THE TRUE NATURE OF REALITY (THIS IS IT!)

[size=200]The True Nature Of Reality[/size] [size=200](This Is It! To Disagree With This Description Of The Real World Is To Be DEAD WRONG!)[/size]

Most people, until they learn to think philosophically, are naive realists.

Naive Realism is the concept that what one perceives is actual objective reality:

“Naive realism is a common sense theory of perception. Most people, until they start reflecting philosophically, are naive realists.The most common theory of perception is naive realism in which people believe that what they perceive is things in themselves (interjection: that is, that what one perceives is the thing itself). Children develop this theory as a working hypothesis of how to deal with the world. Many people who have not studied biology carry this theory into adult life and regard their perception to be the world itself rather than a (interjection: virtual reality) pattern that overlays the form of the world.”

(Wikipedia, Naive Realism, Philosophy Of Perception, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naive_realism)

One can argue that the nature of the world entails the existence of not just one but two layers to reality:

b The Conscious Virtual Reality [/b](Consciousness itself as a virtual or simulated reality distinct from the real or external world)

b The External Zombie World[/b] (The external world believed to exist behind the existence of all consciousness----with consciousness believed to more or less accurately mimic the appearance and behavior of the external world)

(Fig. 1a) (Black and White) Zombie train as it is believed to exist in the external world beyond the existence of consciousness.

(Fig. 1b) b The same train as it appears to the visual experience of a conscious being observing the zombie world[/b]

Of the two realities, the existence of one is known due to the fact that it is experienced: the existence of the other is incapable of being experienced, and is known only through appeals to common sense, intuition, a psychological rather than empirical notion of likelihood or probability—and a secular version of faith.

b[/b] [b]Psychological likelihood and probability is distinct from empirical likelihood and probability, although these are often confused within philosophical debate.

Psychological probability and likelihood is derived from a powerfully suggestive conviction of a “greater reason to believe” a particular theory or hypothesis, despite the fact that the theory or hypothesis cannot be empirically proven through the use of sensory perception and/or internal cognitive, emotional, or mental state. The less true a hypothesis feels or sounds to the listener, the less (psychologically applied) the probability or likelihood of the objective truth of the hypothesis.

Empirical probability and likelihood is derived from the observation of physical behavior weighed against predicted probability given known physical laws, with the relevant probability tested through scientifically controlled experiment or observation of natural behavior beyond the laboratory.[/b]

b[/b] Secular faith, as (inadvertently) defined by astronomer Ned Wright, is the twin sister of theistic faith, and it is commonplace within godless theories concerning the origin of the universe, life, and the nature of reality. This faith is necessary, given the limitations of human consciousness and subjective experience. However, when accused of possessing ˜faith" in the objective truth of their explanations, certain atheistic philosophers and theorists mistakenly deny that many of their beliefs concerning the nature of the world requires faith. To illustrate this, one need only surmise that Wright’s definition of religious ˜faith" applies, upon further reasoning, even to godless explanations for the nature of the world.

“Most religious beliefs are matters of faith: a belief held in the absence of evidence (secular faith) or even despite contrary evidence (typical religious faith).”

(Wright, Ned: Science Is Based On Experience(Cosmology And Religion), astro.ucla.edu/`wright/cosmo-religion.html

A. The Zombie World

[b]The Zombie World is the external world of materialism, foundationalism, and realism, believed to exist independent of the existence of consciousness. It cannot be experienced, and as such is beyond empirical knowledge—yet it is strongly believed to exist due to a super-strong conviction that follows observation of a certain appearance to and behavior of the Conscious Virtual Reality of human (and presumably animal) conscious experience.

That is, the CVR consistently and predictably appears and behaves in such a way that it tends to generate an extremely powerful and almost unshakeable conviction that something exists beyond—and that this “beyond” somehow controls and maintains the existence and evolving nature of the CVR. This yields a persuasive inner suggestion that it is most likely (invoking a psychological rather than empirical likelihood) that the external world is somehow a facsimile represented by the CVR—rather than something whose appearance and behavior are wholly unrelated to the CVR.

Thus, the zombie world is characterized as a ˜real world" isomorphic counterpart to consciousness. Objects, places, and persons within the CVR possess a zombie counterpart, each sharing a dynamic isomorphism (in the sense that the behavior of the zombie world is mimicked in real-time by it’s conscious (virtual) twin).
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B. How Does One Deduce That The CVR Is Ontologically (Existentially) Distinct From The Zombie World?

The inference that the virtual reality of consciousness is something ontologically distinct from the external world (with such a realization defeating naive realism) follows from:

b The existence of sleep.[/b]

In sleep, there is a seeming discontinuity in conscious experience, with experience giving way to sudden or gradual unconsciousness, and unconsciousness giving way to sudden or gradually resumed waking consciousness. Unless one is a solipsist (who believes that only one’s own mind exists), there is good reason to believe that the universe does not cease to exist when one falls asleep (only to magically pop back into existence when one awakes).

b The existence of the effect of mind-altering drugs and brain/sensory pathology:[/b]

“A particularly interesting syndrome, left-sided neglect, which involves disturbance of higher-order perceptual functions, results from damage to the right parietal area (Mesulam, 1981). Patients with this syndrome neglect the left half of their body and the left side of space in front of them. When dressing, they fail to put the left hand into their shirt sleeve, or the left leg into their pants. When writing, they may only use the right side of the page, and when copying a figure, they may omit the part on the left side. Even when they shut their eyes and imagine a scene, say of a town square or of a particular room in their house, they describe what is to the right of the vantage point they have assumed, and they neglect the left side (Bisiach and Luzzatti, 1978).”

(Rosenhan, David L. and Seligman, Martin E. P: Abnormal Psychology, 2nd Edition, W.W. Norton & Company, New York 1986)

b The existence of death.[/b]

The ontological difference between the conscious virtual reality and the external zombie world is speculatively deduced from the conceivable subjective state of being dead, which (presumably) is indistinguishable from dreamless sleep. The concept of physical death is derived indirectly from the notion that the virtual reality of human experience is believed to fail the self-existence and eternity of the ZW (with the self-existence and eternity of the ZW due to the first law of thermodynamics). The proximity of the CVR to the physical brain aspect of the ZW also yields the inference and popular and pertinent belief that the CVR is somehow created by the electronic and chemical operations of the physical object known as the brain (psychophysicalism).

D. The Two Types of External World Beyond The Existence Of The Virtual Reality (Consciousness)

Regardless of whether or not one accepts psychophysicalism or is anti-psychophysicalist, the nature of reality can be reduced to two indistinguishable hypotheses:

b Objective Foundationalism[/b] (the view that there exists an objective reality behind conscious experience in the form of an external mind-independent world of some type):

Objective Foundationalism can decompose into two small and distinct hypothetical forms:

b[/b] Representational Foundationalism (in which conscious experience subjectively mimics the nature of the external zombie world)

b[/b] Non-Representational Foundationalism (in which the external world is wholly fails to resemble [yet somehow determines and controls] the nature of conscious experience, with such external world/conscious experience distinctions entailed within scenarios such as the Brain-In-A-Vat or Matrix Hypotheses)

b[/b] Non-Foundational Objectivism (a view entailing either a solipsistic or quasi-solipsistic world in which only one mind or a world whose inhabitants are virtual minds existing independent of physical embodiment exists).

If one denies the existence of b[/b] above (or in the spirit of philosophical fair play chooses to safely lock it away within the filing cabinet of logical and metaphysical possibility), then the choices between a description of the true nature of reality are at last reduced to: b[/b] and b[/b] above, marching beneath the banner of Objective Foundationalism.

Given this, a final question emerges: If the world exists beneath Objective Foundationalism, then which of the two types of Objective Foundationalism describe the world: b[/b] or b[/b]?

E. Facsimile Realism

If one denies solipsism (the view that only one’s own mind exists) and philosophically transcends naive realism, then one most likely subscribes to Representational Foundationalism in the form of Facsimile Realism. Facsimile Realism is the most popular view of the nature of reality (for those who have moved beyond naive realism). Facsimile Realism is the view that subjective experience models and represents an isomorphic ˜external world" counterpart that exists independent of the existence of consciousness.

Facsimile realism is unquestionably taken for granted as truth. Yet given that the external world cannot be experienced, this truth is certainly not an empirical truth, as empirically, reality only presents itself as a simulated reality (according to facsimile realism, this simulated reality is a simulation of the external world). Given this, how does one become unwaveringly certain of the existence of a reality imagined to exist as a facsimile of one’s personal experience, if that reality lies beyond the power of one’s ‘virtual reality’ perception?

