AN INVINCIBLE ARGUMENT FOR THE AFTERLIFE (PART THREE)

Yes, but science has taken this “first-person subjective experience” of ours and put it in context. Re…

  • The evolution of human history
  • The evolution of life on earth.
  • The evolution of earth and our solar system – of matter – back to the Big Bang.

Then this part:

It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe.

Then the part where that and all the things we are discussing in this exchange fit into an ontological – teleological? – understanding of existence itself.

Okay, but this assessment is relevant to any argument about anything — anything not able to be demonstrated.

But: with so much at stake regarding the existence of the afterlife, a demonstration is all that more crucial.

But my point is that we really have no definitive capacity to demonstratre that solipsism is not the explanation for what we think we know about the relationship between “I” and “out in the world”.

We always seem to be stuck here. Arguments are made regarding all aspects of human consciousness both before and after the grave. But sooner or later the arguments fall over into the abyss that is all of those “unknown unknowns” that stand between “I” and all there is to be known about existence.

Instead, we [all of us] are forced to fall back on one or another intellectual contraption to convey what we think “here and now” is a possible explanation:

So, is this one closer to the whole truth than the arguments of those here who have their own more or less sophisticated “philosophical” assessments of “the human condition”? Before and after we die?

Exactly. Your belief. But why should I or others believe this too? What are you able to demonstrate more substantively about the afterlife.

Sure, these speculations/conjectures can be really, really fascinating. No doubt about it.

But: as I myself get closer and closer [existentially] to oblivion, I tend to want something more.

“Where’s the beef?”, as it is sometimes put.

Basically, we have to keep coming back around to this:

Yeah, this might be right in the bullseye. As an intellectual contraption. But “for all practical purposes” it is useful only to the extent that you are somehow able to think yourself into believing it…such that the belief itself is what sustains your “comfort and consolation”. That you seem to have accomplished this “here and now” is something that I can congratulate you for. But this doesn’t get me any closer “here and now” to believing it myself.

You suggest that…

And “for all practical purposes” this clearly means something to you it does not mean to me. Actual evidence for me is more in the way that science goes about accumulating it experientially.

Instead [to me] you seem more compelled to approach the afterlife “by definition”. And “by definition” the afterlife is "a matrix world that exists behind the matrix world we call the ‘here and now’. "

And that means what exactly?

To you it does. But not to me. Nothing that you note here demonstrates to me in any substantive manner what is to become of “I” on the day that my own real brain ceases to be among the living.

Instead [to me] it’s just about what you happen to believe in your head here and now. And how [from my frame of mind] believing it procures you some measure of psychological equillibrium and equanimity. On this side of the grave.

But science’s statement, any statement about (1) The evolution of human history ; (2) The evolution of life on earth; (3) The evolution of earth and our solar system—of matter—back to the Big Bang; (4) 68% of the universe is dark energy; (5) Dark matter makes up about 27%; (6) The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe….

Are only made-up, imaginary states of affairs believed to have independent existence in the external world based on their appearance as ideas and sensory events within the “matrix” or virtual realities that make up the consciousness of all scientists, which they erroneously believe are magically (through neural transformativism or incantationism) produced by neurons in a skull.

Is it? Or what could suffice, for some, is merely the knowledge or realization that an afterlife is not necessarily or logically false, given that we only experience virtual realities and that consciousness is not logically or necessarily something that ceases to exist (but only changes content)?

We have no capacity to demonstrate that solipsism is not true. The only thing that supports the falsity of solipsism is faith that it isn’t.

True. The only certainty is the existence of “I” and the things that appear within the sensory virtual reality or “matrix” that is one’s (primarily) visual perception.

Outside of the virtual reality of visual perception, the truth of what (or who) may exist outside the virtual reality that is “I” is entirely speculative, supported by intellectual contraptions that are basically statements of (1) faith and/or (2) Arguments that the virtual reality of “I” cannot based solely upon what appears within one’s virtual reality disprove or falsify the existence of an “unknown” that one happens to support or believe in.

