Death...according to Pantheopsychism

Discuss philosophical questions regarding theism (and atheism), and discuss religion as it relates to philosophy. This includes any philosophical discussions that happen to be about god, gods, or a 'higher power' or the belief of them. This also generally includes philosophical topics about organized or ritualistic mysticism or about organized, common or ritualistic beliefs in the existence of supernatural phenomenon.
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Re: Death...according to Pantheopsychism

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Count Lucanor wrote: May 8th, 2020, 5:52 pm
Greta wrote:The fact is that reality is very strange. Pantheism is increasingly not a fringe hypotheses. Ever more serious thinkers are leaning towards IIT and some of them towards the idea of proto-consciousness. The fact is that there ARE mysteries, and the linear approach is running into limits. Math can arguably cover some of the remaining riddles, but others may require a different approach. What that different approach may look like in the end, I obviously don't know.
There's a difference between facing the baffleness of unexplained phenomena, once a phenomenon has been established as a real event, and constructing a narrative around a dubious phenomena, labeling it as "mysterious" and already a proof that something anomolous is shattering the physical conceptions of reality. Next thing, you end up with a lot of material for ghosts episodes in the History Channel, to say the least, not even mentioning how general culture is fed with an enormous amount of misleading information about magical powers regulating almost all aspects of our everyday lives, branding them as spirituality or transcendence.

I wonder why the mention of pantheism. I didn't see phenomenal_graffiti's arguments as particularly endorsing this view, despite adding the "pantheo" prefix to the label of the religious view he's advocating. To me it looked more as advocating an even weirdest version of solipsism. Although I find pantheism in general an appealing view, in fact very close to atheism (at least some interpretations of it), I don't see what we can do with it besides metaphysical speculations. I mean, I don't see it as something to which scientists can add more insights, and if they were trying to do so, probably they would not be dealing with pantheism, but slipping into panpsychism, which is a completely different business, one that I'm not willing to endorse. The point is that whatever one discovers in nature, it can be added as another feature of a naturalistic cosmos, I don't see a particular feature as the key to confirming pantheism.
Greta wrote: So I see no problem with people embracing materialism, just as I have no problem with people embracing spirituality.
I often have an issue with the word "spirituality", as it is usually intended to entail something that materialism could not provide itself. I take it with tweezers.
Yes, it's clear that you have chosen a side. You simply dislike everything about spirituality, being the logical opposite of theists who cannot tolerate any aspect of atheism.

I think that limiting oneself to materialism suggests a misunderstanding of what science's purpose. Science has not uncovered the truth about reality; that is a project that is in train, but far from complete. In 10,000 years, far more will be known, and you can be sure that some of that knowledge is currently considered fanciful or even ridiculous (just as blacks holes were considered such). Thus, if we limit our conceptions to the proved, we ignore all that is unproved, including the phenomena that is too ephemeral to test due to lack of repeatability or testability. Better to engage with, and utilise, the unproven without having to adopt unsubstantiated beliefs.

The OP was trying to marry pantheism with theism, so I focused on the "pan-" angle to the extent to which we agree, or not. It's easy to dismiss metaphorical content if taken literally, but I don't see that as a fair hearing. I am assuming that the OP, despite ideological differences, is also interested in better understanding actual reality, being unsatisfied with "humanism" - the abstractions and layers of meta content of human society that is so often presented as all that matters. Each has their own path that suits them at a certain stage of life.
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Re: Death...according to Pantheopsychism

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Count Lucanor:
Rather than coming to think of it, as this belief of yours doesn't come from the logical analysis, we might try to understand what is your belief. So far, it seems clear that when you refer to a body or creation of something, you're actually just referring to the idea of body, the idea of something, etc., since your solipsism does not allow you to believe there's nothing real, except your own mind and the ideas that it produces. So, for you, bodies, brains, atheists, theists, etc., are not real entities existing somewhere, but singular mental objects inside your mind.
We have no evidence of the existence of consciousness-independent bodies, brains, bodies and brains of atheists, bodies and brains of theists, galaxies, trees, chairs, skyscrapers, etc. Thus there may, for all we know (and what I believe) is that there is just the existence of minds and the ideas the mind produces. I am not a solipsist as I believe other minds exist, though I must accept the existence of every mind save my own on faith.
phenomenal_graffiti wrote:
The body of anyone being born in the ridiculous belief that consciousness is created by the brain...
I still don't get it why it would be a ridiculous belief. Perhaps it is not the belief you share, perhaps it turns out to be the wrong belief, but to be a ridiculous belief it would be one that a) defied common sense, b) is not supported by many people, c) defied rules of logic, d) was indisputably proved wrong in academic or intellectual circles. None of this seem to apply to the long-held consensus that consciousness is produced by the brain. So it looks like calling it ridiculous just means that you despise it, that's all.
It is a ridiculous belief by way of (a) because we have no evidence of the existence of a consciousness-independent brains.
phenomenal_graffiti wrote:
is part of a "Matrix" or artificial reality, made up of your consciousness, that is created by the brain. I asked which body is 'conscious'...as there are actually two bodies for every person: one generated by the brain which exists in one's experience of one's own body and the second body, which is not created by one's brain that purportedly exists in the external world.
There you have a ridiculous belief. It also shows complete incoherence in your thoughts, because you have already advanced the view that there's nothing real, except your own mind and the ideas that it produces. Matrix of reality, people, their bodies, your own body and your own brain, don't even exist for you, are just thoughts in your mind. You're debating a Count Lucanor in internet, but neither the person represented by the avatar, neither the computer, neither the characters in the screen exist, they are being produced by your mind right now.
I have made no such claim that there's nothing real except my own mind and the ideas it produces. If I had, it would make no sense to type or advance the OP. I advance the view that the only real thing is first-person subjective experience, not that which is not or that is other than first-person subjective experience, and I advance the view that the external world is just the mind of the Judeo-Christian God, with all other minds existing within this overarching infinite mind.

Matrix of reality, people, their bodies, my own body and my brain do exist, but consist or are materialistically composed or made up only of the consciousness of the Christian God. The Count Lucanor in internet, the person represented by the avatar, etc. are ideas in the mind of God that have a doppelganger within that God's subconscious that is composed of his first-person subjective experience, in the fragmented way proposed by Greta (albeit in a different context and intent) below.
Didn't you read what I just wrote? I clearly explained to you that the notion that brain creates consciousness does not convey automatically the notion of a split in reality, the same way that seeing a jogger running does not invite us to split that reality between a jogger and a running that he "creates". I also explained why this split cannot be an atheistic view, and I showed you that non-atheists can support this split, precisely because "splitters" are necessarily dualists, and dualism is consistent with religious doctrine. In case you still don't get the point: you may despise the idea that the brain creates consciousness, but you have to drop the silly idea that this has anything to do with atheism.
Seeing a jogger running, if one believes the brain creates consciousness, invites one to observe that there is a brain-created jogger and, if one believes that there are consciousness-independent doppelgangers of the content of visual perception, a consciousness-independent doppelganger of the jogger moving through a consciousness-independent external world. The jogger viewed and the consciousness of the jogger, is a "Matrix" created by the brain (for those believing the brain creates consciousness).
phenomenal_graffiti wrote:
The point being, if one believes the brain creates consciousness, and if one believes that at death consciousness ceases to exist,
Let's get this straight first, because you have an issue with language. What you're trying to say there, according to the beliefs that you have exposed, is actually: "if one believes that there is a real physical person with a real physical organ called brain that creates consciousness, and if one believes that at the supposed death of the supposed person with the supposed brain, consciousness ceases to exist, then..." What is important to underscore here is that the only real thing for you in that sentence is consciousness, the rest are plain illusions of that consciousness.
Bingo.
Consistent with your view, you don't believe there's a real physical chair, which is represented in a physical brain as an image of that chair. Whoever believes that is holding a ridiculous belief that there are consciousness-independent doppelgangers, right?. For you, there's only the image of a chair in your consciousness. And your point is, I guess, that if one holds the "ridiculous beliefs" that mental representations of objects correspond to real existing objects, independent of the mind, then one also must hold the idea that there are actually two independent objects existing in two domains, one the brain and the other, the so called external world. That must be one of the most preposterous idea I have heard in a long time (although it matches a little with someone's idea that a telephone conversation is not a real conversation).
If there are not two chairs, then there is not a mind-independent or brain-created-consciousness-independent version of the chair. That's the flimsy house of cards upon which the process of perception stands: the distal object is the consciousness-independent doppelganger of the chair existing in the external world, and this chair somehow transmits energy from itself to the peripheral, then central nervous system of an animal, the energy routing (in visual perception through the eyes) to strike, then help activate, just that neural circuit or circuits that by the strangest and most convenience of chance, just happens to have the ability to magically pull the rabbit from the hat of just that visual doppelganger of the external chair. (the percept)