An almost unshakeable conviction in the truth of facsimile realism is created by:

b[/b] The logical suspicion that the existence of the Conscious Virtual Reality (CVR) seems to depend upon something that exists external to it, with changes in one’s conscious experience explicable to isomorphic real-time changes within the zombie replica of one’s perceived world. This explanation, despite being groundless, nevertheless arrives in the train of a powerfully persuasive conviction, which naggingly suggests that facsimile realism is the most likely (invoking a psychological likelihood) nature of the real world.

b[/b] The highly complex, multifaceted, and constantly evolving appearance and behavior of human experience itself. The world consistently appears and behaves in such a way that it produces an incredibly powerful suggestion that there “must” exist a ˜real world" zombie counterpart to this type of CVR.

[b]However, proof of the existence of facsimile realism seems only psychological, in the formation of an unshakeable conviction and a sense of reason that nags the subject, continuously persuading the subject that an empirically-inaccessible state of affairs is nevertheless somehow a certain truth. For die-hard adherents of facsimile realism (compared to the number of naive realists), this super-strong sense of the undeniable truth of FR is believed to follow from an inscrutable revelatory epistemic link between the external world and and belief in the nature of the external world.

This magical epistemic link is an aspect of externalism, the view that one can have knowledge, or have a justified belief, despite not knowing (having “access” to) the evidence, or other circumstances, that make the belief justified. An anti-facsimile realist, however, can point out that there exists a deep epistemological problem with such externalism, and that there exists no mystical revelatory knowledge of an empirically-inaccessible reality that unquestionably defeats viable counterpossibilities to Facsimile Realism.

If one denies this revelatory knowledge, then one enables an a priori justification for hypotheses that propose a Non-Representational Foundationalism (external realities that are unrelated in appearance and behavior to conscious experience, such as the Brain-In-A-Vat, Evil Genius, or Matrix Hypotheses) that cannot be ruled out (due to the indistinguishableness between FR and anti-FR). Anti-FR hypotheses are not obviously true, but one can argue that neither are they necessarily false.
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“I don’t know whether the Creation Hypothesis is true. But I don’t know for certain that it is false. The hypothesis is clearly coherent, and I cannot conclusively rule it out.”

(Chalmers, David J: The Matrix As Metaphysics, consc.net/papers/matrix.html)

F. Arguments Against Facsimile Realism

An anti-facsimile realist can point out (at least) two epistemological limitations that cripple the notion of the undeniable truth of Facsimile Realism:

b[/b] [b]There exists no rational basis for the existence of a mystical revelatory or truth-indicating link between the true objective nature of the external world (being empirically-inaccessible) and a subject’s belief in the objective nature of that world. The supposed link is believed to exist in the form of a powerfully suggestive feeling of the "ring of truth" to certain beliefs, such that these beliefs can be confidently asserted to be necessarily true independent of experience.

If a hypothesis based upon the conceivable nature of the world (fighting for parking space against equally viable counterpossibilities yielding the same indistinguishable evidence) is accompanied by an extremely powerful internal suggestive conviction of the truth of the presenting hypothesis (and if the presenting hypothesis obeys the dictates of common sense and is not obviously false), one is tempted to mistakenly and precipitously apply a necessary truth to the hypothesis—due to the failure of all the other viable counterpossibilities to form within the subject the same “truth-indicating” persuasion as the accepted hypothesis.

The anti-facsimile realist can argue that such “revelatory knowledge” is actually only a potentially fallible persuasion that seems to "indicate" the true nature of reality to the mind of a conscious being, causing that being to believe that the universe has “spoken in one’s ear” concerning the ‘truth’ of an empirically-inaccessible belief—decisively defeating all other logical counterpossibilities (rendering them necessarily false).

As David Hume rightly states (which such statement applying to the very notion of this magical “truth-whispering” revelatory link):
[/b]
“We are got into fairy land, long ere we have reached the last steps of our theory;
and there we have no reason to trust our common methods of argument, or to think
that our usual analogies and probabilities have any authority. Our line is too short to
fathom such immense abysses.”

b[/b] The anti-facsimile realist can appeal to a skepticism of process reliabilism in order to defeat the logical necessity of Facsimile Realism:

“Some find reliabilism of justification objectionable because it entails externalism, which is the view that one can have knowledge, or have a justified belief, despite not knowing (having “access” to) the evidence, or other circumstances, that make the belief justified. Most reliabilists maintain that a belief can be justified, or can constitute knowledge, even if the believer does not know about or understand the process that makes the belief reliable.”

(Wikipedia, Reliabilism, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_reliabilism)

[b]Quite simply: if the physical brain is the sole arbiter of consciousness, then one can argue that beliefs are nothing more than the (cognitive rather than sensory or emotional) product of an electrochemically powered biological ˜computer" (the brain), such that belief becomes nothing more than potentially fallible output within the software of a physical machine, rather than an omniscient metaphysical revelator of empirically-inaccessible truth.

A skeptic of process reliabilism and externalism can make the following observations:
[/b]
b[/b] The cerebral cortex is the only aspect of the brain responsible for consciousness:

“The cerebrum, which is the only area of the brain responsible for consciousness, is the largest portion of the brain in humans. The outer layer of the cerebrum, called the cortex, is gray in color and contains cell bodies and short fibers. The cerebrum is divided into halves known as the right and left cerebral hemispheres. Each half contains four types of lobes: frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital. The cerebrum can be mapped according to the particular functions of each of the lobes. The particular sensation produced is the prerogative of the area of the brain that is stimulated, since the nerve impulse itself always has the same nature.”

(Mader, Slyvia S: Inquiry Into Life, Fourth Edition Wm.C.Brown Publishers, Dubuque, Iowa 1976,1979,1982,1985)

The parietal, temporal, and occipital lobes are believed to determine the existence of sensory experience and certain emotions, and to relay motor commands from the frontal lobe. The frontal lobe, then, is the primary seat of thought and belief–including the belief in the objective truth of facsimile realism(!)

b[/b] It does not matter that the function of the cerebral cortex does not occur in a vacuum (that is, the function of one area of the brain requires the functioning of all others, with each supplying electrical power to the other through neurotransmitter action): regardless of how the cerebral cortex is dependent upon it’s non-consciousness producing neural and biological neighbors (as well as the external environment)for it’s cellular maintenance and electrical function—when it comes to consciousness-production, any aspect of the organism that is notthe cerebral cortex (including the environment itself) ultimately functions indirectly as a “battery” that continually charges and supports the electronics within the cerebrum.

b[/b] A skeptic of process reliabilism, then, can argue that the belief in facsimile realism (as well as anti-facsimile realism, paying homage to the arguments of Thomas Reid against skepticism itself) exists fundamentally as an aspect of a virtual reality computed to exist in the form of a cognition created by the physical brain (if one accepts psychophysicalism).

b[/b] [b]Given this, a skeptic of process reliabilism and externalism can hold that if causes precede effects, then all the conscious experiences of a being (including the cognitive experience of belief in an external world that is a foundational replica of one’s conscious experiences) are only fallible mechanical outputs (in terms of the fallibility of their ability to “mimic” or “tell of” the nature of reality) of the psychophysical relations that describe the consciousness-producing ability of the physical brain.

This skepticism seems prima facie justified, holding that the brain is mechanized to create beliefs that are themselves mechanically (in terms of the neural correlates of such beliefs) linked to the brain’s sensory mechanisms, such that the sensory mechanisms within the cerebral cortex lie adjacent to, electrically powers, and in turn is powered by the frontal lobe mechanisms that produce the powerful self-persuading conviction that there exists a ˜real world" counterpart to the sensory virtual reality output of the brain.
[/b]
Question: If Facsimile Realism is true, is not the external world reflected ONLY in visual perception? Is not every other aspect of sensory perception unique ONLY to the existence of consciousness???

[b]The skeptic of externalism and process reliabilism (and facsimile realism) can argue that the very idea of the ˜real world" counterpart is not a magical revelatory epiphany into the going’s-on of the external world, but one of several (potentially fallible) mechanical effects produced within the brain’s presumably limited catalog of logical algorithms (detailing the possible nature of the world).

In defense of Facsimile Realism, however, one can argue that like Anti-Facsimile Realism, it cannot conclusively be ruled out, such that an anti-FR philosopher should not necessarily discard FR outright, but safely file it away within the cognitive filing cabinet of metaphysical and logical possibility, leaving the jury out when it comes to the question of it’s objective truth.[/b]

Conclusion: Examples Of Non-Representational Virtual Reality Consciousness And End Summary

In conclusion, for those who embrace Anti-Facsimile Realism (or for those who at the least find it a somewhat interesting if objectionable possibility), there exist several Non-Representational Foundationalist hypotheses (secular or theistic) to choose from–with certain non-representational hypotheses believed to actually exist and others posited as thought-experiments or objects of fiction.

