Contra Metaphysical Idealism

[archangle]

Let's see.
We are defined by experience
we define our minds
our minds define us
we define what is "real"
Our experiences define what is real
"reality" is only in our minds.

It aint rocket science ladies.
This is a logical fallacy.

[bennyboy]

Let's see.
We are defined by experience
we define our minds
our minds define us
we define what is "real"
Our experiences define what is real
"reality" is only in our minds.

It aint rocket science ladies.
This is a logical fallacy.

It's also a strawman, apparently. What point, exactly, are you arguing against with this?

[archangle]

Let's see.
We are defined by experience
we define our minds
our minds define us
we define what is "real"
Our experiences define what is real
"reality" is only in our minds.

It aint rocket science ladies.
This is a logical fallacy.

It's also a strawman, apparently. What point, exactly, are you arguing against with this?

we have a limited number of reasonable conclusions. tor pointed out your flaw.

I see your claim as the universe only exist because we "process it". does that sum it up?

I say we exist because the universe "processed" us.

Now, instead of word games. Would you like to talk about evidence for your claim? Then I will offer mine. And we can compare the two.

heck, I'll even start. with an easy one. The rock record.

[bennyboy]

I see your claim as the universe only exist because we "process it". does that sum it up?

No. What you just said has absolutely zero to do with anything I've ever said. In fact, I've contradicted this idea, which is an extension of solipsism, at least twice.

My claim is that the universe itself is not a collection of things, but of the interrelationships between properties that don't supervene on anything-- i.e. they are just ideas or concepts, and there are no "things" that cause them. But they are not ideas or concepts of people-- they are self-existent ideas or concepts.

[JuliaL]

I see your claim as the universe only exist because we "process it". does that sum it up?

No. What you just said has absolutely zero to do with anything I've ever said. In fact, I've contradicted this idea, which is an extension of solipsism, at least twice.

My claim is that the universe itself is not a collection of things, but of the interrelationships between properties that don't supervene on anything-- i.e. they are just ideas or concepts, and there are no "things" that cause them. But they are not ideas or concepts of people-- they are self-existent ideas or concepts.

Can I play too?

I'll grant that I only experience my experiences.
The universe outside of my immediate vicinity may not exist.
However, I find it simpler to model reality as a collection independent physical things which exist whether I'm observing them or not.
Otherwise I cannot explain the consistency of their behavior. Every time I step outside, my street looks the same. What those materials 'ARE' is unavailable to me. Calling them ideas is no more helpful than calling them fields, relationships of particles or blahverts when their essential nature cannot be known.
If all is ideas thought by myself and others, how do we coordinate our experiences? Universal unconscious ideation? How does THAT work?
You'd still have the problem of determining that the universe created by the minds of others is of the same idea stuff as your own experiences. As others have pointed out, pulling everything into yourself is solipsism. No answer there. At least none that won't be laughed at.

It seems trivially likely based on study of neural pathology and the effects of psychotropic drugs that personal experience is an emergent phenomenon of complicated chemical reactions. The claim that qualia are idiosyncratic and opaque to investigation is under attack.
Creating a self aware neural network is simple. Point the inputs at the network and teach it that when it sees its own pattern, it has recognized itself. Once a self aware network is created, it should be highly preserved by natural selection as self preservation becomes much easier once self is recognized.
A parallel approach to Koch's postulates for identifying infectious organisms can be applied to consciousness. If an experience can be identified as a neurological pattern and transferred from individual to individual, then the experience can be considered identical to the pattern. This is currently being done with memory.
False Memory implantation in mice

[bennyboy]

Can I play too?

Welcome.

I'll grant that I only experience my experiences.
The universe outside of my immediate vicinity may not exist.
However, I find it simpler to model reality as a collection independent physical things which exist whether I'm observing them or not.
Otherwise I cannot explain the consistency of their behavior.

This consistency exists in an objective reality, but not necessarily a physical monist one.

Every time I step outside, my street looks the same. What those materials 'ARE' is unavailable to me. Calling them ideas is no more helpful than calling them fields, relationships of particles or blahverts when their essential nature cannot be known.

Given a lack of access to whatever objective reality may/may not underly our experiences, then why wouldn't the most sensible choice be to take experiences as brute fact? I do not know if I'm in the Matrix, a BIJ, the Mind of God, or a physically monist reality. I do know that I have experiences. Why, then, shouldn't I categorize all my experiences as such, and think of physics simply as a description of categories of experiences which show high levels of consistency? I'm perfectly happy seeing physical monism as a model which very well represents many of my experiences-- it's when you try to turn that around and squeeze into that model psychogony and cosmogony that I no longer think the model represents my experience of things, and must be set aside.

If all is ideas thought by myself and others, how do we coordinate our experiences? Universal unconscious ideation? How does THAT work?
You'd still have the problem of determining that the universe created by the minds of others is of the same idea stuff as your own experiences. As others have pointed out, pulling everything into yourself is solipsism. No answer there. At least none that won't be laughed at.

The mechanisms of most things, even in a physical monist view of science, is unknown to us. I don't see an appeal to ignorance benefiting either position, however.

It seems trivially likely based on study of neural pathology and the effects of psychotropic drugs that personal experience is an emergent phenomenon of complicated chemical reactions. The claim that qualia are idiosyncratic and opaque to investigation is under attack.

