(September 16, 2015 at 9:24 am)lkingpinl Wrote: Because Idealism would be a manifestation of the state of the greater mind as outlined by AKD.  So no matter what happens, it has no bearing on the real mind as all we are experiencing is just a manifestation of that mind (if I understand it correct).  Therefore whether in this "reality" you live to be a world leader or a serial rapist, is meaningless to the "real mind".

with an immortal soul no matter what happens, you're just experiencing a manifestation of matter that doesn't effect your soul.

now, I would like to point out that though i'm an idealist i'm also a Christian (as it says on my religious views). just because this world is a mental manifestation doesn't mean it's void of purpose. I would say an idealistic interpretation would better explain why the physical doesn't matter, it's only your heart that has true value. as Jesus said, sinning is not about actions but intentions. he says 'thou shalt not murder but I say to you if you hate your brother, you have already committed murder.' sin is about the intent in your heart, not the physical actions. idealism better explains why that is.

(September 16, 2015 at 11:09 am)Redbeard The Pink Wrote: You're conflating "evident" with "immediately evident." For something to be "evident," there just has to be evidence of it. It doesn't actually matter how that evidence turns up, so long as it is repeatable and/or observable.

again, Webster disagrees. it says it has to be 'clear to the sight or mind' or 'clear to the vision or understanding.' though when I said evident, I meant more clearly 'self evident' which means 'not needing to be demonstrated or explained; obvious.' thus the nature of brain producing mind is not evident in the same way 'the mind exists' is.

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:And I'm saying that's completely irrelevant and non-meritorious because it can be applied to any damn thing someone could make up, so long as they pick something that is not testable.

if something that is 'testable' includes things that can be demonstrated by logic and reason, then almost nothing is 'not testable.' as for the topic on hand, I really can't think of any things other than the origin of mind that can't be known by conflict of epistemic limitations. so if there are no other topics your objection can be voiced to, then it's not logical fallacy... you're just special pleading.

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:It is impossible to falsify the existence of Santa Claus and his workshop at the North Pole.

now this clearly can be falsified... because it's a claim about the world we experience. so experience in conflict with the claim (such as going to the North Pole) can falsify it. you're gonna have to come up with a better example than that. there's a fundamental difference between a claim involving the contents of the world you experience and a claim involving an explanation for your experience itself.

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:Ok, maybe it is, but that's not an "epistemic limitation" so much as a logical irrelevance. It's simply not how problems are solved.

because your examples are false... the fact that they aren't epistemic limitations is exactly the point. the only reason I constructed premise 1 into the argument is because of the epistemic limitation. and even if you are right in all of your examples, at best you can conclude it's 'possible' santa claus exists. or it's 'possible' a tea pot is orbiting the sun... but I don't know what you can do to make any stronger claim to build from those.

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:Looking at your conclusion, what you're basically doing is circling around to applying premise #1 to Monistic Idealism.

for the argument to be circular, the first premise would have to assume monistic idealism is true... but at best you can say i'm assuming solipsism is possible in the first premise. that's still not a circular argument.

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:The reason I haven't touched premises 2-5 is that they follow from premise 1 (problematic for the aforementioned reasons), and 5 is basically a bunch of word salad.

translation: you don't understand it. look up problems of substance dualism and get back to me. though since you're a materialist, you shouldn't object to the premise anyways.

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:Nothing in that list leads to the definite conclusion presented in 6.

if mind doesn't reduce to matter, then mind must be its own substance. if there can only be one fundamental substance, then mind must be it since matter can't be.

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:I didn't say the definition was "invalid," really. I think the exact word I used was "shitty."

I know you didn't... which is why I asked are you going to? or are you going to keep using ad hominem?

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:Yes, you've done a clever job of constructing a scenario in which you can ignore everyone's evidence as being merely a part of Simulation Land and you don't have to present any evidence yourself because...

first, I didn't ignore your 'evidence.' I actually directly addressed it by saying your evidence is question begging... but no!! keep ignoring that statement and hash out the same garbage instead of listening to the criticisms. that's what reasonable people do, right?

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:If our reality is a metaphysically solipsistic world

and you're already wrong... I never said our reality is metaphysically solipsistic. I said it's possible, but that's it.

