I’m going to try and condense a little, so we’ll see how it goes.
So we have a material world, processes in that material world (the sense process), and somehow the result of that is This Experience.
Let’s take an example of “someone seeing a computer keyboard.” Let’s call him “the experiencer.” He’s just a regular guy who knows nothing about what we’re doing here. There is a material keyboard some objective distance from his material brain, light goes from the material keyboard to his material eyes, and in that material brain, somehow, he has the experience he would call “seeing that beige keyboard on my brown desk.” That experience consists of experiences of color and what seems to the experiencer to be a sense of space or distance.
Some observations. (I’m sure you’re thinking – yeah, yeah, ho hum, I know all this. Patiently bear with me.)
This Experience is not the material world – it is an experience happening in a brain that is in a material world.
The experiencer can experience nothing outside of his material brain.
What the experience thinks is “the world” is not a world, but rather his brain generated experience.
What he experiences cannot be a material world.
Nothing in his experience can be “made of atoms.”
What he experiences as his body cannot be his material body.
The experiencer can experience nothing in the material world. For any "object" he sees in his experience to exist in the material world it would have to be made of atoms. Since his experience must happen in his material brain, any experience-object “made of atoms” would also have to be in his brain. If the beige keyboard he experienced seeing was “made of atoms,” he would literally have a material keyboard made of atoms in his material brain. (However, in his experience he might have experiences and “do experiments” from which he could deduce the concept of atoms (a very, VERY important point which we will revisit).
Since what he experiences as “his body” is also part of “This Experience,” it also cannot be made of atoms, or else he’d have a body made of atoms in his material brain.
Since This Experience for him is not a material world, there can be no light going into what he experiences as his eyes.
(I know you don’t like the “This Experience” thing, but just for information, I refer to what I experience as “my body” as This Body, the apparent spatial aspect of my experience as This Space, and (to the extent that I experience it) to the brain I think of as being in what I experience as my head as “This Brain.” So there’s material world space, and there’s This Space. There’s my material brain (where my mind and experience actually happen) and “This brain.”)
Since he can experience nothing in the material world, it is meaningless for him to speak of “locating” any particular object in the material world (or the material world as a whole) relative to any aspect of his experience, or vice versa. He literally cannot locate or “find” the material world. (It’s kind of like heaven.)
Ask the experiencer what he sees. He says, “That beige keyboard.” He does not say, “A material keyboard made of atoms in a material world I can’t experience. If we ask him if the keyboard he sees is made of atoms, he will no doubt say “yes.” He – and everyone I’ve ever met – actually believes that the keyboard he experiences seeing (the beige one) is made of atoms. (It never ceases to amaze me how no one ever sees a problem with the belief that there are atoms where they experience color.)
So there are, in the Materialist Sense Story, two keyboards –one made of atoms, and one that is an aspect of the experience. They are not the same, exist/happen at different places in the material world, etc.
Do you agree with the above? I know there’s a lot here, and I’m trying my best to condense.
“Personal” questions - Do you believe there are atoms where you experience color? Do you believe what you experience as your body is made of atoms?
So we have a material world, processes in that material world (the sense process), and somehow the result of that is This Experience.
Let’s take an example of “someone seeing a computer keyboard.” Let’s call him “the experiencer.” He’s just a regular guy who knows nothing about what we’re doing here. There is a material keyboard some objective distance from his material brain, light goes from the material keyboard to his material eyes, and in that material brain, somehow, he has the experience he would call “seeing that beige keyboard on my brown desk.” That experience consists of experiences of color and what seems to the experiencer to be a sense of space or distance.
Some observations. (I’m sure you’re thinking – yeah, yeah, ho hum, I know all this. Patiently bear with me.)
This Experience is not the material world – it is an experience happening in a brain that is in a material world.
The experiencer can experience nothing outside of his material brain.
What the experience thinks is “the world” is not a world, but rather his brain generated experience.
What he experiences cannot be a material world.
Nothing in his experience can be “made of atoms.”
What he experiences as his body cannot be his material body.
The experiencer can experience nothing in the material world. For any "object" he sees in his experience to exist in the material world it would have to be made of atoms. Since his experience must happen in his material brain, any experience-object “made of atoms” would also have to be in his brain. If the beige keyboard he experienced seeing was “made of atoms,” he would literally have a material keyboard made of atoms in his material brain. (However, in his experience he might have experiences and “do experiments” from which he could deduce the concept of atoms (a very, VERY important point which we will revisit).
Since what he experiences as “his body” is also part of “This Experience,” it also cannot be made of atoms, or else he’d have a body made of atoms in his material brain.
Since This Experience for him is not a material world, there can be no light going into what he experiences as his eyes.
(I know you don’t like the “This Experience” thing, but just for information, I refer to what I experience as “my body” as This Body, the apparent spatial aspect of my experience as This Space, and (to the extent that I experience it) to the brain I think of as being in what I experience as my head as “This Brain.” So there’s material world space, and there’s This Space. There’s my material brain (where my mind and experience actually happen) and “This brain.”)
Since he can experience nothing in the material world, it is meaningless for him to speak of “locating” any particular object in the material world (or the material world as a whole) relative to any aspect of his experience, or vice versa. He literally cannot locate or “find” the material world. (It’s kind of like heaven.)
Ask the experiencer what he sees. He says, “That beige keyboard.” He does not say, “A material keyboard made of atoms in a material world I can’t experience. If we ask him if the keyboard he sees is made of atoms, he will no doubt say “yes.” He – and everyone I’ve ever met – actually believes that the keyboard he experiences seeing (the beige one) is made of atoms. (It never ceases to amaze me how no one ever sees a problem with the belief that there are atoms where they experience color.)
So there are, in the Materialist Sense Story, two keyboards –one made of atoms, and one that is an aspect of the experience. They are not the same, exist/happen at different places in the material world, etc.
Do you agree with the above? I know there’s a lot here, and I’m trying my best to condense.
“Personal” questions - Do you believe there are atoms where you experience color? Do you believe what you experience as your body is made of atoms?
