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> Consciousness the the fundamental reality; it is the only thing we know for sure. These statements conflate, as idealists do, epistemology and ontology. Wha

> Consciousness the the fundamental reality; it is the only thing we know for sure. These statements conflate, as idealists do, epistemology and ontology. What we know "for sure" has no bearing on what's real. These are entirely separate questions. What an ape might, or might not, feel certain (or any which way about) says nothing about where an ape finds itself. Of course, this is a great injury to our ego, and sense of power to determine the nature of the world by our mind alone -- but such is life. The world is not human, not at all like a human, and nothing about it follows from us at all. The world is not made in our image. Consciousness is a derivative, secondary phenomenon which is a measurement process occurring in the body of an ape, and whatever it manages to measure with any clarity, has no impact on the nature of that world.

qsera 5mo 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?
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- mjburgess 5mo ago
  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.
  - qsera 5mo ago
    >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.
    - mjburgess 5mo ago
      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.
      - qsera 5mo ago
        The point is that all existence is built on top of consciousness. I understand your difficulty. It is hard to imagine the universe disappearing if all consciousness cease to exist the next second. But is that really hard? Don't everything in your dreams disappear when you wake up? Let me ask another question. Can you differentiate between a consciousness observing a universe, and a consciousness with a sensation of a whole universe, built in? And the point of that is our subjective experiences only require consciousness, and not a universe that is independent of it.
        mjburgess 5mo ago
        I've been an idealist. I understand all the arguments. The base fallacy at the heart of all this is the one I mentioned. On the very last point: the conclusion that consciousness is thin, like a photograph, and the world thick -- follows from the most complete explanatory account of how consiousness works. The idea that there is no world, or that the world is a thin transcendental ego -- this abandons the project of offering an account of consiousness at all and ends up in incoherence. Within consiousness I am presented with: what I cannot change (fixed perceptions), what I can change (eg., imagined perceptions). This duality is immanent to consiousness itself. The imagination can apprenend the fixed, ie., I can imagine scenarios that I could, in principle, see. So there is, immanent to consiousness already, a representational duality: I have both fixed perceptions that I cannot change, I have mutable perceptions (imaginations) that I can -- and my mutable perceptions are representations of my fixed perceptions. All of the dynamics of the duality of the represented and representation, of the fixed/external and of the mutable/internal -- are already immanent to consiousness. What remains to be explained is: why? The obvious answer is that the reason i have fixed perceptions is because they are caused by a world that they depict, and the reason I have variable/mutable perceptions is they are caused by me as I represent that world to myself. The duality immanent to consiousness is explained by the duality of the measured and measuring. Even if you abandoned the world "external" and replace it with "fixed", you gain nothing. Everything which seems objectionable about this duality is already present. If you simply assert it, rather than explain it, your position is weaker because you've nothing to say. The causal origin of our fixed perceptions is the world, which impacts our sensory organs, interacts with our bodies, and produces a thin perceptual surface to us which causally-directly depicts the world that we are in. These fixed perceptions are constructed by our bodies thru this process of activation, which we can call "measurement with post processing" ie., a kind of digital camera rather than a chemical one. But in any case, to answer your final question: yes, the difference is that "consiousness" with this duality of the fixed and the variable, and their representational relationship, only makes sense if part of consciousness isnt being determined by consciousness. The need to say what determine it means the "consiousness is complete" option incoherent, if "consciouness" as a term comes to adopt all the properties it needs to explain the fixed perceptions, then you'll find consiousness becomes both the material and the mental -- and all you have done is empty the word of all its meaning
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
summarybot 5mo ago
Largely I find your points reductionist and insulting to the very sacred experience that is unfolding for you and me. Consciousness is a primary or even a priori phenomenon from which all of your surmisals stem. You have got it backwards. The fact someone once saw an ape, or saw a nebula, or made a measurement of brain waves, these all had to happen within human-experience. The experiencing itself is irreducible. Consciousness as a byproduct or secondary phenomenon as you claim, is to be expected for someone brought up in the modern era where religion and spirituality were so vehemently eschewed that men leaned too far into the other extreme and became physicalist-materialists claiming the lived experience is but a mere symphony of neurological interactions without consequence. This is a disastrous view. This is basically a swift ticket to a hell-realm. The basic posture is all wrong - you must return to the fundamental facts, namely those of your lived experience. What you claim as primary evidence are in fact secondary observations. And then you use the secondary observations to make claims about a primary nature "out there" and "distinct from" human-experiencing. This is simply not the case. This view is logically untenable. One does not study consciousness by looking at pictures and drawings and photos, just like how one does not study what music sounds like by inspecting the buttons of a saxaphone unblown. The fluid nature of the energetic capacity of mind is very difficult to discern - it's not an everyday occurence, sages spend their whole lives pursuing prayer and meditation in order to catch a mere glimpse at the primal nature of experience. Everything else flows from this. Your mind is the root of all things, it is the common denominator in all moments of your experience.
- mjburgess 5mo ago
  You can read my other comment. You're also committing the genetic fallacy. Yes, a hand can measure itself. Yes, consciousness as a measurement process of reality can expose to the conscious agent that its own consciousness is a merely a process in the world. Just as a camera, in photographing a mirror, discovers that it is only a camera located at some point in space and time. The "back to basics" pov you're talkign about is one which actually abandons everything consciousness tells you about the world, because you're afraid of what you've found. An ape without a mirror thinks, of course, it is god. What an insult to find the face of this god is only that of an ape.