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:So yeah, you state that such a world can't be proven false and go on to conclude that such a world must, in fact, be true.

no.. I didn't. I went from 'solipsism is possible' to 'all is mind.' the whole 'all of reality is dreamed by an all encompassing mind' (not my words but close enough) was extra explanation of how an idealistic world 'could' work, but it wasn't in my premises or conclusion. I could have presented an argument why idealism implies theism, but I didn't do that here. and I certainly didn't do it in the OP.

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:Premise #1 implies that reality is all dreamed up by a mind-thing

so you're saying 'solipsism is possible' implies idealism is true? if so that's not circular. the two statements are clearly different. the implication would be by virtue of logical implication, not ontological equivalence of the two statements.

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:The ghost particle is not a simulation of a ghost, though. It's named that to get an idea across about it's nature.

right, it's named to explain its nature of 'likeness' to a ghost. if you have a problem with the word simulation I can use the word likeness in the exact same way it's used in this example.

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:Furthermore, a ghost isn't physical reality. Physical reality, by definition, has to physically exist. To simulate physical reality, there has to be at least one example of physical reality to simulate, and that example by definition has to physically exist.

irrelevant.. the point, as I clearly said, is a neutrino is called the ghost particle because it exhibits behavior in likeness of a ghost. if I took your 'in order for this world to have likeness to material, there has to be material for it to be like' statement seriously; I would likewise have a point in saying 'neutrinos can't be called ghosts particles, because in order for it to be ghost like, there has to be a ghost for it to be like.' so why don't you tell the physicists that?

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:If the reality we experience is nothing more than a dream, then our reality is conceptual, not physical. If there is no physical world upon which it is based, then it is not a simulation of a physical world. It is merely a conceptual world, populated with objects and rules conceptualized by the Conceiver.

ok then, we'll go with that. does that satisfy your simulation objections?

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:All evidence indicates that our Universe is natural and material, and yes, some of the evidence from that Universe helps us understand how our brains and senses work, which gives us an idea of "why" we experience and perceive things the way we do and what minds actually are.

nice non-answer... let me try again. can we use information from our experience to explain why we are able to experience?

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:Aaand that doesn't matter because it's also impossible to prove that it's true, and until you do there is no reason to believe that it is.

let me try again... if experience can't be used to disprove solipsism (because that's begging the question) and there is no reason outside experience, then the first premise is true. it is impossible to prove solipsism is false. that would be what you call... proving it true...

(September 16, 2015 at 1:55 pm)Captain Scarlet Wrote: Since all reasoning, including the process of proving a conclusion, is conscious activity, and consciousness is consciousness of something, the primacy of existence is a necessary precondition of proof. One does not need to prove the primacy of existence since it is validated in every instance of consciousness. Thus the primacy of consciousness is false and existence, exists independently of consciousness. Wishing it so, does not make it so. Dreams do not alter reality. Minds cannot control reality nor project a different reality.

I never said nothing exists... I said mind is fundamental, ie, it exists but matter does not. I see no reason why you can't be conscious of concepts. after all, when I dream i'm not conscious of the physical world. i'm conscious of the contents of my dream. you can claim the dream is caused by material interactions, but the contents nonetheless are immaterial and I am conscious of them.
our minds do not affect this reality. but if you have a lucid dream, your mind can affect that. all that tells you, however, is our mind is not dreaming up the world. it comes from something external to our mind, which could be a different mind...

Captain Scarlet Wrote:Take this thread and the processes leading to its creation. To consider idealism you have had to listen to and|or read information pertaining to the subject. You have had to then consider thoughts of others using information from their sensory perceptions. You have then assumed the physical world is real and that we can understand and see your posts through physical media. You have posted using touch to validate keyboard entry. If you spoke instead of posted and said: "idealism is true and empiricism is false". You would have to assume that you could hear yourself correctly to ensure you said what you said and not something contradictory.

if by real you mean the world is outside my mind; then yes, I consider the world real. but that doesn't mean the world isn't derived from a mind external to my own. in other words, I consider the world functionally real but not objectively real. the world doesn't exist beyond perception, but you can use it to interact with other minds who are all experiencing the same world just as you are.

(September 16, 2015 at 9:24 am)lkingpinl Wrote: Because Idealism would be a manifestation of the state of the greater mind as outlined by AKD.  So no matter what happens, it has no bearing on the real mind as all we are experiencing is just a manifestation of that mind (if I understand it correct).  Therefore whether in this "reality" you live to be a world leader or a serial rapist, is meaningless to the "real mind".

