Why We Do Not Perceive The External World

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phenomenal_graffiti
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Why We Do Not Perceive The External World

Post by phenomenal_graffiti »

Why We Do Not Perceive The External World

Unless one invokes an inter-ontological magic in which the non-subjectivity of an external world independent of consciousness transforms into the subjective perceptions and experiences of humans and animals, sensory perception of the world is not one and the same thing as the world itself.

If one doubts this, one need only consider the existence of death (sleep, visual misperception, hallucination, etc. notwithstanding), and how it aptly demonstrates the lack of identicalness between consciousness and the external world---a world whose existence is not dependent upon the existence and operation of the brain.

So-called “perception of the external world” and the external world itself simultaneously exists; the world in the absence of consciousness exists despite the presence of consciousness. If not, does the external world transform into brain-generated consciousness? Does the external world cease to exist when personal consciousness is generated by the brain, only to come back into existence when the brain ceases to function?

If these questions are absurd, it follows that consciousness exists side by side, not in place of, the world that exists independent of consciousness.

The ontological simultaneity of consciousness and the external world and the existence of Death (more than any other “putative defeater” of Direct Realism) establishes the logical necessity of representationalism over Direct Realism. By reason of cessation of "direct perception of the external world" upon cessation of cortical function, and given the invulnerability of the external world to the existence of consciousness (in that the external world can exist without consciousness if need be), direct, immediate perception and interaction with the external world becomes metaphysically impossible.

Regardless of the explanatory abyss between neurons and subjective experience, the Externalists---particularly Direct and Indirect Realists---go so far as to insist that the electrochemical function of the occipital lobe, for reasons unknown, is able to manufacture direct visual perception (Direct Realism) or visual replica (Indirect Realism) of the external world.

Worse, the Externalist tells us that occipital lobes must manufacture direct perception or replica of the external world, and that occipital lobes must, by virtue of being occipital lobes, contain neurochemical information about the evolving real-time appearance and behavior of the external world---which exists regardless of visual perception.

But the actual state of the world (the world not produced by the brain) is devoid of consciousness (according to secular mythology of the nature of the world), and it is the notion that the external world continues to exist in the hypothetical absence of any and all consciousness that challenges Externalist claims that we perceive the external world. Why, when quarks and electrons combine to form functioning cerebral cortices and occipital lobes, should visual perception come into existence---and why should this visual perception necessarily perceive (Direct Realism) or mimic (Indirect Realism) the appearance and behavior of a world that is not created or controlled by cerebral cortices or occipital lobes?

The Externalist may assert that the external world somehow imposes upon neurons in such a way as to ensure that neurons perceive or mimic the world. But it is implausible, even with panpsychism, to hold that external world forces blindly strike here and there upon the neural skin receptors on external world bodies, to produce neuro-electrochemical resonances that route through the PNS and CNS to, in the nick of time, activate just that cortical circuit that, fortuitously, happen to produce subjective experience of the current, real-time appearance and behavior of the external world.

The implausibility is aggravated in the stipulation that there exist a brain and body neurally prepared before the fact to anticipate just those non-destructive forces from the external world that will route to the neural circuits set-up before the fact to generate subjective experience of the world that happens to currently act upon the body and brain. This fantastically convenient set up---one that anticipates every possible future of the body and brain---is particularly hard to swallow as the accidental product of a universe devoid of a governing intelligence.*

*
Brother, Hast Thou Faith In The External World? Part One: http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/vi ... 9&t=168437

Given the logical, explanatory, and ontological gap between neurons and subjective experience, the necessity for future prediction and anticipation in the design of the brain and body, and the further improbability of chance provision of future-predicting/anticipating neurons in a godless universe, one can argue that there is, in the end, no logical connection between neurons and consciousness, and no logical connection between neurons, consciousness, and the external world.

To see this, one need only consider the famous notion that consciousness comes into and goes out of existence, and the notion that neurons somehow create consciousness, and creates consciousness ex nihilo. If panpsychism is ruled out, how do neurons create visual perception of the external world by conjuring that perception from nonexistence? Further, why in the devil should conjured visual perception necessarily perceive or mimic the external world? How does the external world influence whatever magic creates consciousness to ensure that its face appears on the coin of perception?

If (due to the problems inherent in the notion of creation ex nihilo) one allows panpsychism (particularly David Chalmers' panprotopsychism), why should pre-existent "bytes" of consciousness in atoms , when and if those atoms get around to making up cerebral cortices, be just those bytes that, by chance, happen to reflect or perceive the current state of the external world?

This lack of a logical (or non-magical or non-explanatorily convenient) connection between neurons, consciousness, and the external world, given the ontological distinction between a world devoid of consciousness and a consciousness that must be generated from a machine in order to exist in the first place, renders Externalist assumption that the brain somehow creates direct and immediate perception of the external world absurd.


Epistemology

There are various kinds of knowledge: knowing how to do something (for example, how to ride a bicycle), knowing someone in person, and knowing a place or a city. Although such knowledge is of epistemological interest as well, we shall focus on knowledge of propositions and refer to such knowledge using the schema ‘S knows that p’, where ‘S’ stands for the subject who has knowledge and ‘p’ for the proposition that is known.[1] Our question will be: What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for S to know that p ? We may distinguish, broadly, between a traditional and a non-traditional approach to answering this question. We shall refer to them as ‘TK’ and ‘NTK’.

