My Theory of Consciousness

Philosophy Forums Psychology and Mind
745

Atlas wrote:

Are the physical/material representations themselves, and the abstract (metaphysical) number 9 itself, also experiences? If yes then who or what, if anyone or anything, is having them?

Yes, everything is experience.

The physical/material representations are experiences in the classic idealistic sense (idealism 101). They reduce to sense experiences (and cognitive experiences when we aren’t looking). But they also serve a representative function, representing other (outer) experiences, those belonging to the universe. Think of them like the shadows on Plato’s cave wall. They are physical, of course, but they also represent other physical things (goings on outside the cave).

The abstract/metaphysical number 9 is a cognitive experience, an idea.

I’ll also add that in my theory, all experiences carry the seed of being, meaning that they all project as something real. Sense experience projects as physical objects or events happing in the physical world. Concepts or ideas like the number 9 project as definitions, or the “is-ness” of things. This is a more complicated notion and rather than expand on it here, I’ll link you to an earlier post I wrote in this thread: here (fast forward to “Well, since you asked”). The point is, just because all reduces to experiences, that doesn’t mean they aren’t real (and I don’t mean they’re real in the Berkeleian sense–real as ideas–that’s such a cop out–but real as the things they seem to be–yes, matter exists).

So what’s experiencing them? I don’t have a clean and simple answer to this questions. I’ve always just said “they experience themselves.” But this question deserves a deeper answer. I think the idea of an “experiencer” (or a self) is itself just one experience out of the fray of an infinity of others. The self is itself an experience.

In my theory, I argue that we can think of an experience in its unprojected form or its projected form. As unprojected, it’s just an experience–a sensation, a thought, an emotion, something in the head–but as projected, it is what the experience appears to be–an physical object, a truth, value, something in the world–and a key tenet of my theory is that the projected form of the experience is the true character of the experience–in other words, experiences, in their true form, aren’t really mental at all, they are (for lack of a better term) “out there”. So what is the experience of seeing a tree? It is the tree itself. That is its true form. Does that make the tree a self? An experiencer? Well, to be precise, the tree still maintains the aspect of being felt, of being experienced–that’s how it exists, that’s how it maintains being–so it doesn’t “get out” of being an experience, but rather experience ends up being more than just mental, it becomes real–real as physical objects, as abstract truths and values, as definitions, as time and space, as music and language, as beauty and ugliness, as good and bad, and if we include unimaginable experiences as well, then as anything you can imagine (and can’t imagine). Do these all count as “selves”? As “experiencers”? I wouldn’t say no; one can think of them all as “selves” or “experiencers” if one must, but more to the point, they are simply whatever the experience projects as, whatever it feels like it is.

^ How’s that for a clear and simple answer? :wink:

Atlas wrote:

They would merge into a denser new object I think.

Ah, but why not think of them as two baseballs overlapping at a single point in space and time?

746

More thoughts on this:

He existed, like all his contemporaries, both in metaphysics and in math, under the sheltering shadow of Leibniz.

He wrote freely mostly because he knew he would be judged as an extended commentary on Leibniz, and would probably have been shocked to be asked to shoulder an entire metaphysical system himself.

He would probably have reached for a gun if he had learned that Leibniz’s name (except in theoretical physics and engineering circles, where the worship is alive and well) would be largely forgotten and his held as the paragon of philosophy.

Atla is right to trace it back to Descartes, though, as it was Descartes who “unleashed” the line in the graph, eventually permitting the Leibniz/Newton powerhouse.

The marriage of God and Math. That is what gave Baroque philosophy in all its rationalist glory. Also a fact largely forgotten now.

Descartes wrote some rather rapturous passages on just this very marriage as he was developping the mathematics that would change the world.

747

Ok thanks, I’ve read it 2-3 times, I think in the end I sort of understood most of it. Our views are many worlds apart, even by ‘experience’ we mean very different things, mine isn’t even really a “Western” understanding of it I guess.
I’ll try to say why I see your theory as still dualistic: you seem to speak of physical representations that are experiences themselves, that represent the wider universe of experience. So you’re not literally equating all ‘experience’ with ‘matter’, which is imo dualism. (The kind of dualism that every Western philosopher of the last centuries would have called a mental monism, imo that’s why Western philosophy of mind is at a dead end.)