These things don't have objective meaning in a physicalist view, either.  Idealism doesn't mean Sky Daddy, it means that the fundamental nature of reality is an expression of universal concepts, rather than concepts being an approximation of some other reality.

I think current physics supports this view, by the way. Try and define, in physical terms, what a photon is, for example. You'll end up with something definable ONLY in conceptual terms, and which cannot be modeled or represented in 3 dimensions or 4 in any meaningful way. Sounds like an idea to me.

(September 16, 2015 at 10:09 pm)bennyboy Wrote: These things don't have objective meaning in a physicalist view, either.  Idealism doesn't mean Sky Daddy, it means that the fundamental nature of reality is an expression of universal concepts, rather than concepts being an approximation of some other reality.

I think current physics supports this view, by the way.  Try and define, in physical terms, what a photon is, for example.  You'll end up with something definable ONLY in conceptual terms, and which cannot be modeled or represented in 3 dimensions or 4 in any meaningful way.  Sounds like an idea to me.

that is very well put. the universe is conceptual rather than distinct while our concepts are at best approximations.

as for physics, I would agree. the kochen-specker theorem confirmed by Anton Zeilinger showed that in quantum mechanics the outcome obtained by a measurement depends on the context at that time and cannot be predicted prior. this would not make sense given materialism, but makes perfect sense given idealism. though i'm not going into too much detail about quantum mechanics on this thread.

Assuming you convince yourself that everything is mind, what comes of it? Will you not go on being motivated for exactly the same reasons you are now?

(September 16, 2015 at 6:43 pm)Rational AKD Wrote: I never said nothing exists... I said mind is fundamental, ie, it exists but matter does not. I see no reason why you can't be conscious of concepts. after all, when I dream i'm not conscious of the physical world. i'm conscious of the contents of my dream. you can claim the dream is caused by material interactions, but the contents nonetheless are immaterial and I am conscious of them.
our minds do not affect this reality. but if you have a lucid dream, your mind can affect that. all that tells you, however, is our mind is not dreaming up the world. it comes from something external to our mind, which could be a different mind...


if by real you mean the world is outside my mind; then yes, I consider the world real. but that doesn't mean the world isn't derived from a mind external to my own. in other words, I consider the world functionally real but not objectively real. the world doesn't exist beyond perception, but you can use it to interact with other minds who are all experiencing the same world just as you are.

 
Firstly thank you for offering this clarification, it helps my understanding of your position.  

"I said mind is fundamental, ie, it exists but matter does not".  I think you are trying to take us down a false dichotomy here ie mind or matter.  I am agnostic on materalism (depending on your definition of it).  Yes I think minds are dependent on brains and physical causal processes.  Do I know what the nature of matter is below the brain, molecule, atom, sub-atomic particles - no I do not and neither does anyone else.  The best explanation I have heard is quantum field theory, but until I have a better understanding (which I may never have) I have suspend judgement on materialism.  However, I have never heard anyone need to invoke magic, mysticism, supernaturalism, the immaterial to explain the true nature of reality.  It could be that matter is "condensed energy" from fields, but they are still part of nature and have a physically measurable existence.  To state matter does not exist, goes beyond our knowledge and is contrary to everything we currently know.

"I see no reason why you can't be conscious of concepts. after all, when I dream i'm not conscious of the physical world. i'm conscious of the contents of my dream....but the contents nonetheless are immaterial and I am conscious of them."  I agree you can be conscious of concepts and I would go further to assert that those concepts can be objective.  When you dream you are not conscious (it is the very definition of dreaming).  Your sub-conscious is aware of the contents of your dream of course and is able to pick up sensory input from its environment, access and replay memories and create new memories and connections.  I would claim that these are well understood by medical science and are not mysterious.  Labelling the contents as immaterial adds nothing to this.  What do you mean? What is immaterial? If you mean not material then you only define what it is not, and not what it is.  It is therefore meaningless.  Matter however can be shown to exist (even though we do not know what its true nature really is at the smallest scale).  Here I think you may be trying the wrongly sever the link between things with no independent physical existence (dreams) and things with independent physical existence (brains), and then concrete out abstractions (like contents of dreams) as real existents, which they are not.  The contents of your dream may "exist" but only as an emergent property of physical processes.  Alter those physical processes and the "existence" of those contents change or disappear.

