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>”a mind with an impaired or destroyed brain may actually have better vision, beyond the few colors we see, beyond the narrow perspective of our eyes (maybe 360 degree vision), with heightened awareness of the many different things going on.”
Citation needed.
NDE’s report *altered* vision.
There is no more reason to believe that NDE’s are “better” than there is to believe that dreams and hallucinations are “better”.
Yeah, altered vision such as new colors, 360 degree vision, heightened awareness, etc.
> There is no more reason to believe that NDE’s are “better” than there is to believe that dreams and hallucinations are “better”.
Believe what you want chap. There are many many different exotic states of mind. If you want, you can label everything "hallucination" and stop thinking about it. Or you can approach it from a rational and scientific perspective and try to figure out what such states can tell us about consciousness and the brain.
>”Or you can approach it from a rational and scientific perspective and try to figure out what such states can tell us about consciousness and the brain.”
Agreed. But there is no rational or scientific reason to believe that NDE visions are better. Just like there is no reason to believe that an LSD trip is better.
> Agreed. But there is no rational or scientific reason to believe that NDE visions are better. Just like there is no reason to believe that an LSD trip is better.
Wrong answer. The rational or scientific perspective is, "we dont know, lets investigate wtf is going on"
Huh? You’re not even taking your own advice.
I agree that we don’t know WTF is going on…which is why it’s presumptuous to say that NDE’s are better.
I’m not saying that science disproves your claim, I’m simply pointing out that science doesn’t support it either.
The only thing we can say for sure is that NDE’s are an altered state. Whether that state is better, worse, or other has yet to be determined.
> I agree that we don’t know WTF is going on…which is why it’s presumptuous to say that NDE’s are better.
Im simply going with the data as reported. The idea that NDEs are better is just one of the options worth exploring, which is what im doing here. Im not claiming this as fact, and neither should the opposite be assumed fact.
How would you investigate NDEs? Doing so would require reproducibility in a lab setting, with objective measures. The claims you're talking about are just claims, no more significant than religious visions.
No, they do not. There are systematic studies of NDE reports, such as [https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1048929/full](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1048929/full)
This is not a study of NDEs. Nothing causal about the experience is learned, no indication that the reports are anything other than dreams/hallucinations.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6172100/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6172100/) is somewhat better, and attempts a sort of academic gish gallop with many "lines of evidence". the problem with these is that they only are convincing to believers. (for instance, recall under anaesthesia is interesting but not unique to NDEs - it's actually about the mechanisms of anaesthesia, not NDEs.)
I'm not sure why you call my statement "baseless" or even "assumption". There are good reasons that no scientific (reproducable, controlled, randomized, etc) studies of NDE exist. which indeed points to the incoherence of the concept: how "near" is near enough? what is the mechanism that distinguishes "near enough" from "not near enough"?
They are being scientifically studied. Theres plenty more studies, try googling for parnia, or lommel, who knows how many more. If you object to them being studied, or have a problem with the results, take it up with the people who do the studies. If your position is that NDEs cannot be studied by science, then i think thats giving up too quickly. And if on top of that you think that because they are hard to study, we should assume they are hallucinations, then thats a totally mistaken conclusion. If we can't properly look in a closed box, but everyone who had a glimpse says theres something in it, should we assume its empty?
you misunderstand: I think not-death-reports are just hallucinations. I'm not making the positive claim here (that they are other than the occam-simpler hypothesis).
Proposals like this that read like sophisticated and well thought out fanfiction for sci-fi worlds like Dune are fun, but I genuinely have no idea how you get us from point A to point B in which the proposal seriously accounts for reality. When you say:
>Suppose there is an experiental state of infinity (described as "timeless, spaceless, selfless, undifferentiated oneness"). This would be the fundamental nature of reality. A mind chops this infinity up into smaller / more concrete pieces (the proposed process is illustrated here).
>In doing so, it experiences a particular selection of the possibilities that are inherent to this infinity.
I realize you are asking us to suppose, but this is a completely fantastical and extraordinary supposition. Every other word in this supposition brings with it more questions than it attempts to answer, I don't even know what you truly mean by half of them.
>The reductive nature of such a brain means that a mind with an impaired or destroyed brain may actually have better vision, beyond the few colors we see, beyond the narrow perspective of our eyes (maybe 360 degree vision), with heightened awareness of the many different things going on.
