Thank you for sharing those two videos. Personally, I didn’t see anything that nudged the discussion in favor of either of our stances. I do have a couple of comments however.
First, people are indeed susceptible to illusions. As a semi-professional oil painter, I know all about the techniques artists use to trick the eye. Despite being initially fooled, viewers can know that what they see is illusion and still delight in the tenaciousness of its affect. The teenager looking at a lingerie catalogue never mistakes the printed image for the real life model. Unlike the beetle, he knows his arousal is based on fantasy. Continued observations may not dispel some compelling misperceptions but they can reveal some illusions for what they are. The lecturer rhetorically states that “we are blind to our blindness” but I don’t think he truly believes that. In fact he uses other more refined observations, mathematical models, and logic to reveal areas of ‘blindness’.
Secondly, there is ambiguity about his use of the phrase “as it really is.” While there may be, and likely is, an unbridgeable chasm between phenomena and nomena that does not mean that the interactions between them are arbitrary. All the reasons I listed before (about the accuracy, precision and detail of our scientific models) justify the belief that those interactions are instead ordered by necessity. So while the phrase “as it really is” can apply to mistaking beer bottles for mates, it would not undermine induced knowledge that the world “really is” rationally ordered. You can have both.
Next. At the end, around 20:00, the lecturer explicitly states his belief that logic and mathematics are not simply perceptual hacks. You seem to have advocated otherwise. You point to problems like the Liars Paradox to support your belief that reason itself cannot be trusted. It too, you have said, is an evolved hack to enhance fitness. Your claim is that people cannot even have certainty about basic rules of thought like the Principle of Non-Contradiction or the Law of Identity. That is a self-defeating position.
Also, I do not often refer to claims from special revelation but I think they have relevance. The content of the videos confirm Christian beliefs taken from Scripture, i.e. the sensual world is illusory and often prevents us from seeing spiritual reality, or as the lecturer would say “as it really is” Specifically:
“For now we see in a mirror, darkly…” – 1 Cor 13:12
“You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” – Ex 33:2
“And he was transfigured before them and His face shown like the sun and His clothes became white as light.” – Matt 17:2
“…Jesus Himself came up and walked with them, but they were kept from recognizing Him…then their eyes were opened and they recognized Him….” Luke 24:15,16
And for what it is worth:
“Angels have no notion or idea of time and space…” – Emanuel Swedenborg, HH 162
“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to Man as it is, Infinite.” – William Blake.
“The name that can be named is not the enduring and unchanging name.” – Lao-tzu
I mention these references both Scriptural and from mystical writings because all of them acknowledge a clear distinction between the nomenal and phenomenal. The categories of time and space and physicality are other than what we suppose. At the same time, the point of these sources is that dispelling these illusions of fleshly incarnation reveals a divine order that is more fundamental (or spiritual) reality. They encourage people to look beyond the veil of illusions to see reality “as it really is.”
First, people are indeed susceptible to illusions. As a semi-professional oil painter, I know all about the techniques artists use to trick the eye. Despite being initially fooled, viewers can know that what they see is illusion and still delight in the tenaciousness of its affect. The teenager looking at a lingerie catalogue never mistakes the printed image for the real life model. Unlike the beetle, he knows his arousal is based on fantasy. Continued observations may not dispel some compelling misperceptions but they can reveal some illusions for what they are. The lecturer rhetorically states that “we are blind to our blindness” but I don’t think he truly believes that. In fact he uses other more refined observations, mathematical models, and logic to reveal areas of ‘blindness’.
Secondly, there is ambiguity about his use of the phrase “as it really is.” While there may be, and likely is, an unbridgeable chasm between phenomena and nomena that does not mean that the interactions between them are arbitrary. All the reasons I listed before (about the accuracy, precision and detail of our scientific models) justify the belief that those interactions are instead ordered by necessity. So while the phrase “as it really is” can apply to mistaking beer bottles for mates, it would not undermine induced knowledge that the world “really is” rationally ordered. You can have both.
Next. At the end, around 20:00, the lecturer explicitly states his belief that logic and mathematics are not simply perceptual hacks. You seem to have advocated otherwise. You point to problems like the Liars Paradox to support your belief that reason itself cannot be trusted. It too, you have said, is an evolved hack to enhance fitness. Your claim is that people cannot even have certainty about basic rules of thought like the Principle of Non-Contradiction or the Law of Identity. That is a self-defeating position.
Also, I do not often refer to claims from special revelation but I think they have relevance. The content of the videos confirm Christian beliefs taken from Scripture, i.e. the sensual world is illusory and often prevents us from seeing spiritual reality, or as the lecturer would say “as it really is” Specifically:
“For now we see in a mirror, darkly…” – 1 Cor 13:12
“You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” – Ex 33:2
“And he was transfigured before them and His face shown like the sun and His clothes became white as light.” – Matt 17:2
“…Jesus Himself came up and walked with them, but they were kept from recognizing Him…then their eyes were opened and they recognized Him….” Luke 24:15,16
And for what it is worth:
“Angels have no notion or idea of time and space…” – Emanuel Swedenborg, HH 162
“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to Man as it is, Infinite.” – William Blake.
“The name that can be named is not the enduring and unchanging name.” – Lao-tzu
I mention these references both Scriptural and from mystical writings because all of them acknowledge a clear distinction between the nomenal and phenomenal. The categories of time and space and physicality are other than what we suppose. At the same time, the point of these sources is that dispelling these illusions of fleshly incarnation reveals a divine order that is more fundamental (or spiritual) reality. They encourage people to look beyond the veil of illusions to see reality “as it really is.”