"it comes from something external to our mind, which could be a different mind...".  This is special pleading and mystical thinking.  Minds are minds if one mind can control reality then so can any other.  I think you are arguing towards the extra special mind of a god and nothing you have said can remotely get us to that without special pleading.  If you are arguing minds can control reality then of course you are now entering the realm of make-believe and mysticism, which for me I'm afriad is woo-woo.

"I consider the world functionally real but not objectively real".  This is just false, infact it is not even false but meaninglessness.  Reality is real or it is not.  It is objectively real or not.  There is no "functionally real".  This is the same as saying I live in a fantasy of either my creation or someone elses.

So again I return to the same topics.  Under idealism is:

- "apparently" blowing your brains out detrimental to your existence?
- "apparently" deliberately driving a car into a crowd immoral?"
- if you are Xtian and idealist, does that not deny Xtian theology and is thus self refuting (given its realiance on bodily death and ressurection as atonement and hope)

(September 17, 2015 at 2:19 am)Whateverist the White Wrote: Assuming you convince yourself that everything is mind, what comes of it?  Will you not go on being motivated for exactly the same reasons you are now?

I don't really need to convince myself.  Everything that I experience, including the apparent physical world, is mind.  The default position is that I don't need to add anything else, i.e. specify the nature of the source of experience which is not really demonstrable anyway.

But basically, yes.  The only difference between a physical world and an idealistic one, in terms of living my life, is that one seems a better fit and the other not so much.  It has little to do with the nature of experience which one I believe.

(September 16, 2015 at 1:58 pm)Rational AKD Wrote:

(September 16, 2015 at 1:46 am)robvalue Wrote: Objects in a dream can affect my wellbeing within the dream. And if we're assuming that whatever perceived reality this is will be the subject of discussion, it may only be a dream world.

Also, what happens in the dream can affect the physical body of the person having the dream as well.

We need to figure out whose dream this is and wake them up!

whether you call it a dream world or not is semantics. the point is since hypothetically all the senses give us the same sensations in an idealistic world as in a material world, both worlds can be described as a 'real world' (still speaking hypothetically). both worlds have the same material consequences, the only difference is the prospect of afterlife in an idealist world and absolute death of self in a materialist world.

Yes, the information we get is the same. A dream world cannot be differentiated from a "real" world, which raises the question of what "real" means at all. We don't know if anyone has ever had any contact with anything "real" or if the people doing the experiencing are "real". Maybe the mind is not real either, and nothing exists. When you say "matter doesn't exist" I'm not sure what you mean by matter. If there is an external objective reality which we are experiencing, then that is made out of matter; hopefully you'd agree with that. So for there to be no matter, you are saying there is no external objective reality. But since experiencing an external reality is exactly the same as experiencing a dream or an illusion, how can you possibly tell the difference? You appear to be arguing for solipsism, that nothing we "experience" is real, exactly like a dream world all in someone's mind. Who that person is, I don't know. God? How on Earth that fits in with Christianity I have no idea. God is having a dream?

But as I said, "real" appears meaningless. Things are as real as they seem, as far as the observer is concerned. So you could say that they are made of "mind matter"; they exist to that person, the mind is producing them. Considering we literally can't experience matter anyway even if it exists, the distinction seems impossible to reconcile. All we have is our brain's interpretation of whatever is going on. That, fundamentally, is why we can't ever know what is really going on.

We deduce things "exist" and are "real" by consulting other independent observers. But once you enter the realm of solipsism, there are no other independent observers. You have to assume solipsism to be false before you can consider anyone else distinct from your own delusion. This includes the existence of ourselves; and the nature of it, if we do exist. But this is somewhat circular; if solipsism is true, then "exist" has no practical meaning in this reality at least.

Congratulations! Robvalue just reached Philosophy level 2! You get the new title of bog-standard philosopher who is not quite a complete beginner. +1 Wisdom, +1 Physical Strength and +1 Beard and sandals. 8,325 xp points to the next level.

(September 16, 2015 at 6:22 pm)Rational AKD Wrote:

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(September 16, 2015 at 11:09 am)Redbeard The Pink Wrote: You're conflating "evident" with "immediately evident." For something to be "evident," there just has to be evidence of it. It doesn't actually matter how that evidence turns up, so long as it is repeatable and/or observable.

again, Webster disagrees. it says it has to be 'clear to the sight or mind' or 'clear to the vision or understanding.' though when I said evident, I meant more clearly 'self evident' which means 'not needing to be demonstrated or explained; obvious.' thus the nature of brain producing mind is not evident in the same way 'the mind exists' is.

