Maybe I should bow out, as I'm feeling out of my depth both with brains stuff and philosophy stuff, here. — Dawnstorm

By all means, I am way out of my depth. That's what makes it interesting. :D Perhaps I'll say some nonsense along the way, but that's all part of the process.

Its ineffable?

Being interpreted as a chestnut does not mean that unseen, it's no longer a chestnut.

What reason is there to suppose that unseen, it is no longer a chestnut? — Banno

No, not ineffable. That's not right.

And I wouldn't endorse that conclusion or form of the argument.

Maybe it's better to say that this is very imaginative -- we're imagining a world without us. And if we believe that our senses are what give us justification to believe, a world without our senses would be a world where we don't have justification to believe. Hell, there'd be no beliefs, from what I can tell, though that may be wrong. (the thought that without us there'd be no minds)

Chestnut trees, though. Yeh, I believe they'd be around. Maybe the difference is exactly what's posited -- whatever it is we contribute to the world wouldn't be there. The tree would get on fine, or that's generally how I think of things, it just wouldn't be enmeshed in language, and I'm not sure if I can say what a world without language would be like. I can kind of imagine it, but it's very speculative.

Well, we say that we understand words and phrases to represent or refer to things, and animals don't say that, can't say that. — Janus

And yet . . .

pretty sure I just heard some crabs (yes crabs) talking on a beach as i walked past them... — Changeling

It's a good point. We don't expect the crabs or the lions to talk, but some of us might talk to them. Or even claim to hear them.

So, what's the difference? Without an account, then there is no difference. Rather, we have to accept that some people can talk to the whales, crabs, lions of the world.

Or accept, because our biological forms are so different, that we could not understand one another even if we were talking, and thereby infer the various animal whisperers are misunderstanding how to use language. The lion may already be speaking, but there's no way we'd understand what he's saying because we're different creatures.

With these examples it seems queer. Unless you understand yourself to be nothing but an animal, and realize that language may not have all the import that we assign to it. Rather, like the lion roars, so we have our different patterns of grunting to get along. We're just barking while we feel like it all means something.

Epiphenomenalism makes no sense — Janus

Let's make sense of it with error theory.

A usual case error theory begins with is astrology. It's an intricate body of propositions with relations to one another that allows people to make inferences (of a very unspecific nature, as that's how it works in the end). People regularly confer on the subject, and it sounds like people are making claims. The only thing is, every single one of the claims is false. So it is possible for us to carry on at length while having no contact with truth -- it doesn't matter that it makes sense to us, because astrology can make sense to us, and it is false.

Further, combining error theory with the post-modern meta-induction...

If the current scientific picture is the true picture of the world, then for the majority of human history human beings have survived by believing false things. Entire generations have been able to manipulate their environment, reproduce, and preserve and pass down culture without knowledge of this picture. So, similar to the dream inference, we might wonder -- what makes our current picture true? If we were wrong so many times before, then wouldn't we predict that we're wrong again now?

And error theory provides the explanation for how that would be possible -- coherence, intelligibility, without truth.

There's a funny assumption with the Post-modern meta-induction, namely that this picture is true and the previous pictures were false. Rather, I'd say given if entire generations before were able to survive successfully then they must have had some true beliefs, even if it was expressed in entirely different ways, and reinforcing entirely different ways of life. But this is all just to make sense of an epiphenomenal account of meaning -- that language means, but meaning drifts beyond any empirical measurement and has no causal connection to the world or brains.

I think it's false, but it does make sense. And the pair of arguments together makes me ask about making distinctions between brains and whatever else. When is it appropriate to reference the brain in relation to a philosophical argument? Do brains have anything to do with the notion of a subject, or are they just an organ like the heart is an organ and the philosophy somehow "sits above" the empirical facts of brains?

Right, is it just differences in the human brain that enables the development of language, or is it vocal chords or the opposable thumb or a combination? I don't think it makes much sense to consider the brain apart from the whole body, anyway. — Janus

Good points.

