Comment by qsera
6 days ago
>Consciousness is a derivative, secondary phenomenon which is a measurement process occurring in the body of an ape
Can you define existence without depending on or referring to consciousness?
6 days ago
>Consciousness is a derivative, secondary phenomenon which is a measurement process occurring in the body of an ape
Can you define existence without depending on or referring to consciousness?
Yes. Though i think you're committing the gentic fallacy here, which is the core fallacy at the heart of idealism and much 19th C. german philosophy.
The properties of the origin of somethign imply nothing about the properties of the product. That a bread factory is made of metal, does not mean bread is.
That in my statement of things in language I am conscious of what I state, says nothing about the truth (or other such properties) of what I say.
A photographic plate is made of metal, the mountain it photographs, of mud.
I am conscious, but when I say, "reality is all that which is extended in space and time" -- the truth of that proposition has nothing to do with my being consiouss -- it is a loaf of bread, a photograph, a product of a process invovling consiousness but in none of its properties, depends upon it.
Every relevant thing we do requires consciousness -- just as everythign a thermometer does requires, say, its own mercury -- but in measuring coffee's temperature, coffee is in no way mercury. And when we measre the world, by photographing it with consciousness, it is in no way conscious.
>reality is all that which is extended in space and time
You are missing the fact that "space" and "time" are also illusions painted on consciousness.
Alas, no I am not.
They're properties of the world which consciousness measures.
A mountain is painted in the ink of a photo, the mountain is not an illusion. You're focused only on the measurement, and not what is measured.
25 replies →
> You are missing the fact that "space" and "time" are also illusions painted on consciousness.
Both of these can be measured. They are not illusions.
Money is an illusion made up by people and agreed upon for basically the whole of the world economy, but not real. Space between me and the lamp on my desk is very real. The age of the world and the age of the universe is very real.
1 reply →
we need to distinguish accounts that are merely self-consistent, and those that are more useful.
the reality-is-illusion meme is self-consistent (panpsychism, simulationism, dream-of-god-ism, whatever). merely being self-consistent isn't good enough.
the alternative (and there is only one) is physicalism and its epistemology, science. the main appeal of this is parsimony, often referred to as Occam's Razor.
8 replies →
You are attributing to me something I never said.
I said nothing about the nature of reality. All that I said is: all my knowledge of the reality (whether it exists independently or me or not) comes from my perception.
There could be an objective reality, or reality could be something created by our consciousness. I don't know. The one thing I do know, however, is what my consciousness perceives. It is in that sense that is is fundamental