AN INVINCIBLE ARGUMENT FOR THE AFTERLIFE (PART THREE)

[Anomaly654]

There's no evidence of the existence of phyaical particles either, as anything that is "physical" is in actuality constructed of a person's consciousness.

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?

[Del Ivers]

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.

[Karpel Tunnel]

There's no evidence of the existence of phyaical particles either, as anything that is "physical" is in actuality constructed of a person's consciousness.

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?

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.....

[phenomenal_graffiti]

To Anomaly654:

There's no evidence of the existence of phyaical particles either, as anything that is "physical" is in actuality constructed of a person's consciousness.

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?

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.

[phenomenal_graffiti]

To Del Ivers:

Anomaly654 wrote:
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.

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

[Anomaly654]

To Del Ivers:

Anomaly654 wrote:
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.

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. " ...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).

[phenomenal_graffiti]

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?

"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.

[surreptitious75]

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

[surreptitious75]

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

[phenomenal_graffiti]

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.

[surreptitious75]

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

[phenomenal_graffiti]

Accident re-post. Apologies.

-PG

[phenomenal_graffiti]

Reply to surreptitious75:

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

Hmm...

First person subjective experience is not a reason to rule out any mind independent reality

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:

Especially since this reality already existed long before any minds ever came into existence

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:

Minds sympathetic to solipsism or idealism cannot accept this as it invalidates their position

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.

[promethean75]

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?

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

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Certainty

[Karpel Tunnel]

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?

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

https://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.

[phenomenal_graffiti]

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.

[promethean75]

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:

Mind-independent reality is dependent on minds to demonstrate anything.

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.

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.

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:

Given that existence only appears in the form of subjective experience, there is no reason for mind- independence to exist.

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:

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.

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.

[Karpel Tunnel]

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:

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

Mind-independent reality is dependent on minds to demonstrate anything.

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.

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...

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

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

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.

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?

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.

now look at this one:

Given that existence only appears in the form of subjective experience, there is no reason for mind- independence to exist.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

but observing something is not the cause of the thing observed, existing.

More tautology.

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!

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

another one:

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.

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.

I'll let PG handle this stuff.

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.

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.

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

take your time.

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.

just kidding. anyway, so this was somewhat of a wittgensteinian style (hey you axed for it) examination of a few typical philosophical statements.

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.

[phenomenal_graffiti]

Gee thanks, Karpel for the above post. Your responses to Promethean were nothing short of amazing---and informative.


To Promethean75:

but does reality demonstrate anything? what do you mean by 'demonstrate'?

Demonstrating something is causing one to experience something. Or one can demonstrate something to oneself by simply experiencing it firsthand. Reality is a 'thing' (thing=something that exists), and reality demonstrates through one experiencing something. Everything that is experienced during demonstration is reality. Reality is not an abstract 'something' separate from the things that are experienced, but constitutes everything that one experiences. If reality is everything someone experiences, reality does indeed demonstrate something---in the form of you demonstrating something to yourself or in the form of another person demonstrating something to you.

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.

You can't separate reality from what occurs within it, for the objects that make actions constitute reality. Reality is not some abstract 'something' separate from objects and actions, but are the objects and actions themselves. Thus 'reality' (the objects and actions and things that appear) 'demonstrates' through the experience of things, and the existence of experiencing itself.

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?

It may be that the kitchen table doesn't exist unless you are experiencing the table. You can't experience a mind-independent table that is not made up of your subjective experience because...well....the table isn't made up of subjective experience, and it isn't made up of your subjective experience. In order for you to experience something, it must be made up of your subjective experience. Not anyone else's....not something that is mind-independent (thus "you-independent") that is something that is not your subjective experience (or something that is not anyone's subjective experience)....

every

single

thing

that you perceive is made up of your subjective experience...and nothing else.

Everything you experience is not made up of something that is not your subjective experience, as that would make absolutely no sense. The kitchen table, using your objective example, only appears because you're observing it, and disappears when you no longer observe it. There is really no need for a kitchen table to exist that is not made up of anyone's subjective experience when you leave the room except as a response to disbelief that the only thing that exists, the only thing that has ever existed, is first-person subjective experience that has only ever existed in the form of a Person and persons within that Person.