As you say , some animals can recognize and respond appropriately to words and phrases,but do they have any notion that the word or phrase represents or refers to anything, or do they merely associate certain sounds with certain activities? — Janus

And, by extension, do we humans do the same while feeling like we do differently? (the epiphenomenal belief, I think, fits here)

I'm have no definite sense of what you mean by "an understanding of language would get closer to this notion of the virtual insofar that we are thinking of language as what's virtual". Maybe you have in mind an idea that I would agree with: that the world of objects, or as the Buddhists would say "namarupa" or "name and form" is a conceptual overlay to bare perception, where the latter is just sensation; visual, auditory, tactile or whatever. In Buddhist philosophy the state of conceptual-less perception is referred to as Nirvikalpa.

* "Of or pertaining to the absence of conceptual thinking or discursive thought"
* "the state of recognizing reality which is totally freed of the distortions of discursive thought, non-discrimination"

(This ties in with the issues around ineffability).

On this view, the empirical world is not something we directly perceive, but is a conceived abstraction; a world of different kinds of objects and "states of affairs", collectively derived from associating sensory experiences.

Do animals experience such a world? It seems doubtful, since they probably don't name things and conceive of them as kinds, and yet they can function very well, arguably better than we can, although they are not so adaptable to new environments. — Janus

I'll admit I'm not sure what I mean by that either. Reading it now it's just a tautology.

I don't think I have in mind what you're describing. If I did then I'd have more sympathy for Husserl than I presently do, given I don't think it's possible to attain that state, and even go so far as to say that our conceptualizations can even enhance our experience -- that language and conceptualization can, in addition to obscuring, elucidate. It just depends on how you use it.

Embedded implications always take me a long time to think through.

So I'm saying P, in your P->Q scheme where P stands for the original implication, is false.



But then there's the original quote, which if we assume is true, then we cannot possibly know whether or not lions can talk.

Of course my mind comes up with two different interpretations off the bat. But I believe you're committed to the belief that we cannot possibly know whether or not lions can talk.

And right now I agree. We can't know that, because they don't. Tomorrow may be different, though.

"If a lion could talk, we could not understand him"

I disagree here because a lion cannot talk, and so we cannot understand him. If I interpret "form of life" in a bio-species sense, then the quote makes sense. But if I interpret language as meaningful outside of our material make-up (down to the organ-tissue-cell-atom-electron), in spite of the obvious necessity for a body to be able to speak language, then if the lion could talk he'd the lion would already be part of our form of life (whatever that is).

I'd just like to point out that if the brain can have dreams that are often mistaken as reality, then it doesn't seem farfetched that the brain is a virtual reality generator. — Shawn

Right! It's a simple enough inference. There are times before when I've mistaken all of what I experience as reality (dreams), and so I wonder: to what extent is it like a dream? Or the virtual, as I've put it -- dreams being a possible case for exploring what's "virtual" about experience, or generated by myself as opposed to the world I seem to inhabit.

Against dreams counting as virtual is how they are composed of elements of the world. So rather than saying dreams and the brain are virtual, we'd say we're experiencing memories that have been encoded into the brain, that dreams are as real as the world we live in, only under different conditions. Which, since the world is real, you'd actually expect a body which is no longer interacting with the world about it to react differently, including the experiential parts (which are just as much a part of the world, rather than virtual)

Cool.

So this would suggest our language isn't necessarily a brain thing. The brain is involved, of course, so that's not where I'm going here. And, so it seems, kinds of brains are important. Which species the brain belongs to, how it's presently situated within the body, and so forth. There are limited instances of importing language to other species (notably, when they are part of our social structures) but nothing like what humans seem able to do.

