THE TRUE NATURE OF REALITY (Revised! New Info!)

[size=150]Most people,[/size] [b]until they learn to think philosophically, are naive realists.

Naive Realism is the concept that the things that are perceived are the things-in-themselves:[/b]

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. 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 (virtual) pattern that overlays the form of the world.

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

If there is only one reality (which I concede to ILP correspondent “Quetzalcoatl”, thanks :sunglasses: ), there are two layers to this reality (a presumption):

b The Virtual Reality Of Conscious Experience[/b]. Consciousness is a virtual or simulated reality of the world rather than the world itself (or consciousness may be a virtual world unto itself unrelated to the appearance and behavior of the external world).

(2) The External World (The Zombie World)[b]. It is believed that there is an external world that existed before (and that will exist after) consciousness. Consciousness is believed to (more or less) accurately mimic the appearance and behaviour of this external world.

Upon further analysis, one discovers that (if one holds that consciousness can only exist if it is generated by brains) the only aspect of consciousness that represents the external world is[/b] visual perception. There is (presumably) no external world-counterpart for non-visual aspects of consciousness (cognitive, emotional, gustatory, tactile, auditory, and olfactory experience). This is hugely significant! How does the brain “know” which non-visual experiences appropriately correspond to the goings on in the external world (if there is no counterpart in the external world for non-visual perception)?

Or, if there is no consciousness in the external world (inferred from the belief that consciousness does not exist before the operation of a functioning brain and that consciousness will cease to exist when there are no more functioning brains) and if the substance making up the external world is wholly distinct from the “substance” comprising subjective experience, it follows that there are no objects or phenomena in the external world upon which non-visual experience is based.


[size=95]Figure 1a. (Black and White) Zombie train, or external world-train “behind” or beyond the existence of consciousness.[/size]


[size=95]Figure 1b. (Color) The same train in the visual experience of a virtual facsimile of the zombie world[/size]

[size=150]The Zombie World[/size]

[b]The nature and content of visual perception generates extremely powerful suspicion that whatever exists beyond the deprivation chamber of conscious experience somehow plays a role in its nature and content and is probably a facsimile of visual perception.

The external world is presumably a zombie world (a world in which there is no consciousness and that does not require consciousness in order to exist). The most common perception of the world (for those graduating from the academy of naive realism) is that the contents of visual perception mimic the appearance and behavior of the zombie world, itself composed of an unknown substance ontologically distinct from whatever makes up subjective experience.[/b]

[size=150]Is Consciousness Ontologically Distinct From The Zombie World?[/size]

Strangely, naive realism is deliberately accepted by certain philosophers, who assert that the external world is an aspect of conscious experience and vice versa. Attempts to amalgamate consciousness and the external world, however, fail to take into account the conceivable non-existence of consciousness before and after the existence of brains (unless one adopts Chalmers panprotopsychism or other “fundamental consciousness” theories). Given the non-existence of consciousness in the pre-brain/post-brain universe, further indication that the virtual reality of consciousness is something wholly distinct from the external world is given by:

b The Existence Of Sleep[/b]

When one (dreamlessly) sleeps, there is discontinuity of conscious experience in the form of non-experience followed by a sudden or gradual return to waking reality (inferred from otherwise inexplicable and instantaneous changes in the waking reality before sleep). Unless one is solipsist, there is good reason to believe that the universe does not cease to exist when one falls asleep (only for the individual to re-create the universe upon awakening).

b The Existence Of Brain Pathology[/b]

A normally functioning brain presumably yields a field of perception that agrees with the perception of other brains with normal function, leading to a ‘consensus reality’ of similar experience. Brain pathology yielding abnormal experience, then, is a striking example that consciousness is distinct from the external world:

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)

The distinction of consciousness from the external world is also inferred from sensory handicaps such as blindness and deafness. The world presumably continues to be just what it is, even if the blind cannot see or the deaf cannot hear.

b The Existence Of Death[/b]

[b]The ontological difference between consciousness and the zombie world is deduced from the conceivable non-experience of death. The “experience” of death is presumably indistinguishable from that of dreamless sleep. Death is derived from the failure of consciousness to share the indestructibility of the external world (according to the first law of thermodynamics).

