* For more about Neural Magic or Neural Incantationism, see: Brother Hast Thou Faith In The External World? viewtopic.php?f=9&t=168437
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QQkKY0yxlI[/youtube]
[size=70]Scenes from Finale of the HBO Series: Six Feet Under[/size]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9eMElqajnM[/youtube]
[size=70]Scene from HBO’s: Six Feet Under, Season 5 Episode 11: Static[/size]
[size=200]FINAL THOUGHTS[/size]
[b]Unless one invokes an inter-ontological magic in which the non-subjectivity of an external world independent of consciousness transforms into the subjective perceptions and experiences of humans and animals, sensory perception of the world is not one and the same thing as the world itself.
If one doubts this, one need only consider the existence of death (sleep, visual misperception, hallucination, etc. notwithstanding), and how it aptly demonstrates the lack of identicalness between consciousness and the external world—a world whose existence is not dependent upon the existence and operation of the brain.
So-called “perception of the external world” and the external world itself simultaneously exists; the world in the absence of consciousness exists despite the presence of consciousness. If not, does the external world transform into brain-generated consciousness? Does the external world cease to exist when personal consciousness is generated by the brain, only to come back into existence when the brain ceases to function?
If these questions are absurd, it follows that consciousness exists side by side, not in place of, the world that exists independent of consciousness.
The ontological simultaneity of consciousness and the external world and the existence of Death (more than any other “putative defeater” of Direct Realism) establishes the logical necessity of representationalism over Direct Realism. By reason of cessation of “direct perception of the external world” upon cessation of cortical function, and given the invulnerability of the external world to the existence of consciousness (in that the external world can exist without consciousness if need be), direct, immediate perception and interaction with the external world becomes metaphysically impossible.
Regardless of the explanatory abyss between neurons and subjective experience, the Externalists—particularly Direct and Indirect Realists—go so far as to insist that the electrochemical function of the occipital lobe, for reasons unknown, is able to manufacture direct visual perception (Direct Realism) or visual replica (Indirect Realism) of the external world.
Worse, the Externalist tells us that occipital lobes must manufacture direct perception or replica of the external world, and that occipital lobes must, by virtue of being occipital lobes, contain neurochemical information about the evolving real-time appearance and behavior of the external world—which exists regardless of visual perception.
But the actual state of the world (the world not produced by the brain) is devoid of consciousness (according to secular mythology of the nature of the world), and it is the notion that the external world continues to exist in the hypothetical absence of any and all consciousness that challenges Externalist claims that we perceive the external world. Why, when quarks and electrons combine to form functioning cerebral cortices and occipital lobes, should visual perception come into existence—and why should this visual perception necessarily perceive (Direct Realism) or mimic (Indirect Realism) the appearance and behavior of a world that is not created or controlled by cerebral cortices or occipital lobes?
The Externalist may assert that the external world somehow imposes upon neurons in such a way as to ensure that neurons perceive or mimic the world. But it is implausible, even with panpsychism, to hold that external world forces blindly strike here and there upon the neural skin receptors on external world bodies, to produce neuro-electrochemical resonances that route through the PNS and CNS to, in the nick of time, activate just that cortical circuit that, fortuitously, happen to produce subjective experience of the current, real-time appearance and behavior of the external world.
The implausibility is aggravated in the stipulation that there exist a brain and body neurally prepared before the fact to anticipate just those non-destructive forces from the external world that will route to the neural circuits set-up before the fact to generate subjective experience of the world that happens to currently act upon the body and brain. This fantastically convenient set up—one that anticipates every possible future of the body and brain—is particularly hard to swallow as the accidental product of a universe devoid of a governing intelligence.*
*[/b] Brother, Hast Thou Faith In The External World? Part One: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=168437.
[b]Given the logical, explanatory, and ontological gap between neurons and subjective experience, the necessity for future prediction and anticipation in the design of the brain and body, and the further improbability of chance provision of future-predicting/anticipating neurons in a godless universe, one can argue that there is, in the end, no logical connection between neurons and consciousness, and no logical connection between neurons, consciousness, and the external world.
To see this, one need only consider the famous notion that consciousness comes into and goes out of existence, and the notion that neurons somehow create consciousness, and creates consciousness ex nihilo. If panpsychism is ruled out, how do neurons create visual perception of the external world by conjuring that perception from nonexistence? Further, why in the devil should conjured visual perception necessarily perceive or mimic the external world? How does the external world influence whatever magic creates consciousness to ensure that its face appears on the coin of perception?
If (due to the problems inherent in the notion of creation ex nihilo) one allows panpsychism (particularly David Chalmers’ panprotopsychism), why should pre-existent “bytes” of consciousness in atoms , when and if those atoms get around to making up cerebral cortices, be just those bytes that, by chance, happen to reflect or perceive the current state of the external world?
