It's not a wild claim. We've known since the 1960s that only a very small amount of the processes in the brain make it to concious experience. R. Scott Bakker's Blind Brain Theory paper has a good summary of this and analyzes it from an eliminative materialist perspective.

We also know that the enviornment has way more information than organisms can absorb without succumbing to the entropy that threatens to overwhelm all self organizing systems.

For example, memories are not stored sensory data. The brain uses the same areas for memory that it uses to process new incoming sensory data. It creates memories and imagination anew each time. Most of our experience is the product of extrapolation from a small set of incoming data. For example, you don't experience your blind spot, the space is "filled in." So too you don't experience just how terrible peripheral vision is and its lack of color. All of that "filled in" experience is essentially a hallucination, the result of computational extrapolation.

Perhaps idealism adds nothing, but you simply accept physicalism as the default position. — Tobias

I've admitted to the unspeakable sin of being a physicalist, yes. But that's not the point. Idealism is just another version of physicalism. It renames the transcendent from "matter" to "mental". That's all. Until the truth can be proved one way or the other, physicalism is not invalidated by idealism.

I am amused by the contempt which idealists hold toward physicalism on TPF.

How is this a problem for physicalism but not idealism? If perception is demonstrably different from "what's out there", it still doesn't matter what we call the transcendent. Calling it "mental" still leaves the gap between quale and what causes quale. The hallucination persists.

I've admitted to the unspeakable sin of being a physicalist, yes. But that's not the point. Idealism is just another version of physicalism. It renames the transcendent from "matter" to "mental". That's all. Until the truth can be proved one way or the other, physicalism is not invalidated by idealism.

I am amused by the contempt which idealists hold toward physicalism on TPF. — Real Gone Cat

Ahh probably a defensive reaction... I am always puzzled by the heaps of scorn idealists here receive... You see, it is after all a matter of perspective... :razz:

"Esse est percipi" grabs on to one part of the story and treats it as the whole.

We learn what things are not by looking at them but by picking them up, turning them around, feeling their weight and texture; but also by making use of them. In short we interact with the things that make up the world, we do not simply observe. And it is in that interaction that meaning is built. One finds out what the ubiquitous cup is, not by just looking at it but by getting it out of the cupboard, pouring the tea into it, drinking from it and washing it up; by sharing it with others; by buying it and breaking it. This of course is "meaning is use".

That's also the seed of truth in existential moto that "existence preceded essence". We have life before that life becomes meaningful. One becomes who one is through one's interaction with the world. One constructs the meaning of one's existence.

This renders the notion of an "inner life" fraught with contradiction. If meaning is found in our interaction with the world, what is left to constitute an "inner" life? Not anything meaningful. That is, some notion of an "inner life" cannot be "carved off" or juxtaposed to an "outer life"; we are inherently embedded in the world. That's the core of the private language argument; that meaning per se is built on our interaction with the world, including with each other.

SO going back to:

Is that all there is to life? Is there more to life or anything beyond the scope of perception? What can we learn from a life that only entails a limited perception of human mind? — chiknsld

"Esse est percipi" is very much not all there is to life.

What I also find interesting is that these kind of metaphysical questions, "what is really really real? as opposed to what is real", seems to be all the rage on TPF these days. — Tobias

The forum is presently dominated by fools with little to no grasp of basic philosophical or logical notions and yet with thoroughgoing confidence in their opinions; by those who have failed to learn how to learn.

Everything in your OP accepts reality a priori

If so and if, however, it doesn't make sense to say "perceiving is perceived", then "perceiving" cannot be; therefore "to be" has to be other (more) than "to be perceived". :eyes: — 180 Proof

"Being" and "perception" are categories, there is nothing wrong with claiming that these categories are in fact coincident.

Name an argument against solipsism if the world is purely mental

If you are a bat, or if you take a hallucinogen, is the world then radically altered? Obvious nonsense, not worth serious consideration.

The mind is essentially a function that maps sensory data to the virtual world of qualia. There is no other reasonable way to understand our place in the world.

From this : if "to be is to be perceived", then, for a perceiver to be, a perceiver must be perceived by another perceiver ... by another perceiver . .. by another perceiver .. ad infinitum. :chin:

I'm not as smart as you idealists (and crypto-idealists) to square this circle and conceive of a non-arbitrary terminus to the infinite regress entailed by Berkeleyism (i.e. map (episteme) = territory (ontic), ergo 'there are only maps of maps of maps ... all the way down" à la fractals?). My naturalism is too pragmatic for this conceptual jabberwocky. :eyes:

"Being" and "perception" are categories ... — hypericin

They do not seem to be not just "categories" in this Berkeleyan context.