And yet, if it's language that separates us from the beasts, and not brains, then an understanding of language would get closer to this notion of the virtual insofar that we are thinking of language as what's virtual. That's an interesting result if we can justify the inference. At the very least I think it suggests, going along with the general scientific picture of the world at least, that there's at least two functions of the brain. There's the original evolutionary adaptation which we see throughout nature -- the ability for a species to adapt to its environment in ways other than genetic modification -- and then there's this language thing that clearly needs a brain to be used, but that's not enough. There's more to it. And there's more to language than our immediate surroundings. So, philosophically at least, that'd be where I'd pin "the virtual". "philosophically" because the empirical story is way more complicated than this clean picture presents.

Brain expands the repertoire of an organism's responses to the environment, particularly in cooperation with specialised organs of sense. One way a complex brain can do this is by modelling the result of various responses, in a virtual environment, and for this it can be useful to distinguish things - a chestnut tree from a monkey puzzle, for instance - (trees I can climb from trees I cannot climb).

Some brains get caught up in the modelling process to the extent that they lose the distinction between the model and reality. In particular, they mistake the 'I' of the model for the real organism. Such is the human condition and universal delusion. — unenlightened

So the brain is an organ of an organism which somehow spawned some time ago -- and we can see its clear evolutionary advantages. In a way the brain enabled information processing without genes -- where once only wiping out a huge portion of a species or dividing them into different environments was the only way a species could "learn", the brain allows a species to learn and mitigate environmental change to a certain extent and in various capacities without wiping out a large portion of a species -- an obvious selective advantage, however it might've come about.

Some brains are able to model. Human brains that have been socialized in particular. At this level I think we're saying -- the brain somehow enables us to model our environment, and I suspect, at least, that language is what enables us to do that. But perhaps it's best to simply say language is a part of how we model things now, rather than put emphasis on language.

Part of our human model is the "I". There's a relationship here between "I" and organism such that our model of our self isn't our self (as is always the case with models -- they are models of something, not the thing). Which would seem to indicate that we are able to virtualize what we are already in contact with, and also forget what we're in contact with. And it's actually the human condition to lose the distinction between the "I" in the model for an organismic self.

Which, if I've got this right so far, means it's the human condition to lose the distinction between my beliefs about myself and who I am. In a way we're constantly in contact with the real, but because of our mental habits as humans we're constantly creating new virtual explanations to -- maybe prop up our beliefs about ourselves? Or to fulfill desires?

But drugs aren't able to fully dissolve the psyche, as you say -- so there's more to it than the brain, all on its lonesome. Disrupting our normal patterns may make us aware, to an extent, of what is modular in our virtual reality, but given the human condition, we're always uncertain, mistaking the model for the organism.

Which would mean that no matter how detailed our model of the brain is we'd still be uncertain about where the model ends and where the organism begins, just by our condition.

One of the things I'm thinking is how brains pre-date language to the extent that they are shared by many species prior to even our own species.

So, in a way, I guess I'm asking about homo sapiens brains.

At least, if we believe that's different from other brains with respect to consciousness.

Cool.

To what extent do you believe brains are involved in the eons of judgments that've been passed down?

Eh, you know me by now. I'm easily tempted into my rabbit holes :D

Its ineffable?

Being interpreted as a chestnut does not mean that unseen, it's no longer a chestnut.

What reason is there to suppose that unseen, it is no longer a chestnut? — Banno

That I agree with. My imagination says the scenario is something without me, but like -- in an always kind of way. Very imaginative. As if species didn't exist.

We are born into a world already formed by the perceptions and judgements, evolved over eons in a community of embodied perceivers, and enacted within ever-changing culture and language. — Janus

I agree with that, I think. Not eons, though -- spoken language is much sooner than biological timescales. It seems like eons.

I guess to bring this back to the original question -- to what extent is the brain involved in any of that? Or is it just an organ, like the heart, which is needed but knowledge of it will not shed light on conscious experience?

So how exactly would they be different? — Banno

Good question.

They would not stand in certain relations to you, sure. Relate that to the word "real" - what will you say, that only what you perceive is real? But that's not right.

