Submitted by Maxwellsdemon17 t3_xsrx5g in philosophy
Reply to comment by TMax01 in “The objective requires the subjective as a foil if it is to play the scientific role late nineteenth-century philosophers assigned to it, not to mention to become accessible through our perceptual apparatus in new kinds of mathematical and logical symbolism.” by Maxwellsdemon17
>And I think we can all appreciate how badly it would go if I presented my perspective as objective rather than subjective.
Exactly!
>When I can do so without confusing people who assume otherwise, I reject the notion that perceptions which are "subjective" aren't experiences. We remember experiencing dreams, but we never experience them, we only experience "remembering" them.
Do you reject subjective perception as experience, or not? Did you mean: "I reject the notion that perceptions which are 'subjective' are (necessarily) experiences"?
The wording is confusing.
If so, then how do we explain lucid dreaming, where the dreamer has the experience of influencing their dreams as they happen?
Regardless, the framework through which we might categorize phenomena as objective or subjective is always derived from some metaphysical theory or assumption about our subjective experiences--such as those in your analysis of dreaming.
We distinguish hallucination from reality only by comparing various subjective experiences, from multiple perspectives, and then we use our theories and assumptions about such experiences (explicitly or implicitly) to reconstruct our own version of what we "objectively" experienced.
I see a person in the woods, but upon closer inspection, I recognize that the person is a tree. I could conclude that the person turned into a tree. Or, I could conclude that my previous perception was confused, but based on other subjective perspectives, I am now confident that I was always looking at a tree--whereby the possibility remains that further inspection might reveal that I was actually looking at a person in a rather convincing tree costume, and so on, without ever reaching definitive objective reality.
Objectivity, then, can only ever be surreal in that it provides a functional but ultimately tentative concept for how we process the subjective perspectives that are the only real experiences that we can have.
Descartes's mistake, likewise, is attributing to his subjective doubt an objective subject, "I", upon which he builds his positive arguments; whereas, he is only entitled to the doubt itself, NOT the doubter.
All experience is of consciousness. The hard problem of consciousness is not explaining how consciousness emerges from what lacks consciousness. The hard problem of consciousness is explaining why anything ever lacks consciousness.
One need not be vexed by brains in jars when we understand that everything is mind.
>Do you reject subjective perception as experience, or not?
Categorically? Of course not. Most subjective perceptions are based on objective stimuli, and are actually experiences. But this does not mean that everything someone imagines or falsely believes happened to them is something they actually experienced:
>>I reject the notion that perceptions which are "subjective" aren't experiences.
Those are scare quotes, identifying a particularly facetious use of the term "subjective" to suggest that experiences flagged with it are just as valid as experiences which are not, and simply referred to as "experiences" or the even more dangerous phrase "objective experiences".
>The wording is confusing.
The issue is confusing. The wording can be adequately understood by looking at the entire context rather than seizing on a single instance of syntax. But given the nature of the subject, there will always be instances of confusing wording.
>If so, then how do we explain lucid dreaming, where the dreamer has the experience of influencing their dreams as they happen?
They have the perception, the belief that they experienced that, just as everyone does regardless of the content of the dream. They do not qualify as "experiences" any more than a false memory does. They are, in fact, that very thing, except they arise from different neurocognitive mechanisms and therefor have differing characteristics. I have had lucid dreams, and in a conversation in a general context I have no trouble saying "I experience lucid dreaming", but the current context demands more exacting terminology, so I would insist that dreams are not experiences, and would say that experiencing dreaming isn't quite the same as experiencing a dream.
>the framework through which we might categorize phenomena as objective or subjective is always derived from some metaphysical theory
Your metaphysical theory may run aground in this area, but mine does not, that's all I'm saying. Your assumption of "or" is physically inaccurate, so I have no trouble accepting that it is metaphysically inaccurate as well.
