Most tribal societies are extremely violent compared to ours, and full of continuous inter-tribal strife. — gurugeorge

I wasn't talking about violence levels but sustainability of life style and population sizes and famine.

I think our economic system is violent and destructive etc and unsustainable. Allowing people to starve under gross inequality is a form of violence. Also lets not forget the trillion pound arms industry.

Obviously there is a vast amount of information that could be studied but it seems to me that some interpretations of history are purely ideologically. How can tribal societies be more violent than two world wars, the holocaust and trans Atlantic and Arab slave trades?

None of this anyhow justifies ownership or excessive unsustainable exploitation of resources.

I am not sure how to add photos here but I can easily link to you to images of massive pollution around the world. Dying rivers, deforestation, dramatic climate change and so on.

You've got a very distorted view of history — gurugeorge

I am the only one presenting actual historical evidence.

What knowledge do you have of the Congo under Leopold and what explanation do you have for the ten million deaths and the chopping off of peoples hands and slave labour?

I can present tons of evidence here.

I am not idealising tribal societies, however if you see the list of famines involving mutli-millions of deaths how many can you attribute to people living primitive lifestyles and how many were alleviated by capitalism or land exploitation?

You can analyse this list for the trajectory and causes of famine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines

Here is a book on famines under the British Empire:

"Davis argues that "Millions died, not outside the 'modern world system', but in the very process of being forcibly incorporated into its economic and political structures. They died in the golden age of Liberal Capitalism; indeed, many were murdered ... by the theological application of the sacred principles of Smith, Bentham and Mill."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Victorian_Holocausts

"In part, the Great Famine may have been caused by an intense drought resulting in crop failure in the Deccan Plateau.[1] But, the regular export of grain by the colonial government; during the famine the viceroy, Lord Lytton, oversaw the export to England of a record 6.4 million hundredweight (320,000 ton) of wheat, made the region more vulnerable. However, the cultivation of alternate cash crops, in addition to the commodification of grain, played a significant role in the events."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1876%E2%80%9378


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Bengal_famine_of_1770

"The famine is one of the many famines and famine-triggered epidemics that devastated the Indian subcontinent during the 18th and 19th century.[4][5][6] It is usually attributed to a combination of reasons and the policies of the British East India Company. In The Medieval History Journal Vinita Damodaran cites Mike Davies who argues that colonized territories, such as India and Ireland, were used as experiments to understand the impacts of free market economics. The results were famine and devastation for the people"

Which is fine in some circumstances. But stewardship needs a central authority to decide who gets to "steward" what when. The advantage of the system of private property is that it doesn't require that kind of central decision-making authority, it just requires everyone to follow certain abstract rules (grounded ultimately in the principle of the Golden Rule, or something like the Kantian Categorical Imperative). — gurugeorge

It is not hard to understand stewardship without a central authority. People have historically prepared food for the winter months by preservation methods and storage and so on.

To me you can tell by looking at your environment what might become excessive exploitation.
It seems to me tribal societies with traditional methods are less prone to starvation and over population , live within there means and understand their land. Notorious famines have occurred as consider, in British India and Ireland whilst resources are being shipped elsewhere and local means of subsistence have been undermined by turning crops into cash.

Private property is far more in need of a central authority than stewardship. You need a government and army to enforce property rights and a legal system in the past there was the divine rights of kings now there is inheritance law.

Can you link me to counter evidence?

Fair and sustainable allocation of resources does not rule out rewards for innovation etc Personally I think peoples consciences should be the strongest force in them with rationality. I chose not to ruin my living space because I know when I move someone else will want to live here, I recycle everything possible out of concern for the environment because I don't see the point in ruining the environs other people will need and inherit. I don't want to have millions whilst children starve or have ten children when there is clear over population.

Bill Gates seems a good role model in some respects. Not every wealthy person is unconcerned about poverty, inequality and the environment.

(My bolds) The claim of misappropriation rests on the idea that the natives were the original owners of their land. — gurugeorge

I don't agree but I can word it differently if you like.