Yup, that's not right. I think the first sentence gets close to what I'm thinking. As soon as we allow English, then it's always-already interpreted and there's no "origin" of all thought or justification or whatever.

And all distinction which allow an origin are always-already interpreted, being that they are distinctions.


Maybe we can't say how they'd be different just because of that.

More like, from the perspective of an embodied brain, my notions came from whatever I was taught and grew up with. Given that's true, I'm sure they were -- but at the time, going along the route of describing experience -- I couldn't tell.

Sure, we can say all of this would be real in some way without us, but we have no idea what that could mean, since the notion real has its genesis in perception. To say all of this would be real without us is to project our perceptually embodied based notion of reality onto an imagined situation where there is no perception or embodiment: I think that qualifies well as "language on holiday". — Janus

No idea?

I don't think that's quite right, because we are born into a world which has already been formed. Our notions come from our elders, in various forms, rather than from our perception.

Perception comes after.

They wouldn't be real without the perceiving body; at least not in the same way. No reality to speak of without bodies, and no speaking either. — Janus

They'd be ... whatever they are... without me.

Without our bodies the things which exist would not be real in the same way.

Yup!

But would they be real at all?

I think so.

I think about the world I'm in and how it seems bounded by whatever happened before me, how I wasn't there, and it's not even hard to realize that the real is modified by forces outside of my body. Without all of us this wouldn't be real in the same way.

Heh. Fair enough. There are times when it's not the right time.

Crowley and Aziraphale. Stop being so bloody nice to everyone. They really don't deserve it. — Banno

*shrugs* I'm a nihilist. Deserts are for the moralists :D

Thumper's mom knew what she was talking about -- and not just morally speaking. Rabbits being a social species too.

(EDIT: Realized that was a very American reference after the fact, and linked to the quote I had in mind "If you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all")

:D I have!

Naturally that means I have to agree here ;) -- and I do. But especially with the mix that you say -- our blend of disagreement with and agreement with seems to bring out things that I wouldn't have thought of on my own, and it's always a pleasure.

Poor old Sartre clearly had a bad trip, which usually arises from a resistance to the dissolution of self. Shame he had to make a philosophy out of it and impose it on us, though. — unenlightened

So this is interesting to me, because in conjunction with the notion that the mind is what limits, as opposed to what generates, my mind makes the connection to the sense of self counting as part of this filter. In this interpretation then, paths to decrease one's sense of self, one's identity, are paths which lead a person -- as opposed to their identity -- to let go of filters.

I wonder about this notion of "filters" too -- is it filtered, or is it created in interaction between a body-envatted brain representing itself and its representation of the "outside" world? Which as we lose a sense of self we naturally lose the distinction between "inside" and "outside", that being a direct result of the various ways we predicate and enact our identity.

So whether or not the contents of consciousness are "real" or "not real" is down to the functioning of the wet-ware robot in daily life. But it's still all a brain process, no? So the real life VR that serves as reference to the metaphorical VR are on different levels: Real world VR is computer generated sensory input for biological perception systems (sensory organs, nerves, brains...). The metaphorical VR is neither input nor output it's just... a flow? It's this disjunction that makes the question hard to answer. — Dawnstorm

Makes perfect sense to me.

Maybe we try to reduce the metaphorical VR to inputs-outputs, and consider that an explanation, but that's exactly what's wrong -- the entire metaphor of a virtual reality, since there are no input-outputs (like real world VR, where the programmer creates an input for our wet-ware, which we're trying to talk about through this metaphor), is wrong since what we experience is more of a flow.

The VR is meant to replicate this feeling of a flow while creating something virtual. (and, actually, in relation to dreams, it's interesting to note how dreams really feel very different from both the real world VR and this experience of "flow" which the real world VR is trying to emulate, but with an imagined reality instead)

So whether or not the contents of consciousness are "real" or "not real" is down to the functioning of the wet-ware robot in daily life. But it's still all a brain process, no? — Dawnstorm

That's the question I'm trying to parse :). The brain is clearly involved, because as the brain undergoes physical changes so does the sense of flow change. But is that sense of flow a result of brain processes?

