Consul:
My statement is not to be interpreted as meaning that the objects of perception, the perceptually appearing nonexperiences become experiences, because there is certainly a difference between appearances qua perceptual experiences and the nonexperiences they are appearances of.
Or, the perception is simply the manner in which existence manifests and the only thing that exists, such that the non-experiences the perception is purported an appearance of does not exist.
When I see a tree, the perceptual process involves an externally, objectively existing tree
The external, objectively existing tree, if it consists of something that is not subjective experience, may not exist as it, being made up of or consisting of something that is not subjective experience, cannot logically or rationally have anything to do with subjective experience beyond magical transformation or the existence magic of creation
ex nihilo.
and an internally, subjectively existing sensory appearance or impression of it,
"it", unless made up or consisting of external, objective subjective experience as opposed to something that is not subjective experience at all, may not exist
and there's no magical transformation of the one into the other.
So we agree there are two trees rather than a single tree in the mythology that brains create consciousness and the ontology it implies or supports: there is a tree composed or consisting of subjective experience created by the brain, and an external tree not created by the brain. Beyond the mythology, the only logical or rational way the external tree can exist and have anything to do with the secondary, perceived tree is if the external tree itself is composed of subjective experience and controversially, the subjective experience of an external being that transmits or shares the substance of its subjective experience with the secondary, perceiving subject.
I perceive the tree through the sensory appearance or impression of it which I experience. To sensorily perceive something is to experience a sensory appearance or impression of it that perceptually presents it to me.
Sure, if the sensory appearance or impression of it you experience is transmitted or inherited from the subjective experience of another, external
person.
Strictly speaking, you're right insofar as you cannot experience nonexperiences; but you're wrong in equating experiencing with perceiving,
Perceiving is experiencing. It's all experience in seven forms (the five senses plus thought and emotion). It doesn't follow how one can perceive without the experiencing that one is perceiving.
because it doesn't follow that you cannot perceive nonexperiences.
It does when existence only manifests in the form of one's experience, and non-experience, being something that is not experience and specifically, not your experience, cannot be experienced (perceived) as it is not experience.
Again, idealists make the fundamental mistake of regarding experiential contents (sensations, sense-impressions, sense-appearances) as perceptual objects. (They become perceptual objects only in the case of introspection, but I'm talking about perception qua extrospection here.)
There is only evidence of the existence of sensations, thoughts, and emotions. These are the only perceptual objects that exist. There is no evidence of the existence of objects consisting of non-experience.
Epistemological skepticism about external, nonmental/nonexperiential reality is rooted in that false idealistic ontology of perception,
It's not necessarily false. Given the evidence (that existence only appears in the form of a person and that which the person experiences), it may be true, and is probably more likely than nonmental/nonexperiential "reality"
because if the subjective contents of perception are its (direct) objects, then there is an opaque "veil of perception" separating us epistemically from nonmental reality—if there is any such reality at all, which is denied by reductive mentalists such as Berkeley, who don't even acknowledge a Kantian realm of imperceptible nonmental noumena.
In truth, we don't need nonmental noumena or a nonmental reality. To ground human experience, there is logically only mental noumena and a mental external reality in the form of an external Person or persons.
Anti-idealists agree that conscious sensory perception essentially has some subjective sense-content which is experienced by the perceiver, but what the perceiver perceives is not the experienced content but what is perceptually presented to her/him through the content qua perceptually transparent medium of perception.
And that which is presented from the external world can only logically be the subjective experiences of an external being or beings.
phenomenal_graffiti wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2020 10:31 am
There is a mythological background to the belief that experience experiences that which is not experience at all: the "brains behind the outfit" so to speak:
This mythology holds there was a time when consciousness did not exist, as brains did not exist. When brains, and therefore consciousness did not exist, there must have been something that pre-dated consciousness (first-person subjective experience) and existed in the universal non-existence of consciousness in lieu of consciousness or subjective experience. Bertrand Russell referred to this "whatever" as 'matter; George Berkeley referred to is as 'unperceived substance'.
This "mythology" is what Wilfrid Sellars calls "the scientific image" of the world.
