A Conscious Universe

[IATIA]

Because we know that our consciences, ideas, or concepts do not dictate what we obsserve unlike in the imaginary world.

But we do not realize this in the dream. The dream is real until we wake or start to wake.

[Surgenator]

Because we know that our consciences, ideas, or concepts do not dictate what we obsserve unlike in the imaginary world.

But we do not realize this in the dream. The dream is real until we wake or start to wake.

If it is a lucid dream, you do realize it. The method of creating an imaginary world is not the important issue but the fact you can create it. If it helps, daydreams give the same abilities without you mixing it up with reality.

[IATIA]

If it is a lucid dream, you do realize it. The method of creating an imaginary world is not the important issue but the fact you can create it. If it helps, daydreams give the same abilities without you mixing it up with reality.

Yes, true. I am capable of lucid dreaming with the onset of the sleep period, but once I am asleep, later in the cycle, it is more difficult to engage lucid dreams and most often I have standard dreams, which seem normal until the realization of "This is bizarre" or just plain not my 'real' world.

[Surgenator]

If I pose the problem of idealism in terms of daydreams, then you cannot claim that you don't know the daydream is imaginary. The problem is that our the shared environment (reality) and our imaginary environments (dreams, daydreams, stories, etc...) are distinguishable. How come they are distinquishable is not answered by idealism without invoking something that seperates the imaginary environment and the shared one. This invoked something is even bigger mystery.

[IATIA]

I just fell asleep. I am dreaming that I am writing this post. I just think everything is normal and think I have memories, but shortly, as I wake, I will realize that all this was just some crazy dream.

[Surgenator]

So what?

[Alex K]

It's not necessary to "go anywhere." We have experiences, we make ideas about them. That's reality. Whatever it is that underlies our experiences, we cannot confidently say that we have access to it, though some insist we do.

That being said, I believe that since everything we experience is, at the moment of experience, an idea, the simplest explanation is that reality is idealistic.

You've lost me completely. I'll be intellectually honest and concede that I may not be smart enough to understand what you're getting at. Bud Light has taken its cruel toll over the years. I just don't see that you have the simplest explanation. It looks to me like you have added layers of complexity in order to satisfy your intuitive take on the situation. It looks exactly like when the theists invent God because they can't intuit a universe without one.

Sorry, Bud Light is not an excuse You'll have to come up with better proof.

[bennyboy]

The mistake in your position, however, is to conflate subjective experiences with what is actually taken to be understood as objective. Any particular subjective experience can truly lead to a mistaken interpretation in how one perceives the context of the events in reality, and by objective we emphatically mean external objects that really exist independently of us and our sense intuitions, even if only known and understood through sense.

Why do you see an idealistic reality as incapable of supporting an objective reality which is shared by many minds? I think almost everyone here, even those on the same "side," are working with very different views of what idealism is.

To me, an idealistic universe can support everything we call physical. Size, shape, energy, conservation, photons, gravity, Mom, apple pie: they are all perfectly comfortable in an idealistic space.

The only difference is that in an idealism, as you start peeling off the layers, you will end up with a reality that loses all the qualities we call "physical," and require more and more abstract descriptions (or more and more refined math) to express. In other words, I think modern science is revealing the abstract and idealistic nature of the universe.

Okay, there is one more difference: mind. There is nothing about a so-called physical universe which is poorly represented as an idea. I know this, because ALL our experiences, and our linguistic expression of them, are naturally represented as ideas. However, I do not think that mind is well described or explained in physical monist terms at all, except by equivocation: "Scientists say mind is brain function. Okay, I found some brain function. Yay, I have located mind."

[Ben Davis]

Hi bennyboy,

That doesn't say much about the framework in which brains exist, which is the question.

But it does address the question of where consciousness comes from: brains of sufficient complexity. The framework for that complexity is formally addressed by evolutionary biologists.

Evidence is the collection of information through the senses, and the processing of said information in the mind. But you have not established that the nature underlying the senses (or the mind) is really as you experience it. How would you go about doing that, except for saying, "Seems real, feels real, must be real!"

Really? I'm surprised you don't understand that we're not solely reliant on our individual intuition in order to come to our conclusions. Serious study results in practical and theoretical experimentation. It's crucial to remember that the 'collection of information through the senses' is not done in isolation and we don't automatically trust our biological senses but instead create mechanisms & tools with which we can in/validate what we sense and intuit.

This is a statement of faith, and I find it strange that you've chosen to emphasize it as such.

No, it's a statement of trust, earned trust, not just in the methodology which is being applied but also in response to the findings already made. It couldn't be further from 'faith'. If the methodology had been poor or the results so-far unrepresentative of a physical cause for/explanation of consciousness, my position would be other than that which it is.