>We distinguish hallucination from reality
Your proclamations about such things become careless and ambiguous when you are not careful to identify just who this "we" is. From the remainder of the paragraph, I can only surmise you mean a single person somehow subjectively determining whether their personal sense perceptions are hallucinatory. This is a practical and theoretical impossibility, a misrepresentation of what the word "hallucination" refers to. One can suspect that one's perceptions are true or false, but one cannot determine whether it is so.
>Objectivity, then, can only ever be surreal
When one is standing alone in the woods, it can easily feel that way. You're basically ignoring all the evidence of objectivity outside of such personal experiences. Yet, the feeling of "surrealness" is objectively occurring as a brain state of undefined (and perhaps undefined, even ineffable) character.
>Descartes's mistake, likewise, is attributing to his subjective doubt an objective subject, "I",
A necessity cannot be a mistake, however inconvenient it is to your reasoning. The doubt is as objective and subjective as the "I", in the case of Descartes' very accurate (indeed, unassailable) reasoning. As I've already explained, the existence (and therefor the distinction) of "objective' or 'subjective' character doesn't enter into it until one gets passed the dubito and attempt to reason further, which is the process defined as the Cartesian Circle. In order to proceed with his reasoning, Descartes relied on the otherwise inexplicable (and presumably prior) existence of a rational (objective rather than reasoning) universe, which he could explain with no other terms than a benevolent deity's gift. Neopostmodernists silently substitute metaphysical transcendence of mathematics (rationality, or logic, in this context) for God and then backtrack to proclaim Descartes' to have erred, while preserving their own "I" free of the necessary metaphysical doubt (either transfering it to everything outside their consciousness, or pretending to deny the existence of their own agency as proven by their ability to reason at all.) I prefer a more cognizant and comprehensive approach, of using the intrinsic reasoning of language already demonstrated by cogito ergo sum, and foregoing the purposeful yet meaningless ignorance of the empirical evidence that there is an objective world, regardless of why or how it came to be. Descartes had faith in God, you have faith in Logic, and I have faith in reasoning and language.
>All experience is of consciousness
All experience is of perceptions by consciousness. The perceptions must still be explained in order to understand what the consciousness is, and accurately interpret the perceptions, including determining, as best we are able, which are experiences and which are dreams, delusions, or hallucinations.
>The hard problem of consciousness is explaining why anything ever lacks consciousness.
This is an erroneous perspective on what is meant by the hard problem of consciousness. It is not an engineering challenge or a scientific puzzle which can be overcome with explanations or theories. It is simply the ineffable distinction between an experience, and the experience of experiencing that experience.
>One need not be vexed by brains in jars when we understand that everything is mind.
You cannot overcome the metaphysical uncertainty of the brain in a jar conundrum by relying on epistemic uncertainty about what "mind" is. To say that "everything is mind" is simply declaring that the word is meaningless by invoking a false tautology.
Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.
> Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.
Thank you for your time as well. It always helps to share our perspectives in good faith.
> The issue is confusing. The wording can be adequately understood by looking at the entire context rather than seizing on a single instance of syntax. But given the nature of the subject, there will always be instances of confusing wording.
I agree completely. You noted concern about confusion, so I assumed you meant the non-categorical version, but sought clarification to be sure.
Likewise, we often use redundant phrases to clarify nuances or potentially confused concepts.
> Most subjective perceptions are based on objective stimuli, and are actually experiences. But this does not mean that everything someone imagines or falsely believes happened to them is something they actually experienced
We differ on the meaning of experience:
Your position is that experiences are only those subjective perspectives that are validated based on your conjecture of objectivity.
My position is that any conjecture of objectivity only ever tentatively postulates a network of subjective perspectives within a metaphysical framework.
If objectivity does not necessarily follow from the collection and comparison of various subjective perspectives, then we should not reject any perspective as experience based on that which we only tentatively hold.
