kakapo

1 minute ago, Daniel said:

 

I understand what you're saying, but that does not mean that none of those things ALSO exist outside of my brain.

 

 

OK.  Are we having this conversation?  Did you have any possible clue the way I was going to edit and update those diagrams to rapidly get us on the same page?  If not, then this experience between you and I is real.  I am not in your brain.  The experience of interacting with me is happening in your brain.  But those diagrams are not the product of some random neurochemical false perception that your brain conjured up.  Those editted diagrams came from outside your brain.  And we both looked at them and saw the same things.

 

That's pretty strong evidence of a shared objecive reality outside the mind, don't you think? 

You can connect a camera to a television, and put the camera outside your front door.

What you see on the TV may actually be happening outside of your home.

The problem becomes when you start confusing what you are seeing on TV for actual reality.

In Plato's republic men are chained to the wall and believe the shadows on the wall to be reality.

In actual reality almost all humans alive today are looking at the contents of their own minds, and believing what they are seeing is an external reality.

It is not external, it is just shadows on the cave wall.
 

2 minutes ago, Daniel said:

 

The problem I have with this idea, is that there is an implication using the word "abstraction" that the representation is inaccurate or false.  I agree it's incomplete.  But, that doesn't mean that human sensory faculties are somehow distorting reality to the point where the existence of objects that are outside the brain are doubted.   That's a HUGE distortion.

 

And if the mechanisms of intoxicants can be studied and the neurochemical effects determined to be a corruption / disruption / impairment of the sensory faculties of the brain, then, the perception while intoxicated can be labeled as false.  The dead bodies resulting from drunk drivers confirms it.

We can dig into this really easy. 

You look at a television connected to a camera.

What you see is pixels of light.

Those pixels can be made to represent any thing you point the camera at.

It is possible to sit your entire life chained to a couch and believe what you are watching on television is actual reality.

It is possible be to chained to a wall and observe shadows on a cave wall and believe those to be actual reality.

In fact that is the actual truth for almost 100% of all humans.

If you are using a camera and a television to observe reality, you are looking at a representation.

A painting of a pipe is also a representation.

It does not matter if it is an accurate representation or not. 

Right now the computer screen you are looking at is not a computer screen at all.

It is literally a holographic experience your brain is creating to make sense of your environment.

A painting of a pipe is not a pipe.

Suffering alone exists, none who suffer;
The deed there is, but no doer thereof;
Nirvana is, but no one is seeking it;
The Path there is, but none who travel it.

Just now, Daniel said:

 

That's just semantics, isn't it?  Once I define 'seeing' in terms of electro-magnetic waves of light, then that connects the outer object with the inner experience.  And I thought you brought a sciency article confirming this?

It's not semantics at all.

Just now, Daniel said:

 

Yes.  I am most familiar with these concepts as "simulation theory".

 

 

A perfectly fair statement.

 

 

But it's not the actual-observed.  Observed is a misnomer.  The 'observed' is an object outside the brain.  I think we, you and I, need to agree on a better word / phrase for this.  And, I think we, you and I, need to agree on a word / phrase for what exists outside the brain in behind the "question-mark".

 

Once e agree on those words, 80% of the struggle in our discussion is ended.

You are the image of the egg cooking.

You are the smell of the egg cooking.

You are the sound of the egg cooking.

You are the taste of the egg.

You are the feeling of the egg.

You are the memory of previous eggs.

You are the imagination of future eggs.

You are the emotion such an experience brings.

You are the entire experience itself.

1 minute ago, Daniel said:

 

OK... last diagram, and then I think I've explained myself enough.  And hopefully we can have a normal conversation.

 

The intoxicant effects the observer and what you're calling the observed.  It doesn't change the object at all.  Nothing changes about the eggs and the pan on the cooktop.  Agreed? That means that the hallucination is only changing the perception.  It doesn't say anything about whether or not actual reality can or cannot be seen.

 

Operating under the assumption an external reality exists, and an object exists outside the skull.

We do not actually ever see the object in this diagram,  we only ever see the screen in the mind. 

The hangup becomes that almost 100% of all people believe the screen in the mind is actual reality, and it is not actual reality it is an abstraction or representation of reality.

This is an important distinction to make.

It is no more reality than shadows on the wall of a cave.