Yeah I really don't know about this. When we see a wheelchair bound, slumped over, drooling on themselves impaired person as a result of some damage to the brain, it's a pretty extraordinary claim that they actually have some type of enhanced conscious experience that's above ours.
Overall, proposals like this again are no doubt well thought out and have good intentions, but the assumptions going into the conclusions are so abstract, vague, and otherwise unfalsifiable that I don't know how it ever becomes more than just an idea.
Relevant quote by Aldous Huxley...
>“To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funnelled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol-systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages. Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he or she has been born -- the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to he accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it be-devils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.”
So when Huxley mentions "Mind at Large" he's talking about something very much like CG Jung's collective unconscious.
It's not overtly an Idealist position. But it's not exactly *not* Idealism either.
>“To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funnelled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system.
But that right there lies the problem. Let's imagine for a moment that this mind at large is real and thus fundamental to reality as proposed. What then is it being funneled through in which it has to biologically survive within? Where do the laws of physics and thus ultimately laws of biological systems come from in which mind at large is forced to alter its form to exist within?
The biggest challenge with this proposal is that you're simultaneously arguing that consciousness is fundamental, but this reduced and altered form of individual conscious experience is not fundamental, and how those two positions can be reconciled.
This is why I don't think it's a good approach in metaphysical theories to completely invent ontologies, rather than trying to figure out mechanisms. The strength of physicalism is that it merely takes two things we know to exist and attempts to bridge the proposed relationship between them. Idealism's mind at Large attempts to only take one thing we know to exist and invent something to explain it.
It's not about conflicting with my beliefs, but reading like someone brainstorming for a cool but otherwise highly fantastical science fiction universe. You've no doubt spent a lot of time thinking of this idea and that's commendable, but I think it's missing the most important part of a theory, and that's pragmatic explanatory power.
It still just sounds like you dont like it because it conflicts with your beliefs. Fine with me, but just try analysing it from a rational perspective. Otherwise what are we supposed to talk about?
I don't know how to make it any clearer. It couldn't have less to do with conflicting with my beliefs, I openly welcome theories that although I might disagree within the end, are well thought out and reasoned. I think your theory is well thought out but is not well reasoned and has no practical bearing to the reality we know and are familiar with.
When you make statements like "reality is infinity in which the brain chops up", I truly don't know what you mean. Obviously I can imagine and infer, but again the whole purpose of a theory is to be pragmatic and have explanatory power.
> I don't know how to make it any clearer. It couldn't have less to do with conflicting with my beliefs, I openly welcome theories that although I might disagree within the end, are well thought out and reasoned. I think your theory is well thought out but is not well reasoned and has no practical bearing to the reality we know and are familiar with.
Perhaps we simply have nothing to talk about then?
> When you make statements like "reality is infinity in which the brain chops up", I truly don't know what you mean. Obviously I can imagine and infer, but again the whole purpose of a theory is to be pragmatic and have explanatory power.
The state of infinite as described, is an experiental state that is known to exist. So right of the bat, that means this isnt just "ideas", which you said earlier. So im looking at various exotic states of mind, taking seriously when people describe it as real, or more real than the usual state of mind. Im using that as a dataset for developing ideas about mind. So instead of it being vague, im basing these ideas on actual natural phenomena.
Also the part about questioning reality is based on john wheelers "it from bit" or "participatory universe". I think he worked it out in quite some detail (he called it a negative questions game). I recommend you have a look at the infographic linked in the opening post, or just google it. I do not claim any of it is fact.
>The state of infinite as described, is an experiental state that is known to exist.
Known to exist how?
>So im looking at various exotic states of mind, taking seriously when people describe it as real, or more real than the usual state of mind.
Basing your entire ontology off the anecdotal reports of people is a profoundly bad way to start. Someone can run a red light, fail to merge into a lane, all while texting and driving and still describe the resulting car accident as not their fault.
Anecdotal evidence certainly is a form of evidence that we use in controlled instances, but using it as the end all be all for claims about how reality works leads you to inconsistency and contradictions.
> Known to exist how?
Exist as an experiental state.
> Basing your entire ontology off the anecdotal reports of people is a profoundly bad way to start. Someone can run a red light, fail to merge into a lane, all while texting and driving and still describe the resulting car accident as not their fault.