> Your proclamations about such things become careless and ambiguous when you are not careful to identify just who this "we" is. From the remainder of the paragraph, I can only surmise you mean a single person somehow subjectively determining whether their personal sense perceptions are hallucinatory. This is a practical and theoretical impossibility, a misrepresentation of what the word "hallucination" refers to. One can suspect that one's perceptions are true or false, but one cannot determine whether it is so.
The ambiguity is careful. As you say, the single person cannot determine whether one's perceptions are objectively valid. Rather, WE rely on "other minds" to collect and compare various perspectives. Since we only ever perceive these "other minds" from within our own subjective perspective, however, we rely on our own metaphysical theories/assumptions about other minds to verify their "objectivity".
Confused and mistaken perspectives are still experienced--thankfully, because that's all we ever experience. To reject any such experiences based on a tentatively held conjecture nested within our own metaphysical theories about other minds, which themselves defy objective analysis, is to ignore experience in favour of conjecture.
We likely agree on the fuzzy nature of distinguishing between subjective and objective in various contexts, but we each emphasize one to dismiss (in some sense) the other.
You maintain that having purported to achieve objective validation through a collaborative process, we can go back and dismiss subjective perspectives that conflict with our agreed "objective" reality--something like Descartes's returning from perceiving God's perfection, and thereby rejecting the Evil Genius doubt.
But your conjecture of objectivity is, by definition, tentative.
I might conclude that the tree is really a person. And I might query if this person perceives another object as a tree or a person. But I can never be sure the first object is a person, so I cannot be sure about the new tree/person simply because the person I thought was a tree agrees with me.
Eventually, we might conclude that our concept of tree and person are themselves confused metaphors. Maybe a tree is a person--in some sense. Maybe it's all the same substance. Then we don't have to explain the emergence of consciousness--not to avoid a problem that requires solution, but--because there is no experience of an absence of consciousness.
> All experience is of perceptions by consciousness.
If consciousness is the experience of experiencing, then how is experience by consciousness not experience of consciousness?
Are we not experiencing the experience of experiencing experience?
Doubt exists necessarily, self-evidently--I have faith in nothing else.
Our language and our specific perspective, however, present confused notions that fragment our experience in ways (like subject/object) that are (in a given context) useful to us--and some which are less useful--but which always represent a different mode of the same substance--the unity of which, explains how we are able to agree on a conjecture of "objectivity" without "objective experience"--the latter you rightly reject.
I can make sense of querying your queries, not because we've exchanged perspectives through some objective intermediary--facilitated by some epistemic hand-shake of objectivity--but because your mind and my mind are different perspectives within the same mind. Our disagreements are similar to those with our previous selves: useful in their differences, but only possible by certain continuity.
Introducing new substances and discreet minds insulted from each other by mindless matter only compounds the confusion.
Postulating the existence of anything that lacks consciousness is extraneous; whereas perspective per se, confused as it must be, cannot be denied. Therefore, the burden of proof remains with those who would introduce such substances and discreet minds--of which, I am quite literally unaware.
>Likewise, we often use redundant phrases to clarify nuances or potentially confused concepts.
My point was that this is not such an instance. I had hoped that was obvious, both from context and the fact I explained this issue previously. The phrase "subjective experience" (or, alternately, "subjective perceptions") does not "clarify nuance" or reduce confusion, it breeds confusion or hides assumptions, possibly on purpose.
>Your position is that experiences are only those subjective perspectives that are validated based on your conjecture of objectivity.
You are incorrect. My position is that only perceptions which are caused by the same external objective occurences as the internal perceptions of those occurances are actually "experiences". To clarify the nuance: only things that actually happened are experienced. This analysis is not based on whether it can be proved the experience actually happened to anyone else's satisfaction, but it is independent of how certain the person who believes they are/were accurately perceiving events is that they experience those events. It leaves all experiences (indeed, all perceptions) metaphysically uncertain, but such is life. Mankind invents philosophy to explore such quandaries, philosophy did not invent mankind to prove a point.
