12 ms·

Sure, but I don't think the analogy holds. In a dream, none of the phenomena I experience (colored blobs moving about) correspond to any facts about an external

Sure, but I don't think the analogy holds. In a dream, none of the phenomena I experience (colored blobs moving about) correspond to any facts about an external reality. That's one kind of illusion, and a meaningful one. The other would be to infer "therefore I must not experiencing [the phenomenon I'm approximating as 'seeing colored blobs' or anything else]," which is nonsense. Even the thought "I am not having a conscious experience" is a conscious experience -- though even that's often not obvious. When you're having a dream, it is all an illusion (of the first kind), but to conclude that you are therefore not experiencing anything whatsoever and thus there's nothing to explain would be a grave mistake. You're not blacked out, and no amount of reasoning would make it so. The same holds here, no matter how much more consistent this reality appears to be.

dwaltrip 9y ago
> In a dream, none of the phenomena I experience (colored blobs moving about) correspond to any facts about an external reality. That's one kind of illusion, and a meaningful one. > When you're having a dream, it is all an illusion (of the first kind) How would you characterize a dream in which friends or family members are present? Are these not "facts about an external reality"? Presumably, you aren't dreaming about my family members, as you have never met them. Yet here I am, dreaming about them for some reason. I would argue this is due to the "external reality" where my family members exist and I have interacted with them.
- monktastic1 9y ago
  Yes, it's possible to have a dream about my family that's in part caused by my actual family members. But the dream parents are not my actual parents, and a pencil in water is not an actual broken pencil. This highlights one meaning of "illusion." From these sorts of examples, we can conclude that whatever we think we are experiencing might not be what we are actually experiencing -- but crucially, not that we are therefore not experiencing anything whatsoever. The visual experience of a broken pencil doesn't stop happening just because you know it's not really a broken pencil. It keeps happening but means something else. If you are dead honest with yourself, and drop all your metaphysics for a moment, you will discover that various things certainly seem to be happening (sights, sounds, thoughts, etc.). Try it right now! This "sheer fact" deserves an explanation, and though logical and metaphysical games can produce the explanation "there's nothing there to explain," many people don't consider that any kind of explanation. (Furthermore, I hypothesize that for those that do consider it a valid explanation, spending more time in that "dead honest" state, where there's minimal conceptualization of one's experience, will slowly eat away at their confidence in the usefulness of the "explanation." Conversely, thinking harder and harder about it may indeed bolster it.)
  - dwaltrip 9y ago
    I made a comment that touches on this more directly elsewhere in the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15245740 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15245740 I'm curious what you think of it.
    - monktastic1 9y ago
      Thanks for sharing that. The trouble I have is that "modeling" can happen in the absence of what I'm calling "experience." Given that one can happen without the other, they cannot be equivalent. So the trouble always seems to come back to giving a formal definition for "experience." I admit that I can't, but I can give a procedure (roughly, meditation) that seems to get other people to a point where they say "oh, that." For a particular reason that I seem unable to communicate, at that point it becomes less meaningful to say that experience is "caused by" physical things as opposed to merely correlated with them. The more clearly I see what it is I'm trying to explain, the more clear it becomes why there's an "explanatory gap." I'm sure this is terribly unsatisfying and sounds like hand-waving woo, and I'm sorry I can't do better right now.
      - dwaltrip 9y ago
        > The trouble I have is that "modeling" can happen in the absence of what I'm calling "experience." This is the big claim. I'm highly skeptical. The way I see it, the self-modeling that occurs in biological organisms _is_ the conscious experience. They are one and the same. Each momentary, instantaneous experience is the latest output of the self-modeling process. As another angle, this seems closely related to identity. I see identity as being intertwined with, perhaps even stemming from, the accumulated impact and memory of these models. At least, the portions that refer to us. The boundaries can be quite fuzzy -- we are partially defined by our friends, etc. Each instantaneous model changes the brain a bit, and over time this process constructs one's identity (starting with a tiny kernel at birth) In summary, maybe we can say that "I" is simply the brain's current best guess at what the entity that houses it actually is, and that conscious experience is the brain's best guess at what this "I" is currently experiencing (caveat: these guesses are biased towards survival -- accuracy is not the only concern). > but I can give a procedure (roughly, meditation) that seems to get other people to a point where they say "oh, that." Meditation is very interesting. I've done some, and I'd like to dig into it more. However, I interpret the experience differently. > I'm sure this is terribly unsatisfying and sounds like hand-waving woo, and I'm sorry I can't do better right now. Not at all! I'm enjoying the discussion. Thanks for being frank.
naasking 9y ago
> In a dream, none of the phenomena I experience (colored blobs moving about) correspond to any facts about an external reality. I think it does. Unless you seriously think you dream before you've ever had a single experience? Dreams are memory mashups. > When you're having a dream, it is all an illusion (of the first kind), but to conclude that you are therefore not experiencing anything whatsoever and thus there's nothing to explain would be a grave mistake. I've already acknowledged that humans "experience" things, in a colloquial sense. What's left to explain is whether it's possible to capture what we term "experience" using third-person objective facts. We still need an account of how this happens, so there's plenty left to explain.
- monktastic1 9y ago
  > I've already acknowledged that humans "experience" things, in a colloquial sense. Thanks for the clarification. Perhaps we don't disagree in the way I thought. Let me see if I understand our divergence. Because my experiences have a certain consistency, I infer an objective cause. Because this continues to happen, I become increasingly certain about this model (e.g., materialism). In brief, the way I model reality is the result of a particular configuration of experiences. I then use this model to explain the existence of experience itself. So far I hope we're on the same page. Where I think the divergence happens is in whether a person considers the inferred model (materialism) or the "sheer phenomenon" (colloquially, "experience") to be more fundamental. I think I understand (and respect) why you and others feel it should be the former. Being the sort of person who spends time relaxing my inferences about reality (i.e., "meditating"), I feel it's the latter. Anyway, I should probably go spend time doing something else. Apologies if I've mischaracterized your views.

