However, perceptions of brain activity are certain states of consciousness themselves. — MonisticIdealist

Ex falso quodlibet.

A perception is a state of consciousness, just like a thought, a dream etc.

So it's completely true.

A perception is a state of consciousness, just like a thought, a dream etc. — MonisticIdealist

No, a perception is consciousness. You seem to image an entity "consciousness" which could then have perceptions or not - which is empirically never the case. That is reification.

No, a perception is not the totality of consciousness. I can have an empirical perception, at the same time someone hallucinates.

Consciousness has different modalities.

Consciousness has different modalities. — MonisticIdealist

How would you know? All you relate to is consciousness. Because you call it such?

A property-to-property analysis shows no coherent relation between consciousness and a physical brain. — MonisticIdealist

Switch off brain, and there goes consciousness. You assume that because a coherent relation is not detectable now, it will never be detectable because it does not exist. What kind of reasoning flaw is this, philosophers? :gasp:

Switch off brain, and there goes consciousness. — jgill

There goes identity, not consciousness

You assume that because a coherent relation is not detectable now, it will never be detectable because it does not exist. — jgill

One step further: There is no relation as there are no distinct entities.

Switch off brain, and there goes consciousness. — jgill


There goes identity, not consciousness — bert1

I pity the poor, innocent chunk of dead flesh lying in the morgue, conscious, but not aware of itself. Wes Craven where are you? :groan:

No, a perception is not the totality of consciousness. I can have an empirical perception, at the same time someone hallucinates. — MonisticIdealist

The analogy of a television illustrates the brain/mind duality. Suppose there's a tv and some guy starts experimenting on it and correlates various parts of the tv with sound and vision. His experiments show that the film on tv is intimately related to the components of the tv and he therefore concludes that the television produces the film.

But this is not true. Correlation is not causation. The film is broadcast to the tv from a remote station. The television only structures the information so the human eye and ear can understand. The television does not produce, it configures.

If the mind is a non physical entity what is the brain for? It is there to enable the mind to partake in physical reality. And for this the brain needs to configure the mind's consciousness in human terms; it translates the mind's thoughts into a human context and allows the mind to engage with the physical world.

For this, a physical analogue of consciousness is required. This analogue is the five senses. The senses provide information from the physical world to the mind. But the mind is conscious in its own terms; it is aware, over and above physical consciousness.

There are strong arguments for this, the Wall of Woo notwithstanding.

I pity the poor, innocent chunk of dead flesh lying in the morgue, conscious, but not aware of itself. — jgill

It is a worry.

I pity the poor, innocent chunk of dead flesh lying in the morgue, conscious, but not aware of itself. — jgill

If one is going to go full idealist, then the chunk of dead flesh is just an idea, not a state of being, since the idea of mind-independent matter would be considered incoherent.

I'm not sure how idealists handle death, but I assume it would simply mean to end of experience, not one of decaying flesh. That's for others to experience.

@MonisticIdealist, so you're more or less going by the tenets of Levine's explanatory gap / Chalmers' mind conundrum, and that I can't deny the mere existence of my experiences, I can't coherently deny mere self-existence.

Actually, I'd question more or less the entire opening post.

In an ontological sense, you'll have it that the Moon is not actually the Moon, but rather is Moon-experiences, a bit like a dream that exists only due to the dreamer.
All I can ever know is the experience, and so that's where the road ends, more or less literally.
The Moon = those Moon-experiences.
Solipsism. :confused: But OK, maybe that's the stance here.

So, idealism (mental monism) starts with conflating epistemics and ontology by universalizing self-dependence. (n)

Some points I've picked up from others:

• Novelty: We sometimes discover new things; things previously unknown, unthought, unexperienced, uninvented. I'm not omniscient, since otherwise I'd know that I were. Sometimes we hear new ideas from others.
• Error: We're sometimes wrong about things. What, then, made us wrong, but whatever is indeed the case?
• Agreement: We agree on numerous things; when to be at work in the morning; where the local grocery store is; how a pawn moves in chess; this is English; ... The fly and the chameleon are in agreement about the colors of the environment when the chameleon sneaks up on the fly and catches it. And, as a spectator, I can understand this little drama; I also agree with the fly and the chameleon about the colors.
• Constraints: We can't do just anything, whether trying to "will" it so or not, and "willing" alone is inadequate. Imposed extra-self limitations.

The simplest coherent explanation is some sort of non-idealism (or realism). (y)

jorndoe

What would an idealist say in response to your critique?

Just checking back, I will address some people's responses.

Solipsism? First off, the argument was never "only my experience is real" that's a straw-man. The argument is that consciousness as an ontological category is all that is real because no relation can be had with the ontologically opposite known as the Physical. Other dissociated perspectives would be conscious just like me, so there is no reason I cannot infer about them because they are the same ontological category as me. This means I can have a relation with other conscious agents through a perceptual interface of 3D space and linear time experience (look up the Interface Theory of Perception). That's what's happening now. So no, Solipsism is not implied by my argument. I'm only doing away with a Physical world - that says nothing about other conscious agents

Also, Idealism is the view that only consciousness is real. Not only "ideas" are real like someone here implied.

