the brain of the rat.

Thinking and thoughts.

If they are not decided upon freely to defend them is utter folly.

It's not that rats don't have thoughts, it's that humans don't know anything about rat language or thought. Udder studies are for bovines.

We know as much objectively about rat thinking as we know about human thinking.

The only things we know about human thinking are subjective reports. We have no objective understanding of any aspect of human or rat consciousness.

 

[DBT]

The perception of colour is an aspect of the mental model of the external world that the brain constructs from information acquired through its senses, the information being wavelength.

 

[fromderinside]

With you DBT with the correction to color is visible energy. One can say senses since both heat and color are derived from energy untermenche.