On naturalism and consciousness

[Surgenator]

Okay, let me say a couple things.

First, there's a slippery slope with this kind of reality. We know that the brain deconstructs and filters sense information, forms it into ideas, and then assembles those ideas into an experience. By the time we experience something, it is fundamentally different than whatever reality it may or may not have originated at. But how much does it matter if the data is source to 30ms ago or 30 years ago?

No, the observe object would not become fundamentally different, just sligtly different, by the time we experience it. (I know I'm nitpicking here).

I think your missing the my main point here. In "30ms", the raw information came from your senses. In "30 year", the formated and stored information is coming from your memories. The pathway of the information is fundamentally different; hense, I distinguish them.

Second, how would we know which case represents reality, and which are ratsetu's other options (or one of myriad others)? How do you know whether you are really seeing something with your eyes, or are just dreamind so? How do you know that your eyes and even your entire life are not essentially dreamlike?

There are two methods that I'm aware of to distinguish between reality and dreamland. Reality can give a fundementally new experience. Also, reality doesn't obey your wishes.

I think our modern age-- of atheism, phsyical monism, and science, is fundamentally ironic. We have used experience-- and only experience-- to arrive at the conclusion that the universe isn't essentially experiential, but has an objective existence outside our experience. We've developed a model-- also an idea-- to demonstrate that ideas are about things rather than vice versa, and that things are responsible for the existence of ideas.

But what is the evidence to support this, really? More experiences? Third-party experiences? The experience of looking through a microscope, or a telescope, or a mass spectrometer?

Your modern age view is imcompete. The modern age didn't come up just from a set of experiences, but also includes logical deductions. Science is the best example of this. Specifically Einstien's special relativity is almost purely based on logical arguments.

Let me ask you, what can we use outside of our experiences and logical deductions to successfully improve our understand of reality? As far as I know, these are the only two that have reasonable chance of succeeding.