If consciousness is not as eternal as the world itself, it is obvious that it is (probably) not an aspect of the external world.[/b]

[size=150]A Tale of Two Worlds: The Two Types Of World That May Exist Beyond The Pale Of Consciousness[/size]

[size=98]
I’m pushing an elephant up the stairs
I’m tossing up punch lines that were never there
I’m breaking through…
I’m looking for answers from the great beyond

-REM[/size]

[b]Psychophysicalism notwithstanding (the view that consciousness arises from the structure and function of the brain), the nature of reality is reduced to a choice between two indistinguishable relations between consciousness and the external world: Solipsism or Foundationism.

Solipsism is the view that the universe exists only in one’s mind and the individual is the only entity that exists. If the individual dies, the universe (the individual) ceases to exist. Foundationism, on the other hand, is the view that there exists an objective, mind-independent world that precedes and outlasts the existence of consciousness.

It is held that there is no independently plausible reason to believe in solipsism. Foundationism, on the other hand, is generally taken for granted as truth. There are two competing types of Foundationism:[/b]

b[/b] Representational Foundationism is Foundationism that holds that the appearance and behavior of the external world, whatever it is, mimics the contents of visual experience. There are two layers of one reality: an objective mind-independent world and its representation in a ‘virtual’ counterpart.

b[/b] Non-Representational Foundationism is Foundationism that holds that the appearance and behaviour of the external world is unrelated to the appearance and behavior of the contents of visual perception. The external world is nevertheless causally linked to conscious experience through technological or naturalistic connection to the brain. Examples of Non-Representational Foundationism include the Brain-In-A-Vat or Matrix Hypotheses.

If one denies Solipsism, (or in the spirit of philosophical honesty files it away in the cabinet of metaphysical possibility), the underlying nature of reality is ultimately reduced to a choice between Representational or Non-Representational Foundationism.

[size=150]The Champion Of Representational Foundationism:[/size] [size=150]Facsimile Realism[/size]

Those who deny solipsism and transcend naive realism most likely subscribe to Facsimile Realism. Facsimile Realism is the most popular view of reality. It is the view that consciousness (or at least the visual aspect of consciousness) mimics the appearance of an underlying reality.

The truth of Facsimile realism is taken for granted. But if the external world cannot be experienced, the “truth” of Facsimile Realism is certainly not an empirical truth. Empirically, reality is only a subjectively experienced sequence of mental and sensual events. There is no aspect of the external world known to consciousness, as the external world (intrinsically) does not contain subjective experience.

Note: The term: ‘virtual reality’ adequately describes the nature of consciousness, as consciousness is (if Representational Foundationism is true) ‘virtually’ the external world (if we cannot experience the external world, consciousness “speaks for” the external world). In addition, consciousness is a ‘virtual’ reality in the sense that it is ‘virtually’ as valid a reality as the external world, potentially functioning as a reality unto itself (if it does not represent the external world).

Facsimile Realism is a very compelling view; it exists in the mass consciousness as an unquestioned and uncontested fact of nature. An almost unshakeable conviction in the truth of Facsimile Realism is created by:

b The experience of internal perception:[/b]

We can categorize perception as internal or external.

• [b]Internal perception (proprioception) tells us what’s going on in our bodies. We can sense where our limbs are, whether we’re sitting or standing; we can also sense whether we are hungry, or tired, and so forth.

• External or Sensory perception (exteroception), tells us about the world outside our bodies. Using our senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste, we discover colors, sounds, textures, etc. of the world at large. There is a growing body of knowledge of the mechanics of sensory processes in cognitive psychology.[/b]

(Wikipedia: Philosophy Of Perception, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy … eption.htm)

The nature of bodily experience, from headaches to orgasms to flatulence, gives rise to the intuition that these types of experiences probably do not arise from brains-in-vats, virtual people, or disembodied minds. Bodily experience (particularly the experience of pain) generates a nagging suspicion that, following Bertrand Russell, “… there really are objects independent of us, whose action on us cause our sensations.”

b A strange conviction in the truth of Facsimile Realism is created by[/b] the absurd nature of the human condition itself. Oddly enough, many assert that there is a connection between consciousness and the external world based upon the strange and complex nature of the world that we currently experience. But it is not clear why the external world should mimic our conscious experience. How do we know that our cerebral cortices have “got it right”?

[size=150]Arguments Against Facsimile Realism[/size]

Are the contents of internal and external perception irrefutable evidence of Facsimile Realism? On the surface of things, one can argue that belief in the truth of Facsimile Realism is ultimately nothing more than a floating logical inference, formed by connections between perception, judgment, and belief that are themselves products of the type of brain we happen to possess. Powerful suspicion of the truth of Facsimile Realism is, at the end of the day, only something that the brain is engineered beforehand to project. Nothing prevents the external world from having no apparitional or behavioral relation to the contents of consciousness.