I agree. There's no question at least in my mind that drugs affect brains, and that this altered function alters experience. I think (maybe) we will one day be able to trace the interaction of ideas in the brain.

What I do not think we will ever be able to determine is why/how some systems experience qualia, while others seem not to. Nor, for that matter, will we know if the brain itself ultimately exists on anything more than properties which themselves rest on no physical reality. (i.e. math instead of "things")

Creating a self aware neural network is simple. Point the inputs at the network and teach it that when it sees its own pattern, it has recognized itself. Once a self aware network is created, it should be highly preserved by natural selection as self preservation becomes much easier once self is recognized.

Alarm bells ring when I see things like this. There's an equivocation here between scientific/mathematical definitions of awareness, and the existence of an agent capable of experiencing qualia as I do. Since we are debating whether a physical monist world view is adequate, then a definition of mind framed purely in physical terms amounts to begging the question.

A parallel approach to Koch's postulates for identifying infectious organisms can be applied to consciousness. If an experience can be identified as a neurological pattern and transferred from individual to individual, then the experience can be considered identical to the pattern. This is currently being done with memory.
False Memory implantation in mice

Very interesting stuff, but I already agree that the content of qualia is dependent on brain activity. This is not the same as psychogony: the existence of the mind. Why is it that a brain, as it processes its information and outputs a behavior, also allows (requires?) the supervenience of the experience of qualia?

It is this hard problem of consciousness, combined with the ever-increasingly squirrely-seeming nature of physical particles as they relate to "objects," that leads me to prefer an idealistic world view.

[Angrboda]

Every time I step outside, my street looks the same. What those materials 'ARE' is unavailable to me. Calling them ideas is no more helpful than calling them fields, relationships of particles or blahverts when their essential nature cannot be known.

Given a lack of access to whatever objective reality may/may not underly our experiences, then why wouldn't the most sensible choice be to take experiences as brute fact? I do not know if I'm in the Matrix, a BIJ, the Mind of God, or a physically monist reality. I do know that I have experiences. Why, then, shouldn't I categorize all my experiences as such...

As such? As what? What are you categorizing experiences as, with the emphasis on the 'what'? If you say ideas, you've just replaced one undefined term with another. What is an idea, where does it live, what is its substance, and how do you know whether or not all experiences are of the same kind of stuff?

[bennyboy]

As such?

As experiences.

As what? What are you categorizing experiences as, with the emphasis on the 'what'?

They would be categorized by their properties. Some experiences are highly subjective and abstract; some seem to reflect the properties of objects in a shared reality. No source attribution is required; nor should any be attempted if we know for sure that we don't have access to any method or mechanism of verification. We can refer to the physical universe as a convention of speech-- it is a good category name for the kinds of experiences we have when we interact with the world. It's the source attribution that piggybacks on the speech convention that ends up at falsehood-- or at least at an unsupportable assumption.

If you say ideas, you've just replaced one undefined term with another. What is an idea, where does it live, what is its substance, and how do you know whether or not all experiences are of the same kind of stuff?

What stuff are quarks made of? What is energy made of? How about time and space? Where did the Big Bang singularity exist?

[Angrboda]

If you say ideas, you've just replaced one undefined term with another. What is an idea, where does it live, what is its substance, and how do you know whether or not all experiences are of the same kind of stuff?

What stuff are quarks made of? What is energy made of? How about time and space? Where did the Big Bang singularity exist?

Our description for what energy is consists of very precise mathematical descriptions of its behavior. We can predict how it will behave based on this description. We can explain the behavior of higher-level phenomena by reducing them to this level of description. Saying that stuff is made of "ideas" has none of these qualities. Do you have a model of how 'ideas' behave, or is it just a one size fits all placeholder? We can describe energy and quarks by their behavior. What does the description of an idea look like?

I'd like to get your thoughts on split-brain subjects. In split-brain patients, the bundle of fibers connecting both halves of the brain is severed. Because the nerves of the body cross over from right to left and vice versa when connecting to the hemispheres, the left brain controls the right hand, and each hemisphere "sees" only one half of the visual field. Thus, the left brain only sees the right side, and the right brain only sees the left side. This allows the experimenter to individually interrogate the left and right hemispheres of the brain. In one experiment, the right brain sees a snow storm. Upon being asked to point to a relevant picture among a set of images, his left hand (controlled by the right brain) points at a shovel. When asked why he is pointing at the shovel, the language center in the left brain makes up a verbal answer based on what it saw (a chicken foot, and his hand pointing at the shovel) which is obviously just a confabulation.



http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/capsules...leu06.html

It would appear, superficially, that there is separate awareness in the left and right hemispheres of a split-brain patient. What is your explanation of these results? Was the original experiencer split into two experiencers? Is one a real experiencer and the other a zombie? Is it possible that neither are experiencers? Is the whole brain itself connected to experiencing because it is made of ideas? What is the explanation of this phenomena under your view?

[Neo-Scholastic]

Rae, the humanities deal extensively with describing how ideas form and fit together. Linguistics and semiotics are useful areas of study that produce knowledge even if those who advocate scientism believe otherwise. In a sense, we can model, albeit less precisely, the behaviour of ideas.