According to TK, knowledge that p is, at least approximately, justified true belief (JTB). False propositions cannot be known. Therefore, knowledge requires truth. A proposition S doesn't even believe can't be a proposition that S knows. Therefore, knowledge requires belief. Finally, S's being correct in believing that p might merely be a matter of luck. Therefore, knowledge requires a third element, traditionally identified as justification. Thus we arrive at a tripartite analysis of knowledge as JTB: S knows that p if and only if p is true and S is justified in believing that p . According to this analysis, the three conditions — truth, belief, and justification — are individually necessary and jointly sufficient for knowledge.

(Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Epistemology , http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/)


When it comes to the Externalist's claim that we have knowledge of the nature of the external world (that is, we somehow know how the world appears and behaves even in the absence of our consciousness: if this were not a real claim, how do we explain the existence of [the views of] Direct and Indirect Realism?), given the inconceivable nature of the external world in the absence of any and all consciousness, evidential knowledge of the outer world is (or should be) immediately ruled out. So the Externalist's claim that we have knowledge of the external world must invoke a knowledge wholly divorced from knowledge gained by direct experience....

What makes beliefs justified? According to evidentialists, it is the possession of evidence. According to evidentialism, what makes a belief justified is the possession of evidence. The basic idea is that a belief is justified to the degree it fits S's evidence.

(Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Epistemology , http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/)


The Externalist cannot perceive the external world in it's true form, as the true form of the external world requires the absence of the Externalist's perception. It is just this consciousness-independence of the external world that ultimately falsifies claims that conscious beings have knowledge of the nature of the external world (!)

Epilogue


"Brother....hast thou faith
in the external world....?"


If Death and cerebral creation of perception (in stark contrast to lack of cerebral construction of the external world) falsifies belief that we directly and immediately perceive the external world, the true form of the external world, how it is when there is no consciousness in existence, falsifies belief that we have knowledge of its nature. The Externalist, at the last, is forced into the deepest dungeons of Angband to cower*, having at the last only a quasi-religious faith in the nature of the external world, despite the fact that experiential knowledge of the external world is logically and metaphysically impossible.

* (from J.R.R Tolkien's, The Simarillion)

(That is, one cannot directly perceive or observe the world as it truly appears and behaves in the absence of consciousness, because the true form of that world requires that there be no consciousness to observe it: thus the very existence of consciousness prevents it from access to the true nature of the world)

To support this quasi-religious faith that humans and animals possess visual perception that perceives or mimics the world as that world is in the absence of perception, the Externalist, fleeing the carnage of the final battle without the aid of evidential knowledge, may desperately fall back on Reliabilism:


NTK, on the other hand, conceives of the role of justification differently. Its job is to ensure that S's belief has a high objective probability of truth and therefore, if true, is not true merely because of luck. One prominent idea is that this is accomplished if, and only if, a belief originates in reliable cognitive processes or faculties. This view is known as reliabilism.

[Reliabilism] holds that a belief is justified if, and only if, it results from cognitive origin that is reliable: an origin that tends to produce true beliefs and therefore properly probabilifies the belief. According to a standard form of reliabilism, what makes [beliefs] justified is not the possession of evidence, but the fact that the types of processes in which they originate — perception, introspection, memory, and rational intuition — are reliable.

(Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Epistemology, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/)


But this is futile: it is difficult enough to explain how neurons conjure subjective experience in the first place; it is going a step beyond logic to claim that neurons are structured the way that they are, and form the connections they do, in such a way that they can reveal or "tell the truth" about states of affairs beyond the ability of neurons to create, simply because one's neurons "reliably" tell the truth concerning the nature of things within consciousness.

With evidential knowledge impossible, and reliablistic knowledge absurd, the Externalist must, in the end, rely upon revelatory knowledge to support purported knowledge of the external world (the Externalist may claim that neurons receive "revelation from the external world", analogous to a religious man's claim that he receives "revelation from God").

If one is forced to rely upon revelatory knowledge to support Direct and Indirect Realism, the notion that that we perceive the external world is supported only by quasi-religious faith that neurons magically reveal the existence of that which lies beyond the consciousness neurons purportedly create. So-called knowledge of the external world, then, is the fraternal twin of faith in the existence of God.


Jay M. Brewer
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Post by mickalos »

Unless one invokes an inter-ontological magic in which the non-subjectivity of an external world independent of consciousness transforms into the subjective perceptions and experiences of humans and animals, sensory perception of the world is not one and the same thing as the world itself.
Direct realism doesn't tell us that our perceptions of objects are the objects (in the sense of logical identity), it merely states that it is these objects we are directly aware of. When I look at a chair, I see the chair, and not some intermediary sense-data. I have direct knowledge of the chair (knowledge of the chair 'in itself' as the indirect realist is apt to say; that is, what it looks like). When I am not looking at the chair, the chair is still there, it still looks the same, I simply do not see it. The rest of the post seems to run along the same lines as these; although I do agree with your criticisms of indirect realism (Why should the representation be accurate?).
If one doubts this, one need only consider the existence of death (sleep, visual misperception, hallucination, etc. notwithstanding), and how it aptly demonstrates the lack of identicalness between consciousness and the external world---a world whose existence is not dependent upon the existence and operation of the brain.
Firstly, hallucinations and dreams are not the same as perceptions. Seeing an elephant in the middle of a room while tripping on mushrooms is not qualitatively indistinguishable from actually seeing an elephant in the middle of a room. However, even if we did accept that hallucinations and dreams could be genuinely indistinguishable from veridical perception, it does not follow from that we do not directly experience the external world. To use the example Austin uses in his Sense and Sensibilia, if we cannot distinguish a piece of soap from a lemon, does it follow that soap and lemons are of an identical nature?