Ultimately an act of make-believe. No different, really, than J.K. Rowlin's imagination of the Harry Potter fictional universe.
Introspection, i.e. the nonsensory perception of the contents of one's mind or consciousness, is evolutionarily preceded by extrospection, i.e. the sensory perception of nonmental things or events. (I subsume the inner perception of one's body, i.e. interoception and proprioception, under extrospection.)
Nonmental things or events probably do not exist, and cannot logically have any relation to mental things and events, as there must be a transformation from nonmental to mental for such a relation to magically exist.
All animal species are capable of extrospection, but only very few of them are capable of introspection. What matters most for fitness and survival is extrospection with its nonmental objects.
If external objects are not themselves made up of subjective experience that can take from itself to become the subjective experience of a person perceiving external subjective experience, it has no logical relation to subjective experience and may not exist.
From the perspective of evolutionary biology, there are no good reasons to abandon our instinctive belief in a (perceptible) external, nonmental reality. We had been aware of nonmental reality long before we became aware of our mental reality.
We can only experience and be aware of subjective experience, not that which is not subjective experience. It's logically impossible for subjective experience to experience something that is not experience.
QUOTE:
"Of course it is not by argument that we originally come by our belief in an independent external world. We find this belief ready in ourselves as soon as we begin to reflect: it is what may be called an instinctive belief.
If one denies solipsism or the concept that human consciousness exists in a psychic vacuum, an independent external world, albeit one that consists of still more subjective experience rather than that which is not or that is other than subjective experience, instinctively follows.
We should never have been led to question this belief but for the fact that, at any rate in the case of sight, it seems as if the sense-datum itself were instinctively believed to be the independent object, whereas argument shows that the object cannot be identical with the sense-datum.
Given that we experience only the sense-datum and have no evidence of the existence of the independent object, it does not follow how one can know the sense-object is not the only thing that exists (of course I
believe it doesn't, as I believe in an external Person and persons from which our senses derive).
This discovery, however—which is not at all paradoxical in the case of taste and smell and sound, and only slightly so in the case of touch—leaves undiminished our instinctive belief that there are objects corresponding to our sense-data.
The instinctive belief is rational only if the objects corresponding to our sense-data are themselves sense-data within the mind of an external Being or beings.
Since this belief does not lead to any difficulties, but on the contrary tends to simplify and systematize our account of our experiences, there seems no good reason for rejecting it. We may therefore admit—though with a slight doubt derived from dreams—that the external world does really exist, and is not wholly dependent for its existence upon our continuing to perceive it."
(Russell, Bertrand. The Problems of Philosophy. 1912. Reprint, Mineola, NY: Dover, 1999. pp. 14-5)
QUOTE[/quote]
This is true, but only if the external world is a subjectively experiencing person or persons, as opposed to something other than or that is not subjective experience itself.
I see no good reasons to doubt my instinctive belief in physical realism and many good reasons not to doubt it.
External world skepticism in my case in terms of the existence of non-experience (something that is not or that is other than subjective experience).
External-world skepticism arises from a false ontology
How can you know its false? Because you don't believe in it?
of perception that encages subjects in their minds, turning them into autists and solipsists, who aren't aware of anything but the subjective contents of their minds.
We aren't aware of (i.e. we cannot experience) anything but the subjective content of one's first-person subjective experience (I try not to use 'mind' as this seems to imply the exclusive existence of nonsensory introspection).
That empirical evidence consists of experiences doesn't mean that it is evidence for nothing but experiences.
How can it be evidence for something that isn't experience at all, given that empirical evidence is the only thing that manifests, and manifests only in the form of experience? How can that which is not experience come up with experience, that experience might depict it? This would require the inane magicks of existential transformation or creation
ex nihilo.
If this were true, the respective subject matters of all other empirical sciences such as physics would have to be reduced to the subject matter of psychology, or to that part of it which is empiriology/phenomenology (the psychology of subjective experience/appearance), since psychology deals with behavior and the nonconscious (cognitive) mind too.
True.