Hell, this point is made in the ridiculous belief that the brain creates consciousness. Your brain is producing a your-subjective-experience composed kitchen table. Because no single instance of consciousness can exist unless the brain magically produces it, you can't experience a kitchen table not created by your brain, and your brain only produces your-subjective-experience composed kitchen tables. The kitchen table that is not created by your brain, that is believed to continue to exist when you walk out the kitchen, is actually just an IDEA your brain created, and the idea is composed....shockingly...of your-subjective experience.

The mind-independent kitchen table outside your brain, if it existed, could have nothing to do with the your-subjective experience composed kitchen table that magically airbag deployed from your neurons, as the external mind-independent table never existed inside your brain to eject from the brain to begin with, and as the external table is quite larger and denser than the squishy, spongy brain itself, the external table cannot use itself to communicate to the brain that it is a table (so as to give the brain the idea to form a your-subjective experience copy of the table), as it cannot force itself through a person's forehead and skull to reach the brain without causing mortal damage.

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.

I like the way Karpel answered this, but existence is synonymous with the things that exist and indeed encompasses everything that exists. Like 'reality', existence is not an abstract, separate thing divorced from the things it encapsulates. Existence 'appears' in the sense that...well....an existing thing appears. Things, processes, or states of affairs that appear are easily what I meant by 'existence'. How could you think otherwise?

Existence (err...things, processes, and states of affairs that exist) appears only in the form of a person's first-person subjective experience of things, processes, and states of affair.

Does existence exist? Yes, in the form of things that exist: the only way things have ever been known to exist and have ever appeared is in the form of a person and that which the person experiences.

It (existence) has never (ever, ever, ever)....appeared in any other form. Hell, mind-independent things not composed of first-person subjective experience exist only as ideas made up of first-person subjective experience. It's the only thing that can be experienced. I make the further induction that sensibly, first-person subjective experience may be the only thing that exists, and has ever existed, as we really don't need mind-independence, as it is not subjective experience and thus cannot rationally have anything to do with the existence of subjective experience.

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.

a star collapsing in galaxy x is actually, to us, just a concept. Even if we were to see the collapse of a star through a telescope....heck...even if one were somehow able to orbit near the star close enough to directly observe it collapsing....all this would only be part of an artificial reality or "matrix" world in which the star, the galaxy, and the collapse of the star are all made up of one's first-person subjective experience: there does not need to exist a 'real' or mind-independent star collapsing in a mind-independent galaxy in a mind-independent universe.

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!

In order for a thing to exist, it must be subjectively experienced by a person. If this is somehow false, that which exists that is not subjectively experienced by a person or is not made up of first-person subjective experience at all cannot rationally have anything to do with subjective experience, as it is not subjective experience. In order for that which is not subjective experience to have anything to do with the existence and appearance of subjective experience, one must invoke magic: the magicks of creation ex nihilo or existential transformativism (in the brain, as the brain is believed to be the only thing that can generate the existence of consciousness, creation ex nihilo occurs in neural incantationism, and existential transformativism occurs in neural transformativism).

Within my belief and inference that the only thing that exists is subjective experience, and that things can only exist in the form of persons, things only exist when they appear i.e. when they are subjectively experienced by a person. The things that appear and thus exist, moreover, are created within the person and are composed of that person's subjective experience. They are not, and cannot, be composed of something that is not the person's subjective experience (which, in my new and improved Judeo-Christianity is actually an offshoot of God-consciousness).

If, however, one wishes to ridiculously believe in something not made out of subjective experience and ridiculously believe that these non-experienced things are in the form of stars, galaxies, atoms, chairs, etc., that is the person's prerogative. Perhaps I should have been clearer, but my statement that in order for things to exist they must appear is set within a model of reality in which only persons and first-person subjective experience exists.

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.

Consciousness, understood to be first-person subjective experience qua first-person subjective experience independent of consideration of things observed during consciousness or states of consciousness, is indeed a thing. It is something that exists; a thing that exists. Joe is conscious, but Joe is an aspect or part of consciousness. Joe's consciousness therefore, is itself a thing. Objects are things, but so are concepts, and so are encapsulating existences, like consciousness. It would be silly to say that only material objects are things.

And consciousness as a thing (something that exists, not just a material object) may be the only thing that exists. That's not only not-non-sensible, but an easily observed probable fact.

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?