A solipsistic view might rely on only a "conjecture of objectivity", but a sane perspective cannot, not even in the guise of a philosophical premise. To reduce confusion: dreams, false memories, hallucinations, and (most controversially, given the nature of the subject) NDE are not "experiences", they are perceptions of occurances which didn't factually occur: false experiences. Again, I understand why this is an unsatisfactory conjecture for idealists, but that their demands for absolute certainty or metaphysically transcendent logic are unreasonable and impossible to satisfy is not something that I can control.
>My position is that any conjecture of objectivity only ever tentatively postulates a network of subjective perspectives within a metaphysical framework.
If you were the only consciousness in the universe, that would be your only option. To cling to it as a necessary assumption when you are just one person among billions, many of which existed long before you did, is solipsism, though.
>If objectivity does not necessarily follow from the collection and comparison of various subjective perspectives, then we should not reject any perspective as experience based on that which we only tentatively hold.
Objectivity definitely cannot follow from only one person's collection and mental comparison of their own subjective perspectives. And, indeed, we cannot prima facie reject any perception as experience, at all. But to say that the existence of objective perceptions and experiences and also their distinction from private delusions of having experienced things which never happened is 'tentative' leaves only two comprehensible positions: solipsism or insanity.
>But your conjecture of objectivity is, by definition, tentative.
All conjectures are by definition tentative (presumptuous), this can be (logically) assumed. Based on that, logic (computational cognition) becomes, from that point on, useless, as it relies on further assumptions which are also tentative since they are conjectures which follow from more fundamental assumptions, each becoming more tentative from the previous. Reason (non-computational cognition, relying on presumptions rather than assumptions, and utilizing comparison of qualia rather than calculation of quantities) remains more than adequate, however; each conjecture becomes more reliable rather than more tentative, because the process is a pile of comparisons rather than a chain of logic. But that is a slight digression from your point.
To address what I must surmise is your point in mentioning the tentative character of (all, or just this one you imagine, inaccurately, I have made about objectivity) conjectures: just because all conjectures are tentative does not mean that they are all equally tentative. So simply observing my conjecture is tentative neither requires it be unreliable nor suggests that it is untrue.
>And I might query if this person perceives another object as a tree or a person. But I can never be sure the first object is a person, so I cannot be sure about the new tree/person simply because the person I thought was a tree agrees with me.
As far as I can tell, you have reiterated my point, but rejected what I presumed was your position. You can never be sure if the "new tree" is even a tree, if you are already hallucinating that a tree is speaking to you. Did you actually experience the tree/person speaking? Of course you didn't, if it is a tree, or perhaps even if it is a person. Can you, alone and by yourself, through any mental effort of either reasoning or logic, know with more than tentative certainty that anyone is speaking, that you are not simply imagining that other people, indeed your own body, or time and space, even exist? No, you cannot. Solipsism (indistinguishable except by abstract declaration from 'the brain in a jar conundrum') is undefeatable because it is unfalsifiable. But from a practical perspective, it is also indistinguishable (by the solipsist) from insanity. Luckily enough, other people don't have such a difficult time telling the difference between a philosophical premise and a mental disorder. Usually.
>postulating the existence of anything that lacks consciousness is extraneous;
Only if you first postulate, not just without evidence but contrary to all available evidence (and there is, despite denials by solipsists/idealists/panpsychists, a LOT of evidence) that your consciousness is independent of the body from which it emerges. Otherwise, postulating the existence of things which lack consciousness isn't necessary, one can directly observe an unlimited number of them.
>whereas perspective per se, confused as it must be, cannot be denied.
Perspectives cannot be denied. Their accuracy can be. Disappointing as it must be, your philosophical perspective is only coherent if it is solipsistic. Otherwise, it is simply an incoherent hypothesis which fails to be rigorously philosophical. Or perhaps it is merely insanity. Do you actually believe paperclips are conscious? Are the pixels on the screen you are looking at conscious? Are the letters those pixels form conscious? Are the photons emitted by those pixels to present those letters to your eyes conscious? Are your eyes conscious independently of your own consciousness? (You may recognize this as the "combination problem", perhaps in inverse form, which everyone but panpsychists recognizes wrecks panpsychism.)