The title of the thread is that "Why we don't perceive the external world?", but as you are clearly not a direct realist or an idealist, and you criticise indirect realism, it seems to be an argument in favour of scepticism about the external world. I must admit I skimmed the end of the post, but you might want to consider causal theories of knowledge like Goldman's, which one would think should be the natural response to any epistemic claims that arise from the philosophy of perception (although, I'm not a subscriber myself). Also, you seem to brush off "desperately falling back on" reliabilism without much treatment, I'd like to hear what your problem is with the related (but much stronger in my opinion) truth-tracking theories (Nozick's is the most well known, in fact I can't say I know of another by a well known philosopher, if you wanted to look over one).
Last edited by mickalos on August 6th, 2009, 8:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Why We Do Not Perceive The External World

Post by nameless »

phenomenal_graffiti wrote:Why We Do Not Perceive The External World
There is no external and no internal world! Any such distinctions remains in the eye (imagination/thoughts) of the beholder.
There is the world of perception, moment to moment, as is.
There has never been any evidence of an 'external world', no matter how strong the illusion or belief.
There is no refutation.
It boils down to 'beliefs' and 'faith' in 'appearances'.
Demonstrate (provide evidence of) a world independent of the perception of Conscious Perspective (impossible), and I'll sing a whole new tune.
Until the impossible happens, thats my story and I'm sticking to it!
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Re: Why We Do Not Perceive The External World

Post by ape »

phenomenal_graffiti wrote:Why We Do Not Perceive The External World
Hi PG!
Thank you!
Before we can perceive or understand others,
we have to understand ourselves.
So lack of perception of the external world is caused by lack of perception of & in ourselves.
Example:
Do you see a fool in me who is external to you?
I see a fool in me.
And I see a wise man in you.
Do you see a wise man in you?

"We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are." Anais Nin

"'Goodbye,' said the fox.
'And now here is my secret, a very simple secret:
It is only with the Heart (of Love) that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.'"
Antoine de Sainte-Exupery in 'The Little Prince'

Those who first are aware of self are auto-aware of the external world and can see the world and all in it in themselves and see themselves and in themselves in the world.
Like this:
"To see the universe in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower;
Hold infinity on the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour,
(And all of that is oneself,
And oneself in all of that).

William Blake
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Post by phenomenal_graffiti »

mickalos:
Direct realism doesn't tell us that our perceptions of objects are the objects (in the sense of logical identity), it merely states that it is these objects we are directly aware of. When I look at a chair, I see the chair, and not some intermediary sense-data. I have direct knowledge of the chair (knowledge of the chair 'in itself' as the indirect realist is apt to say; that is, what it looks like).
In order to hold to direct realism, one must have quasi-religious faith that chairs exist in the external world in the absence of any and all consciousness. We can't know (experientially) that chairs exist in the external world: one merely imagines that chairs exist in the external world and then asserts it to be true.

That is, those who claim that we directly perceive or are directly aware of a chair as it is in the external world mere asserts that one is looking at an external world chair, but this is logically impossible: why it is logically impossible is explained better here:

http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/vi ... 9&t=169043

What direct realists fail to realize (or what they willfully ignore) is that there exists an ontological duality between so-called "direct awareness or perception of the external world" and the external world itself in the absence of perception.

{This duality is a natural consequence of secular mythology concerning the nature and transience of consciousness compared to the external world itself)

The duality exists because:

(a) There is experience or perception of a chair, which is actually the chair as it is experienced or perceived by a single person. This experience or perception is actually composed entirely of the subjective experience of that particular person.

(b) And there is the chair as it exists in the absence of "direct perception of the chair" (the absence of any and all consciousness). If there is (hypothetically) an absence of any and all consciousness, there is no longer such a thing as direct awareness of chairs.

(b1) If chairs can exist in the absence of direct awareness of chairs, given that there is no direct awareness of chairs in existence, it follows that external world chairs are nothing at all like chairs that are perceived by a conscious being.

In the end, it turns out that Death, more than hallucination, illusion, misperception, etc. is the more excellent teacher of the existence of this ontological duality between consciousness and the external world. If Death exists, direct awareness can in principle cease to exist while the external world we purport to directly perceive continues on (in whatever form) in the complete absence of so-called perception of the external world.

If external world chairs, for example, can continue to exist in the absence of direct awareness of external world chairs, obviously there is a way that external world chairs are that is NOT what chairs are to the personal, private perception of a conscious being. Why? Because if there is no consciousness, the world is obviously unlike the world as it is to a conscious being, because in the absence of consciousness the world is obviously
not made up of the substance that makes up conscious awareness or experience (if one does not subscribe to phenomenalism or idealism).

