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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 ab

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.
        ZeroFries 8y ago
        Natural selection, combined with a limited number of ways of fitting all the observations together into one or even a few coherent wholes means the representation correlates well enough with the external world so as to confer reproductive fitness. The agent with the representation most conducive to successfully navigating the environment, avoiding danger, and reproducing passes on the genes which informs the next generation's representation. It does mean however, there's always epistemic uncertainty with regards to what reality is actually like. See Kant's noumenon for further details.
        pmoriarty 8y ago
        Neither natural selection nor even something arguably even more fundamental like physics or chemistry can be appealed to for evidence regarding anything in the external world, for they and the observations that presumably led to them may not be from or about the external world at all. Once again, all of them could be merely hallucinations, or you could be insane, or manipulated in to thinking them, or your thinking may be impaired, etc. You or I might think they make sense, but that doesn't matter, since our beliefs about them does not in any way endow them with the power to be an accurate description of the way the external world is, nor do we have any way to check to see if that's the way the external world is. Kant's noumenon is not merely something we are uncertain about, but something that is completely and utterly inaccessible to use, that we are hermetically sealed off from by our experience (at least from Kant's and the representationalist's point of view). Of course, you can come up with probabilities regarding some conjectures you have regarding the noumenon, but as you can never get to the noumenon there's no way to test or verify them, so they're completely pointless and essentially arbitrary. In any event, those probabilities (and any other thoughts you may have) are all subject to the same objections as those listed in the first paragraph, as they're all just more experience.

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.
      - ZeroFries 8y ago
        Natural selection, combined with a limited number of ways of fitting all the observations together into one or even a few coherent wholes means the representation correlates well enough with the external world so as to confer reproductive fitness. The agent with the representation most conducive to successfully navigating the environment, avoiding danger, and reproducing passes on the genes which informs the next generation's representation. It does mean however, there's always epistemic uncertainty with regards to what reality is actually like. See Kant's noumenon for further details.
        pmoriarty 8y ago
        Neither natural selection nor even something arguably even more fundamental like physics or chemistry can be appealed to for evidence regarding anything in the external world, for they and the observations that presumably led to them may not be from or about the external world at all. Once again, all of them could be merely hallucinations, or you could be insane, or manipulated in to thinking them, or your thinking may be impaired, etc. You or I might think they make sense, but that doesn't matter, since our beliefs about them does not in any way endow them with the power to be an accurate description of the way the external world is, nor do we have any way to check to see if that's the way the external world is. Kant's noumenon is not merely something we are uncertain about, but something that is completely and utterly inaccessible to use, that we are hermetically sealed off from by our experience (at least from Kant's and the representationalist's point of view). Of course, you can come up with probabilities regarding some conjectures you have regarding the noumenon, but as you can never get to the noumenon there's no way to test or verify them, so they're completely pointless and essentially arbitrary. In any event, those probabilities (and any other thoughts you may have) are all subject to the same objections as those listed in the first paragraph, as they're all just more experience.