PROCESS OF PERCEPTION

The process of perception begins with an object in the real world, known as the distal stimulus or distal object.[3] By means of light, sound, or another physical process, the object stimulates the body's sensory organs. These sensory organs transform the input energy into neural activity—a process called transduction.[3][10] This raw pattern of neural activity is called the proximal stimulus.[3] These neural signals are then transmitted to the brain and processed.[3] The resulting mental re-creation of the distal stimulus is the percept.

To explain the process of perception, an example could be an ordinary shoe. The shoe itself is the distal stimulus. When light from the shoe enters a person's eye and stimulates the retina, that stimulation is the proximal stimulus.[11] The image of the shoe reconstructed by the brain of the person is the percept. Another example could be a ringing telephone. The ringing of the phone is the distal stimulus. The sound stimulating a person's auditory receptors is the proximal stimulus. The brain's interpretation of this as the "ringing of a telephone" is the percept.

The different kinds of sensation (such as warmth, sound, and taste) are called sensory modalities or stimulus modalities.[10][12]

-Wikipedia, Perception

Well, so far you have only exposed what you believe, but you have not showed why what you believe would make any sense. Believing that the computer screen I'm seeing right now is really there, and still will be there when I move to the kitchen to prepare coffee and don't see it, makes a lot of more sense than your belief that this is all a dream going on in your mind. And of course, as Searle pointed out, your solipsism is instantly refuted by my own existence.
Except I'm not a solipsist. And my Berkeleyian Idealism arguably makes more sense because there is no evidence of the existence of mind-independent or consciousness-independent doppelgangers of the content of visual perception. The computer screen you are seeing is "really there" in the sense that it is composed of your consciousness, but it is not evidentially "really there" in the sense that it is composed of something that is not anyone's consciousness.

PG.
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.

In other news...
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Re: Death...according to Pantheopsychism

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Greta wrote:Yes, it's clear that you have chosen a side.
Having a worldview is not necessarily "choosing a side", unless it is pushed as a subject to decide upon, but in any case everyone is entitled to have one, specially in public forums. I don't mind either that someone lacks a commitment to a worldview, but whomever uses this as their presentation card, will hardly be equipped to challenge other people's views on the basis of finding their reasons unconvincing. I mean, obviously they will be able to state that they're not persuaded, but that's about it. All their speculations about what might be a sensible alternative, although reasonable, will not have the force of an argument.
Greta wrote: You simply dislike everything about spirituality, being the logical opposite of theists who cannot tolerate any aspect of atheism.
Actually, I've been very careful to specify that I dislike the use of the word when it conveys the meaning of a ghostly realm. If I'm presented the case that "everything about spirituality" is only that and cannot be anything else but that, then I certainly dislike everything about spirituality. I wished it could be also about intellectual life, human relations, our relation with the cosmos, etc., but as you have made it patently clear: either you swallow it completely with non-materialism, or you get nothing. I'd rather have nothing then.
Greta wrote: I think that limiting oneself to materialism suggests a misunderstanding of what science's purpose. Science has not uncovered the truth about reality; that is a project that is in train, but far from complete. In 10,000 years, far more will be known, and you can be sure that some of that knowledge is currently considered fanciful or even ridiculous (just as blacks holes were considered such). Thus, if we limit our conceptions to the proved, we ignore all that is unproved, including the phenomena that is too ephemeral to test due to lack of repeatability or testability. Better to engage with, and utilise, the unproven without having to adopt unsubstantiated beliefs.
That is, at best, an argument for epistemological nihilism. It involves not being committed to any view, as all of them are potentially fanciful or ridiculous. But one that is not committed to any view cannot legitimately demand from others not to commit to any view, or claim that we can commit to a view which sees other views as fanciful or ridiculous. The only coherent statement that could be produced under such conservative stance is that anyone's views can be either right or wrong, as reasonable or ridiculous that they may look now.
Greta wrote: The OP was trying to marry pantheism with theism, so I focused on the "pan-" angle to the extent to which we agree, or not. It's easy to dismiss metaphorical content if taken literally, but I don't see that as a fair hearing.
For myself I chose to give a literal interpretation of what the OP explicitly stated: his committed view to Berkeley's solipsism, which as if not weird enough, is blended with a psychiatric assessment of the Judeo-Christian deity, apparently suffering from "a cosmic form of Dissociative Personality Disorder". Nothing of pantheism deserves to be identified with this nonsense. And that is certainly a view I'm committed to.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
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Re: Death...according to Pantheopsychism

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Count Lucanor wrote: May 9th, 2020, 6:43 pm
Greta wrote:Yes, it's clear that you have chosen a side.
Having a worldview is not necessarily "choosing a side", unless it is pushed as a subject to decide upon, but in any case everyone is entitled to have one, specially in public forums. I don't mind either that someone lacks a commitment to a worldview, but whomever uses this as their presentation card, will hardly be equipped to challenge other people's views on the basis of finding their reasons unconvincing. I mean, obviously they will be able to state that they're not persuaded, but that's about it. All their speculations about what might be a sensible alternative, although reasonable, will not have the force of an argument.
Au contraire. Being one who doubts everything, I am in the very best position to challenge those who make up their minds without conclusive evidence.
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Re: Death...according to Pantheopsychism

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Count Lucanor wrote: May 9th, 2020, 6:43 pmI think that limiting oneself to materialism suggests a misunderstanding of what science's purpose. Science has not uncovered the truth about reality; that is a project that is in train, but far from complete. In 10,000 years, far more will be known, and you can be sure that some of that knowledge is currently considered fanciful or even ridiculous (just as blacks holes were considered such). Thus, if we limit our conceptions to the proved, we ignore all that is unproved, including the phenomena that is too ephemeral to test due to lack of repeatability or testability. Better to engage with, and utilise, the unproven without having to adopt unsubstantiated beliefs.
That is, at best, an argument for epistemological nihilism. It involves not being committed to any view, as all of them are potentially fanciful or ridiculous. But one that is not committed to any view cannot legitimately demand from others not to commit to any view, or claim that we can commit to a view which sees other views as fanciful or ridiculous. The only coherent statement that could be produced under such conservative stance is that anyone's views can be either right or wrong, as reasonable or ridiculous that they may look now. [/quote]
Obviously not all hypotheses are equal. Now dig a little deeper.