So the conundrum is this: how can we have direct awareness of chairs or perceive chairs as chairs exist in the absence of direct awareness or perception of chairs? How can we know what non-conscious externalism is even like? We can't, so we imagine what non-conscious externalism is like and forcibly link it to consciousness---and we assert that a godless universe accidentally granted us extra-empirical powers of mind allowing us to know with absolute certainty what exists beyond the deprivation chambers of our personal, private, subjective worlds.

See the contrivance? See the inanity?

Thanks to ole' Thanatos (Death), the existence of the ontological duality between "perception of the external world" and the "external world without perception" is conceptually (if not experientially) proven.

One can only conclude that they are two distinct existences, and that there is no magical X-Ray vision into the external world, (as the true nature of the external world is that which exists without consciousness to perceive it) but only representationalism (if one continues to hold that, for some unfathomable reason, the content of conscious perception somehow mimics the nature of the non-conscious external world).

Firstly, hallucinations and dreams are not the same as perceptions. Seeing an elephant in the middle of a room while tripping on mushrooms is not qualitatively indistinguishable from actually seeing an elephant in the middle of a room. However, even if we did accept that hallucinations and dreams could be genuinely indistinguishable from veridical perception, it does not follow from that we do not directly experience the external world. To use the example Austin uses in his Sense and Sensibilia, if we cannot distinguish a piece of soap from a lemon, does it follow that soap and lemons are of an identical nature?

This is why Death is a better defeater of Direct Realism than misperception, hallucination, or illusion. You have a complete absence of consciousness, and an external world object as it is in the absence of any and all consciousness.

If consciousness does not exist (in this hypothetical example), it is obvious that the external world object is nothing like the object as it is "within" a conscious subject, given that everything that is known (through experience) to exist exists within or to the private, personal experience of a particular conscious being. A chair, for example, is "someone's experience of a chair". This is something altogether different from a chair in the absence of all beings (if it even exists).

The title of the thread is that "Why we don't perceive the external world?", but as you are clearly not a direct realist or an idealist, and you criticise indirect realism, it seems to be an argument in favour of scepticism about the external world.
I'm certainly an Idealist. More to the point, I adhere to George Berkeley's Idealism, as Idealism is the view that only Mind exists and that everything that exists does so within the Mind of a Grand Conscious Being. No skepticism of the external world here, just of an external world that is non-conscious in aspect.
I'd like to hear what your problem is with the related (but much stronger in my opinion) truth-tracking theories (Nozick's is the most well known, in fact I can't say I know of another by a well known philosopher, if you wanted to look over one).
My problem with any claim of knowledge of an empirically-impossible/inaccessible state of affairs (the claim that one knows something that cannot be perceived or is not an object of internal mental introspection)---particularly if this Extra-Empirical Knowledge is granted to us by a godless world that does not know that it exists, much less that we exist or that it has granted us this magical power of revelation (of what goes on beyond the veil of our conscious experience), is that such revelatory knowledge is impossible.

J.
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Post by phenomenal_graffiti »

nameless:
There is no external and no internal world! Any such distinctions remains in the eye (imagination/thoughts) of the beholder.
There is the world of perception, moment to moment, as is.
There has never been any evidence of an 'external world', no matter how strong the illusion or belief.
There is no refutation.
It boils down to 'beliefs' and 'faith' in 'appearances'.
Demonstrate (provide evidence of) a world independent of the perception of Conscious Perspective (impossible), and I'll sing a whole new tune.
Until the impossible happens, thats my story and I'm sticking to it!
You said it, man! Yeah! Right On!

Image

J.
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Post by nameless »

^^^ Hey, hey, hey! *__-
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Post by mickalos »

In order to hold to direct realism, one must have quasi-religious faith that chairs exist in the external world in the absence of any and all consciousness. We can't know (experientially) that chairs exist in the external world: one merely imagines that chairs exist in the external world and then asserts it to be true.
I see a chair in a room, other people agree with me that there is a chair, I conclude that I know there is a chair. When I wave my hand in front of my face, and affirm, "here is a hand", this is a far more certain truth than any of the hypotheses that scepticism relies on. Describing it as a quasi-religious faith is very much wrong, I think.

That aside scepticism about the external world and direct realism are not mutually exclusive. It is possible to say sometimes we cannot tell when our experience is veridical, and therefore we cannot know anything about the external world, but in the cases when our experience is veridical, we do experience reality directly.
That is, those who claim that we directly perceive or are directly aware of a chair as it is in the external world mere asserts that one is looking at an external world chair, but this is logically impossible: why it is logically impossible is explained better here:
Perhaps you could explain why you think it is logically impossible. I would really rather not trawl through that obscenely long post.
What direct realists fail to realize (or what they willfully ignore) is that there exists an ontological duality between so-called "direct awareness or perception of the external world" and the external world itself in the absence of perception.

