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Everything is a hallucination, since everything is an internal representation ([1] direct vs indirect realism). The real question is why do these hallucinations

Everything is a hallucination, since everything is an internal representation ([1] direct vs indirect realism). The real question is why do these hallucinations seem consistent enough to generate a shared world/consensus reality. I think David Pearce answers this well [2]. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_and_indirect_realism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_and_indirect_realism 2: https://www.quora.com/How-can-we-explain-the-shared-experience-of-reality https://www.quora.com/How-can-we-explain-the-shared-experien...

pmoriarty 8y ago
The wikipedia article you link to does not support the assertion that "everything is an internal representation", but only presents it as one view (representationalism). In fact, it explicitly says that "The main alternative to representationalism is anti-representationalism, the view according to which perception is not a process of constructing internal representations." I also don't see any answer in the quora article to the question of why "these hallucinations seem consistent enough to generate a shared world/consensus reality". In fact, he seems to say the opposite is the case: "all worlds are private worlds".
- ZeroFries 8y ago
  I linked the wikipedia article to show the main two competing theories. I don't see how direct realism could possible be the case, though, given what we know about perception. > I also don't see any answer in the quora article to the question of why "these hallucinations seem consistent enough to generate a shared world/consensus reality" From David Pearce's answer: "Natural selection ensures that awake world-simulations share similarities. Hence the misconception of a shared experience of external reality. It’s fitness-enhancing, but delusive." An analogy would be each player in a game has their own map of the territory, but overtime, only the players with the maps which reflected the territory accurately enough to continue playing and succeeding in the game would exist.
  - pmoriarty 8y ago
    That answer seems to contradict his assertion that "all worlds are private worlds", also it seems to presume that there's some way to break through the delusion (else, how would he even know there's any such thing as natural selection in external reality, or even that there is an external reality), but it's not at all clear that there is -- certainly he's made no argument to this effect in the article itself -- and were there such a way, it would also contradict the same assertion.
    - ZeroFries 8y ago
      "all worlds are private worlds" means that all of our experience are necessarily private - I don't have access to your world simulations. The delusion is that we have access to the external world directly. So, breaking through the delusion doesn't mean gaining access to the some shared, public world, it's a recognition that such access is impossible.
      - pmoriarty 8y ago
        In that case, how does one get access to the external world?
        ZeroFries 8y ago
        One can make inferences based on sensory input and a nervous system attuned to the environment over millions of years of evolutionary shaping.
        pmoriarty 8y ago
        That already presumes a world view in which there is an external world or environment in which we're in, that we have senses through which we get input from that world. But since all of that is outside our experience (since the model you're arguing for is that we don't have direct access to the external world), the question of how you arrived at that world view remains. The lack of direct access to the external world (if there is one), seems to me to be a hard barrier through which I see no way of breaking, as no matter what you sense, intuit, or think, they are all compatible with any number of ways the external world could be -- such as you're insane, hallucinating, deceived, brain injured, mind controlled, etc, and there's no way to get outside your experience and compare whatver you've concluded, sensed, or believe with what actually is the case. No amount of collaboration or cooperation with others can get you to get at the external world (again, assuming it exists) either, since whatever interactions you have with others is through your own experience, and the same objections regarding their presumed input applies.
pierrebai 8y ago
This is the typical philosopher going one (well, at least one) step too far. If I cut off my hand, I'll experience my hand being cut off, people will see my hand cut off and surgeons could try to stitch it back. To qualify reality as a shared illusion is fine after a night of drinking. To hold such a view in face of independent viewers perceiving essentially the same events without having to communicate is ludicrous. That perception is imperfect and that people can disagree does make a proof of delusion.
- ZeroFries 8y ago
  This doesn't qualify reality as a shared illusion, it qualifies our experience of it as a private illusion, with shared/overlapping characteristics. It's not the pragmatic, common-sense way of interpreting our experience of the world, but no one said the truth had to match up with pragmatics. If you think you see an error in the actual logic leading to that conclusion, please point it out, but deeming it unpragmatic (or ludicrous) isn't one.
- boomlinde 8y ago
  Your hand being cut off is maybe just a convenient abstraction, imparted on us socially or genetically. We agree that it was because we roughly agree on what the essence of a hand is and what it means for it to be cut off, but that's not all there is to what happened. Similarly, that I can scrawl a few crude lines in a particular shape and have everyone agree that it looks like a face doesn't mean that it's an accurate representation or that everyone perceives the same thing. It may embody the shared essence of a face, but people will still disagree on what exactly it represents. Is it smiling or smirking? Tired or just squinting? Old or young? The devil is in the details. Perception is as far as I know only partially based on sensory stimuli. Also important are the abstract concepts we use to make sense of the world and memories of past impressions. We might easily agree that your hand was cut off because we agree on a pretty fundamental level what these things mean, but that's not a very fine-grained description of what happened. Ask people how long it took and you'd probably find some interesting differences in perception.