qsera 5mo 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?

deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
mjburgess 5mo ago
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.
- qsera 5mo ago
  >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.
  - mjburgess 5mo ago
    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.
    - qsera 5mo ago
      The point is that all existence is built on top of consciousness. I understand your difficulty. It is hard to imagine the universe disappearing if all consciousness cease to exist the next second. But is that really hard? Don't everything in your dreams disappear when you wake up? Let me ask another question. Can you differentiate between a consciousness observing a universe, and a consciousness with a sensation of a whole universe, built in? And the point of that is our subjective experiences only require consciousness, and not a universe that is independent of it.
      - mjburgess 5mo ago
        I've been an idealist. I understand all the arguments. The base fallacy at the heart of all this is the one I mentioned. On the very last point: the conclusion that consciousness is thin, like a photograph, and the world thick -- follows from the most complete explanatory account of how consiousness works. The idea that there is no world, or that the world is a thin transcendental ego -- this abandons the project of offering an account of consiousness at all and ends up in incoherence. Within consiousness I am presented with: what I cannot change (fixed perceptions), what I can change (eg., imagined perceptions). This duality is immanent to consiousness itself. The imagination can apprenend the fixed, ie., I can imagine scenarios that I could, in principle, see. So there is, immanent to consiousness already, a representational duality: I have both fixed perceptions that I cannot change, I have mutable perceptions (imaginations) that I can -- and my mutable perceptions are representations of my fixed perceptions. All of the dynamics of the duality of the represented and representation, of the fixed/external and of the mutable/internal -- are already immanent to consiousness. What remains to be explained is: why? The obvious answer is that the reason i have fixed perceptions is because they are caused by a world that they depict, and the reason I have variable/mutable perceptions is they are caused by me as I represent that world to myself. The duality immanent to consiousness is explained by the duality of the measured and measuring. Even if you abandoned the world "external" and replace it with "fixed", you gain nothing. Everything which seems objectionable about this duality is already present. If you simply assert it, rather than explain it, your position is weaker because you've nothing to say. The causal origin of our fixed perceptions is the world, which impacts our sensory organs, interacts with our bodies, and produces a thin perceptual surface to us which causally-directly depicts the world that we are in. These fixed perceptions are constructed by our bodies thru this process of activation, which we can call "measurement with post processing" ie., a kind of digital camera rather than a chemical one. But in any case, to answer your final question: yes, the difference is that "consiousness" with this duality of the fixed and the variable, and their representational relationship, only makes sense if part of consciousness isnt being determined by consciousness. The need to say what determine it means the "consiousness is complete" option incoherent, if "consciouness" as a term comes to adopt all the properties it needs to explain the fixed perceptions, then you'll find consiousness becomes both the material and the mental -- and all you have done is empty the word of all its meaning
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]

summarybot 5mo ago

Largely I find your points reductionist and insulting to the very sacred experience that is unfolding for you and me. Consciousness is a primary or even a priori phenomenon from which all of your surmisals stem. You have got it backwards. The fact someone once saw an ape, or saw a nebula, or made a measurement of brain waves, these all had to happen within human-experience. The experiencing itself is irreducible. Consciousness as a byproduct or secondary phenomenon as you claim, is to be expected for someone brought up in the modern era where religion and spirituality were so vehemently eschewed that men leaned too far into the other extreme and became physicalist-materialists claiming the lived experience is but a mere symphony of neurological interactions without consequence. This is a disastrous view. This is basically a swift ticket to a hell-realm. The basic posture is all wrong - you must return to the fundamental facts, namely those of your lived experience. What you claim as primary evidence are in fact secondary observations. And then you use the secondary observations to make claims about a primary nature "out there" and "distinct from" human-experiencing. This is simply not the case. This view is logically untenable. One does not study consciousness by looking at pictures and drawings and photos, just like how one does not study what music sounds like by inspecting the buttons of a saxaphone unblown. The fluid nature of the energetic capacity of mind is very difficult to discern - it's not an everyday occurence, sages spend their whole lives pursuing prayer and meditation in order to catch a mere glimpse at the primal nature of experience. Everything else flows from this. Your mind is the root of all things, it is the common denominator in all moments of your experience.

mjburgess 5mo ago
You can read my other comment. You're also committing the genetic fallacy. Yes, a hand can measure itself. Yes, consciousness as a measurement process of reality can expose to the conscious agent that its own consciousness is a merely a process in the world. Just as a camera, in photographing a mirror, discovers that it is only a camera located at some point in space and time. The "back to basics" pov you're talkign about is one which actually abandons everything consciousness tells you about the world, because you're afraid of what you've found. An ape without a mirror thinks, of course, it is god. What an insult to find the face of this god is only that of an ape.