It can just mean to gain something in an underhand manner or by force.

It doesn't follow anyhow that if I don't own something you have equal right to it.

You seem to be making a classic mistake concerning nihilism. Moral nihilism for example says killing is neither right nor wrong so you can't justify anything under that framework, it doesn't make killing acceptable or excusable but it makes moral claims about it null.

Nihilism could entail cooperation and pragmatism. Because if you accept no one owns anything but you want to live in peace then this system would maximise your goals. Nihilism could lead to anarchy but it can't be entailed by it because it denies this kind of causal necessity.

I am not trying to justify land ownership.But if you intend to justify ownership I can point out that land is not owned or justified by the means you claim.

If you imply resources were claimed fairly I can refute that. My point is that once you put claims on land you get into dodgy territory.

In the Congo as far as I am aware the locals were not using rubber widely however they could have been paid to harvest this resource. It wasn't just resources taken but labour.

I am wondering what knowledge of History gurugeorge has.

Lets dwell on the history of the Ironically named Congo Free State "owned" by King Leopold II

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_Free_State#Humanitarian_disaster

"A Congolese man looking at the severed hand and foot of his five-year-old daughter who was killed, and allegedly cannibalized, by the members of Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company militia, 1904"



"(..)generally agree with the assessment of the 1919 Belgian government commission: roughly half the population perished during the Free State period. Hochshild points out that since the first official census by the Belgian authorities in 1924 put the population at about 10 million, these various approaches suggest a rough estimate of a total of 10 million dead.[16]:225-233"

My key point is advocating stewardship.

If you live on a piece of land and own some great works of art and literature it would be vandalism to destroy the land so it became unlivable and to destroy the works of art that both could be enjoyed by future generations. You can't own something after your dead.

Children don't deserve to inherit poverty or wealth.

Look at the long conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians over land. The land is being thoroughly exploited and is overpopulated. Ownership claims are being propped up by deliberately having large families to dominate the land and increase perceived claim on the land.

Even if you could get an agreement on land ownership it wouldn't justify overpopulating and unsustainably exploiting the land.

No, the classical liberal or propertarian position is against colonialism — gurugeorge

Which came first Colonialism or capitalism?

How much evidence do you want me to provide about misappropriation of land and resources which already had a claim or occupancy on it?
There is Still beneficial Infrastructure in Europe was paid for by slavery. Piracy, war and colonialism led to wealth and artefacts being taken with no recompense.

Exploitation of other countries resources, politics and labour is a reoccurring theme in capitalism.

I am not sure what your original point was but you asked if I would prefer an iPhone or lump of silica implying that superior use of land justified ownership.

When there are finite resources cooperation is the only thing to prevent conflict, war and force.

I am attacking the ideologies that do not encourage stewardship of the land, fair usage and treat the world like an infinite resource and also the just world hypothesis that falsely believes reality is fair and we start from a level playing field.

Regardless of political or economic leanings I do not see a way to claim someone owns somethings which I think is actually a metaphysical claim. If there were infinite resources then we wouldn't need to worry about ownership because no one would be deprived.

I think the contrast between science and the supernatural is misleading.

For example think of the unimaginable evil humans have perpetrated like the holocaust.

I don't think anything credited to spirits and demons has matched the actually reality of barbaric human conduct but can science seriously reduce this to neuronal firings?

I think science lacks the qualia of reality that is the vivid experiences including immense suffering, prejudice, infatuation, music and so on.

The danger of materialism is extreme objectivism just treating people like insentient objects to be mathematically manipulated.

Statistics are an interesting example.It is quite easy to collect data but interpreting it is a different matter.

There are flawed, biased political and simply incorrect interpretations of data.

Also, evolutionary and cosmological theories are falsifiable, they make testable predictions. — aporiap

There are a huge range of claims made in evolution beyond the general paradigm. I am thinking about individual claims as opposed to support for the general paradigm..