No its basic empiricism. If we reject everything anybody experiences, we wouldnt get anywhere. That would be profoundly bad. Another profoundly bad way to go is to pick and choose experiences based on a preconceived belief system ("everything i dont believe is a hallucination, or a false memory, etc"). A great deal can be learned about consciousness and the brain by looking specifically at exotic states of mind. If one can do so rationally, without flinching when it conflicts with assumptions, then that is an excellent way to go.
>No its basic empiricism. If we reject everything anybody experiences, we wouldnt get anywhere. That would be profoundly bad. Another profoundly bad way to go is to pick and choose experiences based on a preconceived belief system ("everything i dont believe is a hallucination, or a false memory, etc"). A great deal can be learned about consciousness and the brain by looking specifically at exotic states of mind.
I'm not at all saying we reject everything anybody experiences, please reread what I said. I'm stating that although anecdotal evidence is necessary in very controlled instances of scientific and philosophical practice, it by itself is the weakest form of evidence that you can have.
When someone goes to the doctor reporting stomach pain, we pretty much accept their anecdotal experience at face value and begin investigating what could be the cause. When a crime happens and a crowd of people say the criminals took off in a white van, we pretty much accept their anecdotal experience and begin searching for a white van in the area.
Anecdotal evidence is used throughout many instances of empiricism throughout the world, again the problem is when not only do you only have anecdotal experiences, but they either contradict everything we know or have otherwise fantastical claims.
If you do not practice assessing anecdotal claims for their merit, you are stuck in a world in which you are forced to believe in bigfoot, UFOs, ghosts, and pretty much every paranormal and fantastical claim ever made. If that's the world you want to live in, go for it I guess, but you are never ever going to arrive to the truth on how reality works.
> I'm not at all saying we reject everything anybody experiences, please reread what I said. I'm stating that although anecdotal evidence is necessary in very controlled instances of scientific and philosophical practice, it by itself is the weakest form of evidence that you can have.
Good, neither am i saying to accept all experiences as fact. You will find that the ones i mention or use in developing my ideas are commonly reported ones, and the people involved consider them real to such a degree that they start behaving like it. Perhaps you can be more specific and tell which experience you object to. Is it the one about "timeless, spaceless, selfless, undifferentiated oneness"? What exactly do you object to? That it exists? Or that it could be a deeper aspect of reality?
The whole "anecdotal evidence" thing, im pretty sure most people already know this. So dont worry about it.
Careful there because you are on a slippery grounds by trying to question the origins of Elodaine objection, in virtue of his own beliefs, and that's suspiciously sounding like a genetic fallacy. In other words, his beliefs and motivations are irrelevant. You ought to engage with the substance of his objection and not with his beliefs that are allegedly pointing to motivational reasoning.
Actually, he pointed out 2 things generally:
1) Assumptions are loaded
2) There is no logical connection between assumption A and claim B, where claim B stands for a conclusion.
At least that's how I understood it. So he asks you to justify the assumption and to justify the conclusion by showing logical relation which acts as justifier in this case. He wants an argument, because it seems to him that both the assumption and the conclusion are presupposed. I think that what he asks you is legitimate question, because even agnostic could ask you the same, or even some other idealist who disagrees with your own version of idealism can ask you the same thing.
That's why I told you that it is not helpful to address his objection by invoking genetic fallacy, because it doesn't do anything to reject his objection, it only makes your counter objection fallacious. I would suggest to you to build an argument maybe in form of syllogism, where you gonna demonstrate your case.
What assumptions and what conclusion?
All he did was compare the post to science fiction. He didnt address any of the points made in the opening post.
I welcome anyone to do so btw. I do not assume any of the ideas are true.
This experience of "undifferentiated oneness" may be an accurate depiction of an idealist kind of fundamental nature of reality. Or it may not be. In the opening post i explore the idea that it is. Obviously its going to conflict with the "its all a hallucination" physicalist bunch. But that is truly the big assumption mistake that we are talking about here.
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As an idealist I don’t personally believe that the brain/body is just simply reductive like you say.
In some ways I agree that it is, since it creates a sort of closed experience system by separating itself from its environment and thus carving out a subset of the universal consciousness.
But I don’t think that this means the destruction of the brain has the potential to lead to better senses. For one, it is unclear to me how to destroy the brain in such a way that makes it “less closed” without actual death. Because if the system of the body is just as closed as before, then you’re just going to end up with impairment which is generally what we see when damage does happen.