This lack of a logical (or non-magical or non-explanatorily convenient) connection between neurons, consciousness, and the external world, given the ontological distinction between a world devoid of consciousness and a consciousness that must be generated from a machine in order to exist in the first place, renders Externalist assumption that the brain somehow creates direct and immediate perception of the external world absurd.[/b]
Epistemology
There are various kinds of knowledge: knowing how to do something (for example, how to ride a bicycle), knowing someone in person, and knowing a place or a city. Although such knowledge is of epistemological interest as well, we shall focus on knowledge of propositions and refer to such knowledge using the schema ‘S knows that p’, where ‘S’ stands for the subject who has knowledge and ‘p’ for the proposition that is known.[1] Our question will be: What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for S to know that p ? We may distinguish, broadly, between a traditional and a non-traditional approach to answering this question. We shall refer to them as ‘TK’ and ‘NTK’.
According to TK, knowledge that p is, at least approximately, justified true belief (JTB). False propositions cannot be known. Therefore, knowledge requires truth. A proposition S doesn’t even believe can’t be a proposition that S knows. Therefore, knowledge requires belief. Finally, S’s being correct in believing that p might merely be a matter of luck. Therefore, knowledge requires a third element, traditionally identified as justification. Thus we arrive at a tripartite analysis of knowledge as JTB: S knows that p if and only if p is true and S is justified in believing that p . According to this analysis, the three conditions — truth, belief, and justification — are individually necessary and jointly sufficient for knowledge.
(Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Epistemology , plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/)
When it comes to the Externalist’s claim that we have knowledge of the nature of the external world (that is, we somehow know how the world appears and behaves even in the absence of our consciousness: if this were not a real claim, how do we explain the existence of [the views of] Direct and Indirect Realism?), given the inconceivable nature of the external world in the absence of any and all consciousness, evidential knowledge of the outer world is (or should be) immediately ruled out. So the Externalist’s claim that we have knowledge of the external world must invoke a knowledge wholly divorced from knowledge gained by direct experience…
What makes beliefs justified? According to evidentialists, it is the possession of evidence. According to evidentialism, what makes a belief justified is the possession of evidence. The basic idea is that a belief is justified to the degree it fits S’s evidence.
(Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Epistemology , plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/)
The Externalist cannot perceive the external world in it’s true form, as the true form of the external world requires the absence of the Externalist’s perception. It is just this consciousness-independence of the external world that ultimately falsifies claims that conscious beings have knowledge of the nature of the external world (!)
[size=150]Epilogue[/size]
“Brother…hast thou faith in the external world…?”
If Death and cerebral creation of perception (in stark contrast to lack of cerebral construction of the external world) falsifies belief that we directly and immediately perceive the external world, the true form of the external world, how it is when there is no consciousness in existence, falsifies belief that we have knowledge of its nature. The Externalist, at the last, is forced into the deepest dungeons of Angband to cower*, having at the last only a quasi-religious faith [b]in the nature of the external world, despite the fact that experiential knowledge of the external world is logically and metaphysically impossible.
- (A Tolkien reference. See: The Simarillion for details.)
(That is, one cannot directly perceive or observe the world as it truly appears and behaves in the absence of consciousness, because the true form of that world requires that there be no consciousness to observe it: thus the very existence of consciousness prevents it from access to the true nature of the world)
To support this quasi-religious faith that humans and animals possess visual perception that perceives or mimics the world as that world is in the absence of perception, the Externalist, fleeing the carnage of the final battle without the aid of evidential knowledge, may desperately fall back on Reliabilism:[/b]
NTK, on the other hand, conceives of the role of justification differently. Its job is to ensure that S’s belief has a high objective probability of truth and therefore, if true, is not true merely because of luck. One prominent idea is that this is accomplished if, and only if, a belief originates in reliable cognitive processes or faculties. This view is known as reliabilism.
[Reliabilism] holds that a belief is justified if, and only if, it results from cognitive origin that is reliable: an origin that tends to produce true beliefs and therefore properly probabilifies the belief. According to a standard form of reliabilism, what makes [beliefs] justified is not the possession of evidence, but the fact that the types of processes in which they originate — perception, introspection, memory, and rational intuition — are reliable.
(Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Epistemology, plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/)
[b]But this is futile: it is difficult enough to explain how neurons conjure subjective experience in the first place; it is going a step beyond logic to claim that neurons are structured the way that they are, and form the connections they do, in such a way that they can reveal or “tell the truth” about states of affairs beyond the ability of neurons to create, simply because one’s neurons “reliably” tell the truth concerning the nature of things within consciousness.
With evidential knowledge impossible, and reliablistic knowledge absurd, the Externalist must, in the end, rely upon revelatory knowledge to support purported knowledge of the external world (the Externalist may claim that neurons receive “revelation from the external world”, analogous to a religious man’s claim that he receives “revelation from God”).
If one is forced to rely upon revelatory knowledge to support Direct and Indirect Realism, the notion that that we perceive the external world is supported only by quasi-religious faith that neurons magically reveal the existence of that which lies beyond the consciousness neurons purportedly create.
So-called knowledge of the external world, then, is nothing more than the fraternal twin of faith in the existence of God.[/b]
[size=200]THE VERY END[/size]
Author’s Note: This article marks the farewell appearance of Sal “Tell-It-Like-It-Is” Slobinsky— Keeper of The Flame of Willfully Ignored Truth! Future posts will regress to ILP standard format with illustrations (Somewhere in the distance, I hear Namelesss clapping…).
Jay M. Brewer
phenomenal_graffiti@yahoo.com
Hopefully, I will be able to get along without him.