For example claims about homology in fossils. Homology claims about humans and other living organism can be disproven by DNA testing so that we find that Tom Cruise look a likes are not usually related to him and similar looking animals can be unrelated.

The point I am making though is that science doesn't always demand empiricism and falsifiability (see string theory, many worlds the multiverse)

Empirical evidence might prove or falsify a theory but science is not constrained or restrained from speculating.

I think some of the prominent metaphysics and methods used in science have made the study of mental states nearly impossible because of their invisibility and subjectivity. For example people face a lot of skepticism when they have a hidden illness or mental illness, Some claims just have to be taken on faith and some inferred. Among these things are chronic pain with no visible bodily damage or abnormalities, phantom limbs, hallucination, M.E. etc.

I am not saying claims have to be falsified to be true but just that this is not a uniting principle in science. If it was then the burden of proof would probably become too high.

What I am thinking is that science might be just a very diverse range of practises with no underlying metaphysical claim to be found or to unite it.

But people present it as worldview or the only method of truth or as a reductive process.

I think it is too restrictive to try and reduce it all to physics or the physical or empiricism and neglect the role of the imagination, cognition,chance, invention, intuition, desire, bias, political forces, commercialism and so on.

You're vastly underestimating how complex and intricate the society that's sustaining you is — gurugeorge

The main part of being sustained is having shelter. Technology is pretty useless if you are homeless.

I don't see why you can't have innovation and fair shared sustainable use of resources.

Your position seems somewhat colonialist and justifying controlling already settled territory because you feel your values and lifestyle are superior.

I think if people don't have somewhere decent to live and equal access to resources that would be adequate reason for protest, noncompliance and resistance.

Fortunately most of West has social welfare which is a reasonable redistribution of resources but still humans are leading highly unsustainable exploitation driven or exploited lives imo.

I don't think science has to make any metaphysical commitment like naturalism. I think naturalism and physicalism are quite meaningless in terms of picking out entities. But is science wants to promote a metaphysics it would then become a philosophical competitor.

I don't think you have to ask questions to make scientific discoveries. Just mixing chemicals can create innovations and new phenomena can appear under a microscope or any other form of observation..

I think most claims in evolution and cosmology are unfalsifiable because they are historical claims about one off events that can't be replicated.

The problem with your position is that very few parts of earth, of the useful matter on earth, are a passive resource just waiting to be plucked off a tree (or sat on). They have to be worked on by others to become useful. — gurugeorge

This seems implausible because we are the only creatures on earth that have technology. We must have survived on the land at one stage with no tools or technology.

I don't think you can justify ownership based on clever usage of resources. Would you allow someone to move into your house because they designed something clever for it? I don't see people giving up land just in order for someone to be innovative with it. Primarily land is for basic survival shelter or food.

Innovation doesn't justify polluting and overpopulating the environment in an unsustainable way.

There is rarely if ever just one person involved in innovation. It is not like someone found some rock and made an iphone unfortunately phones have an unethical dimension with some of material they consist of mined with slave labour in places like The Congo and assembled in oppressive regimes like China.

I think rampant pessimism could be learned helplessness.

It seems to me that facts about reality can not logically entail emotional response. The link between judgements, information and mental sates or emotional response is puzzling. It is part of the mind vs body, semantics vs the physical issue.

So I think making someone happier or more optimistic by biochemistry or brain manipulation is fine.

However I do think some optimism can be delusional. If people feel happier because they have formed false and damaging judgements that could be harmful. But do all positive emotions lead to a diminishing of reason and vice versa?
Even if we are doomed it doesn't' seem to help being depressed about it because that just adds to the overall discomfort.

I think how we respond to information could be subjective so that some people are just more affected by things than others. Optimism might be a defence mechanism against anxiety. Pessimism might be a sign of low self esteem and helplessness.

All of that said however I value the truth over emotion and wouldn't want a world based just on how people felt at the time.

I think there are lots of problems with the notion of just desert. The most prominent is that we are randomly born into our initial circumstances through luck or misfortune which means some people immediately have access to more resources, better genes, a more democratic country, a favoured gender/sex.