If you doubt the transcendent[exteriority], then all is what's in your mind. That's solipsism. — Real Gone Cat

:fire:

Idealism is just another[an incoherent] version of physicalism. It renames the transcendent[exteriority] from "matter" to "mental". That's all. — Real Gone Cat

:up:

The forum is presently dominated by fools with little to no grasp of basic philosophical or logical notions and yet with thoroughgoing confidence in their opinions; by those who have failed to learn how to learn. — Banno

:100: :clap:

if "to be is to be perceived", then, for a perceiver to be, a perceiver must be perceived by another perceiver ... by another perceiver . .. by another perceiver .. ad infinitum. :chin: — 180 Proof

No need for an ad infinitum. It's a circle, not a line. A perceiver can perceive itself. Two perceivers can perceive one another.

Enough with the mojies. Use your words 180.

The mind is essentially a function that maps sensory data to the virtual world of qualia. There is no other reasonable way to understand our place in the world. — hypericin

:roll:

@180 Proof ...ok, I take that back.

No need for an ad infinitum. It's a circle, not a line. A perceiver can perceive itself. — ZzzoneiroCosm

IIRC, there's nothing in Berkeley's speculation that says 'to be is to be self-perceived'. And even if so, that's mere solipsism, which I suppose pertains to the function of Berkeley's "God" as the Ur-perceiver (i.e. arbitrary terminus à la "unmoved mover" or "first cause" or "necessary being", etc).

It is a good question, one would think they would be more readily admitted here, which in a sense they are, but not as much as one would expect.

Of course, the problem very soon arises as to what you mean by "idealism". Berkeley's notion is not Kant's or even Descartes, etc.

Reality is reality. I've done most psychedelics. It's brain function

And even if so, that's mere solipsism, — 180 Proof

It's not solipsism if the self-perceived perceiver believes in the existence of other persons.

If there were no others perceiving you, and only the mirror would be left, in other words, if you were alone in the world, it's questionable if we could speak of real being. To be is to be perceived by others.

To be is to feel yourself embodied

Perceiving, not believing, is the determining factor in the Berkeleyan context.

IIRC, there's nothing in Berkeley's speculation that says 'to be is to be self-perceived'. And even if so, that's mere solipsism, which I suppose pertains to the function of Berkeley's "God" as the Ur-perceiver (i.e. arbitrary terminus à la "unmoved mover" or "first cause" or "necessary being", etc). — 180 Proof

To be is to be self perceived... that is interesting no? Being iis purely abstract, it means nothing, I agree. Then the question becomes what does 'being talk' do? I think it is a question, an 'anspruch', it is a limit, how abstract can we go and therefore at the same time a demanding puzzle, can we articulate it? It (en)lights the one that asks this question and points to the one who asks the question of being. For who is it an issue? I would say it is an issue of human being, at least only human being dwells on being. That is basic Heidegger actually. However, even for an ardent physicalist, this points to something, namely, the characteristic of that being that questions its being. So being, the way we use it in metaphysics, is it really so odd to say that being is in the end self perception? Being, is nothing per se, being is an openness or a riddle with which self perception vexes itself. It is a look at the world, a look at the world in which our own face becomes visible. So being as self perception in practice says this: everything in the world we categorize in the same way as we see our own living body.

The forum is presently dominated by fools with little to no grasp of basic philosophical or logical notions and yet with thoroughgoing confidence in their opinions; by those who have failed to learn how to learn. — Banno

I am not sure... I actually like many of the posters and I learn a lot from them, though maybe I am easily bewitched by the language of quantum physics, I do not know. Maybe it is just that Kant is forgotten or refuted when I had my guard down.. I do not know. Maybe I am milder at my ripe old age.

he point about the rose colored glasses is particularly apt. That IS the argument against physicalism. Just reframe it: "if you assume you have an abstract thought model that explains reality, and you interpret all experience using that model, does that mean your model is actually a reflection of reality?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

Except, your models of the world do not change when you put on and take off rose colored glasses. But your perceptions do. How do you consistently model a world where esse is percepi and rose colored glasses exist?

