What is Reality?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

I enjoy philosophy of the mind. I think it's shortsighted to believe consciousness can be understood as mere neurons firing. To paraphrase David Deutsch until we can agree on a proper definition of consciousness there is no point in trying to explain it.

[Sci-2]

I enjoy philosophy of the mind. I think it's shortsighted to believe consciousness can be understood as mere neurons firing. To paraphrase David Deutsch until we can agree on a proper definition of consciousness there is no point in trying to explain it.

Sorry I should say it's useful to lay out the problems, the solutions however all leave something to be desired. I actually enjoy reading it but that's largely because it's interesting to see how people try to parse reality rather than thinking any position is true.

As I've said before philosophy without evidence is conjecture, empiricism hits brute facts that themselves call for explanation, and mysticism is by definition subjective. So expecting to figure out consciousness, causality, origin, time, and so on...unlikely.

Feyman has some arguably good advice about this:

You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here, and what the question might mean. I might think about it a little bit and if I can't figure it out, then I go on to something else, but I don't have to know an answer, I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is so far as I can tell. It doesn't frighten me.

[Wise Fool]

How do you speak about what can't be spoken of? You can't. The mind - the problem-creating/solving, the language-using, the reasoning-logical mind - wants to speak of it anyway.

To quote Khalil Gibran's The Prophet:

But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart's knowledge.

You would know in words that which you have always known in thought.

So on one hand there's no point in trying to explain consciousness (or all of reality) completely, because it can't be done to completion. On the other hand, it's fun, so nananaboo boo.

[Sci-2]

Well I'm not saying anyone should quit studying the brain or doing philosophy. As I said I enjoy reading about all this stuff, as a mental whetstone as Tyrion would say.

But, as per the Fodor quote I have now located, it's pretty dismal:

"Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. Nobody even knows what it would be like to have the slightest idea about how anything material could be conscious. So much for the philosophy of consciousness."

Don't get me wrong, all the other explanations are also lacking especially when trying to deal with the scientific evidence that shows close correlations between mind and body. The fact that even philosophers who reject material answers aren't convinced that there are souls or an Ur-soul/Brahman is telling.

[Wise Fool]

But there are those who are convinced. And who can't possibly prove it, can't spin up a Universal Theory to the satisfaction of everyone and create a global scientific consensus. That does not invalidate that they know. I do not have to be able to explain to my wife, for example, how and why exactly it is I love her, in order to love her and to know that I do.

[Sci-2]

If people want to live their own lives while believing in some non-physical explanation that's probably a topic for the religion thread.

Forget about consciousness - there's a host of other mysteries like the nature of Time. What makes it hard to really dig into these mysteries is - sad to say - theists who take any gap and try to stuff God into it. But Jesus coming back from the dead is like Vampire Otherkin - why should we believe it?

.

eta: To clarify, I'm asking about knowledge that is communicable, not knowledge that is gnosis. Knowing your wife loves you is personal gnosis.

eta II: My point isn't religious beliefs are wrong, it's that they aren't communicable in way that lends itself to a definite understanding of reality.

[Wise Fool]

But I am not talking about religion, or the non-physical. In a strictly materialist worldview, after all, everything is physical. But if everything is physical, then it's meaningless - as well say everything is non physical. The problematic concept here is "everything," which is to say, Reality - whenever you say "Reality is X" it can be argued that reality is also Y and Z and so on. This is only problematic with regards to communicating about it because to speak of, to conceptualize "everything" is to try and conceptualize what cannot be conceptualized. It's to speak of what can't be spoken of.

[Sci-2]

Well a materialist could say there's physical closure - everything can be explained via the fundamentals accepted by that ontology.

I don't think that's meaningless - there's good reason IMO to think it's inadequate and that Fodor's pessimism is well-founded - but it wouldn't be meaningless. On the other extreme Idealism wouldn't be nonsensical either.

That said I'd largely agree with the idea that trying to come up with an adequate classification is a fool's errand. As Borges would say:

"...it is clear that there is no classification of the Universe not being arbitrary and full of conjectures. The reason for this is very simple: we do not know what thing the universe is..."

[Nas!]

Dave's not here, man.

[Larry of the Lawn]

According to the J Peterman catalog, reality is based on the fundamentals of lycanthropy and muffin stumps.