G. Secular Non-Representational Foundationalism

b The Dream Hypothesis[/b]

[b]"Dreaming provides a springboard for those who question whether our own reality may be an illusion. The ability of the brain to trick itself into believing a neurally generated world is the “real world” means one variety of simulation is a common, even nightly event.

Dreaming silences those who claim a simulated reality requires far fetched scientific technology, since the only apparatus needed to construct a simulated reality is a human brain. And since human brains currently exist and consistently mimic our reality this also eliminates Occam’s Razor as a valid defense for “realists” who dismiss the simulation hypothesis. Although Occam’s Razor is not a natural law, many skeptics defer to Occam’s Razor as a means of avoiding the simulation hypothesis. However, since we regularly create simulated realities in the form of dreams that fool those dreaming, the simple explanation could be that we’re always being tricked by our brain or an outside mechanism. The existence of dreams must be accounted for when examining the equality requirement of Occam’s Razor."[/b]

(Wikipedia, The Dream Argument, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_argument)

b Descartes’ Evil Genius Hypothesis

(3) The Brain In A Vat Hypothesis

(4) The Matrix or Simulation Hypothesis[/b]

H. Religious Or Theistic Non-Representational Foundationalism

bThe Biblically Errant Matrix Hypothesis[/b]

While not espoused by Fundamentalist Christianity itself, the Biblically Errant Matrix Hypothesis (Yes, a “biblically errant” rather than a “biblically inerrant” ‘Matrix’ hypothesis—BEMH) effectively solves the epistemological problems for Christianity posed by modern scientific discovery, secular philosophy, and seeming biblical contradiction. For example, the truth of the Genesis Creation Account seems constantly threatened by the Big Bang Theory (in terms of the empirical evidence of the galactic redshift and uniform background microwave radiation) and biological evolution of species from a single cellular organism through trial-and-error natural selection (inferred from the fossil record, the philosophy of Charles Darwin, and the works of Gregor Mendel, Friedrich Mieshcer, Francis Crick, and James Watson). The mounting physical and scientific evidence compels greater reason to believe in Evolution than the "magical" creation of Adam and Eve entailed within the Book of Genesis.

[b]Fundamentalist Christianity and believers in Intelligent Design, however, need not waste time jousting with the secular skeptic in a battle to the philosophical death over the true nature and origin of the experienced world. The threat of the truth of a godless Big Bang and the biological evolution of ape-like creatures into human beings can be lanced off it’s horse through the invocation of the Matrix Hypothesis, entailing a world in which the Judeo-Christian God traps human minds (with the deceived minds existing, for example, after the crucifixion and ascension of Jesus Christ) within a ˜Matrix" beyond which exists (or before which existed) a world that verifies (or would have verified) the inerrancy of biblical scripture.

If BEMH is true, the Big Bang and biological evolutionary through the mechanism of natural selection never occurred—except within the minds of beings encapsuled within an ingenious Bible-disproving Matrix (within this 'Matrix", humans are confronted with piling virtual evidence of the Big Bang and natural selection). The Genesis Account, however, is objectively true, and God causes post-crucifixion humans (test subjects trapped within a God-contrived, faith-testing world-simulation) to perceive scientific evidence that disproves the biblical Genesis Account of the origin of the universe and man.

The BEMH is a theistic version of Descartes’ Evil Genius Hypothesis, and if true it is implemented by God in order to cull the “sheep from the goats”—harvesting those who have faith in the inerrancy of the Bible (despite lack of evidence) from those who do not ----with the faithful holding fast despite the continuous piling of the evidence of a real world science, woefully ignorant and/or skeptical of the fact that it exists only within a simulated reality unrelated to the true nature of the external world.

The BEMH is also a version of the Omphalos Hypothesis. See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphalos_(theology
[/b]
I. The Superchristian Matrix Hypothesis

[b]According to Superchristianity, every event within the universe is related directly or indirectly to God’s omniscience (God’s foreknowledge of past, present, and future), with God the "cartoonist" that controls and determines even human will and destiny (theological determinism). To this end, the Superchristian Matrix Hypothesis posits that the Judeo-Christian God is yet another variant of Descartes’ Evil Genius, creating multiple first-person conscious ‘virtual people-virtual world’ programs to function as re-enactments of the imaginary characters perceived (pre-universe) within the omniscient mind of God. The purpose for this re-enactment is for the psychological and moral evolution of the characters (corresponding to further omniscient views of the future) into psychological and moral extensions of the mind of Jesus Christ (given that Jesus Christ is a moral and psychological ubermensch whose mind, according to Superchristianity, God intends to use as a template that redefines the perceptions and mentality of any being whom God wishes to live forever).

The essential nature or ‘substance’ of the Superchristian Matrix/Simulation is purely phenomenal (mental), as a mind-independent physical reality does not exist. With reality purely subjective (with consciousnesses existing within separate dimensions from other consciousnesses, with God as the foundational subjective “wall” from which all other minds are controlled) rather than physical, the SC Matrix Hypothesis posits a purely phenomenal world made up of phenomenal “bytes” or “pixels” that collectively creates it’s own ˜physics"—causal laws of nature existing only in the form of intersubjective (mental-to-mental) causation within a manifold of quasi-Berkelian idealism that appears and behaves in the same way as a physcial world obeying physical laws.

Thus human beings within the Superchristian Matrix Hypothesis actually exist within a “virtual people-virtual world” aspect of simulated reality:[/b]

Virtual people

“In a virtual-people simulation, every inhabitant is a native of the simulated world. They do not have a ‘real’ body in the ‘outside’ reality. Rather, each is a fully simulated entity, possessing an appropriate level of consciousness that is implemented using the simulation’s own logic (i.e. using its own physics). As such, they could be downloaded from one simulation to another, or even archived and resurrected at a later date.”

(Wikipedia: Simulated Reality, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_reality)

Summary And Final Thoughts

At the end of the day, if an individual chooses to abandon naive realism as incoherent and counterintuitive (upon later introspective examination of the nature of one’s conscious experience), the only choices left for a description of the true nature of reality (beyond idealism) are Solipsism, Representational Foundationalism, and Non-Representational Foundationalism.

[b]Despite the matter of the fact that each yields indistinguishable evidence in terms of the appearance and behavior of the world, and each cannot conclusively rule the others out based upon what one knows or believes, it is a fact that humans tend to nevertheless find themselves persuaded that one hypothesis "possesses more of a ring of truth than the others, unfortunately, this persuasion tempts a belief in a revelatory magic that conveniently defeats all other viable counterpossibilities and “whispers” to the subject the “true nature” of an empirically-inaccessible reality.

This certain knowledge is believed to exist in the form of an exceptionally powerful conviction of the truth of a selected hypothesis (which in turn gives rise to a ˜rationality" that points the finger to suggest the concurrent ˜irrationality" of other counterpossibilities). Opponents can resist this magical epistemic externalism through the presentation of strong arguments against a mystical revelatory tie between belief and empirically-inaccessible objective reality, even going so far as to lay the logical cards on the table and express a skepticism of a psychophysically mechanized ability of the only consciousness-creating mechanism in the universe (the brain) to fabricate empirically-inaccessible revelatory knowledge, expressing criticism of the brain’s ability to produce certain knowledge of that which presumably exists beyond it’s mechanical capacity to perceive.

If these arguments go through, the True Nature of Reality can safely continue to (epistemically) hover listlessly between the cognitive netherworlds of Solipsism, Facsimile Realism, and Secular or Theistic Non-Representational Foundationalism.[/b]

END

Great read!

Question:

Would you compare this to the Uncertainty Principle?

Reply to Anthem:

Thank you.

To respond to your question: I suppose that in questioning the truth of facsimile realism, one might form a philosophical analog to the Uncertainty Principle (in terms of a “Metaphysical Uncertainty Principle” as a philosophical view that states that when it comes to the imperceptible world and the fact that it is empirically-inaccessible, conceivable aspects of that world are forever beyond certain knowledge). Analogous to this is the physical Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, in which it is believed impossible to measure both the position and momentum of a particle. There seem to be certain things that will forever be beyond the brain’s power to fathom, things whose existence can never be known. Do we invoke a “God of the gaps” (in terms of asserting “absolute truth” to counterhypotheses to facsimile realism) because of this? Not necessarily, but viable counterhypotheses to facsimile realism (like FR itself) cannot be ruled out.