I certainly don't think that brain provides VR as output for a disembodied consciouness. Or at least, I wouldn't know how to make sense of it. This is why I'm with Chalmers: I have no idea how to connect that "experiential flow" with the physical processes. — Dawnstorm

Me either. Or, even more so, I wonder if that "experiential flow" is being related to the correct physical processes? Suppose we learn most of our mental habits from our social environment. Then, it'd make sense, in various experiments, to not just measure the electronic structures of a person undergoing some test, but also to measure the electronic structures of the scientists performing the test, and also you'd want to ensure that people underwent similar experiences prior to measuring everyone because the associations we make depends upon what had happened to us, what we are attached to before the experiment begins.

The only reason I know what we're talking about is that I have that sort of flow myself. So, yeah, there's this brain process, "consciousness", and it's part of the total functioning of the wet-ware robot; and there's this first-person experience on top of it.

Cool. We're in a similar wheel-house for puzzling, then. Because I think these two things make sense, too.

So to the extent that we can call that VR, it doesn't make sense to differentiate between illusions and reality for the VR status; it's *all* generated. We'd be talking about types of input, rather than the process. But types of input matter, too. Does it travel along the nervous system? Is it generated somewhere else in the brain? People with more insight into the brain might be better fit to talk about this (say, Isaac). But the process itself shouldn't be all that different.

Right! And I think you've tripped across a good distinction between the real world VR, where inputs from a digital machine are programmed such that our wet-ware gets a sense of reality within an imagined world, and the actual flow which VR is built around to emulate.

The VR machine is mimicking how we sense things in the world to be able to create a fantasy that seems real. So "virtual reality" isn't quite the right metaphor.

To proffer what I think is a less loaded locution: I'd say the body is a reality-generator. — Janus

I'm good with that. Basically brain-in-a-vat where the vat is actually a meaty, mucousy, bio-breathing thing developed by the mad scientist, natural selection.

Does Sartre make perfect sense, too? Both are interpretations, albeit in opposing directions. What is to be avoided is the mistake of thinking that an experience brings one somehow closer to reality "in the flesh"; using mescaline or existentialism or phenomenology remains an interpretation, just different to our more common or functional interpretations.
. — Banno

Sartre also makes perfect sense there -- I'd say Sartre and Huxley are expressing themselves in a similar modality(philosophical methodology? similar linguistic-function, but employed by different people?), but feel different things (at least in these contrasting expressions). In a way we might say they are like the parable of the blind men touching an elephant -- they are attending to their experience, interpreting it, and expressing that interpretation. But that's too many metaphors at once to keep things clear. (is "reality" like an object we cannot see perfectly? At this level of abstraction "elephant" seems too concrete to count as a good metaphor... and invoking "imperfect senses" already assumes a lot of mental-goings-on...)

So i don't see it helping with the mind-body problem or the hard problem, except perhaps to show how what we deal with is always already filtered through our neural networks, even when they are behaving unconventionally

I think that's a win :). Though it could go down some rabbit holes.

At the very least, I'd hope that with such a realization that we might be tempted to at least listen to the great multiplicity of people expressing their interpretations of experience, unless we believe there's some other path -- and I believe I've been arguing against those pretentions of phenomenology, at least. I very much doubt anyone can, through introspection alone, come across a linguistic incantation that will summon some sort of universal experience or whatever which makes everything "click" into place (but it can still be beautiful)

From there, if everything one deals with (and not just everything, an important distinction I think) is interpreted, then that already shifts the mind-body problem to what is and how to distinguish between better or worse interpretations. At least, philosophically, given its preference for using words to express itself -- in activity it's usually not as hard to distinguish between body/mind, because it's always relative to what we're trying to do together, and usually we're not trying to distinguish the verbal relationship between the body and the mind.