{This duality is a natural consequence of secular mythology concerning the nature and transience of consciousness compared to the external world itself)

The duality exists because:

(a) There is experience or perception of a chair, which is actually the chair as it is experienced or perceived by a single person. This experience or perception is actually composed entirely of the subjective experience of that particular person.
Here you make a category mistake. Perception isn't a thing, a kind of object that exists it is something that we do to objects: I see a chair, I feel a tree. When we do this we gain direct knowledge of the objects, when I look at a chair I can be said to know what a chair looks like. What on earth do we mean by "What does a chair look like" if not what happens when I visually perceive it.
(b) And there is the chair as it exists in the absence of "direct perception of the chair" (the absence of any and all consciousness). If there is (hypothetically) an absence of any and all consciousness, there is no longer such a thing as direct awareness of chairs.
I, as a direct realist, agree with this. When turn away from the chair, nothing changes about the chair, all the facts about the chair that make it look the way it is are still there, I am simply not looking at it.
(b1) If chairs can exist in the absence of direct awareness of chairs, given that there is no direct awareness of chairs in existence, it follows that external world chairs are nothing at all like chairs that are perceived by a conscious being.

n the end, it turns out that Death, more than hallucination, illusion, misperception, etc. is the more excellent teacher of the existence of this ontological duality between consciousness and the external world. If Death exists, direct awareness can in principle cease to exist while the external world we purport to directly perceive continues on (in whatever form) in the complete absence of so-called perception of the external world.
It is fairly obvious that your conclusion: "external world chairs are nothing at all like chairs that are perceived by a conscious being", does not follow from your premise: "Chairs can exist in the absence of direct awareness of chairs". It seems to me that your entire argument hinges on this, and it simply does not adhere to the laws of reasoning, it is not a valid argument. We call it the external world because it is objective, and independent of any direct experience we have of it. Our perceiving the chair changes nothing about the chair, thus when we cease to perceive the chair, the chair is the same. The chair looks the same because counterfactually, if someone were to look at the chair, they would see the same chair. Consider the Mona Lisa, every night night it is locked up inside the Louvre with nobody looking at it, but it still has the appearance described in all of the art history books; I know what the Mona Lisa looks like this very moment, despite the fact that I am not in the Louvre.
f external world chairs, for example, can continue to exist in the absence of direct awareness of external world chairs, obviously there is a way that external world chairs are that is NOT what chairs are to the personal, private perception of a conscious being. Why? Because if there is no consciousness, the world is obviously unlike the world as it is to a conscious being, because in the absence of consciousness the world is obviously not made up of the substance that makes up conscious awareness or experience (if one does not subscribe to phenomenalism or idealism).
You commit the same fallacy here as the one above, but more importantly than that, what can you possibly mean by "world is obviously not made up of the substance that makes up conscious awareness or experience"? Conscious awareness is not something that you can pick of and throw around, it is not made of anything, it is a mental state, nothing more, nothing less.
I'm certainly an Idealist. More to the point, I adhere to George Berkeley's Idealism, as Idealism is the view that only Mind exists and that everything that exists does so within the Mind of a Grand Conscious Being. No skepticism of the external world here, just of an external world that is non-conscious in aspect.
Berkeley's is one of those grand over-arching theories that is completely unverifiable by empirical observation or logical analysis, he makes some very convincing arguments in favour of sense data and indirect perception, but his Treatise, taken as a whole has no place in modern thought.
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Post by phenomenal_graffiti »

mickalos:
I see a chair in a room, other people agree with me that there is a chair, I conclude that I know there is a chair. When I wave my hand in front of my face, and affirm, "here is a hand", this is a far more certain truth than any of the hypotheses that scepticism relies on. Describing it as a quasi-religious faith is very much wrong, I think.
Consensus reality is merely multiple subjective experiences, nothing more. Seeing a chair and waving a hand in front of one's face are, in the end, nothing more than a particular being's subjective experience of "chairs" and "hands". Direct realism relies on "quasi-religious faith" that there are non-mental chairs and non-mental hands that would survive a hypothetical universal loss of consciousness (regardless of a resulting non-functionality of the hand).

(Note: The question of whether or not the external world exists or if trees, building, chairs, etc. exist in the external world as objective realities can be posed in the context of the hypothesis of an instantaneous and universal cessation of consciousness: if tomorrow all consciousness were to cease, would trees, buildings, chairs, etc. still exist? If your answer is yes, you are a direct or indirect realist, one of a majority of phenomenalists, or a panpsychist. If your answer is no, you're either solipisist or idealist.)

That aside scepticism about the external world and direct realism are not mutually exclusive. It is possible to say sometimes we cannot tell when our experience is veridical, and therefore we cannot know anything about the external world, but in the cases when our experience is veridical, we do experience reality directly.
But we only believe we experience reality directly! That's the point! We only IMAGINE what the world in the absence of all consciousness is like, and we can only BELIEVE that our experience is veridical, that it directly observes the world as it would continue to be in the absence of consciousness! There is an ontological duality between "perception of the world" (note the apostrophes) and the world in the absence of perception or consciousness.
What direct realists fail to realize (or what they willfully ignore) is that there exists an ontological duality between so-called "direct awareness or perception of the external world" and the external world itself in the absence of perception.

