I think you misunderstand the move Down The Rabbit Hole is making. He is using the analogy with the doctor to show the weakness of Ockham's Razor in his original post. Ockham's Razor was originally formulated as "entities should not be multiplied without necessity," but it is often used in metaphysics today as "simpler is better." If you are presented with two options that seem equally likely, in Rabbit Hole's example the options are living or dying from the terminal illness, you would not think that one is more likely than the other just because it is simpler (Ockham's Razor). In the same way, it does not seem like the simpler option when it comes to illusion or reality would be any more true just because it is simpler. I haven't mentioned Ockham's Razor yet because as Down The Rabbit Hole has pointed out it is not an immutable law and so it doesn't make much sense to appeal to it as such. — Andrew F

Sure, I see that. I mean, if we go straight to the point, I could say that the simplest explanation possible for everything is "strict" or "strong" solipsism, everything is a creation of me, this very moment. My immediate past, and the near future, don't exist. The only thing that exists is me and my projections.

Of course, this can be debated endlessly. Someone will say that such a view is not simple, as it assumes that I was the cause of Tolstoy and Beethoven and everything else. Surely there are many, many examples in which Ockham's Razor fails. It should be used, when it is sensible to use it. That varies by person to some extent.

I still don't think the illusion option follows. Let's put aside the "less steps" argument and just argue from plausibility alone. If it is true that this world being an illusion is just as realistic as assuming a "normal reality", then why should it not be the case that we aren't in a world in which we are the remains of a God who killed himself?

The point here, as I take it, is that such scenarios can be stipulated instantly and there are infinitely many scenarios one can imagine. So if this world is an illusion, it could also be heaven or hell or someone's dream. But then we postulate an infinite number of scenarios, as we have to, given this line of thinking.

We are left then, with an infinite number of alternative worlds and the real world. But then we are not considering one view (illusion) being as likely to be true as another view (we are in the real world).

Things looks like either we are in an infinite number of hypothetical worlds or in the real world. So it's not even that there's an equal chance of either being the case, there's an infinite number of options on one side and only one option on the other.

This makes the illusion argument look weak, I think.

Ahh, but if we are in an illusion we have no evidence as to the steps that would be in the real world. So to make the thought experiment fair, all we have to rely on in both cases is the fact that there are fewer steps. If it isn't enough for us to believe that we're not going to die, why should it be enough for us to believe that we are in reality? — Down The Rabbit Hole

Ok. Let me try to put that in another way, otherwise I'm going to get confused. Either we are in an illusion or in reality. Let's assume we don't know which world we're in. In both cases illusion and reality, the doctor says I have 50% chance of dying in a week. That's fine. It would hold true of both cases.

Either we die in the illusion or we die in reality. The only meaningful difference I can extract from that is that if this were an illusion, I might wake up to reality. Or I might not and I'll still be in an illusion.

Is that possible? Sure. But I would make no attempts to verify such experiments in this world. And the only reason you've given so far, is that it's a possibility.

I only say that it's a possibility that either we are the dream of the third turtle down, in a world in which there are turtles all the way down. Or we are the rotting corpses of God, who choose to commit suicide because he thought death preferable to existence.

There's no reason to accept these arguments at all.

No, all I can say is that the odds that we are in an illusion are similar to those that we are in reality. This is not a common view. — Down The Rabbit Hole

Which is just as plausible as saying that we are a turtles dream or part of the corpse of God.

Yeah, saw it.

But what does that mean? I understand the phrase "conscientious objector" in war time, but can't make out what it could mean in the antinatalist case.

Yeah, this is true. Camus point is rather fair concerning the present.

On the Sisyphus front, if it were for a few years sure but I mean, for all eternity rolling a up a rock. Damn. :meh:

Edit:

or conscientious antinatalists — 180 Proof

Nice story btw you linked in the previous post.

I did have a brief question, what do you mean here by "conscientious antinatalist"?

Cool insights. One can have two ideas in one's head at the same time. I bet you you can find some happy-go-lucky philosophical pessimists. Not all PPs are necessarily dispositional pessimists too. — schopenhauer1

Not an insight, just a comment, would like to find an example of such a person. I was referring mostly to Mainländer.