Taking 20 dried grams of mushrooms, makes the screen go all crazy, but my assumption would be that the object that exists outside the skull would not be affected by this assuming it exists.

30 minutes ago, Daniel said:

I know.  This is what you're describing .  Notice, please, what you are calling the "observed" is just the "observation" on a screen. Not a literal screen, but it's still just perception.  Just observation.  The actual-observed-object could be eggs on a pan, or it could be flying monkeys. The actual-observed-objects are are things outside the brain.  And there's still 3 phenomena.  The stuff behind the question mark exists.  Agreed?

 

 

Using the 'observed' for what is in the brain makes this more cumbersome.  There's no good reason to use 'observed for what is happening in the brain.  If a person closes their eyes, they are not observing anything.  They might be imagining something.  Or dreaming something.  But they are NOT observing anything ith their eyes closed.  It's better to use the words 'obersavtion' or 'perception' or 'the-mind's-eye'.  But it's definitely not the observed.   I'm using the word 'observation' to try to sync up with you. 

There could be an external reality, that exists outside the skull.

I can't say for certain.

This could be a quantum computer simulation.

I could be a Boltzmann brain.

There are too many unknown, unknowns to say with certainty. 

For purposes of conversation, I will assume that an external reality does exist, but it isn't a position I actually hold or try to defend.

The item you have labeled with the question mark may exist, and my hope would be that it does exist, but I cannot say with certainty that it does.

The image of the egg in the frying pan you have labeled as observed, is also the observer.

It observes itself, you are the image of the egg in the pan, you are the smell of the cooking egg, you are the sound of the sizzle, you are the feeling of warmth from the stove, and you are the taste of the egg.

The little man should be removed from the picture. 

So the thing you label as observed, isn't actually being observed at all. 

An image of it is being replicated and displayed inside the brain, and that image inside the brain is what is being observed.

Here's where it gets weird.

There is no little man, he doesn't exist, and there is no screen or projector it doesn't exist either.

The film or movie that is playing is watching itself, and there is no one in the audience to watch it.

Yes I understand how absolute bat**** insane that sounds but that is what is actually happening.

45 minutes ago, Daniel said:

 

Ahhhhh.  Thank you.  That gag was getting uncomfy and it seemed odd that you would keep quoting me, but, I was not to reply.

 

 

I feel like I understand what you're saying perfectly.  Where we disagree is:

 

I am considering 3 different phenomena as reality:  observer, observation, and observed.

You are considering 2 different phenomena as reality:  observer, and observed.

 

Good so far?

If you have to use a camera to look at reality, then you aren't looking at reality but rather an abstraction of it.

For purposes of discussion an eyeball is a biological version of a camera.

Imagine if I connect a camera to a television, and point it at a tobacco pipe.

If I look at the screen and point to the pipe on the screen and ask "what is this?"

If you answer "that is a pipe" your answer would be incorrect.

The correct answer would be "that is a television, the pixels on the television are emitting light, and the light is creating a pattern which resembles the object the camera connected to it is pointed towards.

The television can only ever display a representation of something, but that representation can only ever be an abstraction of something else, and never the actual thing being displayed.

A painting of a pipe is not a pipe, and a holographic experience of reality is not reality. 

The confusion here happens when you don't understand you are looking at a television.

In allegory of the cave the men chained to the wall know of no other reality besides the shadows on the wall, and to them that is all there is.

What I am saying is the computer monitor you are reading these words on, exists only inside your mind as energy and information in your neural networks it has no reality to it, at least no more than shadows on a cave wall, or a painting of a pipe is real pipe.

On a television you see pixels of light, in your mind you see the energy and information exchanged between neurons.

Where the observer = the observed fits into all this is that you are the energy and information inside the neural networks, and it is set up so you observe the contents of your own awareness.

By bad analogy your little man is sitting on a couch watching a TV inside your brain.

Except there is no little man or tv,  just energy and information flowing between synapses.

I Am a Strange Loop" by cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter is a 2007 book that delves into consciousness, self-awareness, and the development of the self using the idea of a "strange loop." This loop is a self-referential feedback mechanism in the brain that generates self-awareness and subjective experiences. In essence, Hofstadter proposes that strange loops are hierarchical structures incorporating self-reference and feedback, which give rise to self-awareness by creating an abstract "I" that observes and examines itself.

