What I find intriguing is that these essentially skeptical hypotheses (questioning the authenticity of reality) are predicated on one singular truth: We can't tell the difference between reality and illusion. — Agent Smith
From a Wittgensteinian standpoint there's no essence to either illusions/simulations or reality that could aid us in telling them apart. — Agent Smith
What about the rationalist position? Shouldn't we be able to deduce the difference? — Agent Smith
The takeaway seems to be that languages are unable to penetrate the inner sanctum, pain taken as representative, of consciousness. Can a coder/programmer code for private experiences like the ones Wittgenstein talks about in his well-known private language argumen? Perhaps our inner private lives are linguistically inaccessible because the creator of the simulation, if we are in one, wanted to, well, hide something in there from us. You see two heads are better than one, more the merrier, but in this case, no number of heads can solve the riddle of consciousness. — Agent Smith
:fire: Amor fati.I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom's realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the Nordheimer's Valhalla. I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content. — Queen of the Black Coast (1934)
The simulation argument is different in that a necessary condition for reality being a simulation is that consciousness can be simulated/is a product of computation. If consciousness can't be simulated, then we're not living in a simulation — RogueAI
Is God amathematicianprogrammer? — Mario Livio
A penny for your thoughts. — Agent Smith
It's nihilism, pure and simple. Nothing has any real meaning. — Wayfarer
If consciousness can't be simulated, then we're not living in a simulation.
— RogueAI
... or we're 'delusional zombies' – eliminationists – living in a simulation. — 180 Proof
From a Metzingerian perspectiive, "self" is a (persistently embodied) phenomenal illusion re: ↪180 Proof — 180 Proof
Though it's addressed to Possibility.. I would like to reiterate again the fallacy of mixing the components of the phenomenon for the phenomenon itself. Even if "self" was an illusion, the reality of "self" in the construct of a human doesn't go away by simply "realizing" this (if that is even true in the first place that we are an illusion, whatever that means). Thus yes, the Cogito does make sense in this situation. There are certain realities that one can't, by fiat of argument, make go away, and thus try to push through as some proof of non-suffering (or "really suffering") for the sake of argument. — schopenhauer1
The simulation argument is different in that a necessary condition for reality being a simulation is that consciousness can be simulated/is a product of computation. If consciousness can't be simulated, then we're not living in a simulation. — RogueAI
Many works of science fiction as well as some forecasts by serious technologists and futurologists predict that enormous amounts of computing power will be available in the future. Let us suppose for a moment that these predictions are correct. One thing that later generations might do with their super-powerful computers is run detailed simulations of their forebears or of people like their forebears. Because their computers would be so powerful, they could run a great many such simulations. Suppose that these simulated people are conscious (as they would be if the simulations were sufficiently fine-grained and if a certain quite widely accepted position in the philosophy of mind is correct). Then it could be the case that the vast majority of minds like ours do not belong to the original race but rather to people simulated by the advanced descendants of an original race.
what I said above doesn't imply that there's no, as you put it, jnside to consciousness; it's just that we can't discuss it among ourselves in a meaningful way (beetle-in-a-box gedanken experiment). — Agent Smith
Your notion of consciousness and self is a bit too Cartesian. There is no inside to consciousness in the sense of some container with a substance, essence or content that sits there waiting to be reflected on. Consciousness is self-changing. That IS its only essence.
It makes no sense to talk about reflection as a mirror or distortion of something that is never simply itself but is always a new differential. — Joshs
I don't quite follow, sorry! — Agent Smith
If we've only ever experienced one then how could we know which it is we've experienced? — Michael
Hence the first position of one following Wittgenstein might well be that the notion of the world being an hallucination is nonsense; that we cannot make sense of the idea of the whole world being a simulation. — Banno
Austin, a contemporary of Wittgenstein, pointed out that we can tell the difference between reality and illusion. If we could not, we would not have the term "illusion" and its cognates. We and our language has developed ways of sorting out illusion from reality. Hence the assumption you bolded is wrong. — Banno
Another way of putting this is that if it were true that the universe were a simulation, nothing in the universe would be different. — Banno
So the Wittgensteinian response is "Meh." — Banno
Consciousness is self-changing — Joshs
We can't tell the difference between reality and illusion. — Agent Smith
From a Wittgensteinian standpoint there's no essence to either illusions/simulations or reality that could aid us in telling them apart. — Agent Smith
The takeaway seems to be that languages are unable to penetrate the inner sanctum, pain taken as representative, of consciousness. Can a coder/programmer code for private experiences like the ones Wittgenstein talks about in his well-known private language argumen? Perhaps our inner private lives are linguistically inaccessible because the creator of the simulation, if we are in one, wanted to, well, hide something in there from us. — Agent Smith
Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language. — Ludwig Wittgenstein
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.