Although there are no immediate visual or audible cues as to gravity's disappearance, the occupants will nevertheless be instantly filled with alarm, as they are suddenly struck by that stomach-in-throat, I just jumped off the diving platform, feeling. They will perceive the disappearance viscerally. — andrewk
IOW, you ditch inference, and with it, explanations of any sort that aren't strictly deductive. You just have one experience following another for no rhyme or reason. — Marchesk
Then a partition is put between you and the fire that blocks your from seeing, hearing or smelling the fire. It ceases to exist as a perception. Furthermore, there is a timer that will let you out before your run out of air, but only if the fire on the other side of the partition is no longer consuming air.
What happens? Do you survive or does your air run out? How would Stace answer that? — Marchesk
And really, why would the question of needing air come up at all? Why would you die of needing something (oxygen) you can't perceive? — Marchesk
I think a whole generation of philosophers, and an increasing number of those considering themselves scientists, would question in what way verifiable testing produces truths that are categorically more rigorous from truths detemined through other discourses, such as philosophical. — Joshs
So I see the paper, right? But it's not that simple. What if I glance in the direction of the paper but don't process it as a piece of paper. We do that all the time. Our minds are preoccupied with other thoughts and we look right through something, not identifying it conceptually as 'this object'. And the act of identifying the paper as a thing is a protracted process. At first our visual system will process edges and then move on to a more encompassing recognition of the object. And our intentions and presuppositions enter into the perception in complex ways. — Joshs
Now, if instead of a human perceiving thepaper, we take a snake, the perceptual mapping of the works will look quite different, since perception is about interacting with an environment adaptively in relation to one's needs, rather than representing, mirroring or copying something. The idea of object would be, to say the least , wry different for a snake, if in fact a sense of persisting thing was necessary at all for it.
We could demonstrate how different the perceptual mapping of a world would be if we used a human infant, also, one who had not yet established object permanency, and for whom a piece of paper would likely not exist as a coherent object yet. — Joshs
what exactly would be appearing and disappearing in our world as our attentive processing shifted from moment to moment would not only be relative person to person, or creature to creature, or developmental stage to developmental stage, but also moment to moment. — Joshs
Classical logic would say these are peripheral and irrelevant issues to defining the paper as physical entity, but classical logic is content tomsubstitute an impoverished abstraction for the more fundamental interactively determined meanings of how we interact with a world. — Joshs
"How can I alone, out of my own resources, know that things exist unperceived?" - then there is no answer, and I am led inevitably to solipsism. — gurugeorge
the hypothesis that the unperceived object exists, is a reasonable explanation for present experience's being the way it is. — gurugeorge
It doesn't follow from the facts that (a) the paper is there when I look at T1 and (b) it is there when I look at T3, that it was there when I wasn't looking at T2. — PossibleAaran
you employ the same tactic sometimes employed by Marchesk. That is, to answer my question by asking other questions in the hope that my original question then sounds ridiculous. — PossibleAaran
If the experiment had been performed in reality, which it hasn't, that might prove the existence of the fire in those contrived circumstances, but the existence of regular objects in regular circumstances would remain unproven. — PossibleAaran
I can feel the oxygen as I inhale it, can I not? If you say "no. You cannot tell from inhaling that what you inhale is oxygen molecules", then fair enough, but the existence of the molecules can be securely inferred from the perceptible properties of air. — PossibleAaran
This argument sounds like an argument I could make using my own resources, doesn't it? — PossibleAaran
think this fundamentally confuses how we come to know about the world with the way the world is itself. Just because we can't get outside ourselves to imagine exactly how the world is without us observing it does not entail that the world cannot exist without us perceiving it. — Marchesk
If the paper in your drawer no longer exists unperceived, then the piano falling toward you no longer exists when you look away.
So you should be fine as long as you don't look back. Same with crossing a street. Long as you can keep yourself distracted with headphones and only looking straight ahead, there shouldn't be any issue. — Marchesk
Thought experiments are used in philosophy. — Marchesk
And this one can be performed in the real world. But you can change it a situation where there was a fire but nobody was aware of it, because they were asleep or it was in another part of the building, and they suffocated.