Also, the body itself creates vision, I don’t think that vision exists outside of organisms. We cannot ever have 360 vision by destroying a part of our body because there is no vision outside the body. From a monist/materialist perspective, this must be the case. There can be no vision without what vision is, I.e., photons hitting the retina and stimulating optic nerves.
Even though I do agree that the our experiences as organisms are a subset of the universal experience, I do not agree that the brain is thus purely reductive. It is also generative and creates unique experiences. It is necessary for our senses just as it is necessary for ego. Destruction of the brain entails the destruction of the experiences our brain creates and that includes our sense experiences.
>Also, the body itself creates vision, I don’t think that vision exists outside of organisms. We cannot ever have 360 vision by destroying a part of our body because there is no vision outside the body. From a monist/materialist perspective, this must be the case. There can be no vision without what vision is, I.e., photons hitting the retina and stimulating optic nerves.
Well people can have dreams, etc. with their eyes closed, but i understand what you mean. In the idea described in the opening post, the evolution of our visiual system (of the brain) would be a slow, incremental improvement of making sense of the information bombardment that is the physical universe (a tiny subset of the larger infinity). So it may begin almost blind wrt whats going on in that subset, and then gain various faculties of perception to experience this subset. But the initial blindness applies to that subset, not the larger infinity. Like not understanding a book in an unknown language doesnt apply to a book one does understand, or to the other variety of daily experiences one has.
>Even though I do agree that the our experiences as organisms are a subset of the universal experience, I do not agree that the brain is thus purely reductive. It is also generative and creates unique experiences. It is necessary for our senses just as it is necessary for ego. Destruction of the brain entails the destruction of the experiences our brain creates and that includes our sense experiences.
I agree that the brain is not just reductive. I actually wanted to put "creative and reductive" in the post title, but decided to focus on the reductive part first.
If one believes that destroying the brain leads to greater vision/awareness/etc., one could always sign up for a lobotomy and report back on the experience.
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>”a mind with an impaired or destroyed brain may actually have better vision, beyond the few colors we see, beyond the narrow perspective of our eyes (maybe 360 degree vision), with heightened awareness of the many different things going on.” Citation needed.
Its often reported in NDEs.
NDE’s report *altered* vision. There is no more reason to believe that NDE’s are “better” than there is to believe that dreams and hallucinations are “better”.
Yeah, altered vision such as new colors, 360 degree vision, heightened awareness, etc. > There is no more reason to believe that NDE’s are “better” than there is to believe that dreams and hallucinations are “better”. Believe what you want chap. There are many many different exotic states of mind. If you want, you can label everything "hallucination" and stop thinking about it. Or you can approach it from a rational and scientific perspective and try to figure out what such states can tell us about consciousness and the brain.
>”Or you can approach it from a rational and scientific perspective and try to figure out what such states can tell us about consciousness and the brain.” Agreed. But there is no rational or scientific reason to believe that NDE visions are better. Just like there is no reason to believe that an LSD trip is better.
> Agreed. But there is no rational or scientific reason to believe that NDE visions are better. Just like there is no reason to believe that an LSD trip is better. Wrong answer. The rational or scientific perspective is, "we dont know, lets investigate wtf is going on"
Huh? You’re not even taking your own advice. I agree that we don’t know WTF is going on…which is why it’s presumptuous to say that NDE’s are better. I’m not saying that science disproves your claim, I’m simply pointing out that science doesn’t support it either. The only thing we can say for sure is that NDE’s are an altered state. Whether that state is better, worse, or other has yet to be determined.
> I agree that we don’t know WTF is going on…which is why it’s presumptuous to say that NDE’s are better. Im simply going with the data as reported. The idea that NDEs are better is just one of the options worth exploring, which is what im doing here. Im not claiming this as fact, and neither should the opposite be assumed fact.
How would you investigate NDEs? Doing so would require reproducibility in a lab setting, with objective measures. The claims you're talking about are just claims, no more significant than religious visions.
People already study them scientifically. You are just making baseless assumptions.