So no one can be blamed for factors like these or praised for achievements based on luck or birth and genetic inheritance. (You could add free will debates in here)

A lot of millionaires and billionaires were already from wealthy backgrounds and or had access to resources others don't. I only found out recently that Richard Branson went to possibly the most expensive private school in the UK whereas he has often been portrayed as a self made man.

Another issue is quality of parenting and parental support, it can be very hard to overcome childhood adversity.

Governments are responsible for a lot of wealth creation because for example they invest in a lot of technology and infrastructure. So everyone's taxes are necessary to aid individual wealth creation.

I don't think you can find a logical relationship between effort/hard work and ownership. Ownership is usually created by force or by negotiation.

I think having children is making an unjustified claim on a limited resource.I think exploiting the earth for your own survival is completely understandable. That is just brute survival

But putting demands on resources by creating children that don't need to exist goes beyond survival to what I suppose you could call it colonisation.

As they say it takes a society to raise a child so then the dynamic becomes exploitative of other people. When you have to cooperate with others and share resources then the ethical questions become more prevalent.

Here is a related issue.

"Unsurprisingly for a field that relies on calling happiness 'utility', economics students are the most likely to display evil personality traits, new research has suggested.

Budding economists, as well as business students, scored highest on the 'Dark Triad' set of personality traits – narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism – in the study conducted by two psychologists at Aarhus University in Denmark."

https://thetab.com/uk/2017/07/26/if-youre-evil-you-probably-study-economics-says-science-44013

A survey conductedby Gandal, Roccas, Sagiv, and Wrzesniewski (2005) find that economics students valued personal achievement and power more than their peers while attributing less importance to social justice and equality.

Rubinstein (2006) reports that economics students were much more likely to favor profit maximization over promoting the welfare of workers when faced with a business dilemma.

Faravelli (2007) finds that economics students were significantly less likely to favor egalitarian solutions to problems than their peers outside of economics.

Haucap and Just (2010) find that a survey of economists revealed they were more likely than their peers to consider the allocation of scarce resources in accordance with who can afford to pay the price set by supply and demand to be a fair method of rationing and distributing resources.

And Bauman and Rose (2011) report that economics majors are less likely to donate to local social programs.

https://www.uv.es/sasece/docum2015/Etzioni-2015-Sociological_Forum.pdf

You might like the anarchist Frenchman Pierre Proudhon's ideas. In his 1840 book he declared that "Property is theft!" (What he meant by 'property' is land, factories... not one's personal 'stuff' clothing, books, etc.) — Bitter Crank

Yes.

If you cite Proudhon people claim you are a communist. I don't know much about communist theory but what I am talking about is rationality. Don't kill the planet that is feeding you.

It would not be an issue of there were only a few humans so that there was more than enough to go around.

I think everyone deserves a home, food and shelter but this becoming harder to achieve.

Also people inherit property and other people are born into poverty so it is far from a level playing field.

I so like the concept of stewardship and I am sure that was advocated in the bible but largely neglected by Christians in favour of "Go forth and Multiply."

We can reward peoples efforts with in reason especially if those efforts involve creative and ingenuity and not just exploitation.

Everything in moderation.

The problem is people are blaming suffering on something just the wrong thing.

I don't see the benefit of a no blame position.

I want an accurate causal picture of reality.For me the worst kind of suffering is pointless suffering and I think this arises from not expecting people to justify having children.

I think suffering emerges from various dynamics including embodiment and is exacerbated in different ways but parents reproducing is the initial spark leading to a possible life of gross suffering (or maybe a mediocre or fairly satisfactory life). Nevertheless any individual moment of suffering is facilitated by needlessly creating someone with the gross capacity to suffer.

To me lack of consent and pointlessness are coequal to with suffering as reasons not to procreate.

Yes but for some reason a lot of people do not seem to believe this and most people apparently will not blame parents for their child's suffering.

I think the reason suffering is tolerated relates to humans religious and superstitious past.