The nonpsychological empirical sciences tell or at least try to tell us what nonmental/nonexperiential reality is like, and they're not chasing a ghost by presupposing that there is such a reality.
Try to tell us what nonmental/nonexperiential reality is like, as it believes in the existence of nonmental/nonexperiential reality, which probably does not exist or at worst, has no rational or logical connection to experiential reality as it is, well, not experience, as you need experience to create or give rise to experience.
Reductive mentalism à la Berkeley may be an empirically irrefutable logical possibility, but it's nonetheless breathtakingly implausible to the point of absurdity.
Really? It's more plausible than getting experience from something that is other than or that is not experience, or experience being able to depict something that is not itself, or something that is other than or that is not experience magically informing experience as to what it is like. It's only 'implausible to the point of absurdity' because you don't believe it, not because it is truly implausible.
QUOTE:
"By a “silly” theory I mean one which may be held at the time when one is talking or writing professionally, but which only an inmate of a lunatic asylum would think of carrying into daily life. …It must not be supposed that the men who maintain these theories and believe that they believe them are “silly” people. Only very acute and learned men could have thought of anything so odd or defended anything so preposterous against the continual protests of common-sense."
(Broad, C. D. The Mind and its Place in Nature. London: Kegan Paul, 1925. pp. 5-6)
Thanks for the compliment, Mr. Broad, but something other than or that is not subjective experience having anything to do with the existence and content of subjective experience runs counter to common sense.
phenomenal_graffiti wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2020 10:31 am
There is certainly no good reason to believe that non-experience can appear in the form of something experienced, or that experience is obligated to "assume the form" of something that is not experience. Whence cometh the obligation? The obligation is made up. The process is made up, make-believe. Why? Because we have no evidence of the existence of non-experience, as it cannot be evidenced, as it is not subjective experience.
Even if one entertains the notion of non-experience for sake of argument, any communciation or causal connection between non-experience and experience would require an ad hoc, arbitrary magic (given that y does not follow from and cannot be existentially and substantially predicted from x) in which non-experience stops being non-experience to inexplicably and magically become someone experiencing and that which the person experiences; not-experience "somehow" stops being something that is not experience to suddenly be someone experiencing and that which the person experiences. Why should this even be thought to be true?
We do have experiential evidence for nonexperiences,
Er, we can't have experiential evidence for non-experience, as experience can only experience itself. Non-experience, as it is
not experience, cannot be experienced, and as such, cannot logically have anything to do with the content or existence of experience.
especially as experiential evidence isn't evidence for itself but for something else.
This is true. If solipsism is false experiential evidence isn't evidence for itself (though it can only experience itself) but propositionally true evidence for the existence of more subjective experience in the external world, perhaps the subjective experience of an external person or persons.
Again, the perception of nonexperiences doesn't require a magical transformation of them into experiences, or vice versa. Nonexperiences are perceptually presented to experiencing subjects without being transformed or transported into them.
They would have to be transformed into experience, as nonexperience isn't experience, and must somehow arrive at experience in order to be experienced. And...nonexperience may not exist.
All that is required for the perceptual presentation of nonexperiences "out there" is the experiencing of sensations "in here" that function as appearances of nonexperiences.
But one is only believing that sensations "in here" function as appearances of nonexperiences, which may not and do not necessarily exist, as they are something other than experiences, that constantly reveal they exist.
And what you experience is not what you perceive! The extrospection of nonexperiences is one thing, and the introspection of experiences is another thing.
You're asserting the existence of something that doesn't necessarily, and probably doesn't exist as though it necessarily and irrefutably exists, but nonexperience may not exist as there simply is no evidence for its existence, and you can't use experience for evidence as, well,
experience is not nonexperience. One is not the other, and one cannot logically have anything to do with the other unless the one
is the other. You believe nonexperiences exist, but you cannot provide evidence for their existence as existence
can only appear as a person, only appears as subjective experience.