My main point is that given that we cannot experience the external world, we have no empirical knowledge of it, so any “certain” statements concerning the world are obviously only psychological, in the sense of the brain creating a super-strong belief in the nature of the external world that might, for all we know, is objectively belied. Thus it is safe to leave the jury out when it comes to the choices Solipsism, Facsimile Realism, and Secular/Theistic Non-Representational Foundationalism.

Jay M. Brewer
superchristianity.com
blog.myspace.com/superchristianity

Amendment To Thread:

It is important to note that Non-Representational Foundationalism does not defeat or “disprove” science: rather, science exists within as it’s own “inner” continuum or exists as a subset of a larger manifold demonstrating the same laws, with the external reality simply being different from the world that we perceive. If (virtual) psychophysicalism is true, then like the Brain-In-A-Vat Skeptical Hypothesis, the brain simply exists with a “predetermined” set-up that allows for our perception of “this” world, with causal inputs to the neural system yielding the same virtual output.

Given this, an interesting question emerges: Is the brain capable of only yielding “our” world, regardless of it’s external world environment—or is it mechanized to be open-ended, able to form a facsimile of any environment?

Jay

woah, massive post, so i didn’t read it all [yet]. i have had many similar discussion before and it always comes down to subjective/objective reality. i think we could take humans out of the equation and the universe would still exist. moreover if we go down the evolutionary ladder then creatures become less able to ‘interpret’ reality, so what they see is what they get.

we humans don’t even see reality, we just see an image created in our minds. the eye receives light radiation and a 2D image of our world, which is then interpreted and hence subjective. however much of the interpretation is correct, it is only when we look at things we cannot formulate in our minds that we make mistakes.

i don’t get all these matrix ideas, you still need a reality which is controlling it. if a dream then what is dreaming it.

if two observers independently see the same thing, then by what is it not there?

as an experiment we may ask what reality can be made of outside of our experience. fundamentally all relities can only have the same infinity! thence we must ask if infinity can have more than one reality? indeed can there actually be anything that is not real [in some way]!!!

perhaps we may say that there cannot be a ‘real’ matrix only an imagined one ~ just to turn the argument on its head

Reply To Quetzalcoatl:

Good response. However, there are observations that are necessary in order to clarify things:

(1) Without making an appeal to solipsism, one can observe that the thought that if humans did not exist, the universe still does is something that cannot be known to be true through experience. We can only believe that this is so.

(2) Even a conception of the nature of experience as we go down the evolutionary ladder involves the notion that there are two layers to reality (or two realities) at work: (a) the external world (if it exists) and (b) conscious experience, which is a virtual reality of subjective experience. My argument is that we cannot know with certainty that (b) necessarily mimics (a). Our brains (if one accepts psychophysicalism, the common view that consciousness is caused by the physical brain and ceases to exist upon the destruction and dissolution of the physical brain) possess a neural correlate that creates a very powerful and virtually unshakeable belief that (b) must mimic (a), when objective reality, for all we know, might belie this notion.

As before, we can’t know that our perception of reality “correctly” mimics the external world. We can only form a super-strong belief that it does, with this belief possibly being wrong for all we can know. On the flip side, the belief might be correct. This is why in the first post above I leave “the true nature of reality” in terms of the relationship between consciousness and the external world as a choice between (1) Facsimile Realism (the notion that conscious experience represents or mimics the external world), (2) Non-Representational Foundationalism (the notion that the external world does not resemble in the least the perceptions of a conscious being), and (3) Solipsism (the notion that only one’s mind exists, other minds are an illusion, and the external world does not exist).

Regardless of the fact that there are two layers to reality, they are both real—which makes certain aspects of Descartes’ philosophy confusing. Even if human consciousness is a virtual reality (which I call: Nature’s ‘Matrix’, invoking a pseudo-atheistic term, as I am theist) it is still nevertheless “real” rather than an illusion. As David Chalmers notes in his paper: The Matrix As Metaphysics consc.net/papers/matrix.html the external world might, for all we know, be something altogether different from what we have always believed it to be. This does not mean that our experiences are not real, it is just that we experience a reality that exists within another reality that does not resemble our consciousness, yet nevertheless controls it (if Non-Representational Foundationalism is true).

For example:

Jay M. Brewer
blog.myspace.com/superchristianity

phenomenal_graffiti, hail [cool username and great thread btw]

we can observe that there are phenomenon outside of our existence. even if we were to ‘believe’ that phenomenon to be an illusion, than what is that illusion made of ~ we could say that reality is thence illusion?
similar applies to matrix theories, you are only offering up another subjective perspective! we are saying that one illusion is more of an illusion than another and is subject to it.

is it truer to say that it is a ‘relative’ virtual experience? the interpretation is based on external data. true we cannot say that the interpreted version is a direct mimic of the world although its purpose is to try to mimic it. the brain is set up as a ‘machine’ to receive input from the external world, which it does rather well. its flaw is in the interpretation, this does not mean that all interpreted information is false. if you switch a light on the brain tells you such and you can make an accurate deduction based on firm data.

personally i would not accept this, we can dissect the brain yet not find the ‘mind’ etc. secondly we may ask if infinity has the ultimate nature of mind [or is it ‘limited’?] and hence all things have such a quality. …another interesting debate perhaps.

is it a belief or rather an action? a transferral of energies and data supplants ‘belief’?

1. partly true.
2. mainly false; a conscious being is a product of the ‘external’ world. …but with the ability to interpret it when it is called into question e.g. shadows in the night, it is advantageous to be able to distinguish between real false impressions.
3. false. if only the mind exists where does it exist in?

speculation on a false premise? firstly we may ask; how can you have a reality within a reality? what is our basis for the meaning of the term ‘reality’? we may begin in the simplest of terms where it is; ‘what is there’. even at this level there are problems with duel realities e.g. what is not there ~ can we have something that is not there, even an illusion is there in some way. secondly how do we distinguish between what is real in one reality and what is real in another, both are according to some subjective, or to other objective. either way reality is either one or the other.
then we may ask; what is the whole? reality must be entire and everything thence belongs to it, sure we can potentially have different levels [questionable though], but all of them belong to ‘reality’ as entire …or to a given other that is the entire!

perhaps we can build reality as a set of concepts independent of human though. this is why i mentioned infinity, as it stabilises the whole thing giving us a concrete platform, it gives us a whole. there must be a whole right? everything else then are subdivision within the greater universality of reality.

of course we have not yet asked; is there any evidence for duel realities and a controlling matrix over a controlled sub-environment?

ps. i will attempt to answer huttons paradox later

Reply To Quetzalcoatl:

Once again, good post. Interesting replies.

However, a few friendly objections…

By your statement: “we can observe that there are phenomena outside of our existence…” Are you referring to b[/b]perceived objects that seem to be astronomically distant from our biological existence here upon Earth (distant stars, galaxies, quasars, etc?), b[/b] to phenomena beyond our universe…or b[/b] phenomena believed to exist beyond human perception within the “external” world?

If you are referring to b[/b], then I agree. If you are referring to b[/b] and even more importantly b[/b], then I must ask how we are able to observe such phenomena (independent pure and simple imagination)?

Reality would seem not to be an “illusion”, as it seems to exist (at least in the form of subjective experience). I wish to imply that consciousness is a subjective construct within a surrounding reality that is more foundational and permanent, not that it somehow “truly does not exist”. This is where a lot of people find themselves confused when studying Descartes’ philosophy concerning the difference between the “external world” and “perception”.

Well, given that other minds (probably—as a psychological probability) exist, then all virtual experiences are relative. However, your statement:“the interpretation is based on external data. true we cannot say that the interpreted version is a direct mimic of the world although its purpose is to try to mimic it. the brain is set up as a ‘machine’ to receive input from the external world, which it does rather well.” is an assumption that certainly is not derived from empirical knowledge, but an assumption that follows from and accompanies a super-strong conviction of it’s truth as opposed to it’s possibility,which is what my first post contends is the inherent problem with the belief: that our experience is “magically” a necessary facsimile of the external world. My point is that we only believe that it is (or only facsimile realists believe that it is), when the objective truth of the situation might, for all we can know, belie that popular and common belief.

I agree with you. I don’t really accept psychophysicalism myself (as I fancy myself to be a: theonomously deterministic superpanpsychist (definition only upon request) . However,when one finds oneself in Mexico, it’s best to know a little Spanish. I am a theist, however there are times within my posts that I sometimes choose to don the “atheist cap” in order to sympathize with the atheist and better understand his/her viewpoint (in order to best attack it with tongue placed firmly in cheek). Same goes with psychophysicalism.