But sure. One can also agree with Gramsci too in "Pessimism of the intellect. Optimism of the will." Or anything else.

Antinatalism, however, as policy is totalitarian, almost theocratic (pace Mainländer). — 180 Proof

Sure. If people don't buy the argument, it's not worth beating them in the head with it.

In his case, however, I don't think it's possible to distinguish his anti-natalist views from his own way of being or personality. I'd have trouble believing he did not suffer from very severe depression.

It's not at all to imply that because of his outlook, his views are wrong. Not at all. But I can't help but wonder how he would have been had he not been a tragic case. Maybe he would not have written his philosophy.

It's interesting that such a person can elaborate extremely interesting and insightful epistemological and metaphysical philosophies because of his conclusions about the origin of existence. Yet one can reject his conclusions while accepting his other arguments. But he would not have elaborated this arguments absent his nihilism. It's very strange.

Maybe there are optimistic AN perspectives in that, one can be an optimist about the future while thinking that not being born would have been better. Maybe.

I was comparing the chances of this being reality to that of surviving the terminal illness.

"Less steps" aside, there is the same amount of evidence that this is reality as it being an illusion (zero).

So if the doctor said that you had a better chance than the standard 50% survival rate, solely on the basis that there are less steps involved in surviving, would this be enough for you to believe that you are not going to die? If not, it's equally not good enough reason to believe we are experiencing reality.

However, an illusion wouldn't have to share the same rules of logic as reality. The "less steps" argument could mean nothing in reality. — Down The Rabbit Hole

If a doctor said I have a better chance of surviving if I do what? If I do something that takes less steps than doing what is usually done? Is that more or less what you are getting at? He'd have to give some evidence that the option with less steps actually improves my odds of surviving. If he doesn't then that argument carries no force.

But that's the point, can you give me any evidence that an illusion makes some aspects of reality more plausible?

I think it fails as a concept too. I don't know what such a thing would even amount to in practice.

I think Manuel correctly comes from the opposite direction of false until proven true. However, I will make one precondition to this rule. At the end of any claim, a person must implicitly mean "so far as I know" because, of course, no one can know what they do not know. That is to say, some things are beyond our current knowledge, or beyond our capacity to know, and we cannot know what these things are. If you knew what they were, then you could no long say that you don't know them.

There is not any evidence, so far as I know, to support the view that our world is an illusion. The only reason we even believe it is a possibility is because "we don't know what we don't know," it is a question that we can neither prove or disprove and therefore it could be true. However, how can you attribute any sort of likelihood to such a thing? Likelihoods are based on evidence. When there is no evidence, where does that leave us? Certainly not at a 50/50. — Andrew F

Very well put. :up:

Exactly. We can easily come up with more and more scenarios in the blink of an eye. But this doesn't clarify the situation, unless an argument is given to the effect that certain things make more sense on the supposition that X is the case or is likely correct. So evidence for any of these views must be substantial for them to gain plausibility. Or, absent evidence, good reasons.

The "so far as I know" should be taken as a given if the discussion is attempting to be honest, which I have no doubt is the case here.

But then there's something here which seems obvious but has not arisen yet:

What is meant in this case by "illusion"? Does it mean "not real and/or imaginary" or does it mean based on a simulation of some kind or does it mean something else entirely? If no further clarification is articulated, I'm only left with the common meaning of the word.

(Assuming that our rules of logic are the same in the illusion and reality) I think that's the only reason reality is more probable - because there are less steps involved.

If a doctor told me that I have a terminal illness with a standard 50% survival rate but on this occasion it would be more because "there are less steps involved". This wouldn't be enough for me to believe that I wasn't going to die from it. Why should it be enough for us to believe that we are in reality? — Down The Rabbit Hole

I don't understand what you are getting at with the analogy. Illusion-based world or not, you'd still have 50% chance to die. The "less stepped involved argument" was merely an illustration of one problem:

Could the world be an illusion? Sure. But this world could also be the dream of the third turtle down, in a world in which there are turtle's all the way down. That could be true too. Or this world could be the result of God's suicide and we are his corpses as we head the way to total annihilation of the universe, some have said this, using interesting reasoning.