It’s the most accurate, based on the empirical evidence of consciousness itself, which is an artificial reality some believe is magically created by the brain. Other philosophies, unfortunately, believe in the entirely imaginary entities of mind-independent doppelgangers of the content of visual perception, which cannot logically have anything to do with their subjectively experienced “counterparts”. Everything that is not part of “I” or the sim or matrix world that exudes from “I” and consists materially of “I” must be accepted merely on faith.

But is there oblivion? Does consciousness cease entirely to exist ? How can something that exists simply stop existing? How does something that does not exist start existing, when it did not exist a moment before? Are their mind-independent brains in the external world? Where do brains “get” subjective, first-person experience prior to the appearance of an experience? What is an experience before it is experienced? Does it even exist? If not, how does the brain cause something that does not exist to come into existence in the first place?

Fair enough. The afterlife, like the consciousnesses of other people, the ability of the brain to create consciousness, the ability of consciousness to cease entirely to exist or to magically come into existence after first never having existed at all….are all just matters of faith, that must be accepted on faith, and that are supported only by faith. One can choose to believe things that are matters of faith (like the existence of “real world” or mind-independent brains) or not.

Any evidence accumulated by scientists are only aspects of the matrix or sim world that is their consciousness. That’s it. There is no evidence of the existence of mind-independent dopplegangers of scientific knowledge and discovery in the external world. Even if there were external world dwelling, non-person experienced trees, mountains, televisions, moons, stars, etc. they can have no rational or logical power to give rise to subjective, first-person experience because they are not and are not composed of first-person subjective experience. It is irrational to derive subjective experience from something that is not first-person experience. As it is more likely that there are no such things as mind-independent doppelgangers of the content of visual perception, everything scientists discover or observe—everything—is all in their heads. It’s all make-believe, the here and now is essentially a constructed reality consisting only of one’s subjective experience that one may irrationally believe airbag deploys from a blob of flesh in their skull (but the blob of flesh and the skull are part of the matrix world that is one’s consciousness, and probably has no “outside you” counterpart).

It means exactly how it’s defined. An afterlife is a subsequent consciousness that replaces the one before it.

But what you believe happens to “I” on the day your virtual brain seems to cease to operate, as real brains probably do not exist and cannot logically or rationally have anything to do with the existence of your virtual or “matrix” brain……also happens to be something you believe in your head here and now. And you believing it (based on the strength of your “evidence” that something outside of “I” cannot be demonstrated and “I”’s that have passed on do not return to report their afterlife experiences, tends to overlook the fact that an afterlife simply cannot be ruled out as absolutely non-existence despite the fact it cannot be demonstrated within the virtual realities depicting “this side of the grave”.

I’ve often wondered; if the world ‘out there’ is a construct of the mind, how is it the mind is constantly learning, experiencing awe and surprise? How can a mind that’s producing its own reality be surprised by or learn anything?

It is producing its own reality within a larger reality.

When I go for drives in the desert, I am producing my own experience of the larger desert reality. More accurately, I am driving on roads made by others who designed that particular approach to experience. Then if I stop, get out of the car and go on a hike making my own trail, then I’m making my own experience approach. It may be that once I leave the physical organism then I go on to other roads and trails. A never-ending supply of surprises and learning whether self or externally generated. :slight_smile:

We can find our dreams fascinating. We can find the vagaries of our own unconsciousness responses and associationg fascinating - even with the everyday realism most work with. We could have chosen to reveal only parts of ‘ourselves’ and over time unveil more. It might be an inevitable partial knowledge, which we have in everyday realism regardning our own feelings, memories, associations, reactions, percpetions…

To Anomaly654:

Whatever the mind learns and experiences, including things that occur by surprise, is nevertheless composed only of the consciousness of the person experiencing it. If there is no such thing as mind-independent entities and substance (and even if these were to exist, they could logically have nothing to do with the existence of first-person subjective experience save by the illogical magicks of conjuring subjective experience that does not exist into existence or ceasing to be something that is not subjective experience to inexplicably “become” first-person subjective experience), existence is just first-person subjective experience, and learning, etc. is just existence “morphing” or “shape-shifting” into future, previously unknown forms of one’s own consciousness, including future, previously unknown forms of the “matrix” world that is only one’s consciousness assuming novel forms.