{This duality is a natural consequence of secular mythology concerning the nature and transience of consciousness compared to the external world itself)

The duality exists because:

(a) There is experience or perception of a chair, which is actually the chair as it is experienced or perceived by a single person. This experience or perception is actually composed entirely of the subjective experience of that particular person.
Here you make a category mistake. Perception isn't a thing, a kind of object that exists it is something that we do to objects:
Worrying about whether or not perception is a "thing" or an "action", and how this qualifies as a category mistake is a red herring that entirely misses the point. Pecerption is described above as a "thing" because it, according to secular mythology concerning the relationship between the brain and perception, percpetion is believed to be something that can cease to exist if the brain ceases to function.
I see a chair, I feel a tree. When we do this we gain direct knowledge of the objects, when I look at a chair I can be said to know what a chair looks like. What on earth do we mean by "What does a chair look like" if not what happens when I visually perceive it.
But we gain direct knowledge of NOTHING by feeling a tree or seeing a chair save only "the experience of a subjective entity called a chair" and "the experience of a subjective entity called a tree"---because there is an ontological duality between our perception of a tree or a chair and whatever exists in the absence of any and all perception. You only BELIEVE that you gain direct knowledge of external world chairs and external world trees because you see something that we call a "chair" and feel something that we call a "tree"---but you have no way of knowing if these things even exist in the absence of your, or anyone else's consciousness---you only believe and have faith they do.
It is fairly obvious that your conclusion: "external world chairs are nothing at all like chairs that are perceived by a conscious being", does not follow from your premise: "Chairs can exist in the absence of direct awareness of chairs". It seems to me that your entire argument hinges on this, and it simply does not adhere to the laws of reasoning, it is not a valid argument.
Of course "chairs can exist in the absence of direct awareness of chairs" follows from "external world chairs are nothing at all like chairs that are perceived by a conscious being".

(Note: I do not commit Ayn Rand's "Stolen Concept" fallacy, as I state the "existence" of "external world chairs" and "chairs that can exist in the absence of direct awareness of chairs" in a tongue-in-cheek way for the sake of argument, as I do not believe in the existence of non-conscious 'physical' objects)

To see that they logically follow, consider: If all consciousness in the universe were to cease tomorrow, and if it is believed that chairs would and could continue to exist in the absence of all consciousness, isn't it obvious that chairs in the absence of all consciousness would be non-mental, and thus substantially nothing like the subjective experience of chairs?

To see this, remember that according to secular mythology concerning the existence and nature of consciousness:


(a) Consciousness previously did not exist before it comes into existence upon formation and function of the brain

(a1) Consciousness is something that is continually generated or created by the brain, as it is believed that no instance of consciousness can exist that is not explicable to some neural function of the brain

(b) Consciousness ceases to exist upon cessation of function of the brain

(c) The external world (and external world trees, chairs, etc.) is not a creation of the brain, in the same way that so-called perception of the external world is a creation of the brain

(d) The external world does not cease to exist when brains cease to function

(e) Ergo, consciousness (including "perception of the external world") is not the same thing as the external world, as the one can cease to exist and the other cannot

We call it the external world because it is objective, and independent of any direct experience we have of it.
Exactly. And it can also exist in the complete absence of any and all consciousness.
Our perceiving the chair changes nothing about the chair, thus when we cease to perceive the chair, the chair is the same. The chair looks the same because counterfactually, if someone were to look at the chair, they would see the same chair.
Our perceiving the chair changes nothing about the chair, and when we cease to perceive the chair, the chair remains the same---AS LONG AS THERE IS SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE OF CHAIRS. We have NO idea if chairs exist in the absence of any and all subjective experience, we only believe that there are--and tell everyone that we absolutely know that there are, but we can't know that there are.
Consider the Mona Lisa, every night night it is locked up inside the Louvre with nobody looking at it, but it still has the appearance described in all of the art history books; I know what the Mona Lisa looks like this very moment, despite the fact that I am not in the Louvre.
If no one is looking at the Mona Lisa when it is locked up, this only means that the subjective fields of everyone changes in such a way that they no longer include subjective experience of Mona Lisa. Subjective experience of Mona Lisa "returns" when she is once again taken out or seen in history or art books. This does not "prove" that there is an external world Mona Lisa that continues to exist in the absence of all consciousness.
You commit the same fallacy here as the one above, but more importantly than that, what can you possibly mean by "world is obviously not made up of the substance that makes up conscious awareness or experience"? Conscious awareness is not something that you can pick of and throw around, it is not made of anything, it is a mental state, nothing more, nothing less.
And mentality is not a substance? Why? You don't think that your direct awareness is "made up" of anything? It exists: do you not think that something constitutes it, as opposed to what constitutes the world in the absence of all consciousness?

Everything, empirically, is mental. We only imagine the existence of the non-mental. Everything, to us, is composed of our subjective experience of things. We only imagine the existence of things NOT made up of subjective experience. Think about it. If consciousness were to no longer exist, what's left behind (if anything)is obviously not mental states or subjective experience; thus the world left behind in the event of a universal absence of consciousness MUST (according to secular mythology) be non-mental and composed of a different substance than mental state (given that all mentality is now absent from the universe).

Remember, secular mythology concerning the nature of consciousness holds that consciousness can cease to exist. If you believe that something remains in the event of the absence of any and all consciousness (and that something existed before there was such things as functioning brains)--isn't it obvious that what was here before consciousness and what will remain after consciousness must be non-mental?

What is non-mentality like? Do you know? If so, how?

Berkeley's is one of those grand over-arching theories that is completely unverifiable by empirical observation or logical analysis, he makes some very convincing arguments in favour of sense data and indirect perception, but his Treatise, taken as a whole has no place in modern thought.
Berkeley's Idealism, if one uses a human rather than divine perception, is the most empirical observation about reality one can possibly make, aside from solipsism. It is the non-mental that is completely unverifiable by empirical observation or logical analysis. And modern thought is in denial about the simple, homogenous, nature of reality: that the only thing that exists is subjective experience, all the way to the ontological bone.