Nonexperiences and extrospection of nonexperiences are entirely fictional entities, acts of the imagination that you unquestionably believe exist. But if something is not subjective experience, it cannot rationally have anything to do with subjective experience
because it is not subjective experience. We can't perceive something that is not subjective experience,
as it is not subjective experience and thus cannot compose or be made up of the substance of perception itself,
which is subjective experience. When one perceives, one is subjectively experiencing. Perception itself is subjective experience.
That which one perceives, as it appears to the person as subjective experience, can only rationally itself be made up of subjective experience existing in the external world that transmits from the external person or persons into the perception of the perceiver. Nonexperience, as it is not experience, cannot rationally perform this action, save in the magicks of existential transformation or creation
ex nihilo.
If what you experience is not what you perceive, the only thing that can be perceived outside introspection of experience is not nonexperience, but the experiences of another person or persons residing in the external world.
If by "logical" you mean "reasonable" or "resulting from sound reasoning", I disagree completely. For, to repeat myself, (ontologically) reductive mentalism à la Berkeley is based on an incorrect ontology of perception, according to which the subjective sense-content of perception is its (only) object, such that we never perceive anything but our own subjective experiences or appearances
Berkeley denies the existence of 'unperceived substance' (nonmental/nonexperiential reality), as do I. Berkeley, however, believes that subjective sense-content of perception is its only object in terms of their not being a nonmental/nonexperiential object corresponding to the sense-content of perception. He goes on to state that there is na external source of sensory-content: the sensory-content of the Judeo-Christian God, who provides the sensory-content of human beings (I expound upon this by dividing the type of content between God's non-lucid dreams, lucid dreams, and wakeful experience).
By the way, apart from the question of whether there is a coherently intelligible concept of a mind/soul/spirit qua mental substance, Berkeley denies that we can have sensory ideas or percepts of ourselves or other subjects as mental substances, so there is a sense in which we and they (including God) qua subjects of mentality are noumenal entities in his worldview.
QUOTE:
"A spirit is an active being. It is simple, in the sense that it doesn’t have parts. When thought of as something that perceives ideas, it is called ‘the understanding’, and when thought of as producing ideas or doing things with them, it is called ‘the will’. But understanding and will are different powers that a spirit has; they aren’t parts of it. It follows that no-one can form an idea of a soul or spirit. We have seen in 25 that all ideas are passive and inert, and therefore no idea can represent an active thing, which is what a spirit is, because no idea can resemble an active thing. If you think about it a little, you’ll see clearly that it is absolutely impossible to have an idea that is like an active cause of the change of ideas. The nature of spirit (i.e. that which acts) is such that it cannot itself be perceived; all we can do is to perceive the effects it produces. To perceive a spirit would be to have an idea of it, that is, an idea that resembles it; and I have shown that no idea can resemble a spirit because ideas are passive and spirits active. If you think I may be wrong about this, you should look in on yourself and try to form the idea of a power or of an active being, that is, a thing that has power. To do this, you need to have ideas of two principal powers called ‘will’ and ‘understanding’, these ideas being distinct from each other and from a third idea of substance or being in general, which is called ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’; and you must also have a relative notion of spirit’s supporting or being the subject of those two powers. Some people say that they have all that; but it seems to me that the words ‘will’ and ‘spirit’ don’t stand for distinct ideas, or indeed for any idea at all, but for something very different from ideas. Because this ‘something’ is an agent, it cannot resemble or be represented by any idea whatsoever. Though it must be admitted that we have some notion of soul, spirit, and operations of the mind such as willing, loving and hating, in that we understand the meanings of those words."
(Berkeley, George. Principles of Human Knowledge. 1710. Part 1, §27)
/QUOTE
My take is that 'spirit' if one denies or ignores the idea of spirit as supernatural ectoplasm (which I deny), may be Berkeley's terms for the first-person subject of experience, which is invisible and intangible. One cannot form an idea of the first-person subjective of experience, only of its experiences. Thus we have some notion of soul or spirit (the first-person subject of experience) by looking upon oneself as an invisible and intangible subject of experiences and the experiences occurring to it.
We are currently living within the mind of Jesus Christ as he is currently being crucified. One may think there is no God, or if one believes in God, one thinks one lives outside the mind of Christ in a post-crucifixion present.
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