Note: This is just the type of disconnect between reason and reality that we may expect from a godless universe. An unconscious universe has no obligation, outside sheer coincidence, to provide information about the external world to brains structured by lawful accident. Only by the most remarkable coincidence would there necessarily exist a deep coherence between consciousness and the external world (given the late arrival of consciousness compared to the preconscious eternity of the external world).

[b]Die-hard adherents of Facsimile Realism are forced to rely upon quasi-religious faith in a revelatory power of mind that reveals the true nature of the external world despite the fact that it cannot be experienced.

This magical external world-revelation is an aspect of externalism, the view that one can have knowledge or justified belief despite ignorance of (or inability to have “access” to) the evidence, or other circumstances, that make the belief justified. An anti-Facsimile Realist can point out that externalism has merit if the hidden evidence is empirically accessible in principle, but externalism defies reason if it claims certain knowledge of that which exists beyond the ‘deprivation chamber’ of personal conscious experience.

The job of the anti-Facsimile Realist is simple, if he or she reductively relies upon the tautology that[/b] objective reality is what it is and will be what it will be despite the chains placed upon it by human belief. [b](Believers in Facsimile Realism,incidentally, also rely upon the tautology). Human reason takes inventory of and manipulates facts known to sensory and introspective experience; it stands ready to learn, inventory, and manipulate future truths verifying today’s predictions or theories, and it aids in the establishment of logical possibility.

But human reason cannot inventory and manipulate truths about the existence and nature of the external world, as external world ‘truths’ are ‘established’ through ad hoc beliefs that are neither justified (save through psychological justification without empirical support) nor verified by the information within the virtual reality of consciousness.

Skepticism against the reliability of human reason is attacked by many philosophers, including the common-sense philosopher Thomas Reid.[/b]

The common-sense Scotsman, Thomas Reid, argued as follows:

  1. Suppose the skeptic is right, and perception is not reliable. But perception is just another of my cognitive processes; and if it is not reliable then others are also bound not to be reliable.

  2. All of my faculties come out of the same shop (the brain); so if one is faulty the others are bound to be as well.

  3. But that means that the faculty of reasoning, which the skeptic also uses, is also bound to be unreliable too. In other words, when we reason, we are bound to make errors, so we can never trust the arguments we give for any claim.

  4. But then that applies to the skeptic’s argument for skepticism! So if the skeptic is right, we should not pay attention to skepticism, since the skeptic arrives at the skeptical conclusion (that reason is unreliable) by reasoning (which happens to be faulty). And if the skeptic is wrong (about the unreliability of reason), then of course we need not pay attention to skepticism. In either case, we need not take skepticism about the reliability of our faculties seriously.

  5. The form of Reid’s argument is a dilemma. Either the skeptic is right, in which case we can’t trust our ability to reason and so can’t trust the skeptic’s conclusion either; or the skeptic is wrong, in which case again we can’t trust the skeptic’s conclusion. In either case we don’t have to worry about skepticism!

But…

The dilemma demonstrates that the skeptic’s conclusions do not follow from his argument (the skeptic ignores the fact that his skeptical reasoning is itself unreliable). It does not prove that the conclusions are not true anyway (despite the unreliability of the skeptic’s reasoning, perception is still objectively unreliable).

(Wikipedia: Philosophical Skepticism, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophi … ticism.htm)

If objective reality is invulnerable to human reason (human reason coincides with but does not determine objective reality), then reason supporting Facsimile Realism does nothing to invalidate Non-Representational Foundationism. At the end of the day, all the intuition and reason in the world cannot rule out the actual truth of the Brain-In-A-Vat, Evil Genius (or Evil Daemon), or Matrix Hypotheses. One can harp over and over about how unlikely they are, but there is nothing that prevents them from having existence behind our backs.

[b]When the possibility of a matrix is raised, a question immediately follows. How do I know that I am not in a matrix? After all, there could be a brain in a vat structured exactly like my brain, hooked up to a matrix, with experiences indistinguishable from those I am having now. From the inside, there is no way to tell for sure that I am not in the situation of the brain in a vat. So it seems that there is no way to know for sure that I am not in a matrix.