Truth still emphasized as an element that's important for philosophy, even with this multiplicity, we throw out false interpretations, first, but then see there's more to it all than an obvious falsity or truth. Such as Sartre and Huxley's emotionally opposite interpretations of reality.

But even so, given they're interpretations (rather than universal statements about experience), they both make sense, upon imagining our own emotional state in different ways. I've felt both, at different times -- also interesting to note how the passages explicit reference to objects isn't even what's important to what the author is expressing, but were just the objects around them at the time. The feelings are far more important.

Though, perhaps this line of thinking just muddles the original question. More straightforward -- would we predict Sartre and Huxley's brain to be in a similar relationship to their respective experiences, or not? Does the human nervous system have anything to do with how Sartre or Huxley are expressing themselves, or even more generally, with their experience? Or, would we say that "experience" here is not related to brains as much as it's related to the environment, and the brain is just putting an emotional "twist" on what we call "experience", which itself is just a catch-all word for "the real, as I see it" as opposed to an epiphenomenal film of the brain's creation?

So, yes? ;)

It looks like you're still thinking through things. I should say "I don't know" is exactly the answer I'd give to the question, at the moment.

People make moral decisions all the time with terrible consequences. The odds of getting it wrong are high and the consequences dire. — Andrew4Handel

That's the terror of responsibility -- what you choose will matter. What you choose matters even if you don't want it to. "People" includes you -- and that's the only person you have control over anyways.

So, knowing that making bad choices matters -- it has consequences which are dire -- you make a choice.

By all means, make a considered choice. Think about it until it feels right.

But that's how you resolve a moral dilemma.

But moral issues can never be resolved — Andrew4Handel

I can make a choice. That resolves it. I might regret it later, but if choice isn't part of a moral issue, it's a kind of illusion.

Oh yeh. I think we're close enough that we agree there on the bad sides of phenomenology, too -- including ethical abuses, and such.

I feel differently about the other phenomenologists, though. And Sartre kind of qualifies, I think, in the Cartesian sense, though his focus isn't that, and he is creative enough to be read on his own. But really I think it's Merleau-Ponty and Levinas which have won me over, making me realize I need to dig into Husserl for realzies.

Take your time. I'm slow, but I do come back around to things eventually.

I waited until we hit the 1k mark, out of an attempt at respect to @jgill -- but now we going to really figure out this ineffable thang at 2k posts. heeeelllll yeah. :D

Somehow sensations are supposed to occupy some middle (@Moliere) ground, private, ineffable, yet somehow despite that, the foundation of our understanding (@Constance).

You clever folk all agree, but can't explain it. I call bullshit. — Banno

Must be. . . incommensurable?

I think I'm still on the naturalist side. I'm on team disappointment, at least, however that leads us ;)

Hrm.

I'd say that morality is important.

And we live in a world without a designer.

I'm mostly in favor of moral error-theory, though I understand it effects people differently.

But the way I look at it is -- I don't care if it's true or false, I care about it. So morality survives, even in a purely physical, design free world.

Even the most veridical perceptions or experiences, I think, are virtual insofar as apprehension of the world is mediated. Illusions, biases, and other misperceptions result from the limitations of meta/cognition, the impacts of which can be reduced or offset by intellectual and experiential disciplines. :chin: — 180 Proof

I think I'd put this somewhere in-between the minimalism I described above to @bongo fury and Transcendental Idealism. And, probably, that's where most of the consciousness-categories are going to sit, too, I just wanted to give a full lay of the land of possibilities.

Do you agree with that?

Cool.

I should have replied separately, and if you're still thinking on it no worries -- but if you have an answer, I'd like to hear it: is the brain a virtual reality machine?