To Del Ivers:

I agree that one is producing one’s own subjectively experienced reality within a larger reality, but I doubt that larger reality, in order to logically be mapped by consciousness, is made up of something that is not consciousness. If the larger reality is made up of something that is not subjective experience, there is no reason that subjective experience should know it exists (or something that is not subjective experience to know anything exists, as it is not subjective experience) and should “copy” it. We can’t even know what non-subjective experience is even like as it is not subjective experience, which is all we are.

The larger reality, I think, logically consists of just more consciousness rather than something that is not consciousness at all. It could be conscious particles, creating an atheistic or godless mechanical panpsychism, or a theism is indeed at foot with the larger reality being the mind of some Person (or persons?). I believe the latter is the true nature of our reality.

-PG

But mind “producing its own reality within a larger reality” seems to be realism, albeit greatly reduced from my orthodox version of it where there are other minds and stuff ‘out there’. Doesn’t stuff out there logically precede the mind operating within it?

This is closest to my take:
“When I go for drives in the desert, I am producing my own experience of the larger desert reality. More accurately, I am driving on roads made by others who designed that particular approach to experience. Then if I stop, get out of the car and go on a hike making my own trail, then I’m making my own experience approach. It may be that once I leave the physical organism then I go on to other roads and trails. A never-ending supply of surprises and learning whether self or externally generated. :slight_smile:…but I recall catching hell from James S. Saint for defendingr it. But this is essentially realism. Multiple minds use preexistent reality and each contributes its own reshaping of that reality, into individual existence(s).

“Stuff”, to me, only logically exists if it is made out of the same substance as minds. If stuff makes minds (i.e. subjectively experiencing persons and everything subjectively experiencing persons experience) and stuff precedes persons, this logically follows if, given that persons are and are composed of first-person subjective experience “stuff” itself, in order to logically be used as the substance that make persons, itself be made up of first-person subjective experience, albeit in non-person form (particles, most simply). I originally adhered to this, and David J. Chalmers sort of reasoned that this is the state of affairs that logically brings about consciousness as he proposed the existence of particles of subjective experience, but he refused to walk into outright panpsychism by stating these subjective particles are trapped inside outer candy shells of non-subjective experience (“the physical” or physical matter and energy).

Given that we only experience ourselves in the form of a person and that which a person experiences within a “matrix” or virtual or artificial reality composed of one’s first-person subjective experience, “stuff that precedes minds” is actually, when it comes down to it, a fiction or imaginary state of affairs one comes to believe or not believe. Same goes with the notion that “stuff” makes minds. First-person subjective experience is the only thing that demonstrates it actually–rather than fictionally or possibly, exists: everything else is make-believe composed of first-person subjective experience in the form of the thought of a person imagining or coming up with the concept of this imaginary other, that the person somehow comes to believe exists outside the “matrix” of one’s consciousness, regardless of whether or not the imaginary entity actually exists.

That is everything else, following iambiguous, is indeed conjecture that one chooses to believe or not believe and cannot be demonstrated to actually exist (one’s consciousness, for example, cannot be demonstrated to others to actually exist: another person, when it comes right down to it, must have faith akin to faith in the existence of God that your consciousness exists).

Long story short, I personally don’t mind the existence of “stuff” as long as stuff is also composed of first-person subjective experience. That’s the only way it can logically or rationally have anything to do with and to come up with subjective experience and subjectively experiencing persons. When one states that “stuff” is something other than or something that is not first-person subjective experience, that somehow can create or have anything to do with first-person subjective experience, well that’s when you say “bye bye” to logic and reason, as the person proposing the existence of non-experience must (and always must) use the magics of creation ex nihilo and/or transformative magic (when a substance magically stops being what it was to inexplicably become or transform into something it essentially was not) to come up with first-person subjective experience.