Also, I’m not sure about this one, it seems to me that you speak of experiences, as in plural, which seem to somehow relate to each other, which is imo also dualistic thinking. Without dualistic thinking there is only “one experience” (it just usually doesn’t seem to us that way), which is the same as all existence aka all ‘matter’ aka the universe.

Because things don’t overlap in (a posteriori Newtonian/Einsteinian) space and time, instead they collide, interact. Although this may be a bad example for abstract things which can overlap if we want them to be able to overlap, because we write the rules of the abstract.

748

Atla wrote:

I’ll try to say why I see your theory as still dualistic: you seem to speak of physical representations that are experiences themselves, that represent the wider universe of experience. So you’re not literally equating all ‘experience’ with ‘matter’, which is imo dualism.

No, not all experience is matter, but all matter is experience. The equation works two ways: 1) all experience of matter reduces to sense experience (idealism 101), and 2) all experience of matter is a representation of (outer) experience. So all is experience in the end, and some experience is matter. Just as an example of experience that is not matter (but is represented as matter), there’s abstract thought and emotion. Since the experience itself, in my view, is the real thing, the non-material feel of abstract thoughts and emotions determine their non-material status. But of course, if you look at a living brain and observe the neurochemical activity when one is thinking abstract thoughts or feeling certain emotions, those are the physical representations of said thoughts and emotions.

Atla wrote:

Also, I’m not sure about this one, it seems to me that you speak of experiences, as in plural, which seem to somehow relate to each other, which is imo also dualistic thinking. Without dualistic thinking there is only “one experience” (it just usually doesn’t seem to us that way), which is the same as all existence aka all ‘matter’ aka the universe.

Ok, you’re talking about a different kind of dualism than I thought. I was talking about Cartesian dualism–you know, mind-substance and matter-substance, and to a degree perception and perceived–and I think I’ve escaped that. But you’re dualism sounds like the dualism that opposes the Eastern “all is one” philosophy (for lack of a better word). Indeed, I’m not a monist in that regard. In fact, I’m more than a dualist, I’m an infinitist. I divide experiences by their qualities. So a visual experience is different from an auditory experience. The taste of cholocate is different from the taste of lime. And I believe there is no limit to the qualities an experience can have… so infinitism.

To be perfectly precise, there is a kind of monism wrapped up in my theory that maybe you would appreciate. I believe experiences can be “summed” or “averaged” into a “higher” experience. As an analogy, it would be like saying red and yellow can be summed/averaged to orange. So if you take all the qualities of experience in the universe and sum/average them, you would get one uniform homogenous quality of experience, what all experiences amount to. And in my theory, such an experience is real, not just a hypothetical “what you would get” if all experiences were summed/averaged, but what must exist because they can be summed/averaged, and could be considered the basis for all particular experiences. You could call it the “God” experience. ← Maybe that clicks with you, maybe it doesn’t. But you definitely don’t want to ask me to explain it in terms of my philosophy–that’s a whole other layer of theory on top of what we’ve discussed here. :smiley:

Atla wrote:

Because things don’t overlap in (a posteriori Newtonian/Einsteinian) space and time, instead they collide, interact. Although this may be a bad example for abstract things which can overlap if we want them to be able to overlap, because we write the rules of the abstract.

You can’t remove the spatiotemporal positions of things either, but it’s a thought experiment, so we take liberties. We sort of write the rules of the abstract, but not according to arbitrary whims. We try to stick to the rules of logic as best we can (or some of us do anyway). We run thought experiments to see how applying the rules of logic in hypothetical scenarios would play out. It’s more to test the logic of our models than to see what would happen in the real world.

Anyway, you gave me an idea, Atla. I’m wonder if a better way to think of the identities of abstract/metaphysical things other than just being singular, would be to consider that there could be multiple ways to enumerate them–singular, multiple, infinite–and that there is no fact of the matter. I’ll try taking that concept and see if I can rejuvenate my efforts at joining our subjective physical universes into one (God, I’m starting to sound like Ecmandu :person_facepalming: ).

749

How would rules we write for abstract stuff help you with handling ‘concrete’ subjective physical universes? The two are unrelated no?

750

Atla wrote:

How would rules we write for abstract stuff help you with handling ‘concrete’ subjective physical universes? The two are unrelated no?