No one needs to perceive God in order for God to exist, as God is an infinite person (there's no one outside him to observe him or think of him). Berkeley stops at God, and God being the outer marker of esse es percipi is quite alright, actually. It's a limit to the process or point at which the process begins and ends, and is just a way things happen to absurdly exist. All beliefs, godless or not, must arrive at a point where things must be taken for granted as just absurdly existing for no other reason than that is the way things exist. Limitations of beings and processes within these beliefs, therefore, are absurdly just “how the cookie crumbles”. Everyone in terms of their existence in Berkeley's model, therefore, are grounded in God, not anyone else. The existence of any person, therefore, depends upon whether or not God is perceiving them. I extend this by asking the question of whether or not God is currently awake and thinking of us or is currently dreaming of us. I suspect, given the existence of evil, that God is not awake but is currently alternately lucidly and non-lucidly dreaming (non-lucid dreaming, which produces uncontrollable content, being the only state of God in which evil can exist).

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?

You, the boat, the optical illusion of the oar being bent in the water, you reaching into the water to feel that the oar is indeed straight, and the thought that there are two oars or that there is only one oar.....are all part of an artificial reality or "matrix" composed of your first-person subjective experience. There's probably no such thing as a mind-independent oar that still exists when you or anyone else are not experiencing the oar.

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.

Okey dokey.

[promethean75]

I meant that all our conclusions come from experiencing.

oh man if only it were that simple. your position is one of empiricism... and yet the way you and PG speak suggests you are both approaching radical empiricism. it is one thing to say 'knowledge' is derived solely from experience (kant would disagree), and quite another to say 'reality' is dependent on experience. there are plenty of conclusions i can safely make trough reference alone without ever having to directly experience anything about them. i can conclude that tokyo is the capital of japan or that spinach grows in kentucky without going to either place to confirm these facts. but more to the point, i can safely say that the world existed in such a state before i was ever aware of it, and that the nature of the state it was in depended not in the least on whether or not i existed to perceive it.

but you and PG are faced with a phenomenological problem. the very act of experiencing something presupposes a difference between the experiencer and the sense data of experience. if reality were purely a construct of the mind, there would be only mind experiencing itself... but if that's the case, mind would have to be its own sense data... and if that's the case, the same division between experiencer and experienced would occur, and you again arrive at a difference between experiencing and what is experienced. and language like 'internal' and 'external' is senseless; there is no 'inner' space that awareness inhabits while what it experiences - the world - occupies some outer space.

i want to keep this short and sweet, though. most if not all of this talk about 'mind-dependent' reality and 'subjectivity' is an aberration that has evolved in philosophy due to metaphysical uses of language which produce seemingly profound statements about reality, but which are really entirely without sense. in general, the metaphysical thesis presents truths which are derived solely from words alone in the form of logically valid and sound propositions... and this is what gets the philosopher all excited. he mistakes proper logical and grammatical form for substantial and meaningful content. the metaphysical statement simultaneously purports the meaning of the proposition with the claim that it's the truth; to know if it is true is to understand it, and to understand it is to know it is true. for example, how would i find supporting evidence to show that 'reality is a construct of mind'? i wouldn't, but with a few specially tailored arguments, i might produce a seemingly meaningful foundation for this premise. so, for instance, if i take the assertion that 'only experience produces knowledge, and the world is knowable' and combine it with 'knowledge is what the mind has', i can deduce that the world only exists if there is mind, since i can't know something i don't experience.

but all these kinds of statements are operating within a language game which is generating its own set of rules that are in violation of the kind of rule-following that led to the learning of the terms and the use they originally stood for. typical of this is the philosophical use of the word 'mind'. not until the metaphysical use of the word did it ever give sense or reference to something other than the description of particular behaviors; 'joe is mindful' when he pays attention... 'joe has lost his mind' whe he acts strangely... 'joe has the good mind to take that job' when he is ambitious... 'joe should be mindful of what he is doing' when he swerves into the left lane, etc., etc.

if, as wittgenstein pointed out, everybody had a box with a beetle in it, but nobody could see the other's beetle, this fact would not prevent them from talking meaningfully about beetles. the same exists for the 'mind', but the philosopher attempts to transcend the ordinary meaning and use of the word 'mind' by inventing a language about it that 'is missing all the signposts (W)' which otherwise serve to help us identify and understand what the word can mean. to replace the usual signposts, the philosopher builds new signposts consisting of language alone, without giving any ostensive sense or reference to the use of the words.

now, the philosopher can 'skate on frictionless ice (W)' because there is nothing to show that what he says is wrong. it is for this reason that philosophy 'does no real work (W)'.

http://www.anti-dialectics.co.uk/Why_al ... nsical.htm

[promethean75]

Don't be a smug prick.