The concept of non-subjective experience and its magical primacy and creative power over first-person subjective experience is a fiction created, in my opinion, out of disbelief that only first-person subjective experience exists. One doggedly adheres to the existence of non-subjective experience out of incredulity at the actual possibility that consciousness is eternal. For me, “stuff” can only be made of first-person subjective experience and was never separate from minds, as it is the substance that was in no other form and did nothing but form an eternal Person and persons. That is, “stuff” has never existed as particles creating persons but throughout eternity was only the substance forming an always-existing-infinite-Person that produces other persons from inner coagulations of it’s stuff to form characters forced by existential necessity to follow consciously made-up or lucidly or non-lucidly dreamt narratives within it’s mind (whew).

Never mind the last two sentences: that’s just my new and improved Judeo-Christian theology. :smiley:

The mind is a part of the biological organism known as a human being and biology is applied chemistry and chemistry is applied physics. This causal chain is physically necessary for minds to exist because they are too complex to either have always existed or come into existence just by themselves. I cannot demonstrate this outside of subjective first person experience but that does not automatically render it false. Whether you actually subscribe to solipsism or not the notion of anything outside of first person subjective experience cannot be demonstrated or refuted with sufficient rigour. It is essentially unfalsifiable either way meaning that solipsism could be true or equally could be false. For no one knows for certain whether other minds are simply a construct of their own mind or if they really exist independently of them Still I think that solipsism is false because given free will why would independent minds perceive exactly the same reality ? The fact that they do suggests that it exists as a mind independent phenomenon rather than a mental construct of our own mind. But whichever it is entirely academic with regard to our interactions with reality

The solipsist argument about stuff is quite weak for it does not accept the idea that things other than minds can be made from it as well
These other things collectively constitute the external reality that a solipsist mind instead thinks of as a mental construct that it created

I understand solipsism to be the belief that only one’s own mind exists. The beliefs that only mind (as a substance) exists are held by phenomenalists and Idealists (I am an Idealist adherent to George Berkeley’s Mystic Idealism, for example).

Stuff other than mind is, essentially, make-believe, as first-person subjective experience is the only thing that reveals it exists. As non-experience is not experience, it cannot rationally produce experience or have anything to do with input into experience’s shape or form, even if it (non-experience) exists.

First person subjective experience is not a reason to rule out any mind independent reality
Especially since this reality already existed long before any minds ever came into existence
Minds sympathetic to solipsism or idealism cannot accept this as it invalidates their position

Accident re-post. Apologies.

-PG

Reply to surreptitious75:

Hmm…

First-person subjective experience is plenty reason to rule out mind-independent reality, because the only thing that exists, or the only thing that manifests that it actually exists, is first-person subjective experience. Mind-independent reality does not nor cannot demonstrate that it exists. Indeed, how could it? Given the real state of existence and the way it manifests and operates, it seems that in order for existence to show that it exists it must take the form of first-person subjective experience. This leads to this:

This cannot in any way, shape, or form be accepted as irrefutable fact. Why? Because you can’t even experience anything that is not your subjective experience, or subjective experience qua subjective experience. Thus we can’t know that something that is not first-person subjective experience even exists. There is nothing about first-person subjective experience, even death or dreamless sleep, that suggests that it needs something other than itself in order to exist. The idea “this reality already existed long before any minds ever came into existence” is entirely made-up fiction, a figment of the imagination that one happens to believe and then go further to assert as if it was absolutely unquestionable, irrefutable fact. One should never state un-provable belief as fact. It’s perfectly okay to say: “I believe x”–when x is something that is a concept of something that purportedly exists or happens outside the “matrix” worlds or virtual or artificial realities of every single person’s consciousness, but it’s not logical, to me, to state x as though x is absolutely the truth and absolutely what happened or happens, when x exists outside the “matrix” that is human consciousness and experience. Anything outside the “matrix” of your consciousness is, following Kant “must be accepted merely on faith”.