Given that it is the most popular and common view of how consciousness comes to exist (indirectly inferred from the speculation of what happens to consciousness upon death: if the physical is eternal a la the 1st law of thermodynamics, and consciousness “ceases to exist” when a person dies, then the inductive inference follows that consciousness is not as eternal as the physical, and it’s continued existence depends upon the continued function of the physical brain)—it is important to wear the “psychophysicalist” cap when talking to another psychophysicalist, despite the fact that you’re wearing an anti-psychophysicalist beret underneath.

Or, the (neuronal) action, in psychophysicalism, creates the belief–which is the subjective “output” of the physical computation. Thus there is a duality to the “transferral of energies and data”, with one being neuronal and the other (it’s correlate) phenomenal or subjective. My point here is that belief is more directly and rationally tied to the empirical than the empirically-inaccessible, such that the belief in facsimile realism might actually be a fallible belief formed as a computational logic (from a choice of alternative hypotheses inherent within the same logic) from a liason between the cognitive and sensory mechanisms of the human brain.

Your response of (1) “partly true” probably follows from your statement concerning the “relativity” of virtual experience above. Agreeable.

Your response of (2) “mainly false” is debatable: true, the conscious being (presumably) is a product of the external world, but we cannot know that consciousness necessarily mimics the external world. Even the question of our survival cannot contest this possibility. Our experiences are ultimately ‘virtual’ experiences (supposedly possessing a ‘real world’ external counterpart or correlate within the zombie world). A wholly distinct outer reality, controlled by blind chance and inscrutable forces, God, or even higher-dimension dwelling humans (who created us as SIMS characters within their super-advanced world-simulating computers, as posited by Nick Bostrom) could in principle create a simulated world containing the dangers and adaptive neural responses of the ‘virtual people’ within that world. From our vantage point “within” the simulation, we can’t know that it is necessarily a matter of Facsimile Realism.

Your response of (3) “false” is debatable: I see no reason for a mind to exist as the only single entity in existence. As we surmise from the speculation of the truth of the 1st law of thermodynamics et. al…things can exist in a vacuum for little or no reason other than they simply happen to exist. In solipsism, the mind is a floating conscious universe.

A false premise? How can we know that the premise is necessarily false?

As for a “reality within a reality”, consciousness is believed to exist “within” a larger manifold of an objective foundational reality. Upon the death of the individual, consciousness is believed to cease to exist, with the external world remaining behind, resolute. This implies that one reality (conscious subjective experience) exists within another (the mind-independent foundationalism). Our basis for “reality” is experience. Beyond that, well, we have no epistemological power to make meaningful judgments of “reality” or to compare two or more realities.

The rest of your statement involves pure and uncut idealism, which is beyond the scope of my intellectual expertise (though idealism is fun if and when you’re in the mood for it). It (idealism) raises fundamentally existential questions to which one can reasonably deduce can never be answered.

Good stuff, keep it coming!

Jay M. Brewer
blog.myspace.com/superchristianity

hail phenomenal graffiti wow that just took 1 & 1/2 hours to think about and reply!

you are correct. as soon as i read this over i saw the problem. of course you are right that there is no phenomenon observable outside of of our existence. we may say that if the universe is cyclic then there would be although that would not be observable. infinity to me is a real ‘phenomenon’ for want of a better term, but that too is not observable.

agreed.

if you agree that as you say ‘Reality would seem not to be an “illusion”,’, then we may say that brains exist and hence minds do.

sure. for this to be 100% true, we would have to be 100% disconnected from that objective reality, and this i contend to be untrue even if partially so [and even then i would say to a far lesser degree]. i don’t think there is any magic just a partial connection with the observable universe to which we are both a part of and our consciousnessess are a construct of. in fact there is nothing about us that lies outside of existence.

my word! i hereby request definition.

interesting. i will post something on this matter at the bottom of this post ~ see what you think eh! i am a universalist, so theism comes into the equation in a major way.
i presume then that you consider the god/world duality [apparent] to be something like the matrix? i actually believe in a real and living creator god, where the universe is literally its body… continued below.

i use the term ‘mind’ rather than consciousness as mind can and must belong to infinity, consciousness occurs when mind is entwined with complex manifestations like brains.

why is it a subjective output? the neurons are like a load of batteries with plus and minus chemicals on the walls of the cells, input of data comes in and is calculated in a manner not that distant from the 0,1, aspect of computer processing. in each computation there is a 50-50 chance of getting a correct output at the very least. this is then backed up by other data in the brain correlating the info to that in the memory, this would add to the correctness to some degree.

for sure no. can it mimic something which is not originally of the external world? you see my point although partly false in that the interpretation can be sometimes untrue to its origins in data from that external world. perhaps we can say that consciousness itself mimics the world but elements of it in our perception and beliefs or memories sometimes do not.

i see. if a computer was made to be as intelligent as us would it know it anything existed outside of its programmed world. hmm it could deduce that it was made and that it belongs to somewhere. it could then build a number of models to which it may belong [like science does]. i see the problem that even if it had a means to detect its construction [as we do with particles in accelerators etc], that too could be falsified.

ok lets have a go at this; if we give that computer a false model of its world it would eventually work out that it is indeed false. it could say that there are many universals like balance [polarity, conservation of energy etc], the principle of orbits [atomic structures solar systems, spirals, the axis or centre of perception and its focal point etc] then that there are three eternals; infinity the infinitesimal and the quantum [of which it is physically composed of the latter]. if we told it that atoms were e.g. cubical then it would deduce that forces would erode these and hence there would only be spheres and orbits. eventually it could deduce most or all of science, and by studying itself it would know it is made of components [as opposed to being born like us] with electricity flowing through them and that they are made by something.

once it arrives at this point [curiously like humanity now], it could then theorise that it exists in a matrix world. however it would know that only its program can be falsified and that reality can only be made i the given manner.

i meant it to be conversely so ~ to qoute; ‘if only the mind exists where does it exist in?’ note ‘if’ so i was saying that i cannot conceive of a world in which only mind exists. …such as one such matrix supposition, that in our world only the mind exist and everything we perceive is a false reality ~ where a supposed matrix is the ‘actual’ reality. thus in conclusion i am saying that is not the case.

for sure, i was asking if it were.

yes, but science would say that consciousness is not a reality of its own i.e. that we are chemical robots, when we die those chemicals simply change into a state that cannot compute.

we may make models, firstly that are based on our experience but also that are valid relative to how a universe can work. the experience itself is a set of connections between things operating as a whole unit or one such model universe. we can though say that only one model can exist at once because it is tied to infinity and there can only be one of those.

here’s an idea of my universalist and theistic views. note that sometimes i don’t include the theist aspect.

The expansion of the universe is equally an evolution, the periodic table can be seen as an evolution of the elements ~ from the start of the big bang elements formed as the universe cooled.

Generally speaking evolution can be seen as a set of patterns [like trees of species etc] which like laws come before that which follows them/works by then/utilises them. in both cases we have to ask what makes the laws by which all things go by, and why is the universe so beautifully designed?

This doesn’t mean you have to have a creator god, i don’t even know how a god or anything else can make laws of the universe. however existence itself has/belongs to infinite intelligence which would be a faculty of the ultimate nature and being.

Something has to be that which shapes existence, i can draw no other conclusion that this shaping has to occur in the primary state before and after a given universe [outside of it]. this could simply be the workings of infinity, but surely that itself would be ‘god’ as i see it i.e. it would possess all that we are at the very least!

It then follows that all patterns and potential evolutions are cast before the singularity goes bang ~ hence evolution is gods workings.

up until now i have always said that ‘creation’ is an invalid concept or an impossible notion, because we don’t see any creation we only have evidence and observations of transformation of what is already there. i am now starting to see where this is flawed, creation would necessarily be external to existence as a baby is from its mother ~ once born. there is a strange state between the birth of a universe and the death of an old one [if it is cyclic], there must necessarily be an absence of physical existence otherwise the one would get tied up with the other in terms of time, dimension and the limited or conserved nature of energy etc. within this gap lies infinity and hence god, everything that went before i.e. in the previous incarnation of the universe, would be wrapped up in the emptiness and form the foetus of the next. within that space laws and principles are changed to form the ‘new model universe’, this would occur necessarily so as to avoid exacting repetitions of each version.

creation is literally a miracle [the reality and the very form of] and hence the universe is too.

ps. and my idea of the ‘humanative’ is true [that humans were set to happen and occur throughout the universe and possibly in any universe before or after this one.

Reply To Queztalcoatl:

Thanks for your response.