All right, all right, I apologize. I’m really really sorry, I apologize unreservedly. I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, and was in no way fair comment, and was motivated purely by malice, and I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you, or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.

[surreptitious75]

My very existence is dependent on a mind independent reality which I have to accept unless I actually deny my own existence

I am not eternal or infinite because if I was then entropy would have absolutely no effect on me. But it does so there must have been a point in time where I came into existence. Even if that event was entirely random it would still follow the law of cause and effect which is a law of classical physics that applies to absolutely every single event occurring at that level regardless of anything else. This event [ which was not actually random ] was my conception which would not have been possible without the existence of my parents who were part of the mind independent reality that logically and physically had to exist before me. I could not have magically come into existence all by myself because that is simply not possible

Furthermore the atoms I am made of came from dead stars which again were part of the very same reality that also created my parents
There is a very significant time gap between these two events but that is irrelevant and of zero significance to the argument in question

I cannot therefore claim that mind independent reality does not really exist because it is that very same reality which created me
Because minds are a part of that reality even if some of them reason that its existence is not something that can be demonstrated

[iambiguous]

...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.

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.

Right, like this very assumption you are making here isn't, in turn, something that you are making up in a context that includes all of these other asumtpions.

But you have to be more specific. Given this very exchange that we are having using this technology invented by a life form on planet earth in the Milky Way galaxy embedded in a universe that astrophysicists have been able to speak of with extraordinary sophistication, how do you go about demonstrating that what scientists "erroneously believe are magically (through neural transformativism or incantationism) produced by neurons in a skull" is in fact erroneous.

What on earth does that have to do with things that we can both know [and demonstrate] about tbis exchange and things that we cannot.

How would you take us out into the world and, empirically, experientially, experimently etc., prove to us that your own particular intellectual assumptions here have actual substance. Insofar as they can be related to our day to day interactions.

...to call your argument here "invincible" is merely to note that, given the state of your own conscious mind here and now, you believe that it is. The afterlife itself is not really demonstrated at all. At least not to me.

Yes. The argument is invincible in the sense that despite the fact it's content cannot be demonstrated, it's content cannot be dis-proven or shown to be irrefutably untrue. The afterlife is not demonstrated, nor can it be demonstrated as we only experience the current artificial or constructed reality we call the "here and now", but it is not necessarily non-existent, nor can anything within this artificial reality prove or provide evidence of it's non-existence.

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.

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)?

Yeah, sure, if someone is able to feel satisfied with the knowledge that an afterlife "is not necessarily or logically false", more power to them. Whatever works...right?

I'm just not one of them. And to those who are satisfied that oblivion may be theoretically obviated through this frame of mind I would ask this:

1] how much have you got to lose in dying?
2] how close have you actually come to dying?

Me, I've accumulated tons of things I don't want to lose forever and ever and ever. And, three times, I have come close to dying. Twice [way, way back] by my own hand.

In fact it was then that I came to appreciate the one true antidote for thanatophobia: being in so much fucking pain you want to die. Then what comes after hardly enters into it at all.

As for evidence of the conscious minds of others, most of us interact with others day in and day out. We note that our own conscious minds seem able to allow us to think and feel and say and do many different things. And then we note that others are just like that themselves. So, we can't be inside their head but what is inside their head seems clearly to be the same thing that is inside our head.

Unless, of course, this is all a sim world or a dream world, or a matrix world or a manifestation of solipsism in which [re Berkeley] God becomes the link between us.

Or unless we live in a wholly determined world and everything is only as it ever could have been.

As I am not a solipsist as I have faith that other people exist (as the existence of the consciousness of other people must essentially be accepted on faith), and that existence seems to have arbitrarily gifted them with the same powers and abilities of mind that I myself have.

So we are more or less in sync here. Millions more just like us regarding some really fundamental biological powers and responsibiliies.