It is scientific to favour the hypothesis that only brains can produce consciousness based on circumstantial evidence. Fine. It is not, however, scientific to commit to the belief, without any doubts being generated by the many decades of failure in trying to find evidence that consciousness can only be produced in brains.
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Re: Death...according to Pantheopsychism

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Count Lucanor wrote: May 9th, 2020, 6:43 pm
Greta wrote:The OP was trying to marry pantheism with theism, so I focused on the "pan-" angle to the extent to which we agree, or not. It's easy to dismiss metaphorical content if taken literally, but I don't see that as a fair hearing.
For myself I chose to give a literal interpretation of what the OP explicitly stated: his committed view to Berkeley's solipsism, which as if not weird enough, is blended with a psychiatric assessment of the Judeo-Christian deity, apparently suffering from "a cosmic form of Dissociative Personality Disorder". Nothing of pantheism deserves to be identified with this nonsense. And that is certainly a view I'm committed to.
:lol: I would think that the very definition of the Judeo-Christian deity is "a cosmic form of Dissociative Personality Disorder".

I can sympathise with your view that there is no point to marrying up the myths of antiquity with pantheism. Still, what is an ancient myth, but an attempt by the people of that time to understand what we are still trying to understand? Unlike theists, I am not in favour of "backtracking" to the ideas of those with a less developed knowledge and understanding of nature. However, I do know that, with each new system of thought that supplants old ones, something is lost. Consider how colonists of prior centuries tended to treat the knowledge of indigenous people about the environment as the ramblings of primitives. Consider how different the world would be today if that knowledge had been preserved? Perhaps.

Then again, the preservation of religious texts is not necessarily preservation of knowledge. They can, and are, misunderstood and often abused for political, personal or financial purposes. So it's possible that the environmental knowledge of tribal people would be abused too and, in fact, is perhaps happening. For instance, hazard burning in Australia has been both destructive and ineffective. We saw indigenous people burning and copied it - or we thought we were.
Western fire practices also involve hazard reduction burns, which are similarly aimed at burning out this litter. What is different, though, about cultural burning, is that it starts from taking a holistic approach with the understanding that everything is interconnected: plants, animals, insects, humans, the weather. Westerners call it an ecosystem, indigenous Australians term it “kinship,” an acknowledgement that the bonds between species are emotional, in addition to functional. Western hazard burns are indiscriminate, while cultural burns are specific: timed to coordinate with the seasons, animal breeding times plant seeding times.

Practitioners typically light small and controlled fires with a specific purpose, such as to clear out an invasive species that isn’t meant to be in that particular area, or to encourage regeneration of ground cover of native diversity. Key to the practice is a deep knowledge and understanding of the immediate landscape: its vegetation, native animal species, topography and climate. Traditional burning aims to burn at the right times and in the right manner to encourage the native vegetation in each micro-region to grow, which ultimately prove far less flammable during bushfires than invasive species.
https://time.com/5764521/australia-bush ... practices/

We can see equivalent problems where ancient texts have been misunderstood with gender roles, sexuality, abortions, euthanasia and stem cell research. I think, at least in this aspects, I have ended up arguing with you rather than against you. That's the beauty of agnosticism - you just follow the evidence and see where it goes.
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Re: Death...according to Pantheopsychism

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phenomenal_graffiti wrote:We have no evidence of the existence of consciousness-independent bodies, brains, bodies and brains of atheists, bodies and brains of theists, galaxies, trees, chairs, skyscrapers, etc. Thus there may, for all we know (and what I believe) is that there is just the existence of minds and the ideas the mind produces. I am not a solipsist as I believe other minds exist, though I must accept the existence of every mind save my own on faith.
You're obviously unaware of the complete incoherence of your ideas. You say "WE have no evidence" of the existence of mind-independent things at the same time that you are holding the belief in things that are mind-independent of your own mind (the other minds), which is the reason you use the pronoun WE. If there were any consistency in your ideas, you would be compelled to use the pronoun I, and you would say "I have no evidence". But that will be entirely ridiculous, too, as you would be claiming for yourself what you deny to others, that is, justified knowledge of things outside one's mind. And holding your own belief that mind-independent things don't exist, the other minds could not exist. But things really get messed up (as if they could get worst) when you assert that ultimately, all objects are just ideas within one overarching mind, which means that YOU are just an idea, a mind-dependent thing within that overarching mind. Now, you would be compelled to either delete all references to WE or I as independent entities, and start using the pronoun HE, because that would be the only agent with objective existence, not dependent of any other, or decide that this overarching mind is actually you, so the one writing in this forum would the Christian God. In either case, the first-person perspective remains without evidence or skeptical of anything existing independent of his own mind, such as other minds. Perception, under that conception, also becomes an illusion. Everything boils down to just one mind making things up: solipsism. And yes, that's what Berkeley stood for, and Berkeley is well known for being a solipsist.

But all of this, as absurd as it is, can only be exposed as the expression of your own beliefs, without any evidence or logical analysis that support them. You say there is an overarching mind, but what evidence can you offer? None. Assuming that you did, could you prove that it is the Christian God? No way. Can you demonstrate that things outside one's mind don't exist? No demonstration is given. Can you prove that other minds outside your own exist while at the same time holding that anything exterior to your mind cannot exist? That's a puzzle you will not solve. Can you prove that skyscrapers exist as mind objects, but not as real material objects? Absolutely not. You're stuck to the claim that people who assert the existence of a mind-independent reality (which you identify as atheists, still don't know why) are wrong. Yet, according to your own schema, such wrong people don't even exist, being just ideas in God's mind.

Notwithstanding my observations, and giving it a second thought, I must congratulate you and express my deepest gratitude. You are the most genuine representation of the non-materialists, a true believer in the principles of straight crude idealism and its religious commitments. They are not diguised in pretentious and mildly sophisticated philosophical doctrines to hide the shame. Most, if not all the chit-chat in these forums, is reducible to the clash between those two principles. You have quite a numerous army behind you, and you're in front fighting for their real cause. It's the wrong cause, one I shall fight against, but at least seeing its naked force is quite revealing of what is at stake in these debates.
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Re: Death...according to Pantheopsychism

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Greta wrote: May 9th, 2020, 6:53 pm
Count Lucanor wrote: May 9th, 2020, 6:43 pm
Having a worldview is not necessarily "choosing a side", unless it is pushed as a subject to decide upon, but in any case everyone is entitled to have one, specially in public forums. I don't mind either that someone lacks a commitment to a worldview, but whomever uses this as their presentation card, will hardly be equipped to challenge other people's views on the basis of finding their reasons unconvincing. I mean, obviously they will be able to state that they're not persuaded, but that's about it. All their speculations about what might be a sensible alternative, although reasonable, will not have the force of an argument.
Au contraire. Being one who doubts everything, I am in the very best position to challenge those who make up their minds without conclusive evidence.
But that's exactly what I said: you will be skeptical, you would find such views unconvincing, but at the same time you're obliged to keep the somehow neutral or conservative stance of not being committed to any view. You will be able to throw things and say "what's up guys, what do you think of this..." to provoke speculations, but whenever anyone made up their minds, the "there's no conclusive evidence" will be face up in the table. And it will never go away, there will never, ever, be the A to stage of human knowledge.
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Re: Death...according to Pantheopsychism

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Greta wrote: May 9th, 2020, 7:00 pm
Obviously not all hypotheses are equal. Now dig a little deeper.