48 minutes ago, Daniel said:

 

No prob.  Seems like you're looking for an echo chamber.  Preaching to the choir.  I understand.  I see this is in the Buddhist forum.  It doesn't have anything to do with not understanding my words does it?  That was just a smoke screen.

 

Bye.

 

"It doesn't have anything to do with not understanding my words does it?  That was just a smoke screen."

I noticed your question and subsequent statement here.

No I sincerely didn't understand and still don't. 

I think probably you are reading my words and interpreting what I am saying differently than my intended meaning, and your responses don't make sense in context to me.

No smoke screen. 

Also I will be happy to talk to you but it seems apparent to me that what I am saying isn't making sense to you, and vice versa so we appear to be talking past each other with no real communication occurring. 

This sort of thing is generally frowned upon here, and after like page 500 of it usually the thread gets locked because it annoys other members.

2 minutes ago, Daniel said:

 

 

Hi Daniel,

I edited my post to help clear up any confusion.

What I meant was it is exactly the case that the observer is the observed.

I hope that clears up any confusion.

Thanks.

"observer =/= observed"

The observer observes only itself, and nothing more.

You can only ever see the contents of yourself, your own mind.

You can only ever see energy and information inside your own neural networks.

You can only ever observe yourself.

17 minutes ago, Daniel said:

 

Respectfully, did you read what I wrote previously about wavelengths?

 

 

Did you read what I said about the difference between qualia and experience?

 

 

You don't know what a drunk driver is?  You don't know that they kill people?  Meaning their perception is altered causing death.  Maybe you don't agree that it's a good analogy, or relevant, but... if you're telling me you don't understand what those words mean, I can excuse myself from your thread.

 

 

This doesn't follow for me.  I'm sorry.  It just doesn't.  The halucination is evidence of a change in brain chemistry which in turn produces impaired ( changed / altered ) perception.  This has nothing to do with reality.  It has everything to do with perception.  The test you're proposing ( If hallucinations exist then actual reality cannot be perceived ) is not testing reality.  It's testing perception.  Just re-read what you wrote:

 

"If it were possible to see actual reality, such a thing as a hallucination could not occur."  

 

"to see" means that your test is about perception, not reality.  The physical sense of "seeing" is being examined.  Not reality.  So.  All that can be said from this test is that perception can be altered.  But the test says nothing about the qualia, the attributes themself.  If the scientific method is desired to be employed, a different test needs to be developed for that.

 

 

The display on television is not the same as the garden.  The display on the camera is different.  Notice what you said.

 

"What you see and experience might be a representation of what is happening outside of your skull, but it is not required to be, as is evidenced by the fact you can hallucinate."

 

Right.  The events outside the skull is 'reality'.  The perception may or may not agree with what is happening outside the skull.  

 

Outside the skull = qualia = observed

Inside the skull = perception = observation

 

Inside the skull = observer

 

observer = observation

 

observer =/= observed

In the analogy I gave of a camera connected to a television,  you can unhook a camera and connect a video player and get a different output on your screen.

There is no law of the universe which requires a television to display any particular image.

The experience you are having can disagree with reality outside of you, we call this a hallucination.

This is because the reality you see and experience is an abstraction of the reality outside of yourself, in exactly the same way a television displaying the output of a camera is an abstraction.

The best possible case scenario you can hope for using a camera and a television is an abstraction of reality, but never can it be reality itself, it will always be an abstraction.

This is just like how a painting of a pipe, is not a pipe itself.

What I am trying to convey to you is you are mistaking a painting of a pipe for an actual pipe.

The same holds true for an experience on an object,  an experience of an object is not the object itself.

The computer monitor you are currently looking at, is in fact not a computer monitor at all, but rather an abstraction of one, created in your mind's holodeck.

Hope that helps. 

1 minute ago, Daniel said:

 

Respectfully, did you read what I wrote previously about wavelengths?

 

 

Did you read what I said about the difference between qualia and experience?

 

 

You don't know what a drunk driver is?  You don't kno that they kill people?  Meaning their perception is altered causing death.  Maybe you don't agree that it's a good analogy, or relevant, but... if you're telling me you don't understand hat those words mean, I can excuse myself from your thread.