Psyche is disrupted by psychoactive substances, but never quite transcended. It seems to me that even a materialist or rationalist understanding can see theoretically that the sense of self is derived from the limitations of the senses; My boundaries are the eyes that I can see with, the body I can touch with and so on. — unenlightened

I agree. (hrm, looking back -- typed that in response to your second sentence, but the first one makes sense)

Actually, materially, something that's interesting is how psychoactive substances have similar effects on people, to believe word of mouth at least. (also, something I always like to bring up from the materialist side is -- psychoactive substances have effects! :) )

And I don't think it's even theoretical, from a materialist standpoint. The sense of self -- arises? -- from the interaction between mind and body. Or however we'd like to parse these things.

I am not you because I cannot see through your eyes walk in your shoes, feel your pain and joy. Identity is thus a mere blindness and insensitivity, opposed to awareness. As if we were all flat-Earthers, we mistake the horizon for the end of the vital world

Yup

One lives one's normal life in service to that blindness, and makes awareness subservient to it. In this way one makes oneself absent from one's life, and projects oneself through time as nostalgia and fear/desire. It is thus only through the disruption of the discounted normality of awareness as self identity with drug induced sensory confusion, that one begins to become aware of reality at all. Otherwise, there is just a vague feeling of something missing, a loss of 'meaning'.
See also, The Bird of Paradise, by RD Laing. (Not seemingly available online for free).

Haven't read, and while I can't put it on the homework list at the moment for fear of never completing anything, I'll have it in this thread now to go back to.

One thing I like to note is how this is something commonly felt. Right? So, that's very interesting to me because it seems like people talk about this sort of stuff successfully frequently enough that there's something to it.

But then, error-theory looms.

Maybe the way to get over that is to simply note that it doesn't matter that it's false, in the error-theorist's sense.

Oh, I should also mention, you can just say "No" :D

And I'd be interested in those reasonings too.

Kant's transcendental subject is simply a formal "I think "X"" -- a subject only formally there as a condition of thought. He doesn't think of the mind in terms of a small human being inside the mind, ala the homuncular fallacy (and, for that matter, Descartes doesn't either -- that's Dennet's preferred nomenclature for certain ways some people think about their own mind -- they explain it in terms of another mind, so it's really just a special case of begging the question)

The notion of a film I'm trying to invoke is more like a bubble-film -- something generated by the mind, and so not just a movie, but the wholeness of experience. The notion would have it that we are in some way in a virtual simulation of the mind's creation, with varying degrees of naturalism. Chalmer's would call that the qualitative aspect of experience -- what it feels like, what-it-is-like.

Basically like a virtual reality of some kind, be it minimal (almost everything we feel is real in the naive realist sense, and only sometimes our mind plays tricks on us), or total (transcendental idealism where we all live within some kind of meta-mind that structures our minds) or even approaching solipsistic (the illusion of the mind is generated by the electric structures within our brain firing, so we can infer that everyone is in a world of their own creation)

I should note, that I'm not holding people to yes and no. I'm more interested in the why part. The yes/no is just meant to make people commit to something, even if its nascent and only being considered rather than truly believed.

I mean, I'm just giving a hypothetical there to clarify the question and say one can make variations however they like for purposes of answering the question. It's a purposefully unclear question so that people of differing views can answer it.

So, yes or no?

Well, that'd be proposing a kind of mechanism that I listed, yes. Though I chose the unclear "virtual reality machine" to sum up a large collection of distinctions, too. So, for instance, we may say that only dreams are us experiencing the virtual part of the virtual-reality -- there's a contact between mind and world (a kind of realism of both, while describing the realism of the mind) as much more subdued version of the Cartesian theatre that is more plausible to current thinking.

A bit of a stretch wouldn't you say? Even what is happening in one's own body is largely below the thresholds of consciousness. — jgill

Yes, definitely a stretch. Part of my fascination with such things is simply trying to understand what brings a rational person to sincerely believe these things, because I'm used to these claims being from the not-rational side.