It is scientific to favour the hypothesis that only brains can produce consciousness based on circumstantial evidence. Fine. It is not, however, scientific to commit to the belief, without any doubts being generated by the many decades of failure in trying to find evidence that consciousness can only be produced in brains.
Remember, you said it yourself: science has not uncovered the truth about reality, it is an incomplete project. And it has been your stance that unless we completed that project, we can't be committed to any view. That's the core of your argument against materialism. The relative weight of our hypotheses becomes completely irrelevant. Unfortunately, that closes the door to any other commitment, too. All there will be is speculation.
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Re: Death...according to Pantheopsychism

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Count Lucanor wrote: May 9th, 2020, 10:43 pm
Greta wrote: May 9th, 2020, 7:00 pm
Obviously not all hypotheses are equal. Now dig a little deeper.

It is scientific to favour the hypothesis that only brains can produce consciousness based on circumstantial evidence. Fine. It is not, however, scientific to commit to the belief, without any doubts being generated by the many decades of failure in trying to find evidence that consciousness can only be produced in brains.
Remember, you said it yourself: science has not uncovered the truth about reality, it is an incomplete project. And it has been your stance that unless we completed that project, we can't be committed to any view. That's the core of your argument against materialism. The relative weight of our hypotheses becomes completely irrelevant. Unfortunately, that closes the door to any other commitment, too. All there will be is speculation.
Two posts where you take issue with the idea of keeping options open. One can still operate with current models pragmatically while not believing that our perceptions of them are unimpeachable.

My argument against materialism is, as you say, in the certainty of its proponents. Materialism (with IIT) might be largely true, or the conception might be more limited than imagined. After all, the great theories of the past - believed by all credible experts of the time - are today's myths. We don't know how far science can go from here; my guess is that there's plenty of room for significant discoveries that can revolutionalise current models as profoundly as Einstein revolutionised Newtonian physics, or Copernicus overturned Ptolemy.

Then there's the fact that our senses are not evolved to perceive reality, only to survive and reproduce. So we filter most of it out. While many brilliant thinkers and engineers have created and used instruments to greatly further perception, we have no idea "how deep that rabbit home goes". Obviously enough, we don't know the "unknown unknowns".
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Re: Death...according to Pantheopsychism

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Count Lucanor:
You're obviously unaware of the complete incoherence of your ideas. You say "WE have no evidence" of the existence of mind-independent things at the same time that you are holding the belief in things that are mind-independent of your own mind (the other minds), which is the reason you use the pronoun WE.
When I use the phrase "mind-independent things" I am referring to the consciousness-independent doppelgangers of the content of visual perception, not others' minds. I admit I have no evidence of the existence of others' minds, as the minds of other people are, to me, transcribed into the substance of my consciousness, but given that the concept of others' minds hold that others' are essentially first-person subjective experiences, what I ultimately mean is that I believe the only thing that exists is first-person subjective experience in the form only of persons. Perhaps I should create a phrase that separates non-consciousness doppelgangers of the content of visual perception, conceptually composed of something that is not/is other than first-person subjective experience, and first-person subjective experience qua first-person subjective experience or first-person subjective experience in the form of persons.
If there were any consistency in your ideas, you would be compelled to use the pronoun I, and you would say "I have no evidence". But that will be entirely ridiculous, too, as you would be claiming for yourself what you deny to others, that is, justified knowledge of things outside one's mind.
Given that I am a first-person subjective experience composed materially of first-person subjective experience, when it comes to "justified knowledge" or "justified true belief" regarding things outside my mind, given the very existence of first-person subjective experience itself as it appears in the form of myself, I have justified knowledge or justified true belief of the existence of other first-person subjective experiences (in a sense--see my concession to your charge of solipsism below), though existence happens to exist in a form in which I can only experience my own. I submit and hold that there is no justified knowledge or justified true belief in the existence of that which is not/other than first-person subjective experience.
And holding your own belief that mind-independent things don't exist, the other minds could not exist.
False. I hold to my belief that something other or that is not first-person subjective experience does not exist. Other minds exist (in a sense--see my concession to your charge of solipsism below), as they are inferred (using myself as evidence driving the induction) to consist of the same thing I am: first-person subjective experience.
But things really get messed up (as if they could get worst) when you assert that ultimately, all objects are just ideas within one overarching mind, which means that YOU are just an idea, a mind-dependent thing within that overarching mind.
Correct. I believe that all persons (as objects are just ideas within persons) exist within one overarching mind and I am an idea (consisting of the material substance of that Person's first-person subjective experience shaped like clay into the "figurine" that is me) within that mind.
Now, you would be compelled to either delete all references to WE or I as independent entities, and start using the pronoun HE, because that would be the only agent with objective existence, not dependent of any other, or decide that this overarching mind is actually you, so the one writing in this forum would the Christian God.
An interesting idea, but given that according to the Bible God is "The God that calls things that are not, as though they were" (Romans 4:17), HE 'calls things that are not' ('given that as you said he is the only agent with actual objective existence), 'as though they were', in which He pretends we have objective existence despite the fact we are only ideas within His mind. As I've stated in other forums, this is analogous to Stephen King entertaining the idea that the imaginary characters he conceives in his mind have tiny consciousnesses of their own within his mind (as opposed to believing they have independent existence outside his mind). I've decided to play along with God (or God causes himself to imagine or lucidly dream of me deciding to play along with God) and use WE and I as quasi-independent entities.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

MY CONCESSION TO YOUR CHARGE OF SOLIPSISM

In either case, the first-person perspective remains without evidence or skeptical of anything existing independent of his own mind, such as other minds. Perception, under that conception, also becomes an illusion. Everything boils down to just one mind making things up: solipsism. And yes, that's what Berkeley stood for, and Berkeley is well known for being a solipsist.
On second thought (and second reading) I happen (now) to agree with you. Whenever I hear or see the term 'solipsism' or 'solipsist' I reflexively and defensively assume "solipsism" to mean "other minds do not exist as the only mind that exists is my own (or another human's)": let us call this Self- or Human-Centered Solipsism or Solipsism-1. Pantheopsychism, it turns out in consideration of your argument is indeed solipsism, but not one in which I or any other human are 'the one mind making things up'; the Christian God is the 'one mind making things up': let us call this Theological Solipsism or Solipsism-2. I am forced to agree that Berkeley is solipsist, but solipsist in the domain of Solipsism-2.

So any argument I have previously made against solipsism is against Solipsism-1. In the cold light of day, I can deny being Solipsist-1 but not Solipsist-2. Thus with new eyes I agree with your statement (and previous statements regarding solipsism), while clarifying the relevant solipsism (for Berkeley and myself, at least) is -2 rather than -1.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
But all of this, as absurd as it is, can only be exposed as the expression of your own beliefs, without any evidence or logical analysis that support them. You say there is an overarching mind, but what evidence can you offer? None.
Correct. Just as:

"It remains a scandal to philosophy and to human reason in general that the existence of things outside us (from which we derive the whole material for our knowledge, even for our inner sense) must be accepted merely on faith (emphasis mine), and if one deems good to doubt their existence, we are unable to counter his doubts with any satisfactory proof."

-Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Reason


The existence of Pantheopsychism and Pantheopsychic Christianity, too, must be accepted merely on faith.
None. Assuming that you did, could you prove that it is the Christian God? No way.
Agreed.
Can you demonstrate that things outside one's mind don't exist? No demonstration is given.
Conversely, no one can prove things outside one's mind exist. No demonstration in this regard can be given as existence only takes the form of, and only appears in the form of (and given this track record one can reasonably assume existence can only appear in the form of) oneself and that which one experiences.
Can you prove that other minds outside your own exist...
Nope.
...while at the same time holding that anything exterior to your mind cannot exist?
Why would I hold to that? I do not endorse Solipsism-1, and I believe things exterior to my mind exist. I simply do not believe that anything exterior to my mind consists or is composed of something other than first-person subjective experience.
Can you prove that skyscrapers exist as mind objects, but not as real material objects? Absolutely not.
Can you prove that skyscrapers exist as real material objects, given you can only demonstrate (and this only to yourself) your first-person subjective experience of skyscrapers but not skyscrapers in the absence of your experience of them? Remember, 'real material objects' are distal objects: objects as they are in the absence of anyone's experience of them. We can only experience percepts, we cannot experience distal objects and only have quasi-religious faith that distal objects exist.
You're stuck to the claim that people who assert the existence of a mind-independent reality (which you identify as atheists, still don't know why) are wrong.
I assert that people who assert the existence of something other than/that is not first-person subjective experience is wrong. Materialists, from my experience, assert that something other than/that is not first-person subjective experience exists. Materialists, in their rejection of biblical spirit (which I maintain is only first-person subjective experience rather than supernatural ectoplasm) and that consciousness can exist independent of the brain or existed prior to the existence of brains are atheist, tend to be atheist. I've never met a materialistic theist.
Yet, according to your own schema, such wrong people don't even exist, being just ideas in God's mind.
They "sorta" exist, in that 'wrong people' exist in the form of God's imagination of them. In the game of God's imagination I think it's reasonable that an idea in God's mind can be imagined by God to argue with another idea in God's mind over ideological difference.
Notwithstanding my observations, and giving it a second thought, I must congratulate you and express my deepest gratitude. You are the most genuine representation of the non-materialists, a true believer in the principles of straight crude idealism and its religious commitments. They are not diguised in pretentious and mildly sophisticated philosophical doctrines to hide the shame. Most, if not all the chit-chat in these forums, is reducible to the clash between those two principles. You have quite a numerous army behind you, and you're in front fighting for their real cause.
"Guns a' blazing" is my motto. No need to hide the "shame".
It's the wrong cause...
Is it---given that existence only appears and manifests and has only ever appeared and manifested as first-person subjective experience in the form of a person and that which the person experiences?

PG
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Re: Death...according to Pantheopsychism

Post by Count Lucanor »

At least you're honest enough to acknowledge that this was all faith-based, so we can save time not going to extensive lengths trying to find demonstrative value in your statements. But I still think they should be coherent enough as not to contradict themselves. For example...
phenomenal_graffiti wrote: When I use the phrase "mind-independent things" I am referring to the consciousness-independent doppelgangers of the content of visual perception, not others' minds. I admit I have no evidence of the existence of others' minds, as the minds of other people are, to me, transcribed into the substance of my consciousness, but given that the concept of others' minds hold that others' are essentially first-person subjective experiences, what I ultimately mean is that I believe the only thing that exists is first-person subjective experience in the form only of persons. Perhaps I should create a phrase that separates non-consciousness doppelgangers of the content of visual perception, conceptually composed of something that is not/is other than first-person subjective experience, and first-person subjective experience qua first-person subjective experience or first-person subjective experience in the form of persons.

You should be aware that when you use the phrase "content of visual perception", you are necessarily referring to the outcome of a set of processes carried out by things that are exterior to your mind. A pure mental entity, which is what you say is all there is, certainly wouldn't need an eye to see, nor have an object of visual perception to stimulate that eye and create a concept of what it sees. Being just a mind, it would create the concepts right away, without mediation of perceptual organs. If you were consistent with your mind doctrine, these things couldn't make sense.
phenomenal_graffiti wrote: Given that I am a first-person subjective experience composed materially of first-person subjective experience...

This is not a valid premise, it's circular: "given that this is a rock composed materially of rock..."
phenomenal_graffiti wrote: ...given the very existence of first-person subjective experience itself as it appears in the form of myself, I have justified knowledge or justified true belief of the existence of other first-person subjective experiences
But where's the logical connection? You have first-person subjective experience. How does it justify the objective existence of other subjective experiences? What's more interesting, if you accept the existence of other first-person subjective experiences, they immediately become third-person subjective experiences, which will see you in their first-person subjective experiences. How do you accomodate that third-person experience in your whole schema? The psychiatric assesment you made of the Christian god's mind does not solve the problem, because if it is an anomaly that must be "corrected", what is then the normal state?
phenomenal_graffiti wrote: Other minds exist (in a sense--see my concession to your charge of solipsism below), as they are inferred (using myself as evidence driving the induction) to consist of the same thing I am: first-person subjective experience.
You cannot use induction to infer the existence of other entities outside of your mind. I mean, you could use it to justify your belief, but by doing so you automatically have granted the rest of us the same justification, based on induction, to our beliefs in mind-independent stuff like bridges, skyscrapers, brains and other bodies.
phenomenal_graffiti wrote: An interesting idea, but given that according to the Bible God is "The God that calls things that are not, as though they were" (Romans 4:17)
If you feel justified to believe in the existence of a book that is independent of your own mind, which your mind and body discover in the exterior world and passively receive the information encoded in it, why shouldn't the rest of us be justified in believing there are real, mind-independent bridges, skyscrapers and brains?
phenomenal_graffiti wrote: HE 'calls things that are not' ('given that as you said he is the only agent with actual objective existence), 'as though they were', in which He pretends we have objective existence despite the fact we are only ideas within His mind.
This would just confirm your acceptance of the notion that you and me and this conversation are not really happening as things and events carried out by free will agents, they are mere illusions in god's mind. By the way, there would be no justified reason to believe that the Christian god narrative is for real, it could be an entertaining deceptive game in the mind of the overarching entity.
phenomenal_graffiti wrote: The existence of Pantheopsychism and Pantheopsychic Christianity, too, must be accepted merely on faith.
OK, fair enough.
phenomenal_graffiti wrote: Can you prove that skyscrapers exist as real material objects, given you can only demonstrate (and this only to yourself) your first-person subjective experience of skyscrapers but not skyscrapers in the absence of your experience of them? Remember, 'real material objects' are distal objects: objects as they are in the absence of anyone's experience of them. We can only experience percepts, we cannot experience distal objects and only have quasi-religious faith that distal objects exist.
The fact that you base all your premises and conclusions on religious faith, does not compel the rest of us, not sharing your faith-based beliefs, to submit to such premises and conclusions. It is true that you will remain entitled to your faith, but since your faith cannot demonstrate anything, it certainly does not demonstrate that objective existence is false. In fact, I'm in a better position than you, since I do not need to doubt all the things exterior to my mind, including my own perceptual organs and other people, because I can certainly use inductive reasoning to consider the evidence (a justifiable method, according to you). And I can use other people's experiences, which will be real experiences independent of mine, to validate the existence of other objects that are also independent of their minds.
phenomenal_graffiti wrote: "Guns a' blazing" is my motto. No need to hide the "shame".
I meant the shame of those who disguise their theism in nuanced idealist doctrines.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Re: Death...according to Pantheopsychism

Post by phenomenal_graffiti »