[Arkhangel]

Every time I see this thread.

[Nas!]

Reality really is better when explored, but just hope you never truly understand it.

[Monday]

What exactly would "you" have to be for "you" to be the one that's conscious?

To put it another way: why isn't the model "you" or why isn't the existence of the model/subjective awareness something that's meaningfully proven by experience anyway?

Not sure. It would be very murky for me. No clear boundaries and as they said, language seems inadequate with this stuff. A neural transceiver is required for maximum communication. Are my subconscious and unconscious thoughts me as well? All the info I take in and use without conscious thought? My environment? My gut flora and brain parasites?

When I experience sleep a paralysis my brain creates "people" that feel physically real to me and can interact with my body. It attributes consciousness to them and intent as surely as it does for me. It feels as terrifyingly real as anything I've experienced. Are they as real as my conciousness? Are they me even though percieve them as other?

If my consciousness is altered and I experience what I perceive to be ego death and oneness with the universe, is that me? Am I everything truly one with everything when in that state and if so is that no longer true when ego returns?

[Larry of the Lawn]

@sci, always knew you were a student of Ajencis.

[Sci-2]

@sci, always knew you were a student of Ajencis.

I like to think Ajencis was at least partly based on Agrippa (of the famous trilemma that invalidates knowledge), with maybe a dash of Robert Anton Wilson (the reality tunnels guy). :-)

[Wise Fool]

[...]When I experience sleep a paralysis my brain creates "people" that feel physically real to me and can interact with my body. It attributes consciousness to them and intent as surely as it does for me. It feels as terrifyingly real as anything I've experienced. Are they as real as my conciousness? Are they me even though percieve them as other?

It is not your brain that is attributing consciousness to these objectively non-physical people, it is consciousness attributing consciousness to itself through differentiation (in this case, dissociation). Just as your normal self-concept is consciousness attributing consciousness to the greater part of your awake, alert and normal-functioning brain (and body, and clothes and whatever else is part of your self-concept at any given time). They are, therefore, exactly as real as "you" are. The brain is perceiving itself as multiple selves instead of just one, but that doesn't mean there is a "real" self and then fake, somehow non-real selves. They may not be as functional, as recognized, as cohesive, etc -- but they are at worst merely "less incomplete" than the normal experience of a single self.

[Castel]

It is not your brain that is attributing consciousness to these objectively non-physical people, it is consciousness attributing consciousness to itself through differentiation (in this case, dissociation). Just as your normal self-concept is consciousness attributing consciousness to the greater part of your awake, alert and normal-functioning brain (and body, and clothes and whatever else is part of your self-concept at any given time). They are, therefore, exactly as real as "you" are. The brain is perceiving itself as multiple selves instead of just one, but that doesn't mean there is a "real" self and then fake, somehow non-real selves. They may not be as functional, as recognized, as cohesive, etc -- but they are at worst merely "less incomplete" than the normal experience of a single self.

See, it's stuff like this that confuses me and makes me have sympathy for Sci.

[Wise Fool]

Oh, my bad. I meant, in the latter bolded part, "consciousness" rather than "the brain." Not that that makes me that much less confusing.

[Sci-2]

Oh, my bad. I meant, in the latter bolded part, "consciousness" rather than "the brain." Not that that makes me that much less confusing.

So if I understand you consciousness starts as One, becomes Many, but just as Many is still One one of the Many can become Many while still being one?

No, that's not confusing at all. :-P

I've actually heard of a concept Memetic Solipsism, where the idea is everyone is a reincarnation of One being who can be reborn without worrying about linear time. I don't even pretend to understand how such a thing is possible though I get for moral purposes this idea - or any variation of One->Many, does encourage people to think of others as themselves.

[Wise Fool]

I suppose I am operating more from my admittedly limited intellectual understanding of certain concepts in Sankhya metaphysics such as the self, nonself, ego, ignorance, and of course the ultimate nature of reality. In this framework, the self - that is, Brahman - is the eternal and absolute individual as well as the totality of existence. But this as kind of a revealed truth, rather than one that can simply be stated and accepted intellectually. As I've probably demonstrated, trying to grasp it intellectually results in my intellect choking and kind of making an ass of myself. But I've had an experience, several actually, which suggests to my intellect that there are things I can know without intellectually knowing, and that this is one of them.