pmoriarty 8y ago

The wikipedia article you link to does not support the assertion that "everything is an internal representation", but only presents it as one view (representationalism). In fact, it explicitly says that "The main alternative to representationalism is anti-representationalism, the view according to which perception is not a process of constructing internal representations." I also don't see any answer in the quora article to the question of why "these hallucinations seem consistent enough to generate a shared world/consensus reality". In fact, he seems to say the opposite is the case: "all worlds are private worlds".

ZeroFries 8y ago
I linked the wikipedia article to show the main two competing theories. I don't see how direct realism could possible be the case, though, given what we know about perception. > I also don't see any answer in the quora article to the question of why "these hallucinations seem consistent enough to generate a shared world/consensus reality" From David Pearce's answer: "Natural selection ensures that awake world-simulations share similarities. Hence the misconception of a shared experience of external reality. It’s fitness-enhancing, but delusive." An analogy would be each player in a game has their own map of the territory, but overtime, only the players with the maps which reflected the territory accurately enough to continue playing and succeeding in the game would exist.
- pmoriarty 8y ago
  That answer seems to contradict his assertion that "all worlds are private worlds", also it seems to presume that there's some way to break through the delusion (else, how would he even know there's any such thing as natural selection in external reality, or even that there is an external reality), but it's not at all clear that there is -- certainly he's made no argument to this effect in the article itself -- and were there such a way, it would also contradict the same assertion.
  - ZeroFries 8y ago
    "all worlds are private worlds" means that all of our experience are necessarily private - I don't have access to your world simulations. The delusion is that we have access to the external world directly. So, breaking through the delusion doesn't mean gaining access to the some shared, public world, it's a recognition that such access is impossible.
    - pmoriarty 8y ago
      In that case, how does one get access to the external world?
      - ZeroFries 8y ago
        One can make inferences based on sensory input and a nervous system attuned to the environment over millions of years of evolutionary shaping.
        pmoriarty 8y ago
        That already presumes a world view in which there is an external world or environment in which we're in, that we have senses through which we get input from that world. But since all of that is outside our experience (since the model you're arguing for is that we don't have direct access to the external world), the question of how you arrived at that world view remains. The lack of direct access to the external world (if there is one), seems to me to be a hard barrier through which I see no way of breaking, as no matter what you sense, intuit, or think, they are all compatible with any number of ways the external world could be -- such as you're insane, hallucinating, deceived, brain injured, mind controlled, etc, and there's no way to get outside your experience and compare whatver you've concluded, sensed, or believe with what actually is the case. No amount of collaboration or cooperation with others can get you to get at the external world (again, assuming it exists) either, since whatever interactions you have with others is through your own experience, and the same objections regarding their presumed input applies.

pierrebai 8y ago

This is the typical philosopher going one (well, at least one) step too far. If I cut off my hand, I'll experience my hand being cut off, people will see my hand cut off and surgeons could try to stitch it back. To qualify reality as a shared illusion is fine after a night of drinking. To hold such a view in face of independent viewers perceiving essentially the same events without having to communicate is ludicrous. That perception is imperfect and that people can disagree does make a proof of delusion.

ZeroFries 8y ago
This doesn't qualify reality as a shared illusion, it qualifies our experience of it as a private illusion, with shared/overlapping characteristics. It's not the pragmatic, common-sense way of interpreting our experience of the world, but no one said the truth had to match up with pragmatics. If you think you see an error in the actual logic leading to that conclusion, please point it out, but deeming it unpragmatic (or ludicrous) isn't one.
boomlinde 8y ago
Your hand being cut off is maybe just a convenient abstraction, imparted on us socially or genetically. We agree that it was because we roughly agree on what the essence of a hand is and what it means for it to be cut off, but that's not all there is to what happened. Similarly, that I can scrawl a few crude lines in a particular shape and have everyone agree that it looks like a face doesn't mean that it's an accurate representation or that everyone perceives the same thing. It may embody the shared essence of a face, but people will still disagree on what exactly it represents. Is it smiling or smirking? Tired or just squinting? Old or young? The devil is in the details. Perception is as far as I know only partially based on sensory stimuli. Also important are the abstract concepts we use to make sense of the world and memories of past impressions. We might easily agree that your hand was cut off because we agree on a pretty fundamental level what these things mean, but that's not a very fine-grained description of what happened. Ask people how long it took and you'd probably find some interesting differences in perception.