Count Lucanor:
phenomenal_graffiti wrote:
When I use the phrase "mind-independent things" I am referring to the consciousness-independent doppelgangers of the content of visual perception, not others' minds. I admit I have no evidence of the existence of others' minds, as the minds of other people are, to me, transcribed into the substance of my consciousness, but given that the concept of others' minds hold that others' are essentially first-person subjective experiences, what I ultimately mean is that I believe the only thing that exists is first-person subjective experience in the form only of persons. Perhaps I should create a phrase that separates non-consciousness doppelgangers of the content of visual perception, conceptually composed of something that is not/is other than first-person subjective experience, and first-person subjective experience qua first-person subjective experience or first-person subjective experience in the form of persons.
You should be aware that when you use the phrase "content of visual perception", you are necessarily referring to the outcome of a set of processes carried out by things that are exterior to your mind. A pure mental entity, which is what you say is all there is, certainly wouldn't need an eye to see, nor have an object of visual perception to stimulate that eye and create a concept of what it sees. Being just a mind, it would create the concepts right away, without mediation of perceptual organs. If you were consistent with your mind doctrine, these things couldn't make sense.
There are no non-person objects exterior to the mind (or there are probably no non-person objects exterior to the mind, and if there were, if they are not themselves composed of first-person subjective experience, they cannot rationally have anything to do with the existence, appearance, behavior, etc. of non-person objects composed of first-person subjective experience). Given that we are first-person subjective experiences and the only thing that is ever experienced is one's first-person subjective experience (the concept of death negatively revealing that objects of perception are constructs made up of one's first-person subjective experience as these disappear during sleep and death), there is no evidence of the existence of exterior-to-the-mind eyes, brains, and the mechanic-visual process. Indeed, the mechanical visual process itself is entirely fictional, as it is merely an imagined process, the parts that may be observed in neuroscientific/medical context merely percepts made up of the first-person subjective experience of the observers. Indeed, the entire process of vision, despite being purely imaginary (as there is no evidence of the existence of exterior-to-the-mind doppelgangers of eyes, brains, and biology) is merely a God-implanted reductio ad absurdum to instigate reason in the direction of panpsychism.
phenomenal_graffiti wrote:
Given that I am a first-person subjective experience composed materially of first-person subjective experience...
This is not a valid premise, it's circular: "given that this is a rock composed materially of rock..."
The premise may be circular, but in it's content it is the most obvious fact about the nature of existence. Regardless of whether or not it is circular to say 'this rock is composed materially of rock' the fact remains that existence only appears and manifests in the form of 'rock' (first-person subjective experience) in the form of a subjectively experiencing first-person subject of experience 'composed materially of rock' (composed materially of first-person subjective experience). As existence only manifests as subjective experience, we have evidence only of the existence of subjective experience.
phenomenal_graffiti wrote:
...given the very existence of first-person subjective experience itself as it appears in the form of myself, I have justified knowledge or justified true belief of the existence of other first-person subjective experiences
But where's the logical connection? You have first-person subjective experience. How does it justify the objective existence of other subjective experiences?
The objective existence of other subjective experiences is justified by the existence of my own subjective experience. This is not to say that the existence of my subjective experience indicates or reveals the objective existence of other subjective experiences, as I can only experience my own experience (I can believe my experience is actually the experience of another person, but this is goes into the schema of Type-2 Solipsism). Given that I won the lottery of existence as opposed to non-existence, the existence of other subjective experiences is justified in that despite the fact that I cannot experience them, it is reasonable to think that existence did not do a "one off" and halt production of others after the existence of myself.

That is, given the fact that I exist, and that I happen to exist in such a way that I am a first-person POV subjective experience, it is not obviously or logically false that other beings would not also be first-person POV subjective experiences; this absence of the logical necessity of the non-existence of others is justification for belief in the objective existence of others.
What's more interesting, if you accept the existence of other first-person subjective experiences, they immediately become third-person subjective experiences, which will see you in their first-person subjective experiences.
Well, they will only see my body in their first-person subjective experience, hear sounds coming from that body, see the body move in a meaningful way that indicates communication, etc. They will certainly not see my first-person subjective experience, as it is not their first-person subjective experience, and a person can only experience one's own experience (that is not to say that there cannot be an isomorphism or mimicry of content of experience between persons, as a relative-perspective version of isomorphic experience forms the concept of consensus reality).

And of course other people would be third-person subjective experiences, as they are not my first-person subjective experience. What matters is that if other people objectively exist, they are probably also first-person point of view subjects of experience composed of subjective experience. I don't think anyone can rationally think that something that is not experience can experience, or that something not composed of subjective experience can subjectively experience.
How do you accomodate that third-person experience in your whole schema?
An excellent question. I use the example of a fiction writer imagining fictional characters and their feelings, thoughts, and actions to illustrate how Pantheopsychism "works", and admittedly solipsism taking this form runs into trouble without the added fiction of what I call "sub-dimensionalism" or "sub-dimensional consciousness".

A fiction writer imagines fictional characters doing this or that, thinking this or that, feeling this or that, but the characters are mental "figurines" made up of the mental "clay" of the writer. It is the writer contorting his or her thought-experience into the form of other people. These "individuals" are not objectively existing subjective experiences existing exterior to the writer's mind, but are simulacrum of the writer's thoughts[/i]. At the end of the day, the characters have no objective existence but are essentially the writer toying with his or her own consciousness to contort it into the form of "another's" consciousness, when in actuality it is just his or her consciousness appearing in the form of someone other than the indigenous consciousness.

"The God that calls things that are not as though they were."

-Romans 4:17


Fictional characters being only a fiction writer morphing his or her consciousness into the form of the imagined-in-the-moment fictional character poses an inextricable problem for Pantheopsychism without the added fiction of Sub-dimensional consciousness.

(Not exactly inextricable: one could imagine that for a past, present, and future eternity we are "morphings" of God's consciousness as God, who has all the time in the world, imagines the birth, life experiences, and death of every human that shall ever exist in single-file order: this solves the seeming problem of simultaneity and multiplicity of other consciousnesses. Oneself, or what one experiences as "oneself" is actually the Christian God contorted into the form of oneself and one's experiences from birth to death. I certainly do not adhere to this view, but hold it as a hidden ace in the sleeve, despite it's psychological unlikelihood [ergo, the "unlikelihood" is "in one's head" in the form of one's lack of belief in it's objective existence, despite the fact that it can in principle objectively exist]). There is in fact a version of this single-file mental contortion-ism in Pantheopsychism, but there's no need to explain it here.)

Sub-dimensional consciousness
is the idea that the substance of the first-person subjective experience of the sub-conscious mind of the fiction writer, independent of the thought making up the writer's working memory, forms an independently experiencing doppelganger of the thought-character that experiences a doppelganger of the experience of the thought-character (which is essentially the author or writer pretending to be the character in his or her thoughts) or may have thoughts that deviate from the narrative of the writer, governed and controlled by the writer's subconscious. Thus, just as in the concept of the process of perception there are percepts and distal objects, in the concept of Sub-dimensional consciousness there is the fictional character that is a formation of the thought of the writer (the distal object) and the sub-conscious doppelganger of the character, existing in the writer's subconscious, that may infallibly or alternately mimic the conscious narrative (the percept).
The psychiatric assesment you made of the Christian god's mind does not solve the problem, because if it is an anomaly that must be "corrected", what is then the normal state?
I've stated in other forums that in terms' of God's psychiatric state there is a comorbidity of Dissociative and Schizoid Personality disorder (i.e. the narcissistic fantasy element of Schizoid personality, which is a natural property of solipsism as God must imagine other beings in order for these others to exist and for God to be able to interact with them).