 

 

This doesn't follow for me.  I'm sorry.  It just doesn't.  The halucination is evidence of a change in brain chemistry which in turn produces impaired ( changed / altered ) perception.  This has nothing to do with reality.  It has everything to do with perception.  The test your proposing (If hallucinations exist then actual reality cannot be perceived ) is not testing reality.  It's testing perception.  Just re-read what you wrote:

 

"If it were possible to see actual reality, such a thing as a hallucination could not occur."  

 

"to see" means that your test is about perception, not reality.  The physical sense of "seeing" is being examined.  Not reality.  So.  All that can be said from this test is that perception can be altered.  But the test says nothing about the qualia, the attributes themself.  If the scientific method is desired to be employed, a different test needs to be developed for that.

 

 

The display on television is not the same as the garden.  The display on the camera is different.  Notice what you said.

 

"What you see and experience might be a representation of what is happening outside of your skull, but it is not required to be, as is evidenced by the fact you can hallucinate."

 

Right.  The events outside the skull is 'reality' the perception may or may not agree with what is happening outside the skull.  

 

Outside the skull = qualia = observed

Inside the skull = perception = observation

 

Inside the skull = observer

 

observer = observation

 

observer =/= observed

"I can excuse myself from your thread. "

Please do so.

"Not the best analogy, imo.  The shadows are still shadows.  Nothing has changed about them.  They still exist in exactly the same way they did before.  And if they leave the cave, that's a totally different scenario.  No one is leaving our shared objective reality such that qualia are abstractions which are inherently unreal.  Maybe-maybe one could talk about dreams, and dreaming.  But the bed still exists even if the person is under full anesthesia just as it does when they are awake.  Nothing has changed about the bed during the dream state. "

I think I explained my position with the television and camera analogy above.

What we see is not actual reality, but an abstraction of it.

If we viewed actual reality it would not be possible to have a hallucination. 

The reality we inhabit and actually see is a holodeck, and it may or may not represent what is actually happening outside of us.

In the image below a little man (homunculus) and he watches a projector inside a skull. 

Imagine there is no little man, but rather a feedback loop of neural networks which observe themselves and in doing so create a holodeck like virtual experience composed purely of energy and information, which is what you are currently experiencing.

35 minutes ago, Daniel said:

 

I think I understand your position.  It's below:

 

 

I simply disagree with this.

 

 

This ^^ .  I agree with this.

 

My assertion from my previous post restated using these terms would be:

 

experience =/= qualia.  experience is a sensation which results from qualia.

 

 

If I am on DMT and somehow go walk around, I'm still going to be tripping over stuff and walking into walls even if I do not have any visual or physical sensations of their presence.  The intoxication fades; I will have bumps and bruises.

 

If what you're saying is true, there would be no deaths from drunk drivers.

 

 

This ^^ .  I basically, mostly, agree with this.  But would replace crude with material.  Or maybe coarse.  Perhaps hollow.  And only if when you say 'see' you're describing what most consider the physical senses. 

 

If I understand, though, that would mean: "In reality there is no such thing as color, shape, texture, smell, sound, or any of that." is false.

 

 

Not the best analogy, imo.  The shadows are still shadows.  Nothing has changed about them.  They still exist in exactly the same way they did before.  And if they leave the cave, that's a totally different scenario.  No one is leaving our shared objective reality such that qualia are abstractions which are inherently unreal.  Maybe-maybe one could talk about dreams, and dreaming.  But the bed still exists even if the person is under full anesthesia just as it does when they are awake.  Nothing has changed about the bed during the dream state.

 

"If I am on DMT and somehow go walk around, I'm still going to be tripping over stuff and walking into walls even if I do not have any visual or physical sensations of their presence.  The intoxication fades; I will have bumps and bruises.

If what you're saying is true, there would be no deaths from drunk drivers."

i am not sure I understand your words.

One time I took 20 dried grams of Psilocybin mushrooms, and I saw faces, arms, and hands coming out of my carpet,  all with the carpet texture on them. 

If it were possible to see actual reality, such a thing as a hallucination could not occur. 

Let's say I have a camera outside my home, and a television connected to it inside my home.

Someone could unplug the camera outside, and connect a video player and play ""Never Gonna Give You Up", by Rick Astley", and in turn that is what I would see on my television.

If I was standing outside looking in the same direction of where the camera was pointed,  I would see a garden instead. 