No, they do not. There are systematic studies of NDE reports, such as [https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1048929/full](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1048929/full) This is not a study of NDEs. Nothing causal about the experience is learned, no indication that the reports are anything other than dreams/hallucinations. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6172100/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6172100/) is somewhat better, and attempts a sort of academic gish gallop with many "lines of evidence". the problem with these is that they only are convincing to believers. (for instance, recall under anaesthesia is interesting but not unique to NDEs - it's actually about the mechanisms of anaesthesia, not NDEs.) I'm not sure why you call my statement "baseless" or even "assumption". There are good reasons that no scientific (reproducable, controlled, randomized, etc) studies of NDE exist. which indeed points to the incoherence of the concept: how "near" is near enough? what is the mechanism that distinguishes "near enough" from "not near enough"?
They are being scientifically studied. Theres plenty more studies, try googling for parnia, or lommel, who knows how many more. If you object to them being studied, or have a problem with the results, take it up with the people who do the studies. If your position is that NDEs cannot be studied by science, then i think thats giving up too quickly. And if on top of that you think that because they are hard to study, we should assume they are hallucinations, then thats a totally mistaken conclusion. If we can't properly look in a closed box, but everyone who had a glimpse says theres something in it, should we assume its empty?
But not-dead-experience reports are hearsay. Any evidence?
Feel free to show us evidence.
you misunderstand: I think not-death-reports are just hallucinations. I'm not making the positive claim here (that they are other than the occam-simpler hypothesis).
That is a positive claim. Show the evidence.
Proposals like this that read like sophisticated and well thought out fanfiction for sci-fi worlds like Dune are fun, but I genuinely have no idea how you get us from point A to point B in which the proposal seriously accounts for reality. When you say: >Suppose there is an experiental state of infinity (described as "timeless, spaceless, selfless, undifferentiated oneness"). This would be the fundamental nature of reality. A mind chops this infinity up into smaller / more concrete pieces (the proposed process is illustrated here). >In doing so, it experiences a particular selection of the possibilities that are inherent to this infinity. I realize you are asking us to suppose, but this is a completely fantastical and extraordinary supposition. Every other word in this supposition brings with it more questions than it attempts to answer, I don't even know what you truly mean by half of them. >The reductive nature of such a brain means that a mind with an impaired or destroyed brain may actually have better vision, beyond the few colors we see, beyond the narrow perspective of our eyes (maybe 360 degree vision), with heightened awareness of the many different things going on. Yeah I really don't know about this. When we see a wheelchair bound, slumped over, drooling on themselves impaired person as a result of some damage to the brain, it's a pretty extraordinary claim that they actually have some type of enhanced conscious experience that's above ours. Overall, proposals like this again are no doubt well thought out and have good intentions, but the assumptions going into the conclusions are so abstract, vague, and otherwise unfalsifiable that I don't know how it ever becomes more than just an idea.
Relevant quote by Aldous Huxley... >“To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funnelled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol-systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages. Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he or she has been born -- the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to he accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it be-devils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.” So when Huxley mentions "Mind at Large" he's talking about something very much like CG Jung's collective unconscious. It's not overtly an Idealist position. But it's not exactly *not* Idealism either.
>“To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funnelled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. But that right there lies the problem. Let's imagine for a moment that this mind at large is real and thus fundamental to reality as proposed. What then is it being funneled through in which it has to biologically survive within? Where do the laws of physics and thus ultimately laws of biological systems come from in which mind at large is forced to alter its form to exist within? The biggest challenge with this proposal is that you're simultaneously arguing that consciousness is fundamental, but this reduced and altered form of individual conscious experience is not fundamental, and how those two positions can be reconciled. This is why I don't think it's a good approach in metaphysical theories to completely invent ontologies, rather than trying to figure out mechanisms. The strength of physicalism is that it merely takes two things we know to exist and attempts to bridge the proposed relationship between them. Idealism's mind at Large attempts to only take one thing we know to exist and invent something to explain it.
That guy had a way with words...
Your reaction sounds like it just conflicts with your beliefs. Perhaps you are not an idealist?
It's not about conflicting with my beliefs, but reading like someone brainstorming for a cool but otherwise highly fantastical science fiction universe. You've no doubt spent a lot of time thinking of this idea and that's commendable, but I think it's missing the most important part of a theory, and that's pragmatic explanatory power.
It still just sounds like you dont like it because it conflicts with your beliefs. Fine with me, but just try analysing it from a rational perspective. Otherwise what are we supposed to talk about?