And millions like us self-consciously aware that death is out there waiting for them. And, thus, faced with the task of figuring out how to cope with the daunting consequences of that.

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 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.

The bottom line here though is really this: that I don't have the capacity to demostrate the truth about solipsism. And you too apparently acknowledge that your own views on it are an existential/intellectual leap of faith.

But: that doesn't mean there isn't a truth about it. Perhaps embedded in God. Perhaps embedded in a mere mortal here. Someone here on earth who has figured it all out but someone we have yet to hear about. Or [perhaps] embedded in the mind of a mere mortal on any other planet in the staggering vastness of just this universe alone.

All anyone of us here at ILP can do is to admit that our own understanding of it is predicated on the limited number of experiences, relationships and access to information that we have accumulated over the years. Meaning, in other words, there are a vast, vast number of experiences, relationships and information we have never had access to.

Then it comes down [for me] to acknowledging the implications of that for discussions such as this one.

In other words:

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.

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.

But even here "I" may well be an entity embedded in a "reality" emanating from a sim world, a dream world, a matrix, a dimension of a multiverse we have no grasp of whatsoever.

There's "I" and then there's "all there is". And then one by one "I" dies. Then what?

Then all the various speculations that abound on this thread.

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?

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.

Again, it's not what is believed, but what is able to be demonstrated as that which all rational human beings are obligated to believe in turn.

What actually is the most sophisticated conclusion relating to the "empirical evidence of consciousness itself"? As that relates to the afterlife? What are the odds that it is being conveyed to us here?

What information is the least likely to come down to leaps of faith?

Funny you should mention Berkeley, my philosophical mentor, and his belief that God is the link between us, as this sums up my belief regarding the nature of reality.

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.

But is there oblivion? Does consciousness cease entirely to exist ? How can something that exists simply stop existing?

Well, if consciousness is an inherent component of the brain and the brain is the inherent component of the material laws of nature, then some suggest that this brain reconfigures back to "star stuff". Star stuff that will someday [maybe] reconfigure back to another "I".

But then that's the part where brains here discussing oblivion were never able not to in a wholly determined universe. Then that going all the way back to an understanding of existence itself.

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?

Exactly! Questions with or without answers. Fascinating to speculate about, sure. But also exasperating. Exasperating knowing in all likelihood that without access to an afterlife we will all go to the grave utterly oblivious.

Again, all the more reason for folks to concoct "intellectual contraptions" that psychologically give them some hope for an answer. If not the answer.

"Where's the beef?", as it is sometimes put.

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

If next week I turn on the news and am informed that physicists have established beyond all doubt that an afterlife does in fact exist, you may or may not be watching it too. But the proof of it is either there or it's not.

Even if proof of the afterlife is never found or cannot be found in the either/or world, the absence or impossibility of this proof does not reveal the non-existence of the afterlife, as the afterlife lies outside the sim world of the either/or world.

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.

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.

Then basically we are more or less in agreement here.

And then it just comes down to grappling with the manner in which we may be construing "faith" in different ways. For me it revolves around...

1] not knowing if human consciousness is autonomous
2] and, if it is autonomous, not knowing if what "I" thinks and feels and says and does is even close to an understanding of why thinking and feeling and saying and doing even exist at all
3] then going back to why and how anything exists at all...and why this existence and not some other

...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).

On the other hand, all of this being sheer speculation based on the assumptions that you have concocted "in your head" about these relationships.

Sure, this may be closer to the truth than any of the rest of us here are able to poke around and ponder, but it's still all just pondering itself.

Only when we wake up one morning and hear on the news that scientists and philosophers are now all in agreement that your "analysis" of these relationships is in fact closer to the whole truth than any other "assessment" can we then take this beyond a thread here at ILP.

I'm stating that you probably believe that there are "real" chairs, for example, that continue to exist if a person, the only one in the room, were to fall unconscious while looking upon or seeing a chair in his or her consciousness, and that there are "real" brains that create consciousness through existence-magic, and that consciousness ceases to exist when "real" brains cease to function. This belief underlies belief in eternal oblivion at death.

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 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”.

Yes, we both believe different things in our heads here and now. But what I believe is about as glum as it gets. "I" die and tumble over into the abyss that is oblivion.