Consciousness is a volitional essence appearing to itself phenomenally as this, that, the other etc. - Internal qualitative experiences are states of awareness such as: dreams, dissociated
perspectives, hallucinations, sensory modalities (touchy-feelings, smells, tastes, visual color pattern experience, audio perception), mystical insights, emotions, illusions/ "seeming", abstract thought/ mental constructs etc

Someone said our senses let us know about a physical world... That's literally what my argument refutes so what you said was incoherent. We sense a mental world through 3D perceptual encoding.

Consciousness upon examination has no physical properties in its essence (introspection verifies this and property analysis). This means no relation can be had with any ontologically opposite purely physical world. Our senses all verify a Geocentric universe too, does that mean we live in a Geocentric universe? All we verify with the senses is how they render reality to us - not how reality is. Our perceptual systems across five sensory modalities merely "stretch out" the world (transcendent consciousness system) for us into dimensions and extended geometric structures within perception right now.

This is because to experience reality as the universal consciousness system, means to become one with it - the climax of meditative experience. Not really good for dissociative fitness or replication.

Now what about this?

Novelty:

This is great and supports Idealism. We do get novelty, and this is only possible because we all the share the same ontological category.

If there was dead matter in between our conscious states no information would be able to get from one to the other. This is how we know that the transcendent realty beyond our consciousness must just be "more consciousness" - not brute physical reality.

Thre is no issue with me believing in other conscious agents and a transcendent consciousness system beyond me.

Error:

What makes us wrong are thoughts (states of consciousness) of things that are nonsense or not true that we can come to with reason.

Agreement:

I addressed this. We all agreed on a Geocentric universe, we all agreed on a Flat Earth.

Intersubjective-agreement across dissociated boundaries only tells us HOW we experience reality, it does not tell us what reality is ontologically. All we know is that it is patterned. This is due to the self-bifurcation of consciousness.

When someone with split-personalities dreams, the split-personalities all experience the same "physical" landscape in the dream from unique perspectives and all the personalies agree. But it's in the mind.

So we have real examples of intersubjective agreement of a physical world when it's just in the mind!

Think of us as split-personalities in a very stable and intense mind dreaming.

Constraints:

Of course there are constraints. If "mental" meant "conforming to our will" then I would never have nightmares and all my dreams would be models on boats with cocaine. Nobody would ever have hallucinations of things they cannot control etc. In a dream you can control it only if you lucid dream.

We can't lucid dream here because this reality is rendered from a more stable Mind than our finite unstable sub-minds.


My stance that Metaphysical Idealism is the only reasonable position holds.

...

Oh, and brain activity is just a 3D perceptual rendering of someone's personal inner life. All objects in perception are like extended "icons" that represent the non-extended "file". Of course there will be tight correlations between them.

People are mistaking the image of a state for the cause of a state. Brain activity does not cause states of consciousness, brain activity is what states of consciousness look like across dissociative boundaries.

Mind does not pop in and out of existence, memory declenches and is lost but consciousness always remains. Of course when there is no memory of consciousness, it "feels" as if we were unconscious

"What about drugs? Hammers? Physical stuff changes consciousness".

No, they are just the icons that represent that change of consciousness. We change eachother's consciousness with the tool of the 3D perceptual interface but the icons cannot change the file.

The simplest explanation?

Mentality exists, our human experiences can all flow from this.

Violation of simplicity?

Mentality exists PLUS some ontologically distinct world of the physical PLUS the ontologically distinct world somehow relates to an us even though there's no relation (nonsense)

Even if everything is subsumed under the category of "our thoughts", the world would be just as real, as if it were material. Material, after all, means independent of thought

The world is real. It's a real mental world that we perceive AS physical across 5 sensory modalities.

Anyone else notice that the OP does not mention idealism?

What's that say about the argument?

You know how to put two and two together right Banno?

A lot of questions. But not relevant until someone tells us what "consciousness" is. It's like asking the difference between rocks and ectoplasm.

Oh, I do.

When I try to put your argument together, it looks something like "not physical realism, hence Metaphysical Idealism".

Which is a bit like "it's not chalk, hence it is democracy".

Xtrix, You don't know what consciousness is? Weird. It it literally why you believe anything exists at all. Anyway, I defined it already, but here it is again:

Consciousness is a volitional essence appearing to itself phenomenally as this, that, the other etc. Such states of awareness include: dreams, dissociated perspectives, hallucinations, beliefs, sensory modalities, Introspection, emotions, illusions/ "seeming", abstract thought/ mental constructs etc

And Banno, I would love for you to tell me which Philosophy of Mind would be left, besides Idealism, if Physical Realism is false.

Well, off the top of my head...

Biological naturalism
Computationalism
Mind–body dualism
Eliminative materialism
Emergent materialism
Emergentism
Epiphenomenalism
Functionalism
Interactionism
Naïve realism
Neurophenomenology
Neutral monism
Occasionalism
Panpsychism
Parallelism
Phenomenalism
Physicalism
Property dualism
Representational
Solipsism
Substance dualism

Please read that again you are very confused. I asked what options would be left if Physical Realism were false.

Every single one you mentioned assumed Physical Realism is true, except for Solipsim

Is that your final answer?

My argument literally ruled out everyone of those except Solipsism.

My argument literally ruled out everyone of those except Solipsism. — MonisticIdealist

Good for you. You win today's Fractured Terracotta Cup.