J.
nameless
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Post by nameless »

mickalos wrote:Berkeley's is one of those grand over-arching theories that is completely unverifiable by empirical observation or logical analysis, he makes some very convincing arguments in favour of sense data and indirect perception, but his Treatise, taken as a whole has no place in modern thought.
Balderdash!
His offering need no 'empirical verification, it is irrefutable!
Belief, with no evidence, beyond appearances, of an 'external world independent of observation/perception of Conscious Perspective, is no more than that, a naive belief.
You can offer no such evidence, ever. There can be no such evidence. Hence, irrefutable.
So, please, before attempting argument (at least with me) make sure that you have some evidence in refutal of all the evidence that existence is and must be 'perceived'.
The 'belief' of a Mind/Consciousness independent 'out there' has no place in "modern thought".
Of course 'critical thought' and 'beliefs' are diametrically opposed. The more of one, the less of the other. Hence the irrationality of fundamentalists.
Your above arguments are both naively feeble, lacking in evidence, and ignorant of modern physics. (And I have committed no fallacies in my post, as you offhandedly assert, with no elaboration, so there needs be no defense or alteration.)
(Sorry, the Greek philosophers have poisoned western thought long enough.)
boagie
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Post by boagie »

I second that Balderdash!

Apparent reality is a biological readout, a virtual reality, as Kant informed us long ago we can never know directly ultimate reality because it is beyond our biologies ability to process all the stimulus available. All our knowledge is necessarily first conditioned by our sensory organs and then conditioned once again through the processes of our understanding."THE MATRIX", your in it.
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phenomenal_graffiti
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reply to boagie

Post by phenomenal_graffiti »

boagie:
Apparent reality is a biological readout, a virtual reality, as Kant informed us long ago we can never know directly ultimate reality because it is beyond our biologies ability to process all the stimulus available. All our knowledge is necessarily first conditioned by our sensory organs and then conditioned once again through the processes of our understanding."THE MATRIX", your in it.
I'm a Berkeleyian Idealist, and as such deny that consciousness arises from the brain or that the physical even exists, but I definitely second the motion that:

1. If non-mentality exists and;

2. The Non-mental substance shapes itself into non-mental analogs of our visual perception (yielding non-mental analogs to slums, jungles, hotels, toilet paper, galaxies, etc.) that continue to exist in the absence of our consciousness...

...then our consciousness must, following Kant, be a virtual reality rather than one and the same thing as ultimate reality.

If the external world can exist without consciousness, and if there is no consciousness around to perceive anything, it is obvious that the external world exists in some form that
has nothing at all to do with consciousness and conscious perception of things (Obvious, since there is no consciousness to compare to the external world in the absence of consciousness).

Thus there is nothing about consciousness that makes up that which makes up the external world; thus there is nothing about ourselves that we can "project" onto an external world that, whatever it is, can exist with no part of ourselves and thus is made of something that is devoid of that which makes up ourselves.

Thus, any claim that we "perceive the external world" must claim that this perception is a representation: the external world is something that our consciousness is not, thus our consciousness and perception is something that the external world is not (obvious, if the latter can exist without the former).
Thus we cannot claim we directly experience that which is something other than experience itself.

Everyone get the picture?

Common sense and logic, based upon secular mythology concerning the nature and transience of consciousness compared to the indestructibility and eternal existence of the physical should, if one is thinking correctly, automatically reveal that consciousness can be NOTHING BUT a representation of the external world (if by chance experience luckily mimics that which is not experience). It cannot directly access the external world as the external world (if secular mythology concerning the external world is true) is made of something that is not that which makes up consciousness.

This is quite obvious, really, when one looks at secular mythology concerning death:

(a) Consciousness ceases to exist

(b) The external world continues on, unaffected by the disappearance of consciousness and the pathology or cessation of function of the brain

(c) The external world, unlike consciousness, is not created by the brain and does not depend upon the brain for its existence.

Ergo: they're two totally different existences.

Problem solved.

It's good to see that there are a few people (nameless, boagie, etc.) actually using the ole' noggin.

J.
boagie
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Post by boagie »

phenomenal_graffiti, :)

An interesting read, and thanks for the compliment. I think however you might need an update on your speculations. The inferences in David Bohm's work,"The Implicate Order", are most impressive, granted there is no final word on the subject but the wonder is delightful. It would seem from these experiments that consciousness is indeed the cause of matter, for the probability wave does not collapse to a particle unless it is observed and/or measured, which might infer consciousness of the phenomena in that it reacts one way when observed and in quite another way when not observed.
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Post by phenomenal_graffiti »

boagie:
An interesting read, and thanks for the compliment. I think however you might need an update on your speculations. The inferences in David Bohm's work,"The Implicate Order", are most impressive, granted there is no final word on the subject but the wonder is delightful. It would seem from these experiments that consciousness is indeed the cause of matter, for the probability wave does not collapse to a particle unless it is observed and/or measured, which might infer consciousness of the phenomena in that it reacts one way when observed and in quite another way when not observed.
But these experiments, including the empirical, sensory results of "collapses of the probability wave" are subjectively experienced from the point of view of a single experiencing being. Everything NOT subjectively perceived is imaginary; that is, they are things we imagine exists: this includes probability waves, the consciousness of other people, and the physical itself.