And, here and now, "I" don't want to die. And here and now you have not convinced me that thinking like you do is how I ought to be thinking in turn. I have no "intellectual contraption" providing me with any measure at all of comfort and consolation.

So, sure, for all practical purposes, what you do believe now, now works for you.

So, between the two of us, well, you "win".

[Karpel Tunnel]

Don't be a smug prick.

All right, all right, I apologize. I’m really really sorry, I apologize unreservedly. I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, and was in no way fair comment, and was motivated purely by malice, and I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you, or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.

Apology accepted. Irony and excess ignored.

[Karpel Tunnel]

I meant that all our conclusions come from experiencing.

oh man if only it were that simple. your position is one of empiricism...

Most current realists are empiricists. I am arguing against them. I'm not a pure empiricist.

it is one thing to say 'knowledge' is derived solely from experience (kant would disagree)

Well,first and appeal to an authority from the 1700s plus a dab of the 1800s might not mean very much. 2) Anyone wanting to take a Rationalist (in the as opposed to empiricist) position, I will be happy to watch deal with current science advocates who will be skeptical of both this rationalist and trascendentalist positions. ,

and quite another to say 'reality' is dependent on experience.

Obviously if you start from the less parsimonious model that there is a reality separate from expeience it will seem that way. But in fact all I was pointing out was that we are dependent on experience to say anything about outside reality.

there are plenty of conclusions i can safely make trough reference alone without ever having to directly experience anything about them.

Sure, you can via experience come in contact with the conclusions other people have drawn via experience and decide to think something is real.

i can conclude that tokyo is the capital of japan or that spinach grows in kentucky without going to either place to confirm tfhese facts.

Who said anything different? certainly not PG, though he would not have a realist account of what that knowledge means.

but more to the point, i can safely say that the world existed in such a state before i was ever aware of it, and that the nature of the state it was in depended not in the least on whether or not i existed to perceive it.

What you just did here was reassert your position. It is not an argument in favor of it. Nor does it challenge PGs position.

but you and PG are faced with a phenomenological problem. the very act of experiencing something presupposes a difference between the experiencer and the sense data of experience.

Wow. I don't think you have read his positions, because if you had you would realize that this is a straw man argument. You need to actually see what position you are refuting, then give it a shot. Again you are presuming your model and assuming that if there is an experiencer there is an object of the experiencing. You presume the subject object split and project this on his position. Admittedly it is a tricky one, but you simply cannot have actually read his threads or you would not be missing by this much. There are two ways to categorize your argument: 1) the philosophical assumptions in everyday language are correct, so he must be wrong. IOW folk philosophy is correct. 2) I don't need to refute his argument, I can point out that most people don't think like that.

if reality were purely a construct of the mind, there would be only mind experiencing itself... but if that's the case, mind would have to be its own sense data... and if that's the case, the same division between experiencer and experienced would occur, and you again arrive at a difference between experiencing and what is experienced. and language like 'internal' and 'external' is senseless; there is no 'inner' space that awareness inhabits while what it experiences - the world - occupies some outer space.

Yes, I cannot possibly dream and seem to be both an I and objects, while in fact there is just a flow of experience that seems to contain inner and outer things. Such things cannot be.

i want to keep this short and sweet, though. most if not all of this talk about 'mind-dependent' reality and 'subjectivity' is an aberration that has evolved in philosophy due to metaphysical uses of language which produce seemingly profound statements about reality, but which are really entirely without sense. in general, the metaphysical thesis presents truths which are derived solely from words alone in the form of logically valid and sound propositions... and this is what gets the philosopher all excited.

[/quote]
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No, this is just you talking about stuff you don't know much about. There are plenty of people who hold positions like PGs based on long experience getting under language - pick nearly any mystical tradition in Hinduism where they can predict how one finds underneath language, which is heavily object/subject split, there is actually a unified experience. IOW there arguements are not based on language.

The irony is that you prior to this point used language, which is heavily biased towards the subject/object split and realism, to 'demonstrate' that what PG argues can't be true. You used language with built in assumptions - go back and read it- to 'prove' that he must be wrong.

You just critiqued yourself, and fairly decently.

I think it would be useful for you to actually read some of his earlier threads to understand his position and it would probably be useful for you to read about epistemological solipsism. His position is not epistemological solipsism, but I think that might give you a better handle on how your counterarguments are facile in the extreme.