In my very religious background humans were blamed for all of suffering and God for none of it.(a bogus and harmful dichotomy)

There is also the notion of Karma and the just world hypothesis.

Atheists secularism is a latecomer as a major movement. So I think even the nonreligious have assimilated this historical cultural attitude towards suffering.

I think that the valid arguments for these beliefs have been non existent but the beliefs have emotional and coercive force anyway.

So this is why I believe rational argument is a way to promote antinatalism. But we have to keep on raising these issues like the picture I have outlined here of superstitious reasons for tolerating suffering.

There are lots of issues with meaning making.

One issue is conflicting values. One persons meaning can easily chronically conflict with anothers (for example religions vs atheism) (Capitalism vs communism) and so on and there is no way to resolve this kind of dispute.

This is one reason I think making meaning is dubious as opposed to discovering meaning. If there is an objective or inherent meaning it unlikely to lead to subjective value clashes.

I don't think enjoying something equals making meaning because I don't think we can choose what we enjoy. If you love your family and have meaningful relationships with them I don't see that as a choice but rather luck.

Finding meaning in Bach or Newton or Renoir I don't see as making meaning because you are being provided by meaning from someone else.

So in what sense is anyone making meaning as if from nothing or truly self generated?

To some extent I see emoting as an enemy to true meaning were emotional coercion is used to advocate the supremacy of ones meaning rather than reason.

Finally it seems wrong to create children and then put the onus on them to validate their existence. It is a cop out for parents who failed to make a child's life meaningful.

I don't think emoting or emotional attachment should be mistaken for meaning.

I think meaning has to equate to semantics where something meaningful is transmitted to the mind rather than just feelings.

If there is no purpose or meaning I don't think it something you can create by emoting over events with pseudo profundity.

I know. There seems to be a limit to our understanding. I wonder if there ever will be one that understands everything. — TheMadFool

Is it possible to live as a general agnostic? I think we seem to have to founded things on some false beliefs and emotions.

I don't know where complete understanding would takes us. There is always the is-ought problem of going from how reality is to how you would prefer it to be.

I think there is a hint of anarchy behind all this where lack of certainty could lead to a free for all of self expression or self indulgence. I think agnosticism leads to caution where you are unwilling to go too far in your claims, assertions and action.

I think false certainty leads to nihilism though the nihilism of abandoning the truth for illusion.

Some people have to "hone" while others "get it" right away. If that is the case, why are we putting people through the "honing" in the first place? Do we like giving deficits to people so they can overcome them? But why — schopenhauer1

What disturbs me is the acceptance of inequality backed up by a denial of facts. The idea that failing is a personal flaw not luck.

I think it would be hard to justify creating more people if people had a factual logically rigorous discussion about procreation.

Well society was successful under centuries of religion and exploitation and to me that proves you can create a successful society on untruths. Some people argue that religion was necessary to motivate progress because the natural order does not inspire us. I think people are becoming more disenchanted now despite humans technical achievements, because some of these historical myths and fancies have been undermined.

I think society should be based on reason and logic as much as possible. That does seem to lead to antinatalism but even if you don't go there I think society could be improved in someway be more sound examinations of ideas and fallacies and metaphysics.

The real reason for this kind of claim is his motivations — ChatteringMonkey

I think that motivations can be valid and invalid. I think society maybe mainly created around invalid motivations.

Take advertising for example. If you do not need a product the company still has to convince you that you need it. The amount of advertising is astonishing and it is aggressive.

Thinking of dating services. They make millions from claiming to help you find a partner which you could do on your own. It is not in their interest to expose the downside of relationships. But the romance industry can promote an excessive desire for an unreal lifestyle.

It is not surprising people succumb to depression with so much propaganda hurled at them.

What is wrong with life as we find it not constructed for some tiring psychological utopia attainment...

We can sufficiently detach ourselves to be unbothered by what we believe or what we do. Is this a good thing? — TheMadFool

Is the point of logic to be detached? I would agree that it it is not easy to separate ourselves from our beliefs. But is our self rational? Logic appears to offer a route to a basic kind of rationality and consistency.