Solipsism, incoherence, or insanity. Those are your only choices, if you believe your philosophy is a serious perspective. Please forgive me for being so blunt.
Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.
>To clarify the nuance: only things that actually happened are experienced.
Then how do we explain the double slit experiment, where we experience observing the interference pattern as if what might have occurred--but we understand not to have occurred--causes the observed experience as if it had happened?
Further, when we observe which slit the particle does travel through, then the interference pattern disappears--hence, the measurement problem of quantum mechanics.
The implication being, observation causes change in the observed.
It's something like General Relativity, where mass bends space-time: observation shapes the observed because they are linked across some (meta)physical substrate--call it The Universe, The Quantum Potential, The Collective Soul, God... whatever metaphor works for you, it is mind itself.
Except, on the quantum level we abandon many of our physical and metaphysical presumptions and assumptions about causation itself.
We can no longer maintain that our experiences are limited to what actually happened, even within the rigorously empirical realm of science, never mind the less abstract realm of metaphysics upon which science must build.
>Objectivity definitely cannot follow from only one person's collection and mental comparison of their own subjective perspectives. And, indeed, we cannot prima facie reject any perception as experience, at all. But to say that the existence of objective perceptions and experiences and also their distinction from private delusions of having experienced things which never happened is 'tentative' leaves only two comprehensible positions: solipsism or insanity.
If we rely on other minds to establish objectivity, but we cannot ourselves establish the objectivity of our own experience of other minds, then objectivity is tentative.
My own sanity is not something I'm prepared to argue--nor is anyone. Sanity is a subjective designation of (limited use, but great misuse) made, as with that of objectivity, tentatively within a collection of perspectives.
>All conjectures are by definition tentative (presumptuous), this can be (logically) assumed. Based on that, logic (computational cognition) becomes, from that point on, useless, as it relies on further assumptions which are also tentative since they are conjectures which follow from more fundamental assumptions, each becoming more tentative from the previous.
But here we contemplate objectivity itself, not just any conjecture.
If objectivity merely exists as conjecture within the collection of perspectives we attribute to other minds, which we must experience from within our own subjective perspective, that is not reason to deny the status of experience to those perspectives which might disagree with such conjecture, because the perspective happened regardless of purportedly external stimulus.
The external stimulus is the unnecessary bit--unless we presupposed it.
>just because all conjectures are tentative does not mean that they are all equally tentative. So simply observing my conjecture is tentative neither requires it be unreliable nor suggests that it is untrue.
Hallucinations are experiences, even if they are not shared. Our task is to place those experiences along with our other experiences within our metaphysical framework to constantly puzzle out how they ALL fit together, with some given more weight than others depending on the context considered.
But if we reject as experiences the perspectives that fail to conform to our tentative notions of objectivity, then we will fail to recognize experiences that falsify our existing paradigm.
>Solipsism (indistinguishable except by abstract declaration from 'the brain in a jar conundrum') is undefeatable because it is unfalsifiable.
Metaphysics, however, is not bound by falsifiability--we should not abstract from questions just because we cannot test them with this specific method, which defines and therefore limits science, not metaphysics.
That's what "meta" means: left-over. Here, we examine what science cannot, so we can ground our science and other understanding on pillars of well-examined doubt, beyond other limited methods.
>Only if you first postulate, not just without evidence but contrary to all available evidence (and there is, despite denials by solipsists/idealists/panpsychists, a LOT of evidence) that your consciousness is independent of the body from which it emerges. Otherwise, postulating the existence of things which lack consciousness isn't necessary, one can directly observe an unlimited number of them.
We only have the experience of consciously experiencing something else "losing" consciousness, as we experience ourselves gaining and losing consciousness.
Just because our own consciousness and that we recognize in others ebbs and flows and changes mode, does not suppose that consciousness itself is absent anywhere.
