Well no, what exists exists – just look around, that is the geometry of experience, its clearly a projective geometry. Nothing flows into any centre point of such a geometry so there is no “ego tunnel” and temporal displacements are geometrical not simple processes as in Gibson’s vision. The scientific way to deal with experience is to examine its dimensionality (the number of independent axes involved) and then derive a geometrical equation to account for the form (see for instance The value of meditations). The philosophical method of accounting for experience seems to be to assume that nineteenth century physics is a universal truth and to reject our experience because it is inexplicable according to such an assumption.

Metzinger’s Ego Tunnel?

I guess I misunderstood your point. I agree that a scientific description of the observer needs a 4D model. Space-time with a subjective “point” of origin.

The point I was trying to make in the previous post was that what neuroscientists and philosophers believe to be a scientific, or third person, model is usually no more than a model within a 3D coordinate system. The ecological model involving elk only needed a 2D model and the description of the observer needs a model in at least 4D. A 4D model (with 1 negative dimension) automatically creates an infinity of observation points.

I’m a neuroscientist and I believe that there IS a privileged frame of reference for each observer! But this belief is a part of my covert (1pp, within my brain) theoretical model. It seems to me that my private belief becomes a scientific description only when it is expressed in an overt (3pp) scientific model. Science is a human invention, and all that is public about science is an elaborate artifact. The ecological scientific theory that proposes that the density of the elk population depends upon the food density, and “explicitly creates a coordinate system that places elk and food on a plane within this system” is a scientific artifact. If all humans on earth were to vanish, the books, journal articles, computer records, etc., that contained the elk-food theory would remain, and might be understood by an alien visitor with the means to decode the scientific content of these artifacts.

Gibsonian ecological psychology?

Science goes way beyond your postulate that physical descriptions are “scientific relations only when they are described within a 3pp scientific model”.

Consider some scientific theories. An ecological scientific theory might propose that the density elk depends upon the food density. This theory explicitly creates a coordinate system and places elk and food on a plane within this system. Consider another theory p = mV, momentum equals scalar mass times vector velocity. This theory sets up a 3D geometry in which the vector “V” is the same no matter where it is placed. Scientific theories set up a geometrical manifold and place objects within it.

Take a neuroscientist’s theory of a brain scan in which activity in area “A” is correlated with stimulus “B”. This theory puts the brain and stimulus in a 3D manifold. Take a physicists theory of time dilation, t = T gamma. This theory not only postulates events in a 4D manifold but divides the manifold into a possible infinity of inertial frames of reference, one for each observer.

The only difference between the physical theories of neuroscientists and the truth about reality is that the neuroscientists know so little about science that they have not understood that a transformation may be needed between their abstract 3D theories and reality. There might be a frame of reference for each observer. There obviously is a frame of reference for each observer but for some reason neuroscientists and philosophers just wont have it!

The physical descriptions drawn by early humans on the walls of their caves are not likely to have involved scientific relations at that time because there probably were no scientific terms to apply

That is because they were not descriptions, they were representations.

- description: de-script. to write about something, to explain something.

- representation: re-present. to present again, maybe in different format and media, like a picture or a photo.

That is why the phenomenal result of an observation is representational, or we can say the phenomenal constitutes a representational space, it presents in another “format or media”, the observed item, scenario, etc

To me this is an important concept.

the self-existent chair itself vs. my conscious experience of it

This is the precise point where I diverge. There is no self-existent chair itself .

The moment you classify, you categorise, you can’t have stand-alone/self-existent entities. The matter and energy of the so-called chair are self-existent, but not the chair itself.

The chair as an object, as defined in the dictionary, can only exist in the mind of an observer.

Manmade objects are tricky, but the same idea applies to everything, a volcano or an ice-berg.

Self-existing are on the one hand matter and energy, that show a behavior that seem to follow certain law, which discovery is the goal of science, and on the other hand other minds, other people, other conscious beings, sentient entities.

The problem is what is the phenomenal, how does a brain produce it? or interact with it? eventually the phyical line end up in a similar place….

You say:

Reality as it appears to us contains *both* the physical and the phenomenal, and we shouldn’t (like Dennett) deny that the phenomenal is as real as the physical. Of course we tend to privilege the physical as ontologically primary and self-existent since it’s what figures in 3rd person explanations

Yes, some even believe that the physical could contain the phenomenal, the “experience locus/locii” idea, appeals to me, and could be up to something. Mind you, it is difficult to separate this path from Theilard de Chardin ideas…. or the other way round, the mental creates the physical.

My opinion, is that there are two separate realms, and the brain is the interface, the bridge that connect both sides. But how?

Sometimes I suspect Dennett doesn’t really understand the hard problem of consciousness.

I’ll have a more detail look at your site, thanks.

All physical descriptions (3pp) are overt expressions of covert phenomenal brain models/images (1pp). They are scientific relations only when they are described within a 3pp scientific model. The physical descriptions drawn by early humans on the walls of their caves are not likely to have involved scientific relations at that time because there probably were no scientific terms to apply. They were simply primitive artistic expressions of subjective images. Science is a human artifact.