The output displayed on the television might be a representation of actual reality outside my home, but it is not required to be.

What you see and experience might be a representation of what is happening outside of your skull, but it is not required to be, as is evidenced by the fact you can hallucinate.

48 minutes ago, Daniel said:

 

I think I understand your position.  It's below:

 

 

I simply disagree with this.

 

 

This ^^ .  I agree with this.

 

My assertion from my previous post restated using these terms would be:

 

experience =/= qualia.  experience is a sensation which results from qualia.

 

 

If I am on DMT and somehow go walk around, I'm still going to be tripping over stuff and walking into walls even if I do not have any visual or physical sensations of their presence.  The intoxication fades; I will have bumps and bruises.

 

If what you're saying is true, there would be no deaths from drunk drivers.

 

 

This ^^ .  I basically, mostly, agree with this.  But would replace crude with material.  Or maybe coarse.  Perhaps hollow.  And only if when you say 'see' you're describing what most consider the physical senses. 

 

If I understand, though, that would mean: "In reality there is no such thing as color, shape, texture, smell, sound, or any of that." is false.

 

 

Not the best analogy, imo.  The shadows are still shadows.  Nothing has changed about them.  They still exist in exactly the same way they did before.  And if they leave the cave, that's a totally different scenario.  No one is leaving our shared objective reality such that qualia are abstractions which are inherently unreal.  Maybe-maybe one could talk about dreams, and dreaming.  But the bed still exists even if the person is under full anesthesia just as it does when they are awake.  Nothing has changed about the bed during the dream state.

 

kakapo said: "In reality there is no such thing as color, shape, texture, smell, sound, or any of that. "

Daniel said: "I simply disagree with this."

Daniel said: "(In reality there is no such thing as color, shape, texture, smell, sound, or any of that.)" is false. "

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/that-dress-isnt-blue-or-gold-because-color-doesnt-exist

“A color only exists in your head,” says neuroscientist Beau Lotto. “There’s such a thing as light. There’s such a thing as energy. There’s no such thing as color.”

https://www.askamathematician.com/2012/06/q-do-colors-exist/

Physicist: Colors exist in very much the same way that art and love exist.  They can be perceived, and other people will generally understand you if you talk about them, but they don’t really exist in an “out in the world” kind of way.

5 hours ago, silent thunder said:

the paint is not red

 

red is in the mind

3 hours ago, Daniel said:

the paint is not in the mind.

 

the observation is the observer.  the observer is not the observed.

 

the color is 'red' is just a label, a symbol in the mind which is bound to the neurochemical reaction when a specific range of wavelengths of elecrto-magnetic radition interacts with the retina.  Those wavelengths are not the mind, nor are the they the observer.

 

while it's an interesting thought experiment to consider objective compared to subjective phenomena, it seems foolish to me to apply this idea globally to the point of "everything is subjective, everything is in the mind" 

In this context what I was attempting to do is explain why I didn't understand helpfuldemon's words, my example given wasn't intended to actually mean anything of significance, other than to show why this was non sequitur.

@silent thunder

I think we agree.

In reality there is no such thing as color, shape, texture, smell, sound, or any of that. 

Such abstractions are only mental constructs and lack any inherent reality.

@Daniel

"everything is subjective, everything is in the mind"

That isn't my position.

Our experience and our qualia are simulations of the reality external to us.

Our brain takes sensory inputs and feeds it into a holodeck, which is what we see the virtual holodeck.

If you take a hallucinogens the simulation you experience is distorted.

If we were perceiving actual reality this wouldn't be possible.

It is not my position that some objective reality does not exist, but rather we see a very limited and crude simulation or interpretation of it.

In Plato's cave the men chained to the wall believed the shadows on the wall to be reality.

What if the cave was your skull?

6 hours ago, helpfuldemon said:

To what end?

I don't understand the meaning of your words, at least not in this context. 

Statement: The paint is red.

Question: To what end?

Answer: There is no end, it's just an observation of the color of the paint.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/ex-intel-official-government-hiding-alien-tech.html

https://phys.org/news/2023-08-visualizing-mysterious-quantum-entanglement-photons.html

If you master the teachings here is what you will get:

1. Better visualization skills and memory.

2. OBE, lucid dreaming, astral projection.