dwaltrip 9y ago

> In a dream, none of the phenomena I experience (colored blobs moving about) correspond to any facts about an external reality. That's one kind of illusion, and a meaningful one. > When you're having a dream, it is all an illusion (of the first kind) How would you characterize a dream in which friends or family members are present? Are these not "facts about an external reality"? Presumably, you aren't dreaming about my family members, as you have never met them. Yet here I am, dreaming about them for some reason. I would argue this is due to the "external reality" where my family members exist and I have interacted with them.

monktastic1 9y ago
Yes, it's possible to have a dream about my family that's in part caused by my actual family members. But the dream parents are not my actual parents, and a pencil in water is not an actual broken pencil. This highlights one meaning of "illusion." From these sorts of examples, we can conclude that whatever we think we are experiencing might not be what we are actually experiencing -- but crucially, not that we are therefore not experiencing anything whatsoever. The visual experience of a broken pencil doesn't stop happening just because you know it's not really a broken pencil. It keeps happening but means something else. If you are dead honest with yourself, and drop all your metaphysics for a moment, you will discover that various things certainly seem to be happening (sights, sounds, thoughts, etc.). Try it right now! This "sheer fact" deserves an explanation, and though logical and metaphysical games can produce the explanation "there's nothing there to explain," many people don't consider that any kind of explanation. (Furthermore, I hypothesize that for those that do consider it a valid explanation, spending more time in that "dead honest" state, where there's minimal conceptualization of one's experience, will slowly eat away at their confidence in the usefulness of the "explanation." Conversely, thinking harder and harder about it may indeed bolster it.)
- dwaltrip 9y ago
  I made a comment that touches on this more directly elsewhere in the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15245740 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15245740 I'm curious what you think of it.
  - monktastic1 9y ago
    Thanks for sharing that. The trouble I have is that "modeling" can happen in the absence of what I'm calling "experience." Given that one can happen without the other, they cannot be equivalent. So the trouble always seems to come back to giving a formal definition for "experience." I admit that I can't, but I can give a procedure (roughly, meditation) that seems to get other people to a point where they say "oh, that." For a particular reason that I seem unable to communicate, at that point it becomes less meaningful to say that experience is "caused by" physical things as opposed to merely correlated with them. The more clearly I see what it is I'm trying to explain, the more clear it becomes why there's an "explanatory gap." I'm sure this is terribly unsatisfying and sounds like hand-waving woo, and I'm sorry I can't do better right now.
    - dwaltrip 9y ago
      > The trouble I have is that "modeling" can happen in the absence of what I'm calling "experience." This is the big claim. I'm highly skeptical. The way I see it, the self-modeling that occurs in biological organisms _is_ the conscious experience. They are one and the same. Each momentary, instantaneous experience is the latest output of the self-modeling process. As another angle, this seems closely related to identity. I see identity as being intertwined with, perhaps even stemming from, the accumulated impact and memory of these models. At least, the portions that refer to us. The boundaries can be quite fuzzy -- we are partially defined by our friends, etc. Each instantaneous model changes the brain a bit, and over time this process constructs one's identity (starting with a tiny kernel at birth) In summary, maybe we can say that "I" is simply the brain's current best guess at what the entity that houses it actually is, and that conscious experience is the brain's best guess at what this "I" is currently experiencing (caveat: these guesses are biased towards survival -- accuracy is not the only concern). > but I can give a procedure (roughly, meditation) that seems to get other people to a point where they say "oh, that." Meditation is very interesting. I've done some, and I'd like to dig into it more. However, I interpret the experience differently. > I'm sure this is terribly unsatisfying and sounds like hand-waving woo, and I'm sorry I can't do better right now. Not at all! I'm enjoying the discussion. Thanks for being frank.

naasking 9y ago

> In a dream, none of the phenomena I experience (colored blobs moving about) correspond to any facts about an external reality. I think it does. Unless you seriously think you dream before you've ever had a single experience? Dreams are memory mashups. > When you're having a dream, it is all an illusion (of the first kind), but to conclude that you are therefore not experiencing anything whatsoever and thus there's nothing to explain would be a grave mistake. I've already acknowledged that humans "experience" things, in a colloquial sense. What's left to explain is whether it's possible to capture what we term "experience" using third-person objective facts. We still need an account of how this happens, so there's plenty left to explain.

monktastic1 9y ago
> I've already acknowledged that humans "experience" things, in a colloquial sense. Thanks for the clarification. Perhaps we don't disagree in the way I thought. Let me see if I understand our divergence. Because my experiences have a certain consistency, I infer an objective cause. Because this continues to happen, I become increasingly certain about this model (e.g., materialism). In brief, the way I model reality is the result of a particular configuration of experiences. I then use this model to explain the existence of experience itself. So far I hope we're on the same page. Where I think the divergence happens is in whether a person considers the inferred model (materialism) or the "sheer phenomenon" (colloquially, "experience") to be more fundamental. I think I understand (and respect) why you and others feel it should be the former. Being the sort of person who spends time relaxing my inferences about reality (i.e., "meditating"), I feel it's the latter. Anyway, I should probably go spend time doing something else. Apologies if I've mischaracterized your views.