Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑October 29th, 2024, 9:47 amSy Borg wrote: ↑October 28th, 2024, 3:45 pm Now I am more confused. What is a Whizzy-way? It sounds like a sherbert lolly.Oh, please. We have been having this discussion over several posts, I know, but you do need to read them:Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑October 23rd, 2024, 5:49 am I think this would be easier if you moved up a level? It looks like you are speaking from a physical perspective, but this is a metaphysical discussion. "We live in reality", yes, but here we are wondering about the (metaphysical) *nature* of reality.
You prefer the Whizzy-way*, while I have no preference. All possibilities are ... possible. The whizzy-way is one possibility, brains in vats and simulations are other possibilities. All of them account wholly for all available evidence. If they did not, they would and could not be 'possibilities'. All of them result in *exactly* the reality that you and I experience, and that's why we are unable to find out which of them is 'true'.
WYSIWYG is a long way from WHIZZY - it was so oblique that I ignored it. My apparent Whizzy Wonka Way is simple logic and rationality.
Why not claim that reality is the fever dream of an interplanetary leprechaun? It's no less (in)credible than creating universes in brains in vats.
Besides, I don't think the brain-in-a-vat notion is possible. It might be possible as a computational device but not in generating qualia. While the brain is essential for qualia, it is clearly not the only component, hence many decades of study, looking for the source of consciousness in brains but without success.
Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑October 25th, 2024, 10:04 amI am wondering, not about (apparent) reality, but about the nature of reality, about any/all of the possible explanations that could explain actual (not apparent) reality. This is not physics, it's metaphysics.
Sy Borg wrote: ↑October 28th, 2024, 3:45 pm We have [apparent] reality as it is, Kant's noumena - which is a chaotic mess of energy with some vague forms within. [This is physics.] And we have our filtered sense of that chaotic mess. [This is a description of physics.]
I'm talking about both, not one or the other.
[My additions.] You are still reasoning at the level of physics, and apparent reality. I am offering comments — metaphysical speculation — about the underlying nature of reality as it actually is, mind-independently, etc, etc.
I am open to the possibility that there are other dimensions of reality, making our reality a four dimensional representation of more complex happenings, but there's no way that we are brains-in-vats. It's merely a thought experiment that represents claims about reality that are probably wrong.