Models are reflections of reality. Perceptions are also models, and they also reflect reality. But they are perfectly pragmatic, without any commitment to accuracy beyond pragmatism. The physicalist models are the products of very hard work deducing what it is perceptions reflect. As direct contact between minds and reality is impossible, models are all we have. They are not reality. But they may model it more it less faithfully, and capture features more faithfully that what our built in models, perceptions, provide.

Self perception is a tiny part of to be. Removing a splinter from your toe requires more self perceiving than contemplating cosmic evolution. Writing a story on cosmic evolution requires perception of the writing hand and maybe your back that hurts on the chair you sit on. A dog perceives itself too. But to say that for the dog to be is to perceive itself is just as silly as to say that for our own bring.

Maybe I am milder at my ripe old age. — Tobias

That'll be it. In contrast, recent posts feed my inner curmudgeon. Or not so inner. My tongue is bleeding from my biting it. Mention of quantum indicates thread derailment.

It's equally a problem for both as far as arguments for solipsism, being a brain in a vat, being mislead by Decartes' demon, etc. is concerned. The arguments against radical skepticism don't really depend on physicalism vs dualism vs idealism.

The point I was making was merely that, contrary to popular arguments, every critique based on the unreliability of perception made against idealism or dualism applies equally to physicalism. Like I said, there is also an argument to be made that idealism is simply more parsimonious, in that it doesn't have to posit that a set of abstractions that exists within thought are actually a description of what has ontic status.

In terms of explanatory power vis-á-vis the "Hard Problem of Conciousness," idealism has advantages over dualism and physicalism. Variants of substance dualism have to contend with the issues of how mind substance, which is totally different from physical substance, interact. It also struggles with why conciousness only shows up in organisms with complex nervous systems. After all, if mind is not based in matter, why shouldn't pens and cars be concious?

Type dualism gets around this issue with the claim that conciousness is a totally different type of thing, but that physical forces are still ontologically basic. I don't know if this event counts as what most people mean by dualism. Type and predicate dualism have always seemed eminently reasonable to me.

Type dualism basically has the same problem as physicalism: how can you explain how subjectivity arises from physical interactions? But at least here, type dualism has less of a problem because it claims that physics can't tell us why experience is what it is. Physicalism that rejects type dualism requires also explaining this last bit, and here it seems it may face insurmountable challenges. Because in physicalism where conciousness is not its own type, you are asking an set of abstractions, which are experienced as merely one element of mental life, to explain the qualitative experience of other elements satisfactorily. And this, I think, is why you get bonkers theories from this camp, namely the claim that quale don't exist.

IIRC, there's nothing in Berkeley's speculation that says 'to be is to be self-perceived'. And even if so, that's mere solipsism.

This is a fundamentally inaccurate reading of Berkeley. It only makes sense if you just look at the phrase "to be is to be perceived," out of context, and ignore his entire metaphysics. External objects are "ideas" in Berkeley; people are "spirits." Spirits are the things that are of themselves and do the perceiving. Unfortunately, he doesn't really develop how ideas are experienced by the mind in depth, but there is a sort of dualism between ideas and spirits. "To be is to be perceived," is explicitly about ideas, as Berkeley gets into to when he is refuting the idea that spirts are "ideas in the mind of God," or that people's spirits are a part of God. He sticks to Christian orthodoxy here, i.e., spirits (people) are ontic entities separate from God and created by God.

There is no infinite regress or solipsism in Berkeley even aside from the role of God. God's existence at the center of the ontology is also explicitly non-solipsistic.

Paradigms in science shift all the time, and then the previously accepted model gets rejected in the same manner. Luminiferous aether, Bowley's Law, etc. Super gravity gives way to super string theory which gives way to M theory. The world has three dimensions... until it has 11. Physical forces act locally, until instantaneous action at a distance shows up. Information in black holes vanishes forever, until it turns out it radiates out. Same thing because both are attempts to make inferences from experience in a systematic way.

To be is to be and to be perceived is to be and be perceived — jgill

What's a tautology? — Agent Smith

That long sentence of which this was a part was meant as a joke. If you took that goblygook seriously, see your mental health professional :razz:

The forum is presently dominated by fools with little to no grasp of basic philosophical or logical notions and yet with thoroughgoing confidence in their opinions; by those who have failed to learn how to learn — Banno

:ok:

True, but old men are at a pretty high risk for suicide.

I didn't realize this thread was 3 pages