I will work through it tonight while I’m at work, and respond to your previous post with a suitable answer tomorrow (including a definition of Theonomously Deterministic Superpanpsychism).

Until then,

Jay M. Brewer
blog.myspace.com/superchristianity

Reply to Quetzalcoatl: (Part One )

I’m ready (I think) to respond to your previous post. You raise a lot of interesting observations.

However…

These days, I’m big on the notion of epistemology, and as such I am a rabid proponent of epistemological criticism: I have no beef against “faith” and “belief”, as these are bold standpoints that hold the line even in the face of lack of evidence. But when it comes to assertions that are stated in such a way that they are to be held to be absolutely true, I like to ask how one has come to know of a particular concept or state of affairs in such a way that such a certain statement can be so confidently made.

With that, let’s move on.

I disagree (to an extent). In order for my statement above to be true, all that is required is that we cannot experience the objective reality, and this seems to be the case. While we may not be existentially disconnected from objective reality, we certainly are disconnected from that reality in a perceptual (and as a consequence, empirical) sense. Given this, there external world might be, in appearance and behavior, something that we had never dared to believe.

As David J. Chalmers states in his paper: The Matrix As Metaphysics, consc.net/papers/matrix.html :

My use of the term: “magic” was not meant literally, I use the term to denote an inscrutable connection between two concepts that seem to defy possibility, such as the creation of subjective experience by simply passing electricity through biological material, which is the modus operandi of psychophysicalism itself. I do agree that there is a connection between the universe (in terms of the external reality) and our consciousness, but the nature and percentage of this connection is unknowable (thus we cannot know whether or not it is “partial”).

Theonomous Determinism is the view that free will does not truly exist, and that human minds and human will is controlled and predetermined by the power and will of the Judeo-Christian God (or a “god” of any kind in non-Christian contexts). If God is omniscient (knowing past, present, and future), then there must be a causal connection between God’s imagination and external reality if God’s omniscient previsions are infallible (they cannot be false). In theonomous determinism, God is the deus ex machina that ensures the infallibility of his predictions.

However, we nevertheless behave as if we have free will, as this “quasi-free will” is granted by God (a twist on the Fundamentalist Christian assertion that God: “gave us free will”), and God has placed us in a position that we are blind to how he has preprogrammed us to behave–such that to our point of view things are happening for the first time.

The biblical “proof” of Theonomous Determinism can be found in Paul’s sermon on Mars Hill in Acts 17:22-28, Proverbs 21:1, Proverbs 21:30, and so on.

Examples of theonomous determinism in “real life” abound: J.K. Rowlings is the “Goddess” ruling over the Harry Potter fictional universe, with all of her characters moving, thinking, feeling, fighting, living, and dying only according to her will. Their fictional “lives” are all predetermined according to the “omniscient” mind of Rowling (in terms of her predeterministic imagination stipulating the appearance, behavior, and fate of her characters). Same goes for Stephen King, who is “God” presiding over the fictional universes of “It”, “Cell”, “The Talisman” (with Peter Straub), “The Dark Tower”, and every other novel he has written. Alan Moore is “God” of the DC graphic novel:“The Watchmen”, the comic series: “Miracleman”, and the graphic novel: “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”. These real human beings all practice theonomous determinism on a daily basis (whenever they are at work creating fictional worlds): it does not matter whether or not the “characters” under the control of a particular “deity” are fictional, all that is required is that the control of the Deity,(d)eity, or deities is/are so complete that free will does not exist.

Superpanpsychism goes a step further than panpsychism (the view that all physical matter is conscious: i.e. bricks, rocks, cars, and so on are conscious, yet cannot express the fact that they are conscious like biological organisms) by proposing that there exists no physicality at all, such that reality on every level is fundamentally mental or subjective, invoking intersubjective causality rather than ‘physical’ cause and effect.

You put the two together, and you come up with theonomously deterministic superpanpsychism, with yours truly a theonomously deterministic superpanpsychist.

In my view, God is a nonembodied conscious mind existing beyond the universe (which is a multifaceted ‘Matrix’ created by God consisting of multiple ‘virtual worlds’ that correspond to the mind of every conscious being), such that the universe is not God’s body, but a construct of God’s from the fundamental phenomenal nature of reality.

That’s all for now. I will respond to the remainder of your previous day’s post later. Once again, REALLY good hashing out. That’s what this is all about.

Thank You,

Jay M. Brewer
blog.myspace.com/superchristianity

phenomenal graffiti
its unusual for me to get someone who answers after two long replies ~ kudos 2 U.

absolutely.

what else can we experience? our interpretations are indeed subjective yet based on only one resource = the objective reality. can we say then that neither standpoint is entirely true?

the brain is connected to the nervous system by which we connect directly to the external world. this could be bypassed though, but the brain is a very powerful and ultra sensitive organ, we would know that something is up. that though is an opinion when without proof, although it seams very likely that the brain could deduce if it is connected to something?

i agree that it is partial ?~ which is enough though!

interesting. [note i have numbered the elements of your quote]

1. god has free will and thus making us in his like, we do to ~ as does the universe! how would he be controlling it?.. he would as i see it have to control each and every thought [a most tiresome task esp in women lols {excuse my lack of PC}]. why would he control it is god inane or possessor of ultimate wisdom? what would be the point?

2. omniscience; take an infinite amount of monkeys and typewriters and they would eventually write shakespeare. indeed they would write everything possible upon the given criteria, thus all that is know [lets say before the universe began ~ and that there were universes before it] they could write, all scientific law etc. but they wouldn’t be able to write anything bar what is already on the table - so to say, hence one of the purposes of the universe is; to create anew, to think new thoughts.
   thus god can be ‘relatively omniscient’. allow me to give an example of this that i see all the time; i go to 6 forums of 12 that i have gone to, i often post the same thread [set of ideas] on all, yet i don’t get the same debate on all. over time i have noticed that all replies act as if there is a rule of ‘no repetition’ it is as if we are all drawing from the one source and it doesn’t want us to mimic each other. if god is that source [as i believe] then why is he continually trying to arrive at the ‘new’ ~ because repetition is pointless just as a matrix would be!

3. gods causal relationship is in terms of universal laws, principles and patterns that we see everywhere. the law comes first right! i.e. before that which acts by it. all such things are designed specifically to give rise to new occurrences and to ban repetition, he cannot control anything that is after the fact - so to say. in other words as he is beyond infinite he works on that level, then everything else is a result.

if you read my thread on ‘the ultimate perfection’ you may see how i am thinking on this ~ that a new idea adds to the eternity of perfect Forms [hence heaven isn’t at a standstill]. as above so below.

he gave us eyes! we are entirely capable of determining the program this is what science, philosophy and psychology etc does.

sorry i know very little of the bible, i have only read the books about jesus. and i would contest its authenticity as gods word, ‘a wise man guides, a dictator rules’. by this i don’t mean that the bible is entirely false but that god would not choose to give his word directly.
…and anyhow why would he need to if he is controlling us!

i see your point - most interesting [but false lols]. what indeed would be the point if all is written and ‘we’ [well god controlling his own creation?] are merely acting out the parts? i do not believe god is inane, but i do believe he is real and very very wise! it would be wisdom to create a universe that is as far away from a matrix as one could possible get.

i done a thread on this called ‘a single thought that lasts forever’ the premise is that everything is thought, the physical is a mere by-product [or even not actually existent]. you may notice in conversations how thoughts and even feelings appear to jump from one person to another. when you find the answer as to why this is not true then you will have the answer to your above position.
…the answer in short is that minds have a reflective nature yet are still mainly individualised.

what am i then? …and what are you, if your all controlling god is false?

then my universal god is greater as he is both lols. we are non-embodied entities within the human form are we not? whatever we say, we are both wrong if there is duality in our vision/perceptions. where exactly can we draw the lines?

thank you,

richard/quetz

Reply To Quetzalcoatl

Finally, my reply: just living life a little since your last post (and doing a little thinking).

Without further ado:

Well, we experience what it is that we experience, but it is not epistemically guaranteed that what we experience is the external world (that is, a subjective replica of the external world). If one is a foundationalist (which I am as well), then granted our experiences are caused by what’s going on “outside”, but it is not logically necessary that the external world appears and behaves in the same way as conscious experience.

At the end of the day, if one accepts psychophysicalism, then the brain is “preprogrammed” to give rise to the subjective experience of “a” world. It is not necessarily preprogrammed (in the sense that neural correlates corresponding to our perception of cars, buildings, people, and the emotional experiences of love, jealousy, regret, etc. are what they are and were “standing by” waiting for electrical activation through antecedent causes) to be the subjective experience of “the” world (the external reality). The belief in facsimile realism (the view that our experience overlaps or mirrors the external world) is only “true” through faith. It is not “proven” by what it is that we experience it.