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:And I'm saying that's completely irrelevant and non-meritorious because it can be applied to any damn thing someone could make up, so long as they pick something that is not testable.

if something that is 'testable' includes things that can be demonstrated by logic and reason, then almost nothing is 'not testable.' as for the topic on hand, I really can't think of any things other than the origin of mind that can't be known by conflict of epistemic limitations. so if there are no other topics your objection can be voiced to, then it's not logical fallacy... you're just special pleading.

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:It is impossible to falsify the existence of Santa Claus and his workshop at the North Pole.

now this clearly can be falsified... because it's a claim about the world we experience. so experience in conflict with the claim (such as going to the North Pole) can falsify it. you're gonna have to come up with a better example than that. there's a fundamental difference between a claim involving the contents of the world you experience and a claim involving an explanation for your experience itself.

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:Ok, maybe it is, but that's not an "epistemic limitation" so much as a logical irrelevance. It's simply not how problems are solved.

because your examples are false... the fact that they aren't epistemic limitations is exactly the point. the only reason I constructed premise 1 into the argument is because of the epistemic limitation. and even if you are right in all of your examples, at best you can conclude it's 'possible' santa claus exists. or it's 'possible' a tea pot is orbiting the sun... but I don't know what you can do to make any stronger claim to build from those.

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:Looking at your conclusion, what you're basically doing is circling around to applying premise #1 to Monistic Idealism.

for the argument to be circular, the first premise would have to assume monistic idealism is true... but at best you can say i'm assuming solipsism is possible in the first premise. that's still not a circular argument.

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:The reason I haven't touched premises 2-5 is that they follow from premise 1 (problematic for the aforementioned reasons), and 5 is basically a bunch of word salad.

translation: you don't understand it. look up problems of substance dualism and get back to me. though since you're a materialist, you shouldn't object to the premise anyways.

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:Nothing in that list leads to the definite conclusion presented in 6.

if mind doesn't reduce to matter, then mind must be its own substance. if there can only be one fundamental substance, then mind must be it since matter can't be.

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:I didn't say the definition was "invalid," really. I think the exact word I used was "shitty."

I know you didn't... which is why I asked are you going to? or are you going to keep using ad hominem?

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:Yes, you've done a clever job of constructing a scenario in which you can ignore everyone's evidence as being merely a part of Simulation Land and you don't have to present any evidence yourself because...

first, I didn't ignore your 'evidence.' I actually directly addressed it by saying your evidence is question begging... but no!! keep ignoring that statement and hash out the same garbage instead of listening to the criticisms. that's what reasonable people do, right?

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:If our reality is a metaphysically solipsistic world

and you're already wrong... I never said our reality is metaphysically solipsistic. I said it's possible, but that's it.

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:So yeah, you state that such a world can't be proven false and go on to conclude that such a world must, in fact, be true.

no.. I didn't. I went from 'solipsism is possible' to 'all is mind.' the whole 'all of reality is dreamed by an all encompassing mind' (not my words but close enough) was extra explanation of how an idealistic world 'could' work, but it wasn't in my premises or conclusion. I could have presented an argument why idealism implies theism, but I didn't do that here. and I certainly didn't do it in the OP.

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:Premise #1 implies that reality is all dreamed up by a mind-thing

so you're saying 'solipsism is possible' implies idealism is true? if so that's not circular. the two statements are clearly different. the implication would be by virtue of logical implication, not ontological equivalence of the two statements.

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:The ghost particle is not a simulation of a ghost, though. It's named that to get an idea across about it's nature.

right, it's named to explain its nature of 'likeness' to a ghost. if you have a problem with the word simulation I can use the word likeness in the exact same way it's used in this example.

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:Furthermore, a ghost isn't physical reality. Physical reality, by definition, has to physically exist. To simulate physical reality, there has to be at least one example of physical reality to simulate, and that example by definition has to physically exist.

irrelevant.. the point, as I clearly said, is a neutrino is called the ghost particle because it exhibits behavior in likeness of a ghost. if I took your 'in order for this world to have likeness to material, there has to be material for it to be like' statement seriously; I would likewise have a point in saying 'neutrinos can't be called ghosts particles, because in order for it to be ghost like, there has to be a ghost for it to be like.' so why don't you tell the physicists that?