The upshot is, and I repeat this over and over, is that non-subjective experience is an unimaginable, completely imaginary (in terms of concept) entity. It is conceived and proposed in argument and conversation only because the one proposing it does not believe that consciousness is eternal, much less that there is an eternal person or persons.

Non-experience is entirely made up. It’s make-believe, no different from unicorns, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, God (to the atheist). Why? Because there is no evidence, anywhere, of non-experience, and logically it can have nothing to do with subjective experience because…well…ummm…it’s not subjective experience. It is not logical to derive subjective experience from something that is not subjective experience, period. One is basically creating fictions based upon an incredulity at and a denial of the probable fact that subjective experience is: (a) the only thing that exists and has ever existed; (b) subjective experience is eternal and indestructible (it, instead of physical energy, is the actual thing that ‘is neither created nor destroyed, but only changes it’s form’).

And finally:

Uh, how does it invalidate their position? Where is a mind-independent entity? Where is mind-independent substance? Everything, everywhere, is constructed of one’s first-person subjective experience, as everything, anywhere, only shows up or appears when one is present. And if mind-independent entities exist, given they are not composed of first-person subjective experience, how can they come up, using only themselves as material substance, with first-person subjective experience? It’s not enough to simply issue the blanket statement: “mind-independent substance evolves into subjective experience”. For one can ask: how does something that is not first-person subjective experience simply stop being something that is not subjective experience to then, in the next second, be first-person subjective experience?

Idealists observe that the only thing that manifests that it actually exists is first-person subjective experience. Nothing else appears. Nothing else manifests. Subjective experience is the only thing to say “ta da” and show it actually exists.
Nothing, and I mean nothing, else does this. Anything that is not first-person subjective experience is thereby unimaginable as we are nothing but first-person subjective experience and do nothing, absolutely nothing, but first-person subjectively experience.

Everything, and I mean everything around us is composed of our subjective experience of it. So it makes no sense, at least not to me, to propose the existence of something that is not first-person subjective experience. Much worse, go so far as to state as if it were absolute, unquestionable, irrefutable truth that this non-experience existed prior to first-person subjective experience. Much, much worse, then claim with absolute confidence that non-experience created subjective first-person experience without the use of eternal first-person subjective experience lying around as the simplest, most rational substance to use in creating first-person subjective experience–instead deriving first-person subjective experience from, let’s face it—magic—in the form of conjuring something that does not exist into sudden, inexplicable existence or magically transforming something that is not subjective experience into subjective experience.

By being the very foundation upon which it is made possible that you doubt at all…

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Certainty

Mind-independent reality is dependent on minds to demonstrate anything. For us, experience in primary. The thing we can be most sure of and anything else we decide to posit exists is based on this experiencing. There is no bird’s eye view. You’ll have to flesh out the Wittgenstein and apply it. I don’t see this thread as saying one cannot know anything. In fact, quite the opposite.

Promethean75:

Given that existence only appears in the form of subjective experience, there is no reason for mind- independence to exist. We certainly can’t demonstrate it does. The concept is introduced and invoked as if it were irrefutable fact only out of disbelief that consciousness is the only thing that exists and is eternal.

berkeley’s idealism and immaterialism - which would deteriorate into pure solipsism if it weren’t for a ‘god’ being the ultimate perceiver that does not need to be perceived - is faced with several epistemological problems… and that’s only if we ignore the confusing language in the arguments and pretend as if the premises make any sense in the first place.