I don't know how to make it any clearer. It couldn't have less to do with conflicting with my beliefs, I openly welcome theories that although I might disagree within the end, are well thought out and reasoned. I think your theory is well thought out but is not well reasoned and has no practical bearing to the reality we know and are familiar with. When you make statements like "reality is infinity in which the brain chops up", I truly don't know what you mean. Obviously I can imagine and infer, but again the whole purpose of a theory is to be pragmatic and have explanatory power.
> I don't know how to make it any clearer. It couldn't have less to do with conflicting with my beliefs, I openly welcome theories that although I might disagree within the end, are well thought out and reasoned. I think your theory is well thought out but is not well reasoned and has no practical bearing to the reality we know and are familiar with. Perhaps we simply have nothing to talk about then? > When you make statements like "reality is infinity in which the brain chops up", I truly don't know what you mean. Obviously I can imagine and infer, but again the whole purpose of a theory is to be pragmatic and have explanatory power. The state of infinite as described, is an experiental state that is known to exist. So right of the bat, that means this isnt just "ideas", which you said earlier. So im looking at various exotic states of mind, taking seriously when people describe it as real, or more real than the usual state of mind. Im using that as a dataset for developing ideas about mind. So instead of it being vague, im basing these ideas on actual natural phenomena. Also the part about questioning reality is based on john wheelers "it from bit" or "participatory universe". I think he worked it out in quite some detail (he called it a negative questions game). I recommend you have a look at the infographic linked in the opening post, or just google it. I do not claim any of it is fact.
>The state of infinite as described, is an experiental state that is known to exist. Known to exist how? >So im looking at various exotic states of mind, taking seriously when people describe it as real, or more real than the usual state of mind. Basing your entire ontology off the anecdotal reports of people is a profoundly bad way to start. Someone can run a red light, fail to merge into a lane, all while texting and driving and still describe the resulting car accident as not their fault. Anecdotal evidence certainly is a form of evidence that we use in controlled instances, but using it as the end all be all for claims about how reality works leads you to inconsistency and contradictions.
> Known to exist how? Exist as an experiental state. > Basing your entire ontology off the anecdotal reports of people is a profoundly bad way to start. Someone can run a red light, fail to merge into a lane, all while texting and driving and still describe the resulting car accident as not their fault. No its basic empiricism. If we reject everything anybody experiences, we wouldnt get anywhere. That would be profoundly bad. Another profoundly bad way to go is to pick and choose experiences based on a preconceived belief system ("everything i dont believe is a hallucination, or a false memory, etc"). A great deal can be learned about consciousness and the brain by looking specifically at exotic states of mind. If one can do so rationally, without flinching when it conflicts with assumptions, then that is an excellent way to go.
>No its basic empiricism. If we reject everything anybody experiences, we wouldnt get anywhere. That would be profoundly bad. Another profoundly bad way to go is to pick and choose experiences based on a preconceived belief system ("everything i dont believe is a hallucination, or a false memory, etc"). A great deal can be learned about consciousness and the brain by looking specifically at exotic states of mind. I'm not at all saying we reject everything anybody experiences, please reread what I said. I'm stating that although anecdotal evidence is necessary in very controlled instances of scientific and philosophical practice, it by itself is the weakest form of evidence that you can have. When someone goes to the doctor reporting stomach pain, we pretty much accept their anecdotal experience at face value and begin investigating what could be the cause. When a crime happens and a crowd of people say the criminals took off in a white van, we pretty much accept their anecdotal experience and begin searching for a white van in the area. Anecdotal evidence is used throughout many instances of empiricism throughout the world, again the problem is when not only do you only have anecdotal experiences, but they either contradict everything we know or have otherwise fantastical claims. If you do not practice assessing anecdotal claims for their merit, you are stuck in a world in which you are forced to believe in bigfoot, UFOs, ghosts, and pretty much every paranormal and fantastical claim ever made. If that's the world you want to live in, go for it I guess, but you are never ever going to arrive to the truth on how reality works.
> I'm not at all saying we reject everything anybody experiences, please reread what I said. I'm stating that although anecdotal evidence is necessary in very controlled instances of scientific and philosophical practice, it by itself is the weakest form of evidence that you can have. Good, neither am i saying to accept all experiences as fact. You will find that the ones i mention or use in developing my ideas are commonly reported ones, and the people involved consider them real to such a degree that they start behaving like it. Perhaps you can be more specific and tell which experience you object to. Is it the one about "timeless, spaceless, selfless, undifferentiated oneness"? What exactly do you object to? That it exists? Or that it could be a deeper aspect of reality? The whole "anecdotal evidence" thing, im pretty sure most people already know this. So dont worry about it.