Everything we know (through experience) to exist exists in phenomenal form, that is, they empirically exist only in the form of someone's experience of them. Thus, there are (presumably, for those who believe) non-mental elephants and subjectively experienced elephants, non-mental jungles, and subjectively experienced jungles, non-mental galaxies and subjectively experienced galaxies (if only through pictures created by Hubble telescopes or televised images or pictures in books). Even if we were to one day see electrons and quarks, we would only see phenomenal electrons or phenomenal quarks rather than physical electons or quarks.

The problem, I think, is that we make the cognitive mistake of confusing the non-mental with the mental, of confusing that which exists or can exist in the absence of all consciousness with consciousness, something that can blink out of existence leaving the physical behind (according to natural philosophy)---thinking of them as one and the same. Reality, to you or me, exists at least as a single person's private, personal subjective experience. Empirically, it appears only in this form.

Anything beyond POV subjective experience is imaginary. That is, we can only imagine non-POV existence exists. Look at yourself and how you are. You're just an experience with seven modalities or "gears" (the five senses plus cognition and emotion). Everything that you perceive: chairs, hands, phones, cars, etc. are composed of (at least) whatever it is that makes up your subjective experience. Whatever you know (empirically) to exist presented itself to your private, personal experience (as opposed to how these things appear or feel to another consciousness). So there is at least the concept of, for example, my experience of something that called 'paper' as opposed to someone else's private experience of the same sheet of paper. We may think they are the same, but consider: I am not the other person, so I can only imagine that my feel of paper and the other's are similar.

(Of course, two individuals could point at the same blue object and call the object blue, but the universe is still divided into "my" experience of blue and "that other guy's" experience of blue)

The universe, empirically, is compartmentalized into my experience of x and y, separate from another person's experience of x and y, and so on. Thus reality, at least, is made up of nothing but different minds. Everything beyond this we only imagine exists.

The moral is, we can't know if consciousness creates or controls matter (as appealing as quantum probability wave collapse may be to the possibility of telekinesis, etc.), as we cannot experience matter (as matter is presumably non-mental or non-POV experience). We only imagine that matter exists (and move magically from imagination to "certainty" that it exists).

Just a thought,

J.
Simon says...
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Post by Simon says... »

Evidence huh?...Ok well drive your car to th edge of a cliff, take a large dose of DMT, and just before your mind goes into a psychadelic realm, realese the handbreak. You may not observe the world around you and it does not observe you either, for it has no mind to observe...but that doesn't stop it from killing you...hence, it is there and there is evidence of this. Otherwise why the correlations?

I would have thought, why the mind is subjective, is obvious, there is more than one person. We all receive similar data, hence our experiances are similar, but having unique positions in space and time the data we all receive is slightly different. In other words we are looking at the world from a different angle.

The existence of the external world is very simplistic, all that exists are particles floating around and reacting with each other by way of physical forces. All that exists is information, data. There is no meaning without an observer, for in order for data to mean anything it has to be interpreted.

But there is only one environment hence there is only one dataset. Hence there is such a thing as universal truth. The our perception of this data is not quite the same as what it really is. What we experiance is an artistic (for lack of a better word) representation of the real world. For example, the experiance of red is not the same was red itself. Red itself is just a light wavelength of ~625-740nm, but one's eyes have evolved to react to this wavelength and the brain it is connected to to evoke in that brain, a thought. That thought is the experiance of seeing red as a colour. Seeing this colour is the brain's way of telling itself than in area X there exists a light wavelength of ~625-740nm...this information is useful, for example it allows us to see when the traffic is coming and when it is not. By dint of evolution we have learned over time and by trial and error, to shape our bodies in such a way as to react to our environment in a survivable way.

It is of course, possible to be wrong. For example if an eye sees a wavelength of ~625-740nm, but due to a misconnection somewhere along the optic nerve something goes wrong, such that the brain things it is seeing green, (otherwise known as being colour blind). Upon thinking one sees green, one thinks the traffic has stopped, walks out into it and gets killed. Hence it is these faulty genetics that become extinct.
In earlier civilisations, colour blind people where much more rare on account of being less able to perceive dangers.

Blind people in general have a real disadvantage because they do not perceive the outside world, but it still effects them.

To my mind the only reason everyone is set on believing that the outside world doesn't exist is because we are unable to account for the strange behaviour of particles in quantum mechanics. But I think that quantum mechanics are not an example of a flaw in the environment but a flaw in our observation of the environment. I think basically that it is an example of how we have only scraped the surface and it is in essence a more complex version of the flat earth hypothesis. The photon cannot travel through both paths with the same energy level and be the same photon, so that other photon must have come from somewhere, maybe somewhere else in space/time, or perhaps there are even more than four real dimentions! Who knows! The answers are limitless, it could be happening for any number of reasons. But I think it is a mistake to use that as a basis for how consciousness is somehow different from the rest of the universe, or that somehow it is the only thing that exists.

Believing that the external world doesn't exist is actually quite a dangerous thing to do as any biologist will tell you.
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