here are two examples:

but does reality demonstrate anything? what do you mean by ‘demonstrate’? be critical with what is meant by that word. with any other use of the word, you’d mean to say that someone or something performed an action; the person gave a demonstration… or the new machine demonstrated how it worked. in neither of these cases is the ‘being’ of the person or machine in question; the thing exists prior to the action, the demonstration it gives. now i’d doubt you’d say that ‘reality’ could demonstrate anything… but even if you insisted on putting it that way, you’d have to deduce from the meaning of the word ‘demonstrate’ that, like the above cases, the actual thing’s existence, the reality’s being, would not be something demonstrated unless it were an action. but what reality is, and what happens ‘in’ reality are not the same thing. sure, you could say ‘reality demonstrated that x and y happened’, and we’d know what you meant (although even this is a bit of a pathetic fallacy; attributing to ‘reality’ the capacity to ‘do’ things like objects), but you would ever say ‘reality demonstrated that it existed’. this would make no sense.

yeah sure, but to deny the existence of something that isn’t immediately experienced is pretty fuckin’ radical, man. you don’t really think your kitchen table doesn’t exist unless you’re there looking at it, do you?

now look at this one:

same kind of thing. he’s not using the word ‘existence’ as a noun in an ordinary, non-specialized way. he’s using it philosophically and deriving super-empirical truths from this misuse. look at a random dictionary definition:

existence: the fact or state of living or having objective reality.

notice that the fact or state is treated as a quality or a predicate, not a subject. so existence couldn’t ‘appear’ as a thing, process, event or state of affairs could appear. rather the word is used to indicate the fact or state of something existing, not the existence itself. if this were not true, we could ask ‘does existence exist’, which would be senseless.

now if he meant to say 'things only appear in the form of subjective experience, he would be right, but not because things don’t exist unless they appear, see. we’d not say that the collapse of a star in galaxy x ‘appeared’ to us if we weren’t able to see it… but we’d never say stars don’t collapse in galaxy x unless they appear to us. ‘ahhh’, says karp.

he futher implies with his logic that unless existence appears (which doesn’t make sense for the reasons above… but let’s pretend it does), it would have no ‘reason’ to exist. this means he’s saying that experiencing something gives that something a reason to exist. but observing something is not the cause of the thing observed, existing. if this were so, it would mean that something would have to ‘appear’ before it could exist… and not only that, but before the thing appeared, it was already preparing to appear because the person who would later observe it was somehow the cause/reason for its appearance… and before it even appeared!

another one:

he says ‘consciousness is the only thing, etc.’ is consciousness a thing? do we observe it, or do we observe things we we describe as ‘conscious’ depending on how it behaves? if i say ‘joe is conscious’, i don’t mean that there is joe, and then there is another property joe has called ‘consciousness’, like he has a foot or brown hair. i mean that joe is behaving in a way that is how and what we describe as ‘conscious’ with our language.

now it makes little sense to speak of consciousness as if it were a thing, or as descartes called a ‘second substance’… but it would make even less sense to say that consciousness is the only thing that exists, even if it were a thing.

and here is where berkeley gets mated; to avoid the dilemma of joe ceasing to exist if john is not perceiving him, he posits ‘god’ as being the perceiver that makes it possible for joe to continue existing when john isn’t looking at him. but who is perceiving god? esse is percipi, right? well then, who the fuck is looking at god?

another problem. you are sitting in a boat and experiencing the optical illusion of the oar being bent in the water. according to these subjectivists, the oar is indeed bent, because it is exactly, and only, what it is observed to be. but what happens when you reach into the water and feel the oar with your hand? it certainly feels straight. but since the oar can’t be both bent and straight, there must be two oars… one that you see and one that you feel.

do you, karpel tunnel, state for the record that there are indeed two oars here?

take your time.

just kidding. anyway, so this was somewhat of a wittgensteinian style (hey you axed for it) examination of a few typical philosophical statements. what is being done here is presenting words and meanings of words in other ways and uses which when compared to the usage in question, raise considerable difficulties in understanding the meaning of the statement in which they are used. the purpose isn’t to sabotage philosophy, but to clean it up, to remove the befuddlement that lies concealed inside it. a lot of the time, philosophers are trying, and are serious, and do mean something, but can’t articulate what they want to say with what they say. us wittgensteinians job is to act as a liaison to the seeker of troof. we tell you what can be said clearly, and what cannot. the rest must be passed by in silence.