Well, I’ll repeat it…

  1. If two or more things are identical in every respect, including their positions in space and time, or if they lack positions in space and time (like metaphysic/abstract entities), there is no basis on which to say they are multiple things, and they can be considered one.

  2. The physical universe of our experience has no position in space or time (though spatial and temporal positions exist in it).

  3. Therefore, the condition explained in 1) is met for the physical universes of our experience, and we can consider them (each individual human being’s universe) as one. Thus, despite projecting from multiple individual minds, we all live in the same physical universe.

Agree? Disagree? Well, that’s the connection anyway.

I’ll let you know how this project goes.

751

We’ll just have to disagree. There is also no basis on which to say they are one and the same. And how we treat abstract stuff, has nothing to do with it imo.

752

I would have guessed you would disagree, but that’s not what matters. My hope was that you could see the connection you asked about even if you disagree. It’s like my example argument about green men. If someone says: All grass is green, and all men are grass, therefore all men are green… I would vehemently reject his second premise, but I can clearly see how his premises led to his conclusion. But I take it you don’t even see that. In that case, what else can we do but agree to disagree? That’s much better than endlessly bickering back and forth until the debate degrades into mud slinging and trolling. At least between you and I, we can shake hands and say, that was a fruitful discussion.

Now, about this: “There is also no basis on which to say they are one and the same.” ← That may be true, and it’s the reason why I’m considering whether the angle ought to be not that: when two things are identical in all respects even with regard to their positions in space and time (or lack thereof), they are one… but that: when two things are identical in all respects even with regard to their positions in space and time (or lack thereof), there is no fact of the matter how many there are. It’s a subtle shift, but often subtle shifts make all the difference. And I’ll have to think about this one to see if I can bring all our universes together as one… “Kumbaya my Lord, kumbaya…” :laughing:

753

? All grass is green, and all men are grass, therefore all men are green: that’s just how logic works, I would handle it the same way you did.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, while we can talk about abstract things unrelated to space and time, and talk about experiences unrelated to space and time from your theory, those are two fudnamentally unrelated groups (at least from my pov). Yes we can play around with using the same rules for both groups to see where that leads us, but we can also not do that. They can have entirely different rules.

754

Atla wrote:

? All grass is green, and all men are grass, therefore all men are green: that’s just how logic works, I would handle it the same way you did.

Good. Then you just don’t see the logic of my theory.

Atla wrote:

I guess what I’m trying to say is, while we can talk about abstract things unrelated to space and time, and talk about experiences unrelated to space and time from your theory, those are two fudnamentally unrelated groups (at least from my pov). ← But they share something in common: they both lack spatiotemporal positions. → Yes we can play around with using the same rules for both groups to see where that leads us, but we can also not do that. They can have entirely different rules.

But we already know abstract things follow the rules of thought… at least according to my theory. According to my theory, abstract things (like Plato’s forms) are projections of thought.

Anyway, are we agreeing to disagree, or are we running in circles?

755

Yes. 15 characters

756

Gib!!

How you doin kiddo?
Ok, so our brains are wired the same at least to the extent that when I see a red light you (and everyone else hopefully) also see a red light. But how does the brain ‘see’ the color red?

757

Well, that’s exactly what my theory answers. It says there is no need to explain ‘seeing’ based on brain processes because the explanation ought to work the other way around. It’s the ‘seeing’ that’s primary, the fundamental ‘stuff’, and the brain processes are merely physical representations of the ‘seeing’. You see?

758

So it’s a cognitive process that accurately mirrors the colors we ‘see’ in the physical world and not abstract reasoning emerging from the interactions of billions of neurons where anything immaterial isn’t required.

759

I wouldn’t call it a cognitive process. I still think seeing is visual. But what we see informs our cognitive faculties about what we’re seeing. But the entire flow of this mental process is driven internally–that is, by the experiences themselves. While doing so, they also express their material representation so that we see brains, not experiences, when we look at them. And the process by which their material representation gets expressed is also expressed as a material representation–i.e. as light reflected off the brain, entering our eyes, being converted to electric signals, and finally reaching the visual cortex where we officially ‘see’. This physical process represents the mental process by which one person’s experience (of seeing and then knowing what he sees) is communicated to, and transformed into a material representation for, the other person who only sees the first person’s brain.