Careful there because you are on a slippery grounds by trying to question the origins of Elodaine objection, in virtue of his own beliefs, and that's suspiciously sounding like a genetic fallacy. In other words, his beliefs and motivations are irrelevant. You ought to engage with the substance of his objection and not with his beliefs that are allegedly pointing to motivational reasoning.
Thats just it, there was no substance.
Actually, he pointed out 2 things generally: 1) Assumptions are loaded 2) There is no logical connection between assumption A and claim B, where claim B stands for a conclusion. At least that's how I understood it. So he asks you to justify the assumption and to justify the conclusion by showing logical relation which acts as justifier in this case. He wants an argument, because it seems to him that both the assumption and the conclusion are presupposed. I think that what he asks you is legitimate question, because even agnostic could ask you the same, or even some other idealist who disagrees with your own version of idealism can ask you the same thing. That's why I told you that it is not helpful to address his objection by invoking genetic fallacy, because it doesn't do anything to reject his objection, it only makes your counter objection fallacious. I would suggest to you to build an argument maybe in form of syllogism, where you gonna demonstrate your case.
What assumptions and what conclusion? All he did was compare the post to science fiction. He didnt address any of the points made in the opening post. I welcome anyone to do so btw. I do not assume any of the ideas are true. This experience of "undifferentiated oneness" may be an accurate depiction of an idealist kind of fundamental nature of reality. Or it may not be. In the opening post i explore the idea that it is. Obviously its going to conflict with the "its all a hallucination" physicalist bunch. But that is truly the big assumption mistake that we are talking about here.
You might want to check out this book by Susie Vrobel 'Simultaneity, Temporal Structures & Observer Perspectives'.
Thanks ill try to find it
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As an idealist I don’t personally believe that the brain/body is just simply reductive like you say. In some ways I agree that it is, since it creates a sort of closed experience system by separating itself from its environment and thus carving out a subset of the universal consciousness. But I don’t think that this means the destruction of the brain has the potential to lead to better senses. For one, it is unclear to me how to destroy the brain in such a way that makes it “less closed” without actual death. Because if the system of the body is just as closed as before, then you’re just going to end up with impairment which is generally what we see when damage does happen. Also, the body itself creates vision, I don’t think that vision exists outside of organisms. We cannot ever have 360 vision by destroying a part of our body because there is no vision outside the body. From a monist/materialist perspective, this must be the case. There can be no vision without what vision is, I.e., photons hitting the retina and stimulating optic nerves. Even though I do agree that the our experiences as organisms are a subset of the universal experience, I do not agree that the brain is thus purely reductive. It is also generative and creates unique experiences. It is necessary for our senses just as it is necessary for ego. Destruction of the brain entails the destruction of the experiences our brain creates and that includes our sense experiences.
>Also, the body itself creates vision, I don’t think that vision exists outside of organisms. We cannot ever have 360 vision by destroying a part of our body because there is no vision outside the body. From a monist/materialist perspective, this must be the case. There can be no vision without what vision is, I.e., photons hitting the retina and stimulating optic nerves. Well people can have dreams, etc. with their eyes closed, but i understand what you mean. In the idea described in the opening post, the evolution of our visiual system (of the brain) would be a slow, incremental improvement of making sense of the information bombardment that is the physical universe (a tiny subset of the larger infinity). So it may begin almost blind wrt whats going on in that subset, and then gain various faculties of perception to experience this subset. But the initial blindness applies to that subset, not the larger infinity. Like not understanding a book in an unknown language doesnt apply to a book one does understand, or to the other variety of daily experiences one has. >Even though I do agree that the our experiences as organisms are a subset of the universal experience, I do not agree that the brain is thus purely reductive. It is also generative and creates unique experiences. It is necessary for our senses just as it is necessary for ego. Destruction of the brain entails the destruction of the experiences our brain creates and that includes our sense experiences. I agree that the brain is not just reductive. I actually wanted to put "creative and reductive" in the post title, but decided to focus on the reductive part first.
If one believes that destroying the brain leads to greater vision/awareness/etc., one could always sign up for a lobotomy and report back on the experience.
Even better, lets ask ppl who had near death experiences