I was responding to your post, not arguing in favor of Berkley’s idealism and immaterialism.

I meant that all our conclusions come from experiencing. If there is a reality out there, we still only access it via experiencing. IOW either way - there is an external reality, there isn’t one, what we have as primary is experience. You presume the external reality. I am agnostic. PG is asserting that there is only experiencing and mind. Regardless of which of you is right, you don’t just get to presume there is an external reality. Why? Because if there is one, our knowledge of it is totally dependent on our experiencing of it. His position is more parsimonius. giving you the burden. As an agnostic. I see your response as precisely what it is ‘tautological’. You interpret everything based on your conventional model. If he uses a noun it refers to an external thing. Wheras for him it refers to his experiencing, which is all there is, for him.

Then you go at the language, without seeming to understand what an idealist would mean. What the idealist is referring to.

Notice that you shifted to a general topic, rather than focusing on my post as a response to your assertion - the assertion was…

This statement presumes the model it is arguing. IOW it is tautological.

Again, I am criticizing your assertion.

You are taking this to mean I am asserting something opposite. You are trying to shift the burden over to me. But you bear the burden of defending your statement, rather than me defending statements I have not made.

It is how it exists as a part of the self or as part of an external world. I don’t think I said what you quoted here, but perhaps you are bringing in quotes of his to give some context.

No, that’s not what I am saying, though that is true if there is an external reality. Again you presume the commen sense model and express some incredulity.

Nope. It is what that experiencing is. Does it necessitate an external reality or does it not. PG argues there is not one. I am agnostic.

More tautology.

No, it would be the appearance. It would not be a mirror of some other thing. No doubling. Just experiencing.

another one:

I’ll let PG handle this stuff.

There would be a seamless experiencing. Not two oars. I mean, do you not understand what idealism is? You just said there would be two oars. That’s external reality talk. I don’t think you understand the position you are arguing against.

Don’t be a smug prick. So far you have tried to shift the burden away from yourself, repeatedly used tautology, presented confused ideas about the position you are arguing against, and now been snide.

You’re a smart guy, but your not much of a discussion partner. Someone who is confused is fine, but a confused smug person is not worth communicating with.

It might be Wittgensteins style. I am skeptical of that but that’s a tangent. I asked what the link had to do with the issue. I don’t think it did have to do with the issue. It was a random appeal to authority. Hey Wittgenstein already showed how you were wrong -when in fact he was talkign about general, radical skepticism and the problems inherent in arguing that stance since the arguments presume knowledge and reason. This is completely different from the situation here. A radical skeptic demonstrating that we can’t know anything is using knowledge and assuming one can draw conclusions from it. Contradiction. PG uses language that idealists and realists interpret differently. And you interpret as a reality as if this must be what he means. It need not be what he means. He does not need to assume an external reality to make his arguments and since those arguments are NOT IN ANY WAY radical skepticism, which attacks induction, deduction, abduction any-duction, that Wittgensteinin appeal to authority is irrelevent at best.

It seems like your point is that sometimes his arguments seem to imply realism. Well, gosh, working in language built up around a philosophy of realism, that is sure gonna happen. Very hard to avoid. It does not demonstrate that he needs external reality, which you simply assume as if it is an argument, for his position. In the idealist model he is being consistant and does not need the realist model in his arguments. The radical skepticism Wittgenstein was arguing against using logic and knowledge to reach its conclusions. Occasionally PG may use language that could be, though it need not necessarily, be taken as assuming an external to the mind reality. When in fact there is no external or internal, in his model, just mind, just experiencing. It’s a category error to think that essay had anything at all to do with PG’s position. And I notice you avoided actually using the essay, but rather just focused on words - since that’s Wittgensteinian to you - and ignored the essay.