We could explore our self to see that we do not dominate our beliefs with our psychological persuasions/issues/biases/disturbances.

I am a general agnostic mostly, because I do feel there is a limitation on my ability to know.

If much of life is about "getting it right", then there is something inherently wrong with it. — schopenhauer1

I think the problem is the limitations of our biology.

There are things people can improve within limits but it is all a fight against our biological state which is leading to an eventual decline.

I think the commonly recorded "just world hypothesis" and "fundamental attribution error" found in psychology are a partly based on a denial of biology/psychological findings.

I think to designate something a state is to attempt to quantify or describe it.

This is hard and there are mountains of books trying to describe things including on psychology and psychodynamics.

Accessing other peoples mental states is a puzzle. We cannot see other peoples minds in the same way as we experience our own. It seems an impenetrable barrier. This becomes quite solipsistic where one has to rely on ones own mind to make analogies about other people and it is also where process all other information.

Maybe we well be able to connect peoples brains so that they can tap into other peoples experiences in some way.

I think the best we can is to try and report our mental contents as accurately as possible. Another question though is to what is mind independent and what things are like stripped of the input of mental processes.

Everything is a mental state.

I might qualify that by saying "everything we are aware of".

I think that to be aware of anything means it becomes part of a mental state.

I had my first solipsistic ideas when I was thinking about gods in my mid twenties. I was brought up in a strict religious household with a hell and damnation god. I left at 17. So later I was reflecting on things like existence and also the supposed nature of God.

I somehow got to thinking that if no conscious beings existed (observers) it would weaken God.
Because in that scenario God could do all manner of miracles, making planets appear and so on but no one would there to acknowledge it. I also imagined God being lonely.

So I thought a god would want to create conscious beings to have his existence acknowledged and have company, but then once they became conscious they could reject him. That seemed to give the individual a certain power because a god creates them to be validated and then he can't just make them robots because that would make there relationship with him pointless.

So I was thinking about this dynamic, that a supposed omnipotent god could be disempowered by his reliance on someone else's consciousness. That made me realise consciousness was a powerful thing in this role of illuminating things existence and adding value.But also the relationship seemed solipsistic where the observer imposes value on something.

Before I thought about all that I had thought about how even the most famous celebrity in the world was probably unknown to a Mongolian herder (and to all the people who died before they became famous). so it is like you can't transcend a lack of personal awareness.....since then I have felt trapped in my own consciousness more then ever.

(..)because if you accept that there are such things as illusions, then you must accept that some perceptions are objective — gurugeorge

I am not sure this follows.

For example if your father tells you on his death bed that you are adopted. You have discovered he is not your father but you don't know who your real father is.

I think an illusion just shows the possibility of experience being deceptive. Because it casts doubt on the validity of a former experience.

That is why I think only a full account of consciousness can stop skepticism. I think if know full how we are able to be conscious of a stick in water bent or otherwise then we will know how valid our perception is.

This is our fundamental disagreement. They are very much part of the nature of the coin — gurugeorge

It seems to me that somethings appearance is a property of the visual system and not the object.

For example people perceive colours differently and it seems to be implausible to claim the object is both colours at once. It is easier to say that the object is individually represent as such. Also when something big seems small because it is far away raises similar issues.

I just can't imagine anything you could say about an unperceived object. (I don't see that physics supports naive realism)
At the very least we need an observer who is separate from an object to discuss it and I am trying to explore that location of the person having these perceptions of some kind of reality.

I think some aspects of consciousness are undeniable in a similar way to pain.

If someone is in pain it seems that being theoretically skeptical about it does not make sense.
You can be skeptical about perceptions because your eyes might be deceiving you but all it takes to class something as pain is to be an unpleasant sensation. Even if the a pain is psychosomatic.

It seems sinister, if someone is claiming to be in severe pain, to then demand rigorous objective evidence as if you are immune to empathising with other people.
I think being skeptical about other mental states can be equally distasteful, undermining or unhelpful.