Schizoid fantasy

A pathological reliance on fantasizing and preoccupation with inner experience is often part of the schizoid withdrawal from the world. Fantasy thus becomes a core component of the self in exile, though fantasizing in schizoid individuals is far more complicated than a means of facilitating withdrawal.

Fantasy is also a relationship with the world and with others by proxy. It is a substitute relationship, but a relationship nonetheless, characterized by idealized, defensive and compensatory mechanisms. This is self-contained and free from the dangers and anxieties associated with emotional connection to real persons and situations. Klein explains it as "an expression of the self struggling to connect to objects, albeit internal objects (emphasis mine). Fantasy permits schizoid patients to feel connected, and yet still free from the imprisonment in relationships. In short, in fantasy one can be attached (to internal objects) and still be free." This aspect of schizoid pathology has been generously elaborated in works by R. D. Laing, Donald Winnicott, and Ralph Klein.

-Wikipedia, Schizoid Personality Disorder


I submit that in the case of God these are not "disorders" but a natural state that is not an anomaly (as no other gods without the condition exist) and is not something that must, or can, be "corrected".
phenomenal_graffiti wrote:
Other minds exist (in a sense--see my concession to your charge of solipsism below), as they are inferred (using myself as evidence driving the induction) to consist of the same thing I am: first-person subjective experience.
You cannot use induction to infer the existence of other entities outside of your mind. I mean, you could use it to justify your belief, but by doing so you automatically have granted the rest of us the same justification, based on induction, to our beliefs in mind-independent stuff like bridges, skyscrapers, brains and other bodies.
I can use induction to infer the existence of first-person subjective experience outside my mind. Given that existence only appears in the form of first-person subjective experience, I don't think one can rationally justify belief in bridges, skyscrapers, brains, and other bodies made up of something other than first-person subjective experience.
phenomenal_graffiti wrote:
An interesting idea, but given that according to the Bible God is "The God that calls things that are not, as though they were" (Romans 4:17)
If you feel justified to believe in the existence of a book that is independent of your own mind, which your mind and body discover in the exterior world and passively receive the information encoded in it, why shouldn't the rest of us be justified in believing there are real, mind-independent bridges, skyscrapers and brains?
The book is made up of my consciousness, which I believe derives only from more consciousness in the exterior world in the form of an exterior Person imagining the book, and transmitting the idea of the book to His sub-conscious and the sub-dimensional persons within the Person, the book and its content mimicked in the subconscious doppelganger of the conscious idea.

One can be justified in believing there are real, mind-independent bridges, skyscrapers, and brains...but these exterior existences only logically exist if by "mind-independent" they are "exterior to a subject's mind", they are composed of first-person subjective experience, and exist only in the form of an idea in the mind of an exterior person.
phenomenal_graffiti wrote:
HE 'calls things that are not' ('given that as you said he is the only agent with actual objective existence), 'as though they were', in which He pretends we have objective existence despite the fact we are only ideas within His mind.
This would just confirm your acceptance of the notion that you and me and this conversation are not really happening as things and events carried out by free will agents, they are mere illusions in god's mind.
True. After all, He is "the God that call things that are not, as though they were."
By the way, there would be no justified reason to believe that the Christian god narrative is for real...
Maybe in the cold light of day it doesn't need to be real? That is, I believe there isn't a valid value-judgment (although one is "free" to "choose" to feel it is a "bad", "good", or "neutral" thing) in the possibility that we are not real? If true, it's simply the way things are.
...it could be an entertaining deceptive game in the mind of the overarching entity.
An entertaining deceptive narrative when the overarching entity is fully awake (the first or "birth" personality). Not so entertaining to the entity when the entity is non-lucidly dreaming of experiencing every negative experience of every human that shall ever exist (the second personality: "The Crucified Man") or lucidly dreaming (the third-personality) in a bid to revert the second and third personality to the first to dissipate the horror experienced by the second and His subconscious/sub-dimensional doppelgangers.
phenomenal_graffiti wrote:
Can you prove that skyscrapers exist as real material objects, given you can only demonstrate (and this only to yourself) your first-person subjective experience of skyscrapers but not skyscrapers in the absence of your experience of them? Remember, 'real material objects' are distal objects: objects as they are in the absence of anyone's experience of them. We can only experience percepts, we cannot experience distal objects and only have quasi-religious faith that distal objects exist.
The fact that you base all your premises and conclusions on religious faith, does not compel the rest of us, not sharing your faith-based beliefs, to submit to such premises and conclusions.
True. When I was younger and dumber, I banged my head against the wall in the futile attempt to command such submission (as many Christians do to this day). But I realized that the most one can do is to simply present one's idea in a forum that invites the sharing of ideas, and argue (if one can) it's logical and metaphysical possibility.
It is true that you will remain entitled to your faith, but since your faith cannot demonstrate anything, it certainly does not demonstrate that objective existence is false. In fact, I'm in a better position than you, since I do not need to doubt all the things exterior to my mind, including my own perceptual organs and other people, because I can certainly use inductive reasoning to consider the evidence (a justifiable method, according to you). And I can use other people's experiences, which will be real experiences independent of mine, to validate the existence of other objects that are also independent of their minds.
It is reasonable to assume that the existence of anything that is other than/that is not subjective experience is false. The only evidence you have for the existence of anything exterior to your mind is your first-person subjective experience, as you do not experience things that are not your first-person subjective experience and something that is not first-person subjective experience cannot logically have anything to do with the existence of first-person subjective experience because, well, it is not first-person subjective experience. Other people's experiences, real experiences independent of yours and mine, still experience only first-person subjective experience---not that which is not first-person subjective experience (which cannot be experienced). Thus the only objects that can be "validated" as independent of one's mind are only objects composed of the subjective experience of others, not objects composed of something other than subjective experience, as this substance that may not exist.

As Hume states (ironically in a context meant to "disprove" the existence of God):

"Why torture your brain to justify the course of nature upon suppositions,
which, for aught you know, may be entirely imaginary, and of which there
are to be found no traces in the course of nature?"

phenomenal_graffiti wrote:
"Guns a' blazing" is my motto (ugh, I said this). No need to hide the "shame".
I meant the shame of those who disguise their theism in nuanced idealist doctrines.
I see.

PG
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Re: Death...according to Pantheopsychism

Post by phenomenal_graffiti »

The psychiatric assesment you made of the Christian god's mind does not solve the problem, because if it is an anomaly that must be "corrected", what is then the normal state?
Oops, correction needed. I said:
I submit that in the case of God these are not "disorders" but a natural state that is not an anomaly (as no other gods without the condition exist) and is not something that must, or can, be "corrected".
In the story of Pantheopsychic Christianity the second personality of the Christian God ("The Crucified Man") must be corrected, as it generates and maintains the existence of evil. The second personality is therefore an anomaly and the personalities must be integrated in the sense that the second and third transform or resume their former existence as the first personality.