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:If the reality we experience is nothing more than a dream, then our reality is conceptual, not physical. If there is no physical world upon which it is based, then it is not a simulation of a physical world. It is merely a conceptual world, populated with objects and rules conceptualized by the Conceiver.

ok then, we'll go with that. does that satisfy your simulation objections?

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:All evidence indicates that our Universe is natural and material, and yes, some of the evidence from that Universe helps us understand how our brains and senses work, which gives us an idea of "why" we experience and perceive things the way we do and what minds actually are.

nice non-answer... let me try again. can we use information from our experience to explain why we are able to experience?

Redbeard The Pink Wrote:Aaand that doesn't matter because it's also impossible to prove that it's true, and until you do there is no reason to believe that it is.

let me try again... if experience can't be used to disprove solipsism (because that's begging the question) and there is no reason outside experience, then the first premise is true. it is impossible to prove solipsism is false. that would be what you call... proving it true...

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I'm gonna start condensing these down because going paragraph by paragraph is just inflating the length of both our posts, plus there are a lot of repeat points that we've gone back and forth on several times now.


We'll start with Santa Claus, since that's the most amusing can of worms you decided to pop open. No, you cannot disprove the existence of Santa Claus or his workshop. No, going to the North Pole will not help. I used to be one of Santa's elves, you see, and I have first-hand knowledge of the security features in his shop. For one thing, it's surrounded by a magnetic field that fucks with people's compasses and other navigational equipment, causing them to constantly circle the North Pole any time they try to get there; the shop is also surrounded by several "false poles," which are designed to prevent human suspicions about why they can't find the North Pole. Humans have never been to the "real" North Pole, only these false ones.


Even if a human did wander close enough to risk seeing the shop, it's hidden by a magic field of invisibility. If they get close enough that they might touch it, the whole shop is silently lowered to the floor of the Arctic Ocean, directly on the Earth's crust beneath tons of ice. If someone goes looking for it there, the whole shop teleports to the South Pole using Santa's magic. If anyone goes looking for the shop at both poles, then it's moved somewhere else, and I'm not allowed to tell you where because I'm sworn to secrecy. Santa's shop is specifically designed to magically evade human senses and equipment by various means. If it seems like it isn't there, that's just because you haven't found it yet.


The only other point from this that's even remotely worth addressing is that stupid question-begging thing you keep bringing up, and all I have to say to that is this: it should be obvious to everyone reading this that you have attempted to deliberately construct your argument so that any time someone brings up evidence from the physical Universe, you can cry "question begging!" and move on. That is a painfully obvious cop-out and an intellectually dishonest ploy. What's really more likely: that you (whoever the hell you are) have somehow figured out some unassailable Truth about the basic underpinnings of reality, or that you have constructed a childishly evasive argument that allows you to cop out by name-dropping a fallacy?


Besides, even your false fallacy is fallacious in the reasoning by which you arrive at it. The question is whether we can use information from our experience to explain why we experience things, and the answer is that as long as the Universe behaves according to consistent rules, yes we can. Regardless of whether reality is physical or conceptual, it still behaves according to apparent rules that allow us to glean information about how it works and what goes on in it. We have evidence of how we came to be the life forms we are with the systems that allow us to sense and process the world around us, so in a sense we do understand "why" our brains exist as they do and why they have minds in them. As long as the alleged Dreamer doesn't change any of the rules, we can learn things about the reality it's dreaming up by studying that reality, including how and why our bodies and minds behave the way they do. That doesn't answer questions of metaphysical meaning, but then again neither does your whole argument.


This is also another instance where you've deliberately chosen shitty wording to meet your ends. You've chosen the word "experience" because of its subjectivity. A more appropriate way to word this question might be, "Is it possible to use evidence from reality to learn about how our brains generate our minds?" By throwing the word "experience" around and asking if it's possible to prove experience from experience, you try to make it sound like your opponent is always begging the question any time evidence comes up. This is nothing more than a cheap trick. There is no reason to believe the things you propose unless you can somehow show them with evidence. The fact that you have deliberately constructed a premise that supposedly can't be proven with evidence is your problem, not mine, because it means that you just can't prove what you're saying and therefore can't convince anyone to believe you. That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.