Unfortunately people with chronic pain and no bodily injury do face skepticism and mental health issues cause skepticism because of peoples skepticism about hidden mental states.
If someone has a big wound most people will assume, or accept, that they are in pain or if someone is writhing around as if in agony.
So why do people think people can accurately report some mental states and not others and what grounds have they for differentiating?

I can reject a theorists model of consciousness or self just by comparing it with my own experience. I think people should do phenomenology and reflect as honestly and (non theoretically) as possible on their mental states and not try and base theories around other ideologies.

It is ironic that some thinkers who seek to diminish qualities of human conscious at the same time seek to elevate the qualities of other organism mental states (kind of like a misanthropic-anthropomorphism)

No, that's just how the bush looks under those conditions — gurugeorge

It can only "look" like something if you have a mind.

Different animals have different visual capacities and things look very different under a microscope or at the atomic level. There is no independent way of something being in the world.

It seems to me that you are claiming that any perspective on anything is dependent on external input but that seems trivial if true. It might be but it might not be. But what different perspectives require is a mind. A coin can appear different from different angles but these are not part of the nature of the coin.

An unconscious object has no perspective.

I don't see how belief in an external world rules out belief in an internal world. A dream is a clear example of something internal or mental. I have vivid dreams which are photographic sometimes with sounds. If the dreams are based on the external world then they must be based on stored memories of it not immediate access.

To have rich veridical-truthful access to an external world like we seem to have would require immense sensory apparatus and conscious access to the product of this sensory scheme. That is to say the more accurate we believe our experiences to be the more sophisticated our means of capturing details of the external world must be.

I think Descartes thought God gave us honest perceptions because God is not a liar. Now evolutionary theorists claim that we must have accurate perceptions because they favour our survival so would have been selected for.
However I think as I said earlier that only an explanation of consciousness can resolve the issue of the validity of our perceptions.

Consciousness is probably nothing special. It is made of the same substance as everything else — Harry Hindu

Nothing in reality is trivial. The phenomena we discover is all special and not banal and with weird properties. But I don't see consciousness being explained using the same framework we use from the natural sciences.

I think subjectivity is one the most defining, special aspects of mind. It is easy to imagine that we all experience a tree in a similar way but we have immediate access to our private mental states and bodily sensations in a way unlike the public access to trees and their cells and biochemistry etc.

I think expanding physics or exploring the role of the observer in physics and observer relativity is probably more useful than trying to exorcise consciousness or subjectivity from science.

Like Descartes I believe we can be more certain of our conscious existence then anything. So that when I have been deeply unconscious everything ceases to exist for me and becomes somewhat irrelevant. So consciousness is not like a weak irrelevant epiphenomenon and something to tap onto to the end of an exhaustive physicalist framework imo.

The distinction between appearance and reality is not a distinction between subjective and objective, — gurugeorge

I think you are failing to grasp the definition of objective and subjective in the sense used with knowledge. This definition from Wikipedia is helpful.

"Objectivity is a central philosophical concept, objective means being independent of the perceptions[thus objectivity means the property of being independent from the perceptions, which has been variously defined by sources. "

I don't think anything can be proven to be independent of the perception and the senses, because we are only aware of things through perception and the senses. Notice that science talks about a lot of concepts pr entities unavailable to immediate perception that are supposed to underlie our perception. Science does not usually validate immediate perception

The point about illusions is they cannot be in the external world and in that sense are subject based and internal. Another examples is if I mistake bush for a cow in the darkness. The seeming like a cow must be happening in my mind.

I am not making a commitment to what the mind is or the experiencer but just that they do exist and are subjective. However there is a dualism to experience in that we can be aware that we are aware. That might be called a meta cognition. "I think therefore I am" I become aware of myself whilst perceiving.Here I am looking to find out how we become that experiencing thing. Even if it is just the brain it is an empirical phenomenal reality that we are a subject or experience.