The Matrix Hypothesis is one that we should take seriously. It seems to be a skeptical hypothesis: a hypothesis that I cannot rule out, and one that would falsify most of my beliefs if it were true. Where there is a skeptical hypothesis, it looks like none of these beliefs count as genuine knowledge. Of course the beliefs might be true — I might be lucky, and not be envatted — but I can’t rule out the possibility that they are false.[/b]

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

Finally, an anti-Facsimile Realist can point out (at least) two epistemological limitations crippling assertion of the undeniable truth of Facsimile Realism:

b There is no rational basis for the existence of a ‘mystical’ revelatory or truth-telling link between the external world and what a subject believes about the external world.

Beliefs about the external world, particularly belief that the contents of visual experience are representations of objects and events in the external world, are ultimately “all in one’s head”. We can’t prove that this is actually going on. We can only believe that this is what happens. We believe and ask others to believe that star-shaped pieces of flesh called neurons are compressed to form a larger blob of flesh weighing about 3 pounds, and that this gives rise to subjective experience by passing electricity through its convoluted mass.[/b]

[b]How atoms are capable of accomplishing this feat (creating subjective experience) when they fail to do so with every other object in the universe is beyond logical explanation. But the fun doesn’t stop there. Some go so far as to state that the virtual reality created by the blob of electrical flesh must mimic the appearance and behavior of a world lying beyond the virtual reality’s level of perception.

The greatest absurdity is that there are those who believe that there exists an inscrutable ‘law of nature’ that ensures before-the-fact that if cerebral cortices should happen to exist, the virtual realities created by those cortices will infallibly mimic the appearance and behavior of the external world.[/b]

Matter is to be understood as that which physics is about. So, matter must be such that the physicist can know its existence. In other words, what physical science is concerned with and makes discoveries about must be a function of the physicist’s sense-data. What could that function be? There are only two ways in which we can know the existence of something. “(1) immediate acquaintance, which assures us of the existence of our thoughts, feelings, and sense-data, (2) general principles according to which the existence of one thing can be inferred from that of another.” (Russell 1912a, p. 80)

The bridge which relates the physicist’s sense-data to matter must correspond to one of these ways of knowing that something exists. If our knowledge of matter can be reduced to what we know by acquaintance, then matter should be understood as a logical construction out of sense-data. Otherwise, it must be by inference that we know the existence of matter. So, according to Russell, the bridge between sense-data and matter is either inference or logical construction. (Russell 1912a, pp. 84-85)

(Steen, Irem Kurstal (abstract on Russell, Bertrand): Our Knowledge of the External World, Open Court Publishing, La Salle, IL 1912. Reprinted Routledge, London and New York, 2000)

[b]Steen’s (and Russell’s) premise rests ultimately upon blind faith in the existence of ‘non-virtual’ matter, and upon faith that the cerebral cortices that we happen to have are “under contract” to give rise to virtual realities that must, by some inscrutable law of nature, mimic the appearance and behavior of the external world.

But this is taking things a bit too far in order to support the knowledge of the physicist and the validity of scientific discovery. It is not a secret that science vitally depends upon Facsimile Realism: if Facsimile Realism is false, there remains no objective support or foundation to our knowledge of biology, astronomy, and microphysics.[/b]


It’s amazing enough that we purport the brain to have the ability to electrochemically produce virtual realities, but to place the existential cart before the horse to insist that: “matter (something wholly distinct from subjective experience itself) must be such that the physicist can know it’s existence (when and if consciousness should exist)” doth protest too much about the nature of the external world and its influence upon virtual realities created by cerebral cortices.

[b]The “general principles” of Russell (and Steen) fail to explain the ontological difference between consciousness and the external world (inferred from the existence of dreamless sleep and the conceivable non-being of death). If the function of consciousness is to yield a projection of the external world, how is this function a necessary relation between consciousness and the external world before the fact, given the pre-existence of the external world before the formation of cerebral cortices? It is likely that (aside from coincidence) there exists no cosmic law dictating that consciousness necessarily reflects the nature of the external world.

Unless one proposes consciousness to have always existed alongside the physical from the very start (a la David Chalmer’s panprotopsychism), one is going a step beyond logic to audaciously insist that an ‘external-world-revealing’ natural principle secretly waited in the wings, looking forward to a future consciousness that may or may not come into being.