There's no plausible explanation of psychogony right now,

There's plenty plausible! Integrated Information Theory is starting to yield some interesting results. And just because there's no current, robust, comprehensive explanation doesn't mean we discount the progress that has been made.

nor has any similar problem been solved in the past which gives us reason to think that the question of mind will be solved at any point in the future.

Untrue. Many supernatural assertions have been overturned as a result of the application of methodological naturalism. So many, in fact, that I feel quietly confident saying that 'the question of mind' will likely yield similar results. I'm not averse to being proved wrong however it seems unlikely, given all that we currently know.

Saying science has solved MANY problems, so it will eventually solve THIS problem, is downright Heywoodian.

Not 'will' but 'may' and I feel it's likely to be so. Crucial difference.

Which part of the Bible does that come from again?

Stop confusing earned trust for quasi-religious faith, please.

[The Grand Nudger]

The only difference is that in an idealism, as you start peeling off the layers, you will end up with a reality that loses all the qualities we call "physical," and require more and more abstract descriptions (or more and more refined math) to express. In other words, I think modern science is revealing the abstract and idealistic nature of the universe.

The concept of the thing is not the thing. When I say bird, when I imagine a bird...that's little bits of stuff in my head, not an actual bird. Our descriptions become more abstract because, at it's core, description is abstract, leaning on variables defined between two people by culture, language, etc. These things change from one person to the next or one point in time to the next - but just because we describe a bird differently in spanish or english, that doesn't mean that -the bird- is different, that -the bird- is abstraction.

Okay, there is one more difference: mind. There is nothing about a so-called physical universe which is poorly represented as an idea. I know this, because ALL our experiences, and our linguistic expression of them, are naturally represented as ideas.

How else could they be represented? We cannot manifest an -actual- mountain in our heads or in the air between us when we speak. There's no room and we lack the ability to do so even if there were.

However, I do not think that mind is well described or explained in physical monist terms at all, except by equivocation: "Scientists say mind is brain function. Okay, I found some brain function. Yay, I have located mind."

That's not actually equivocation....but I'll run with it. We see brain, we observe mind. We see no brain, we observe -no mind-. When we experience things it is our brains that "light up"....and in a predictable way, enough that we can isolate portions of our brain which appear to be handling specific types of thought, specific experiences of mind across a wide range of individual subjects.

What isn't well explained is how our minds, in particular, accomplish this (though we do have some explanation - we don't have a complete picture), but not how it -can- be accomplished in a physical monism. Mind in the general is well described, well explained. Mind is the expression of logical functions performed by a physical system on discrete bits of data which are handled by and comprised of physical things. We know that this works, but we also recognize that there are many ways to implement this sort of system, so there's no reason to demand that the implementation between systems be identical. We can say, for example "my mind is not a digital computer!" and we'd be right, of course......however, it does appear to be performing the same functions using the same principles to the same effect. It's just our experience, and our observation, that our "mind" is a more capable (in some ways, not all) implementation of that type of system. That a thought is not something generated, but that it is actually the physical thing, the pieces of physical stuff - same as it would be in any computational system.

That every indicator we have says human mind is brain, brain is human mind - and that no indicator says otherwise is strong evidence of that statement, and since physical monism poses -absolutely no challenge- to such a statement, and in fact provides a framework in which the statement is sensible and the mechanics can be actualized is, to me, strong evidence that there isn't some extraneous and hidden variable somewhere beyond our grasp. That for all of the things that we -do not- know about mind, how it can be accounted for within the framework of physical monism is a non-issue. I think that the issue between us, in these conversations, has always been that you feel that I'm proposing experience as somehow a seperate thing made by mind (which, obviously, I call brain), but I'm not, I'm proposing that experience -is- mind (that I call brain), not a product, not an additional step - not some nebulous non-thing "made" by mind (which I call brain). Does that help you understand why I don't see monism as an issue?

Now, this is in no way offered as evidence in favor of my position, merely as an exercise in craft.....account for mind otherwise. Lets say it's not a bunch of physical stuff, or that it's physical stuff -plus-. How might we accomplish mind without physical stuff, or what stuff isn't physical stuff - and what does that stuff do, in our minds....but also, how does it interact with the physical stuff? I offer this, again, not as a means of providing support for my position but as an effort to try and communicate the difficulties I see in proposing (as you essentially have) mind-body independence. How would we even go about demonstrating that, if it were true - what evidence could we point to? Whats means could this be accomplished by? We both desire a robust explanation for mind....what I'm asking, boiled down to simplicity, is this. Is your proposal even -capable- of generating such an explanation?