Similar to leaving the car running in the garage with you in it. — Marchesk
Someone slips an odorless, tasteless poison into your drink when nobody else is looking. They leave the room.
Now the poison should ceased to exist just like the paper, right? You drink from the chalice and next thing you know you're vomiting blood and being rushed to the emergency room where the doctor figures out what poison was used and counters it to save your life.
So somehow that unperceived poison came back into existence. — Marchesk
No, the idea that the existence of some unperceived object is a reasonable explanation for present experience's being the way it is depends on a prior acceptance of the world being pretty much as we think it is, with people who give you information, etc. — gurugeorge
The Idealist can posit the two items experienced - the car that you see and the car that hits you- and say that usually seeing one is followed by feeling the other. He need not posit the existence of a car that exists in between these two states, nor need he say that all three are "the same" car.
The same with the piano. The Idealist says that there is the piano that you see falling towards you, and there is the piano that strikes you in the head, but he need not postulate another piano which exists when you aren't perceiving it, nor that all three are "the same" piano. — PossibleAaran
The idealist can make this move, but there is also the possibility that experience just ceases. Other people will infer that the falling piano or oncoming car killed you. The examiner might say poor sap didn't even feel it.
So the idealist has to include the possibility that not looking will result in no longer experiencing, for no reason at all, since there is no unperceived death event. — Marchesk
The possibility of 'not experiencing' doesn't make any sense to the subjective idealist
...
In conclusion the subjective idealist is a solipsist who cannot make sense of the statement "I am mortal". — sime
In conclusion the subjective idealist is a solipsist who cannot make sense of the statement "I am mortal". Yet why should this be absurd by your criteria? After all, the solipsist is not only against holding views that he cannot disprove, he is even against attributing meaning to such views. — sime
I don't know how you've come to that conclusion. One doesn't need to believe that one's experiences are eternal to believe that one's experiences are all that exist, just as one doesn't need to believe that matter is eternal to believe that material things are all that exist. — Michael
All i mean to say is that if subjective idealists are understood to be verificationists in the strongest possible sense, then it makes no sense for them to speak of an absence of experience when it comes to their own experience. — sime
The solipsist thinks they are eternal and there experience will never end? How is that not completely unfounded? — Marchesk
Would such verificationism also commit one to not being able to speak of past experiences except as memories now. — Marchesk
So the idealist has to include the possibility that not looking will result in no longer experiencing, for no reason at all, since there is no unperceived death event. — Marchesk
That is the common belief, but it is a misconception. It is actually the feeling of the absence of gravity. The diver's accelerated motion - in the reference frame of the diving board - exactly cancels out the impact of gravity. What a diver feels the instant after leaving the platform is exactly what is felt by a person in what is considered a 'gravity-free' environment such as a space station, or even just a 'motionless' space ship in deep space.But this feeling that the diver has is one which he has as a result of falling. — PossibleAaran
This really weird thought occurs to me often, and seems completely divorced from any philosophical discussion of materialism vs idealism.The idealist can make this move, but there is also the possibility that experience just ceases. Other people will infer that the falling piano or oncoming car killed you. The examiner might say poor sap didn't even feel it. — Marchesk
Without a temporal perspective there is no such thing as the way that the world is. That's why it's a senseless questi, on to ask about the way that the world would be without an observer. Without an observer there is no such thing as the way that the world is. — Metaphysician Undercover
We already agreed that the Idealist can posit (a) a car hurtling towards him when he sees it, and (b) a car hitting him in the back when he feels it. He need not postulate a car which exists in the interim, when he is not seeing or feeling a car at all, nor need he postulate that these three are 'the same' car. — PossibleAaran
And I explained how I disagree with that, given that we can depict the world mathematically without a perspective, and given that our lack of a ability to picture a perspectiveless world does not necessitate the world can't be that way. — Marchesk
e cannot produce a mathematical model of the universe which is independent from perspective. This is one of the key things that special relativity demonstrates to us. — Metaphysician Undercover
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