One must be willing to believe that the a priori principle twiddled it’s thumbs, hoping against hope that a googleplex of atoms—[/b]

One hundred million of them lined up would measure barely an inch (Thibodeau, 1987).

—would somehow “win the atomic lottery” and accidentally form cerebral cortices that happen to be able to produce the right kind of virtual realities that satisfy the principle, ensuring that “… matter is such that the physicist can know its existence.” (Russell; Steen, 1912, 2000)

The implication of a pre-brain gamble to establish a connection between consciousness and the external world stretches the bounds of logic. As David Hume rightly states:

“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.”

From a purely physical or functional standpoint, the opponent of Facsimile Realism can argue that belief in Facsimile Realism is nothing more than fallible output [b]from the physical brain.

If psychophysicalism (the mind/body connection) is true, the brain is neurally set up before the fact to yield belief in Facsimile Realism (if the right neural circuits should fire). The circuits corresponding to belief in Facsimile Realism, at the end of the day, are simply “there”----there is no guarantee that they are in place for the purpose of revealing the true nature of the external world. If this were true, then what prevents neural circuits corresponding to a belief in God from qualifying as proof that God exists?[/b]

[size=150]Summary: Placing All The Cards On The Table[/size]

In the end, arguments for or against Facsimile Realism reduce to the following:

Arguments For Facsimile Realism

1. Matter is to be understood as that which physics is about. So, matter must be such that the physicist can know its existence (Russell, 1912a, p. 80).

In other words, physics speaks not of consciousness, but of what purportedly lies beyond consciousness. Our consciousness yields certain conscious experiences (experiences of biology, astronomy, microphysics, sociology, and the human condition), and these experiences (particularly bodily experience and the human condition) are of such quality that they seem generated by something external to themselves. Thus consciousness somehow subtly reveals the external world.

2. What physical science is concerned with and makes discoveries about must be a function of the physicist’s sense-data(Russell, 1912a, p. 80).

The function of consciousness is to tell us of the nature of the external world. This function of consciousness is “just-so”: nature is set up without explanation to yield this correlation between consciousness and the external world.

Arguments Against Facsimile Realism

1. Matter has existed independent of consciousness (if consciousness is not as eternal as the physical) for an eternity before the formation of functioning brains (if no gods exist). If the substance that makes up the external world is wholly distinct from the substance that makes up subjective experience, and if subjective experience is something that can come into and go out of existence while the external world remains, it is not clear how and why the external world should be such that it can somehow “instruct” late-arriving consciousness to reflect the external world’s true nature (independent of coincidence).

2. The concept of consciousness as an “emergent property” does not save Russell’s assertion (that physics must be such that we must know of its existence). The notion that consciousness is an emergent property from the physical is nothing more than logical construction requiring faith that:

a. The external world exists in the first place

b. The external world possesses qualities that ensure that the contents of consciousness reflect its appearance and behavior.

c. The external world possesses an intrinsic nature containing consciousness from the start, from which consciousness arises (anything else requires the complications of ex nihilo creation).

3. There is nothing that logically or rationally prevents the existence of a world that does not mimic the contents of visual perception. Despite the power of our intutions against it, Non-Representational Foundationism may be true.

[size=150]However…[/size]

[b]In defense of Facsimile Realism, one can argue that the despite the power of arguments against it, Facsimile Realism cannot be ruled out. One cannot simply discard Facsimile Realism outright, thus it is best to safely file it away in the cognitive filing cabinet of metaphysical and logical possibility. At the end of the day, nothing prevents the world from producing cerebral cortices engineered (by natural selection) to produce virtual realities that just happen to mimic the external world.

In order to rationally hold to Facsimile Realism, one should claim that there is only an accidental connection between the external world and consciousness.[/b]

[size=150]Conclusion: Examples Of Non-Representational Foundationism And End Summary[/size]

There are several hypothetical substitutes for Facsimile Realism in Non-Representational Foundationism. Some hypotheses are accepted as truth while others are relegated to thought-experiment or fiction.

[size=150]Examples Of Secular Non-Representational Foundationism[/size]

[size=130]The Dream Hypothesis[/size]

[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)

[size=130]Descartes’ Evil Daemon Hypothesis[/size]

[size=95]“I shall suppose, therefore, that there is not a true God
who is the sovereign source of truth, but some evil demon,
no less cunning and deceiving than powerful, who has used
all his artifices to deceive me.”
(Descartes 1641)[/size]


[size=70]Film: The Truman Show, Paramount Pictures (1998)[/size]

[b]The Truman Show is a 1998 fantasy comedy-drama chronicling the life of a man who does not know that he is living in a constructed reality soap opera, televised 24/7 to billions across the globe.

