The brain-in-a-vat and other such hypotheses are just analogies. The underlying principle is best exemplified by Kant's transcendental idealism. There is indeed something that is the cause of experience, but given the logical possibility of such things as the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis, it is not a given that everyday experiences show us the cause of experience. The causal world might be very unlike what is seen. And that includes being very unlike the material world as is understood in modern physics. So it's not that we could just be some brain-in-a-vat, it's that we could just be some conscious thing in some otherwise ineffable noumena.
At the very least this might warrant skepticism (in the weaker sense of understanding that we might be wrong, not in the stronger sense of believing that we're likely wrong). — Michael
There is indeed something that is the cause of experience, but given the logical possibility of such things as the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis, it is not a given that everyday experiences show us the cause of experience. The causal world might be very unlike what is seen. — Michael
the kind of thing that we hear in the case of a veridical perception is the same kind of thing that we hear in the case of an hallucinatory perception — Michael
has to be spelled out? We recognise illusion and hallucination in virtue of being a member of a community. — Banno
Thus, a veridical, illusory, and hallucinatory experience, all alike in being experiences (as) of a churchyard covered in white snow, are not merely superficially similar, they are fundamentally the same: these experiences have the same nature, fundamentally the same kind of experiential event is occurring in each case.
If you were on Ketamine you wouldn't be able to tell that you were hallucinating and if someone tried to tell you, you wouldn't believe them. — Tate
Thus, a veridical, illusory, and hallucinatory experience, all alike in being experiences (as) of a churchyard covered in white snow, are not merely superficially similar, they are fundamentally the same: these experiences have the same nature, fundamentally the same kind of experiential event is occurring in each case. Any differences between them are external to their nature as experiences (e.g., to do with how they are caused).
We recognise illusion and hallucination in virtue of being a member of a community. — Banno
The indirect realist’s claim just amounts to the claim that when reading about history we’re just reading words, which is true. — Michael
I don't think this is justified. If I dream of a churchyard covered in snow I cannot decide to move around it, walk up to and touch its cold wet stones, turn my back on it and see the surrounding landscape, look up and see the grey dismal skies and then turn back and see the church looking just as it did when I first looked at it. — Janus
So we have no way of telling if someone is on Ketamine? — Banno
You made a further claim about what does inform our intellectual considerations. You did not merely claim that the external object does not inform our intellectual considerations directly. You made the claim that it does not tout court, and that something else does. — Isaac
Recall the scene in A Beautiful Mind where Nash asks a passing stranger if they can see the representative from the Nobel Foundation. — Banno
I would not agree these ever could be the same kind of experiential event. An hallucinatory experience is private to the subject. There is no verification of a subject's hallucinatory reporting, while a veridical experience can in principle be verified since they can report on a public environment. — Richard B
The argument from hallucination relies on the possibility of hallucinations as understood above. Such hallucinations are not like real drug-induced hallucinations or hallucinations suffered by those with certain mental disorders. They are rather supposed to be merely possible events. For example, suppose you are now having a veridical perception of a snow-covered churchyard. The assumption that hallucinations are possible means that you could have an experience which is subjectively indistinguishable—that is, indistinguishable by you, “from the inside”—from a veridical perception of a snow-covered churchyard, but where there is in fact no churchyard presented or there to be perceived.
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However, as noted above, from a phenomenological point of view, hallucinations too seem as though they are direct presentations of ordinary objects: from the subject’s perspective a hallucination as of an F cannot be distinguished from a veridical experience of an F. This is why it seems so plausible to think of them as fundamentally the same.
There are two philosophical points here. The first is that, since the "unseen" world causes what we see, we can and have used those causes to grasp the nature of that unseen world. Science did what Kant imagined to be impossible. — Banno
The reply to him is simply that since such a world is utterly outside of what we can comprehend, it cannot act as the cause of what we experience. — Banno
Why? — Isaac
Yup. Effects, like a visual experiences, carry information about their causes, like the object and the light reflected off the object and into your eye. Information is the relationship between cause and effect.There are two philosophical points here. The first is that, since the "unseen" world causes what we see, we can and have used those causes to grasp the nature of that unseen world. Science did what Kant imagined to be impossible. — Banno
How do we know the difference between our experience of the world and the way the world is independent of our experience? You must have had some experience to even make this claim, so there must be some experience that has informed you how the world is independent if your experience. Or your experience is sufficient to know how the world is independent of your own experience. There must be something in your experience that informs you of how the world is unlike your experience, but how could that be if not by some experience?Scientific realism isn’t a given, and even if it were true, the world as described by the Standard Model is very unlike the world as seen in everyday experience, — Michael
How do we know the difference between our experience of the world and the way the world is independent of our experience? You must have had some experience to even make this claim, so there must be some experience that has informed you how the world is independent if your experience. — Harry Hindu
"Why is it the words and not the events that inform us?" ?
Or "why are the words still about the events?" ? — bongo fury
Does this mean that your earlier self's beliefs were wrong during the course of the previous dream, or does this only mean that your earlier self is presently wrong in relation to your present observation of 'waking up' ? — sime
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