Our existence and well-being is an aspect of the “virtual reality” that is human consciousness, as such, given that our survival is depends upon changes within the virtual reality,it stongly tempts the “truth” of facsimile realism. This isn’t necessarily the case.

Thus, I agree with you (being foundationalist) that our subjective experience is based on one resource, the objective reality, but one can argue that this resource is merely causal rather than mimicking.

I disagree. We can only believe that the nervous system is connected “directly” to the external world, despite the fact that objective reality might belie that belief. We can’t know either way, however. Once again, this belief is due to common conditioning in the absolute and undeniable truth of facsimile realism, which I have argued is not and absolute and undeniable truth through empirical means. It is a hyper-strong belief that may not be true, for all we can know.

The brain, if one accepts psychophysicalism, can only produce electrical activity through chemical messengers through biological material. That’s basically it. This is believed to be enough to produce consciousness, however absurd the whole thing sounds upon further rational reasoning. You see, the brain is “preprogrammed”, so to speak, to provide your entire conscious world. It’s all there, just waiting to be electrically stimulated. How you react to a surprise party to be given you on your 80th birthday, for example, is already within some neural system within your brain, they just haven’t fired yet. Your whole past, present, and future has been predetermined—if the atheists are right, then your entire life from birth to death is physically predetermined by whatever neural sets happen to be present within your cerebral cortex.

Even if those neural sets are “johnny-on-the-spot” (in the sense that synaptic connections change all the time due to the causal backlash of previous neural firings a la Frederick Hayek), if causes indeed proceed effects, this is still a “johnny-on-the-spot” predetermination of future conscious experiences, if psychophysicalism is true and your every experience is represented and determined by some arrangement of electrically stimulated physical objects.

Thus, the brain could “deduce” that it is connected to something, but it cannot deduce that it is connected to something. It would be correct only through coincidence, as it cannot perceive the goings’ on of the external world (it is merely controlled by the external world, if psychophysicalism is true).

Not to be nitpicky, but your estimation of “partial” connection (and your inference of “partial” non-connection) is pure conjecture. We have no empirical or epistemic power to know the percentage of connection between the external reality and consciousness (if any). We can only take it on faith that it is 100%, 80%, 50%, and so on.

Asking “what is the point” of theonomous determinism in favor of the Judeo-Christian of God is the same thing as asking “what is the point” of J.K. Rowling’s theonomous determinism in her creation and control of the Harry Potter universe. I charge that theonomous reductionism is not necessarily a choice (such that God could allow free will, such that we can operate independent of God), but a causal necessity, in the sense that things are set up so that if God wants beings seperate from himself, he must necessarily make them up and control them. Of course, this speculates a God that is not as powerful as say, the Magical Supernatural God of Fundamentalist Christianity, but it is nevertheless a God that controls all universes according to a nice, neat, and predictable causal order, as opposed to a God that can "whip up whatever’ from sheer nonexistence.

As for how God controls each and every thought, etc? Quite simple. According to my belief in theonomous determinism, God is not “in there” pulling wires all over the universe every second! He would be a busy person indeed! Rather, the belief in that God has pre-programmed all universes to “run by themselves” through chaos dynamics—a chaos dynamic generated by his power, believed to be a multi-verse controlling telekinesis) mediated through a mental quantum generated from the mind of God that permeates all space and interacts with every other particle in spacetime).

Thus a causal web is believed to exist in which the universe is constrained to obey the will of God through this telekinetic dominion of the mind of God upon every other (“non-God”) aspect of existence.

We can cut to the chase and simply define Omniscience as being:

x= “all knowing”, and:

y= having knowledge of “past, present, and future”.

The term (“omniscience”), unfortunately, can be ambiguous and confusing, because everyone thinks omniscience is complex and something other than x and y above.

Given x and y, one can lay down commonsense implications for the nature of reality if God is truly omniscient.

First, given that we can’t know what the “all” might be that God might know, it is best (for us mere mortals) to stick to the definition of omniscience expressed by y. This simplifies things and sets the stage for a human-level understanding of omniscience.

The most remarkable observations of omniscience is that in order for one to know past, present, and future, it external world must mimic what one knows. That is, one’s knowledge of the future must be mimicked or “fulfilled” through the appearance and behavior of the external world (in terms of the “external world” that is distinct from one’s imagination). If not, then one is merely delusional or possessed of an avid imagination (that goes nowhere) rather than omniscient.

Thus, the future must turn out just as God knows that it will, or else he is not omniscient. This is non-negotiable. Either God is omniscient or he is not. It’s that simple.

If God is not in complete causal control of the universe, yet is somehow omniscient, then either:

(1) There exists a further unseen deus ex machina hiding in the wings that reads Gods thoughts and forces external reality to mimic God’s thoughts and predictions of the future, or:

(2) The external world accidentally mimics God’s thoughts and predictions by a ongoing and neverending series of coincidences.

If God is in complete causal control of the universe (or all universes), and is omniscient, then it follows that God himself ensures his own omniscience, by himself forcing external reality to mimic his thoughts and predictions of the future.

Why would God do this? Well, one reason would be the causal necessity mentioned above, another would be that God is, as the Bible states: “all and in all” in the sense that it is God’s intention to be over everything, so that nothing that exists is beyond his control. The Bible is emphatic about this absolute control.

It is believed that God is all-wise, and all-good, thus God’s control is believed to be ultimately for the benefit of his “characters”, rather than a meaningless domination.

Science, philosophy, psychology, etc. can’t predict the future, except through speculation. That is what I meant by the above statement, which is actually a theological variant of Hayek’s atheistic speculation that free will does not exist, due to the fact that we are preprogrammed and predetermined by our neurons (as stated above), and that our neurons do not allow us to know how they will control us the very next second. Everything we do, to our conscious experience, is happening for the first time. Equivalently, if theonomous determinism is true, then God does not allow us to see the future, or know how he has determined us to behave.

I would myself contest some of the authenticity of the Bible, but I believe that most of it is authentic. But once again, “belief” is the key word. There is still the possibility that the Bible is true anyway (as noted in the “Biblically Errant Matrix Hypothesis” in the first post). One could amend the statement: “A wise man guides, a dictator rules”, to say that a “wise man rules wisely, and guides through ruling”. As a form of “language”, it is not out of the question that God would give his word directly, if only to a point. And this is an aspect of his control, in the sense that the “cartoonist” communicates with his “cartoon characters” through the language of the Bible. We are simply controlled to communicate in this manner.

The “point”—if all is written and we are controlled by God—is in the nature of God’s control itself. There is nothing necessarily “wrong” with the notion of God’s control of human destiny, it is simply the way things are (if theonomous determinism is true). I deny and mock the notion of: “ontological or existential morality”, in the sense that it is somehow “right” or “wrong” for certain fundamentally causal states of affairs to exist. Such “morality” is merely an emotional reaction to a universal state that one does not favor. If free will does not exist, then this is not “wrong” or “evil”—it’s simply the nature of things. It is not “wrong” or “evil” for God to control us, or for we to be under God’s control. This is just how things are. The point of it is “that’s just how it is”. Just as the existentialists charge that we are “thrown into existence” (in the sense of one’s existing without any choice or say-so in the matter), the control of God over human will is just another example of existential “throwness”. See: Existentialism, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism

I never got why people insisted that having free will is somehow “right”, and it’s absence is somehow “wrong”. Existence is simply what it is, no more or less. If existence exists in such a way that free will does not exist, then that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. God isn’t committing a crime in controlling us (if theonomous determinism is true), no more than J.K. Rowling is committing a crime by creating and controlling the fate of Harry Potter. To suggest otherwise smacks of nonsense.

I agree. I believe that minds have a reflective nature as well. Your first sentence is superpanpsychism in a nutshell (if the “physical” does not exist).

What are you (what do you call yourself)? If my “controlling God” is false, then I am simply someone who believes in the truth of theonomously deterministic superpanpsychism, with objective reality belying my belief without my knowledge that my God is false. Given that the world appears and behaves as it would if TDS were true, then there would be no way for me to know that my God is “false”.

for now maybe , but in the future …hmmm

the Heienberg Uncertainity Principle is based on high energy particles not low energy particles or systems such as our solar system .