The film is a secular version of Descartes’ Evil Daemon Hypothesis. The “evil daemon” in this case are humans going out of their way to construct (with actors paid to live out their lives as Burbank’s family, friends, co-workers, and people on the street) a highly-rated soap opera in the form of a simulated reality (prison) centered around their victim/star Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey).[/b]

The evil daemon, sometimes referred to as the evil genius, is a concept in Cartesian philosophy. In his Meditations On First Philosophy, Rene Descartes hypothesizes the existence of an evil demon that presents a complete illusion of an external world, including other people, to Descartes’ senses, where in fact there is no such external world in existence. The evil genius also presents to Descartes’ senses a complete illusion of his own body, including all bodily sensations, where in fact Descartes has no body. Most Cartesian scholars opine that the evil demon is also omnipotent, and thus capable of altering mathematics and the fundamentals of logic.

(Wikipedia: Evil Daemon, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_daemon )

[size=130]The Brain In A Vat Hypothesis[/size]

The Matrix presents a version of an old philosophical fable: the brain in a vat. A disembodied brain is floating in a vat, inside a scientist’s laboratory. The scientist has arranged that the brain will be stimulated with the same sort of inputs that a normal embodied brain receives. To do this, the brain is connected to a giant computer simulation of a world. The simulation determines which inputs the brain receives. When the brain produces outputs, these are fed back into the simulation. The internal state of the brain is just like that of a normal brain, despite the fact that it lacks a body. From the brain’s point of view, things seem very much as they seem to you and me.

The brain is massively deluded, it seems. It has all sorts of false beliefs about the world. It believes that it has a body, but it has no body. It believes that it is walking outside in the sunlight, but in fact it is inside a dark lab. It believes it is one place, when in fact it may be somewhere quite different. Perhaps it thinks it is in Tucson, when it is actually in Australia, or even in outer space.

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

[size=130]The Matrix or Simulation Hypothesis[/size]

Let us call the hypothesis that I am in a matrix and have always been in a matrix the Matrix Hypothesis. We can imagine that a matrix simulates the entire physics of a world (interjection: this isn’t out of the question, as the human brain, in a sense, simulates the physics of a world)[b], keeping track of every last particle throughout space and time. (Later, we will look at ways in which this set-up might be varied.)

An envatted being will be associated with a particular simulated body. A connection is arranged so that whenever this body receives sensory inputs inside the simulation, the envatted cognitive system will receive sensory inputs of the same sort. When the envatted cognitive system produces motor outputs, corresponding outputs will be fed to the motor organs of the simulated body.

When the possibility of a matrix is raised, a question immediately follows. How do I know that I am not in a matrix? After all, there could be a brain in a vat structured exactly like my brain, hooked up to a matrix, with experiences indistinguishable from those I am having now. From the inside, there is no way to tell for sure that I am not in the situation of the brain in a vat. So it seems that there is no way to know for sure that I am not in a matrix.[/b]

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

[size=150]Religious Or Theistic Non-Representational Foundationalism[/size]

[size=130]The Bible-Disproving Matrix Hypothesis[/size]

While not accepted or proposed by Fundamentalist Christianity, the Bible-Disproving Matrix Hypothesis effectively solves the problem modern science poses for bible believers. The truth of the Creation Account is threatened by the Big Bang and biological evolution. The mounting archaeological and laboratory evidence suggests that there is greater reason to believe that man descends from apes rather than Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

[b]But take heart Bible believers! Believers in Biblical Fundamentalism and Intelligent Design need not waste time jousting with the skeptic over the origin of the world. It just so happens that the Big Bang and biological evolution are objectively falsified by the Matrix Hypothesis, as the Judeo-Christian God encased human minds in a ˜Matrix" that only appears to disprove the Genesis Account and the miracles of the Bible! Beyond the Matrix exists the REAL world—in which Adam and Eve eats the fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil, Noah and family survives a global flood, God (through Moses) parts the Red Sea, and Jesus heals the blind and crippled.