PG
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Re: Death...according to Pantheopsychism

Post by Count Lucanor »

phenomenal_graffiti wrote:There are no non-person objects exterior to the mind (or there are probably no non-person objects exterior to the mind, and if there were, if they are not themselves composed of first-person subjective experience, they cannot rationally have anything to do with the existence, appearance, behavior, etc. of non-person objects composed of first-person subjective experience).
If you deny the possibility, on rational grounds and evidence, of the existence of any object exterior to the mind, you're obliged to deny the existence of person-objects, which are still a subset of the set of all exterior objects. There's no rational ground to accept some exterior objects and deny others. If you believe the person flying an airplane is real and has an existence outside of your mind, you're forced to believe that the airplane he's flying has the same ontological status. When you attribute to that person the property of having a first-person subjective experience, it is still an attribute you assign to an exterior object from your own first-person experience. You may believe there's an exterior person-object that has a first-hand experience, but you're not in better position than anyone believing there's another exterior object having some other property.
phenomenal_graffiti wrote: Given that we are first-person subjective experiences and the only thing that is ever experienced is one's first-person subjective experience
Again, let's be careful with language. Your own doctrine does not allow you to use the pronoun "WE" tied to the first-person experience, that by definition is singular and cannot be confused with the plural first-person, composed of I and THEY. Actually you mean "given that I am first-person subjective experience".
phenomenal_graffiti wrote:...there is no evidence of the existence of exterior-to-the-mind eyes, brains, and the mechanic-visual process. Indeed, the mechanical visual process itself is entirely fictional, as it is merely an imagined process,
OK, but if there's no evidence and they are entirely fictional, then they don't exist and that confirms that they cannot be taken into account to explain anything. So if we took your own doctrine for good, there's not even perceptual process.
phenomenal_graffiti wrote:...the parts that may be observed in neuroscientific/medical context merely percepts made up of the first-person subjective experience of the observers. Indeed, the entire process of vision, despite being purely imaginary (as there is no evidence of the existence of exterior-to-the-mind doppelgangers of eyes, brains, and biology) is merely a God-implanted reductio ad absurdum to instigate reason in the direction of panpsychism.
But you must realize, according to what is expressed above, that there can't be, according to your own doctrine: parts, observations, neuroscientific/medical contexts, nor observers. You only have your thoughts, which is consistent with solipsism.
phenomenal_graffiti wrote:The premise may be circular, but in it's content it is the most obvious fact about the nature of existence. Regardless of whether or not it is circular to say 'this rock is composed materially of rock' the fact remains that existence only appears and manifests in the form of 'rock' (first-person subjective experience)
No, according to your own doctrine, you cannot have facts, and especially none about anything that is not your own mind. You cannot pretend to know properties of anything but your mind, and the properties of the illusory objects your mind creates are as illusory as the mental objects themselves.
phenomenal_graffiti wrote: As existence only manifests as subjective experience, we have evidence only of the existence of subjective experience.
Again, when using "WE" it is implied as if it is something that other independent beings agreed on, but you can only mean "I have evidence of subjective experience..."
phenomenal_graffiti wrote: The objective existence of other subjective experiences is justified by the existence of my own subjective experience.
This is completely a non sequitur fallacy. Nothing about your subjective experience leads automatically to the conclusion that there are other subjective experiences.
phenomenal_graffiti wrote: Given that I won the lottery of existence as opposed to non-existence, the existence of other subjective experiences is justified in that despite the fact that I cannot experience them, it is reasonable to think that existence did not do a "one off" and halt production of others after the existence of myself.
We usually mean "justified" to express the notion that there are more reasons to assert the proposition, than to deny it, not that there is merely a chance of having what the proposition asserts. You're "reasonable" speculations mean only a rationalization of your faith-based belief. One could "reasonably" believe as well anything that the mind will be willing to entertain arbitrarily, and you certainly could not deny anyone else their beliefs on the basis that "they are not justified".
phenomenal_graffiti wrote: absence of the logical necessity of the non-existence of others is justification for belief in the objective existence of others.
There's no logical necessity for the non-existence of material bodies, so you would have to admit that believing that they exist is well justified.
phenomenal_graffiti wrote: Well, they will only see my body in their first-person subjective experience, hear sounds coming from that body, see the body move in a meaningful way that indicates communication, etc.
They can't "see", remember? At best, they could imagine seeing you, and that would imply that for they being real, you have to be fictitious, including your first-person experience. Why you don't doubt then, your first-person experience? Their experience invalidates automatically yours.
phenomenal_graffiti wrote: I don't think anyone can rationally think that something that is not experience can experience,
But that's exactly what you believe and you think it is rational. Those things that your mind imagines as experiencing objects cannot experience, precisely because they're illusions of your mind. They can only be illusions of experiences in your mind, yet you believe they somehow exist as first-person experience and can really experience.
phenomenal_graffiti wrote: A fiction writer imagines fictional characters doing this or that, thinking this or that, feeling this or that, but the characters are mental "figurines" made up of the mental "clay" of the writer. It is the writer contorting his or her thought-experience into the form of other people. These "individuals" are not objectively existing subjective experiences existing exterior to the writer's mind, but are simulacrum of the writer's thoughts[/i]. At the end of the day, the characters have no objective existence but are essentially the writer toying with his or her own consciousness to contort it into the form of "another's" consciousness, when in actuality it is just his or her consciousness appearing in the form of someone other than the indigenous consciousness.
Assuming the analogy depicted accurately the universe you're describing, you would have to admit that there's absolutely nothing that could be absurd and illogical in that fictional world theater. Everything, arbitrarily chosen, would be possible, and there could be no objection to one thing being more likely or justified than other. At the same time, given that nothing would be a necessary and sufficient cause of anything else, since anything goes, nothing could be asserted with conviction, even the existence of the overarching mind imagining all this, because it well may be possible that the idea of authorship is also a mere illusion. Even the whole idea of stating a problem to be solved logically becomes a capricious game without any real purpose, because there's no end to it, no conclusion can be reached. There can be no talk of natural states, order, etc. Anything goes, literally.

I remember that you tried to make the point at the beginning of this thread that one could not claim that a person ceased to exist. But all your explanations now lead to consider any person a fictional character, that actually does not exist, and that certainly can be made to be deceased in your fictional world of solipsism.

phenomenal_graffiti wrote: I can use induction to infer the existence of first-person subjective experience outside my mind.
No, you can't, if you follow your own doctrine.
phenomenal_graffiti wrote:Given that existence only appears in the form of first-person subjective experience,
That's an unwarranted belief, you cannot prove it, not even to yourself.
phenomenal_graffiti wrote: I don't think one can rationally justify belief in bridges, skyscrapers, brains, and other bodies made up of something other than first-person subjective experience.
There's no reason for induction to give you only person-objects and not giving you non-person objects. Interestingly, you have not explained why in your doctrine (if there was anything rationally justified in your assumptions) the exterior minds imagined by your mind appear to be embodied, I mean, they don't appear disembodied, in other words, not linked to a person's body, and particularly his brain. Why they don't appear as ghostly minds hanging around?
phenomenal_graffiti wrote: The book is made up of my consciousness, which I believe derives only from more consciousness in the exterior world in the form of an exterior Person imagining the book, and transmitting the idea of the book to His sub-conscious and the sub-dimensional persons within the Person, the book and its content mimicked in the subconscious doppelganger of the conscious idea.

One can be justified in believing there are real, mind-independent bridges, skyscrapers, and brains...but these exterior existences only logically exist if by "mind-independent" they are "exterior to a subject's mind", they are composed of first-person subjective experience, and exist only in the form of an idea in the mind of an exterior person.
That's the problem with solipsism, all solipsism. Since everything is real as an illusion, there's no distinction between real and not real. What would be the point of your doctrine in calling something real or not real?
phenomenal_graffiti wrote: The only evidence you have for the existence of anything exterior to your mind is your first-person subjective experience
So, my first-person subjective experience gives me evidence of the existence of things independent of my mind. I experience cars, bridges, brains, people, so I have evidence of their objective existence.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
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