Reply To North:

Incorrect. Empirically-inaccessible means exactly that: “inaccessible to experience”. Certain aspects of the world are simply beyond consciousness. This means that consciousness, such as it is and happens to be, cannot grasp the external world, it can only make subjective representations of it (if Facsimile Realism is true). Thus, we can only know those aspects of the world that are within conscious experience. The future will yield only more representational consciousness with no access to the “outside”, and as such the future cannot change this existential restriction.

True, but the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and is experienced at the subatomic or quantum level, and for the purposes of the above thread that mentioned it, this limitation was used only as an analogy for the limits of human perception, particularly that limit that fails to have access to the external world.

Jay M. Brewer
blog.myspace.com/superchristianity

phenomenal_graffiti, hi ~ yes sometimes it is better to leave threads for a while to review afresh etc. and i am still impressed with your responses, may i say your idea of god sounds more and more like satan to me though [no offence meant ].

indeed. mind if i go off slightly on a tangent from this to understand the overall rule of gods freedom?
…i kinda like the fact that our minds aren’t purely mimicking, i have been considering this very notion whilst debating with atheists about creationism and universal evolution. i have come to the conclusion that freedom seams to be paramount both in terms of law and the personal, it is as if the very purpose is to create anything but a programmed universe and personality! their main argument is that everything is purely random chance, i argue that although there is improbability this does’nt mean that existence is mainly order. what we have is order by law, rule and principle, but they don’t dictate total order, an analogy would be:

imagine that all laws, forces and dimensions are like cogs and levers in a fine old swiss clockwork clock. now let us imagine that we take the whole thing apart and put it in a zero gravity ocean, yet that the parts all work together still. the only difference is that a cog turns and it has a relative effect on some other cogs and levers rather than a direct effect. we can see that in this indirect mechanism allows for improbability and a degree of randomness.
if we squash it altogether to much you would get a universal catastrophic effect ~ big bang, this would occur near to the beginning of time, then as we expand the mechanism more entropy is resultant.
importantly we don’t see anything that is not order i.e. the water is itself not a law. some scientists are considering the idea that time slows down the further you go back in time, can we say that in this clockwork analogy there would be an overall effect which we call the transition of time, thus as it expands time gets faster.

so the most fundamental rule of existence is freedom, and that must be universal?

i see, so what would we call the subjective entity itself? it appears we have sent it into an existential hell lols. and how would anything have an effect upon it? we could say that there is no such entity [as do atheists] that we are a program, that is a difficult to prove either way as to weather or not we have mind spirit and soul or if god exists. we always hit this plateaux don’t we! personally i thing the most objective reality is the mind/soul everything else is just what it’s interactive forms are made of [body, world].

i agree that its intervention is outside of physical reality, but as above not that god wants a predictable universe, sure he wants that overall effect that things will come to a balance etc, yet within his framework he gives his children freedom.

i agree with this part in terms of laws etc. …but not this:

with my universal god there is no non-god [although like infinity he is both separate and one at the same time]. if you ask god a question he will answer according to his wisdom and your/the worlds needs. he does not dictate our thoughts as there would be no point, life would simply be like a film without real actors ~ an animation of his own creation. wouldn’t you want more than that if you were god?

yes except that the future does not exist yet even when viewing with an infinite eye

an infinite intellect is a wondrous thing and can know ‘all that is known’ in less than an instant, yet cannot know what is unknown. i think omniscience can be that as it is still knowing all. if not then we have to ask if there is anything that cannot be known, the simple answer is that knowledge itself is limited ~ ‘the truth is naked’ as we druids say.

the causal chain is broken by infinite sets, randomness, improbability and the ultimate nature of truth [its nakedness]!

we cannot truly look at things as a whole, we can have a cyclic universe with an eternal universal now moment. if though we try to conceive of all-universes at once we run into infinity paradoxes, such as; can you have an infinite amount of universes ~ obviously not as you cannot have an infinite amount of limits. we would also run into infinite variability, believe me we don’t even want to go there.

for me the bible has two levels of truth one for the common man and a higher metaphoric truth for the more advanced adept.

indeed, however it is wisdom to give freedom, good not to control [inv; adolf hitler! satan!]. a creatior that just creates a film then fills it full of souls without choice nor effect upon it would be an inane one, it would be utterly pointless.

1. neither can anything even god.

2. neurons are there to give us [the actual ‘you’] information, just as the rest of the body is there as a vehicle to receive and deliver info. think of it like this, if the neurons were like a dictator keep telling you want to think, you can just not listen or disagree. the way the brain works is that if the neurons are not giving the info we want then the direction of information changes and the brain tries to collect new info for its user. it is a gift and is there to serve, the more we master it the more it does so.

the point is that he does not need to tell us his word in the ‘Biblically Errant Matrix’, he is in this theory controlling our every thought ~ so in effect he would be telling himself.

jesus’s teaching would also not be necessary for the same reason, in fact there would be no devil to be tempted by as our thoughts are that of god, if we are completely controlled then our fall from grace is not our own. this is why it is important to see that god gives freedom, that everything is there to serve us and help his children grow up.

if J.K. Rowlings characters had souls and minds yet were unable to express them, it would be mental imprisonment to the furthest degree of the term, that would be the ultimate crime that any dictator could do, the ultimate in satanism.

i must remember that one lols

naked truth. as in, greater than objective truth. or from your quote; “non-embodied entities within human form”. the thing is that our truth is ultimately the same as gods truth, our inner most self the same kind of ‘entity’ as his inner being. there is nothing but that basis, infinity and quantum states, so there is no room for a matrix left.

Reply To Queztalcoatl:

I’ll keep this short.

There is room for a ‘Matrix’, as…why…we live in one! That’s what consciousness is, it’s a virtual reality that is believed to be a reasonable facsimile or representation of the world that lies outside “nature’s matrix”—that is, the external world believed to be invulnerable to the nonexistence of all consciousness and that would still exist if we all disappeared in the next five seconds.

Second, philosophical honesty requires an individual to determine whether or not a statement or belief, stated with the utmost certainty by the subject is either true or only possibile by asking oneself the following question:

Is my statement capable of being verified by experience?

If the answer to the question is “no”…then how is an empirically-inaccessible belief necessarily true, and why should one believe that such a belief is necessarily true in a way that renders all other logical counterhypotheses necessarily false?

Just a thought,

Jay M. Brewer
blog.myspace.com/superchristianity

hi

ok i’ll keep this short too. perhaps there are many distinct factors which need to be addressed before we can get a handle on the entire concept of what you are saying.

the matrix does not exist because duality does not exist [1], sure from an atheist perspective consciousness is just a program, however i would think that consciousness is universal and what it is in us the the same as what it is in anything else ~ even god!

1. see this thread for further explanation:
   viewtopic.php?f=1&t=163173

a matrix would necessarily make us into an imaginary aspect of a greater reality or at least comparatively so. if we actually exist then we do not belong to a matrix. for me it is the primal truth that i exist, hence all that i am is reflected in the greater aspect of reality [in god].

Quetzalcoatl:

[b]I’m about to take vacation from my job, so I’ve been staying away from the computer (and thus from ILovePhilosophy) while doing a lot of preparation (for vacation) around the house, at the job, etc. Sorry I have not (yet) responded to your posts in the topic: “For Those Who Believe That God Did Not Create Evil”. Don’t worry, it’s been nagging my conscience.

That being said, I went back to the past (March 11, 2008 to be exact) to look at your post in this thread: “The True Nature of Reality” (as well as to edit the main post above), and I reviewed this:[/b]

[b]I think this depends on your definition of a “matrix”. The film implicitly demonstrates that a “Matrix” is an alternate reality of perception—in the form of a simulated reality altogether distinct from the “real world”.

While the film posits a fictional variety of Non-Representational Foundationalism produced by artificial intelligence, it hints at the true nature of the world (apart from the notion that the world “underneath” may be something distinct from our experiences): that despite our habitual conditioning to perceive the world through the lens of Naive Realism (see), the world that we perceive is in fact a “Matrix” assembled by Nature (in secular terms)—in the sense that we perceive only a virtual reality simulation of the external world, and not the world in itself—through the “simulator” of the physical brain (HOW this is done has never been answered, given that the physical and conscious experience are two distinct existences).
[/b]
David J. Chalmers, in his paper: The Matrix As Metaphysics, states that while consciousness IS a virtual reality, that does not mean that the content of the virtual reality does not exist: for example, even if there is no such thing as hair in the external world (if Facsimile Realism is false), this does not mean that hair does not exist: there still exists ‘virtual hair’—the sensory perception of “hair” by conscious beings having conscious experiences of “this” virtual world.

Es todo,

As another poster said better than I can, please tell me how to eat or have sex with a virtual reality? The matrix concept is limited to social reality; it does not apply to ontological reality.