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A wise philosopher once said this. You know your experience is real. But you do not know if the material world you see is the result of a great delusion by a m

by h_tbob 2y ago

A wise philosopher once said this. You know your experience is real. But you do not know if the material world you see is the result of a great delusion by a master programmer. Thus the only thing you truly know has no mass at all. Thus a wise person takes the immaterial as immediate apparent, but the physical as questionable. You can always prove the immaterial “I think therefore I am”. But due to the uncertainty of matter, nothing physical can be truly known. In other words you could always be wrong in your perception. So in sum, your experience has no mass, volume, or width. There are no physical properties at all to consciousness. Yet it is the only thing that we can know exists. Weird, huh?

ziofill 2y ago
Reminds me of Donald Hoffman’s perspective on consciousness
scotty79 2y ago
> You can always prove the immaterial “I think therefore I am”. But due to the uncertainty of matter, nothing physical can be truly known. But the brain that does the proving of immaterial is itself material so if matter is uncertain then the reasoning of the proof of immaterial can also be flawed thus you can't prove anything. The only provable thing is that philosophers ask themselves useless questions, think about them long and hard building up convoluted narratives they claim to be proofs, but on the way they assume something stupid to move forward, which eventually leads to bogus "insights".
Chance-Device 2y ago
Descartes. And it’s pretty clear that consciousness is the Noumenon, just the part of it that is us. So if you want to know what the ontology of matter is, congratulations, you’re it.
nkrisc 2y ago
Yet empirically we know that if you physically disassemble the human brain, that person’s consciousness apparently creases to exist, as observed by the result on your rest of the body even if it remains otherwise intact. So it appears to arise from some physical properties of the brain. I’m ignoring the argument that we can’t know if anything we’re perceive is even real at all since it’s unprovable and useless to consider. Better to just assume it’s wrong. And if that assumption is wrong, then it doesn’t matter.
TeMPOraL 2y ago
> You can always prove the immaterial “I think therefore I am”. But due to the uncertainty of matter, nothing physical can be truly known. In other words you could always be wrong in your perception. Sure, you can prove that "I think therefore I am" for yourself. So how about we just accept it's true and put it behind us and continue to the more interesting stuff? What you or I call external world, or our perception of it, has some kind of structure. There are patterns to it, and each of us seem to have some control over details of our respective perceptions. Long story short, so far it seems that materialism is the simplest framework you can use to accurately predict and control those perceptions. You and I both seem to be getting most mileage out of assuming that we're similar entities inhabiting and perceiving a shared universe that's external to us, and that that universe follows some universal patterns. That's not materialism[0] yet, especially not in the sense relevant to AI/AGI. To get there, one has to learn about the existence of fields of study like medicine, or neuroscience, and some of the practical results they yielded. Things like, you poke someone's brain with a stick, watch what happens, and talk to the person afterwards. We've done that enough times to be fairly confident that a) brain is the substrate in which mind exists, and b) mind is a computational phenomenon. I mean, you could maybe question materialism 100 years ago, back when people had the basics of science down but not much data to go on. It's weird to do in time and age when you can literally circuit-bend a brain like you'd do with an electronic toy, and get the same kind of result from the process. -- [0] - Or physicalism or whatever you call the "materialism, but updated to current state of physics textbooks" philosophy.
xpe 2y ago
Philosophy as a field has been slow to take probability theory seriously. Trying to traffic in only certainty is a severe limitation.

by h_tbob 2y ago

ziofill 2y ago

Reminds me of Donald Hoffman’s perspective on consciousness

scotty79 2y ago

> You can always prove the immaterial “I think therefore I am”. But due to the uncertainty of matter, nothing physical can be truly known. But the brain that does the proving of immaterial is itself material so if matter is uncertain then the reasoning of the proof of immaterial can also be flawed thus you can't prove anything. The only provable thing is that philosophers ask themselves useless questions, think about them long and hard building up convoluted narratives they claim to be proofs, but on the way they assume something stupid to move forward, which eventually leads to bogus "insights".

Chance-Device 2y ago

Descartes. And it’s pretty clear that consciousness is the Noumenon, just the part of it that is us. So if you want to know what the ontology of matter is, congratulations, you’re it.

nkrisc 2y ago

Yet empirically we know that if you physically disassemble the human brain, that person’s consciousness apparently creases to exist, as observed by the result on your rest of the body even if it remains otherwise intact. So it appears to arise from some physical properties of the brain. I’m ignoring the argument that we can’t know if anything we’re perceive is even real at all since it’s unprovable and useless to consider. Better to just assume it’s wrong. And if that assumption is wrong, then it doesn’t matter.

TeMPOraL 2y ago

> You can always prove the immaterial “I think therefore I am”. But due to the uncertainty of matter, nothing physical can be truly known. In other words you could always be wrong in your perception. Sure, you can prove that "I think therefore I am" for yourself. So how about we just accept it's true and put it behind us and continue to the more interesting stuff? What you or I call external world, or our perception of it, has some kind of structure. There are patterns to it, and each of us seem to have some control over details of our respective perceptions. Long story short, so far it seems that materialism is the simplest framework you can use to accurately predict and control those perceptions. You and I both seem to be getting most mileage out of assuming that we're similar entities inhabiting and perceiving a shared universe that's external to us, and that that universe follows some universal patterns. That's not materialism[0] yet, especially not in the sense relevant to AI/AGI. To get there, one has to learn about the existence of fields of study like medicine, or neuroscience, and some of the practical results they yielded. Things like, you poke someone's brain with a stick, watch what happens, and talk to the person afterwards. We've done that enough times to be fairly confident that a) brain is the substrate in which mind exists, and b) mind is a computational phenomenon. I mean, you could maybe question materialism 100 years ago, back when people had the basics of science down but not much data to go on. It's weird to do in time and age when you can literally circuit-bend a brain like you'd do with an electronic toy, and get the same kind of result from the process. -- [0] - Or physicalism or whatever you call the "materialism, but updated to current state of physics textbooks" philosophy.

xpe 2y ago

Philosophy as a field has been slow to take probability theory seriously. Trying to traffic in only certainty is a severe limitation.