If BDMH is true, the Big Bang and biological evolution never occurred—save within the imagination of beings encapsulated within an ingenious “Bible-disproving” Matrix (in which humans are confronted with piling virtual evidence of the Big Bang and natural selection). The Genesis Account, however, is objectively true, with God causing post-crucifixion humans (test subjects in a faith-testing-world-simulation) to perceive scientific evidence disproving the claims of the Bible.[/b]

[b]The BDMH is a theological version of Descartes’ Evil Genius Hypothesis, it proposes that God implements the Matrix Hypothesis in order to harvest those who have faith from those who do not. The faithful hold fast to their faith in the face of increasing scientific evidence offering ‘rational’ explanation for the world, with science woefully ignorant and/or skeptical of the fact that its ‘discoveries’ are part of a God-contrived simulation unrelated to the true nature of the external world.

The BDMH is also a version of the Omphalos Hypothesis:[/b]

The Omphalos hypothesis was named after the title of an 1857 book, Omphalos by Philip Henry Gosse, in which Gosse argued that in order for the world to be “functional”, God must have created the Earth with mountains and canyons, trees with growth rings, Adam and Eve with hair, fingernails, and navels (omphalos is Greek for “navel”), and that therefore no evidence that we can see of the presumed age of the earth and universe can be taken as reliable. The idea has seen some revival in the twentieth century by some modern creationists, who have extended the argument to light that appears to originate in far-off stars and galaxies, although many other creationists reject this explanation (and also believe that Adam and Eve had no navels).

Though Gosse’s original Omphalos hypothesis specifies a popular creation story, others have proposed that the idea does not preclude creation as recently as five minutes ago, including memories of times before this created in situ. This idea is sometimes called “Last Thursdayism” by its opponents, as in “the world might as well have been created last Thursday.” The concept is both unverifiable and unfalsifiable through any conceivable scientific method — in other words, it is impossible even in principle to subject it to any form of test by reference to any empirical data because the empirical data themselves are considered to have been arbitrarily created to look the way they do at every observable level of detail.

[size=110]A deceptive creator[/size]

From a religious viewpoint, it can be interpreted as God having ‘created a fake,’ such as illusions of light in space of stellar explosions (supernovae) that never really happened, or volcanic mountains that were never really volcanoes in the first place and that never actually experienced erosion, and the idea that God would create appearances that are so completely deceiving to every level of detail is not consistent with most benevolent theistic theologies.

(Wikipedia: Omphalos (theology), en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphalos_(theology

[size=130]The Superchristian Matrix Hypothesis[/size]

[b]According to Superchristianity, everything is explicable to God’s omniscient foreknowledge of past, present, and future. God rules the world by Theonomous Simulism, in which God controls human will and destiny through a simulation program that calculates and runs algorithms of the fates of billions of ‘virtual people’ within a ‘virtual world’‘. The Superchristian Matrix Hypothesis, therefore, proposes that the Judeo-Christian God is a variant of Descartes’ Evil Genius, creating a replica of an imaginary possible world in order to contrive a psychomoral evolution of the depraved “characters” of God’s prevision of the existence of evil. God’s purpose is to “improve the existential lot” of such beings through their transformation into psychological and moral manifestations of the mind of Jesus Christ.

If the Superchristian Matrix Hypothesis is true, the external world either does not exist or is an infinite realm of phenomenal aether God uses to construct the human mind, the current world, and the various afterlifes inhabited by ‘post-death’ creatures.[/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)

[size=150]Finale[/size]

If one transcends naive realism to realize that consciousness is, in effect, a ‘virtual reality’ that purportedly simulates the external world (or exists as its own virtual world), the true nature of reality is reduced to either Solipsism, Representational Foundationism (Facsimile Realism), or Non-Representational Foundationism.

[b]Each view yields a world indistinguishable (in appearance and behavior) from the others, and no view falsifies or rules out another based on what is known or believed. Externalism, however, rears its ugly head to purport that humans possess special revelatory knowledge of the imperceptible world that irrefutably defeats counterpossibilities by “whispering in the ear” of the subject the “true” nature of the external world.

Opponents can resist externalism through strong argument against supra-conscious knowledge (that claims certainty of the nature of the imperceptible world). The opponent can go so far as to express skepticism against the ability of neurons to give rise to virtual realities that purportedly peer over the wall of the “prison cell” of consciousness.

In the end, if one denies the existence of supra-conscious knowledge, the True Nature of Reality floats listlessly between the netherworlds of Solipsism, Facsimile Realism, and Secular/Theistic Non-Representational Foundationism.[/b]

[size=200]END[/size]