Again, we cannot have an experience of lacking consciousness. That is beyond falsifiable. It is inconceivable.
>Disappointing as it must be, your philosophical perspective is only coherent if it is solipsistic. Otherwise, it is simply an incoherent hypothesis which fails to be rigorously philosophical. Or perhaps it is merely insanity. Do you actually believe paperclips are conscious? Are the pixels on the screen you are looking at conscious? Are the letters those pixels form conscious? Are the photons emitted by those pixels to present those letters to your eyes conscious? Are your eyes conscious independently of your own consciousness? (You may recognize this as the "combination problem", perhaps in inverse form, which everyone but panpsychists recognizes wrecks panpsychism.)
The combination problem, insofar as it is a problem, is largely a problem of combination itself, not just within interpretations of panpsychism. William James originally suggested there are no composite objects whatsoever. Is that the position that you take?
The problem arises from the illusion of fragmentation itself.
Where do the foothills end and the mountain begin? Nowhere. Mountains and foothills are metaphors we use to represent topographical relationships by postulating objects that are a function of our own perspective rather than some objective demarcation.
We choose ontological metaphors that fit our own perspective and the functional context at hand, much as we might choose to distinguish our current self from past selves, even though there is no clear demarcation of one self from the next, and in other ways we understand all our selves to be one person.
When we further remove the subject itself--because we can doubt the doubter but not the doubt--then we no longer have the subject-summing problem.
Much like the horizon is an artifact of our perspective--there is no such demarcation of the ground and sky, except as a function of our metaphors for the same--the subject is an artifact of our perspective.
Therefore, cosmopanpsychism does not suffer the combination problem.
When we choose to look for particles, then we see particles. When we choose to look for waves, then we see waves.
From our mundane perspective, we are discreet indivisible individuals, but when we look closer we see ourselves as constituted of many parts, and even particles, which observed in certain contexts display behaviour that we can recognize as consciousness--hence why we say electrons want to remain in stable orbits, even if the electron itself might otherwise be described as a probability matrix rather than a single object in space-time.
We fail to understand a certain mode of consciousness as consciousness the way we fail to see beyond the horizon. But if we travel beyond this horizon, we will not fall out of existence or discover a lack of consciousness--rather, we will discover new territory, new consciousness.
When I first learned about panpsychism, it was but a tiny paragraph in the textbook--barely a footnote. We were encouraged to discard the theory as nonsense, just as you have.
Over time, however, our tentative models of objectivity have given way, reluctantly, to this increasingly powerful paradigm.
The orthodoxy called Copernicus and Galileo insane, because they could not make sense of their paradigm shifting models.
Likewise, even Einstein rejected quantum mechanics, because, "God does not play dice with the universe." Rather, Einstein said, "I believe in Spinoza's God."
Turns out, based on our current understanding of quantum mechanics, that Spinoza's God plays dice with the universe.
Calling me insane is an ad hominem attack, which only betrays a lack of argument on your part.
As yet, we cannot decidedly doubt panpsychism--perhaps because it is an accurate model of the cosmos--and so mindless matter is not necessary. Your failure to take seriously this possibility only renders your metaphysics less serious for being unduly limited.
The hard problem of consciousness only arises when we try to explain the existence of mindless matter, which we can never experience.
Panpsychism avoids this problem by not postulating this unnecessary mindless matter.
If the strongest argument against panpsychism is that we cannot disprove it, then this seems like a good reason to at least include this metaphysical paradigm as one lens (of many) through which to examine our cosmos.
>Then how do we explain the double slit experiment,
Question: why do panpsychists always want to flip from a philosophical consideration of consciousness that admits no existence of anything objective except their own mind to the conundrum of wave-partice duality which necessarily presupposes the existence of all of the objective apparatus that demonstrations of quantum physics requires, as soon as their philosophical hypothesis is shown to be incoherent? Answer: because their philosophical hypothesis is incoherent.
>as if what might have occurred--but we understand not to have occurred-
Because the reliance of your description on "as if" and the limits of our understanding reinforces rather than refutes my position, that's why. If you took your own position seriously, there would be no need to refer to the double slit experiment, it would simply be a mundane an unsurprising result that whatever we wish to be is what happens, even when it needs to reverse chronology and change what happened, in order to make what is match our desires. But your position cannot be taken seriously in that way, instead it is incoherent, because this phenomena can only be demonstrated by the double slit experiment, and panpsychism has no cogent explanation for why that is the only circumstance that conforms to this expectation of yours that objectivity is subjective.
Realists don't need to explain quantum weirdness, we need merely annotate it as weird, and not currently explained. But fantasists can't explain why everything else except carefully and rigorously defined demonstrations like the double slit experiment doesn't exhibit the same kind of weirdness. That alone is not an insurmountable task: if an idealist worldview could coherently describe how, when, and why quantum decoherence results reliably (very reliably) in the deterministic objective behavior of non-quantum systems, that would be interesting and informative. But that doesn't seem likely, since idealist philosophies such as panpsychism reject the notion any such description is necessary, and are incompatible with scientific results because science is realist rather than anti-realist.
>The implication being, observation causes change in the observed.
Your implication is simple-minded and mistaken. For the purposes of physical experiments (including quantum mechanics) "observation" is interaction with any other system, not limited in any way to conscious perception. The double slit demonstration carefully excludes all other interactions in order to make the effect obvious, but all it proves is that quantum weirdness (including the measurement problem, heisenberg's uncertainty principle, wave-particle duality, and other related but not necessarily identical artifacts) is an objective phenonemon, independent of any subjective "belief system" of the scientist performing the empirical experiment or philosopher proclaiming its implications, despite being surprising based on intuitions honed by classical objective phenomena.
Since the basic premise of panpsychism is that mind is more fundamental than matter, quantum physics doesn't actually support your premise any more than classical physics does. It just opens the door to epistemic and metaphysical confusion, which fantasists can then take advantage of to pretend their hypothesis is coherent.
>Except, on the quantum level we abandon many of our physical and metaphysical presumptions and assumptions about causation itself.
LOL. Nobody abandoned any assumptions, we are simply forced to do without certain familiar prevarication and posturing. Since the quantum world still conforms to an extreme degree with mathematical predictability (it simply does so probabalistically rather than deterministically) causation itself still favors the realist side rather than the fantasist side, despite the adjustment that must be made in understanding what causation is. I've developed a philosophy which does so adequately, without the need to resort to anti-realism.
>Again, we cannot have an experience of lacking consciousness. > Hallucinations are experiences, even if they are not shared. >But here we contemplate objectivity itself, not just any conjecture.
Your declarations lead to confused rhetoric and pointless insistences, so I reject your semantics and instead attempt to clarify discussions of very difficult topics by using better ideas about the proper usage of these words. "Experience" excludes false perceptions such as dreams and hallucinations. "Objectivity" does not exclude subjectivity. These aren't perfect allowances; the nature of epistemology and ontology ensure that no terminology can be perfect. But mine is more practical than yours, more consistent and productive. Yours simply revels in being mired in ignorance so that you can maintain a fantasist's outlook.
>We were encouraged to discard the theory as nonsense, just as you have.
I have read extensively on it. My dismissal is not based on a mere paragraph, but grows ever more certain with every paragraph I read about it. My philosophy actually explains the underlying problem (related to the connection, necessarily but generally inconsequentially ignored by scientific realism, between self-determination, consciousness, and the nature of teleologies, causation) that fantasists believe justifies panpsychism, but without all the fantasizing panpsychism requires. And the fact that even after all that anti-realist effort, panpsychism still doesn't provide a coherent explanation seems, to me, to bring the matter to a conclusion. No, I cannot disprove idealism, but that's okay, because I don't need to, I only need to recognize why it can't be disproven.
Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.
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