But that's the point. It could be all that and much more. But why add to our situation if something can be satisfactorily stated without recourse to further complications? I don't see how postulating an illusion can help clarify the status of reality.

Perhaps you could explain what is made easier by such a postulation.

We understand certain laws and I do think that the reason so much is unknown is due to the invisible aspects of reality. — Jack Cummins

Sure, that's a problem too.

But like you implied, aiming at having something like "the mind of God" is extremely unlikely. I think we should be grateful we've discovered so much as it is. A "humble" species coming along and understanding a portion of the universe is a big deal.

We'll surely discover more, but our understanding of newer aspects of physics for example, might be quite straining. The physics we already have is difficult enough as is.

:up:

Yes, that sounds about right."Reality as a whole" in not a coherent concept in that, it's not clear what aspects should be denied the status of "reality" or what such an account would amount too, there's way too many things to consider.

The 'totality' seems to be beyond explanation, since explanation links this to that. But there's nothing outside the Everything that we can link it to. The 'system' hovers over an abyss. — j0e

That could be the case. Or it could be that we simply don't have the capacity to peer into nature any further. Explanations only go so far before we are forced to conclude that "that's just the way things are". But why are they this way? Who knows?

:)

You cannot reliably work out the probability of the illusion's origin, while in the illusion. You would need the illusion to be a copy of reality.

Ockham's razor aside, there is no reason to believe that this is reality over an illusion. — Down The Rabbit Hole

It's less probable, there are less step involved in thinking that this is "normal" reality vs. an illusion. If you speak of representations caused by stimulations of "things in themselves", then I'd agree.

If you have in mind some other reality, or some other origin, I don't see why there are good reasons to accept such a view.

A "dream within a dream". Have you seen the film Inception? — Down The Rabbit Hole

Sure. Fun movie. But I don't know if there's a way to test one of the fundamental ideas in that film: that a dream within a dream lasts longer the more "dreams down" you go. Maybe it happens, maybe not.

But the question would be: who's the dreamer? Is it a super intelligent AI? Is it "God"? Or is it the universe? If it's the AI, I'd have to say that I think the probabilities of that being the case are so impractically low, that I'd almost say it's impossible.

If it's God, then you'd have to give me some of his/her characteristic to get a better idea.

If it's the Universe, well, I'm familiar with Bernardo Kastrup's idealism, it's quite interesting and it's a refreshing perspective. It solves some problems, but I think he's wrong.

I don't think the universe is "conscious" in any manner that remotely resembles what we have in mind when we use that word.

So you'd have to tell me a bit about the dreamer or who is causing the illusions.

Yes - the mechanistic picture of the world keeps popping back up, even though it was refuted by Newton hundreds of years ago.

It appears that we have a mechanistic out-look built into the way we see the world, we can't help re-postulating it in some manner. Problematizing the mind, that is saying that its not what it seems or that it's folk-theoretic and to be reduced to brain states is one way of not dealing with many hard issues.

I am not speaking of science and its inconsistent views about the universe, e.g. Einstein's block time vs..probabilistic quantum waves. I am more interested in the meaningless of determinism as applied to life. — MondoR

Well, I mean I don't know if science has any views per se. People doing science have views, often very different views it seems to me.

But I do agree that determinism doesn't make much sense, as I understand it anyway.

But our best science at the moment seems to imply that our universe is probabilistic and not determined.

Dennett believes in free will as well. I'm not seeing the problem with truth here.

You weren't happy with, and I quote, "...a cloistered monk who contributes nothing to the world." My point is that at least such people doesn't add to our woes. Sometimes, in my humble opinion, not creating a problem is far far better than being even a perfect solution to one. That's all. — TheMadFool

:clap:

What you don't can often be much more important than what you do.

The proposition is, without Ockham's razor, the chances that this is reality is the same as it being an illusion. — Down The Rabbit Hole

This comes up from time to time. But if this were so, that is, if everything you see and experience is an illusion, then what happens when you have what people normally call an "illusion"? Would this be an illusory-illusion or an illusion-illusion?

From the outset, you need to have an idea of what an illusion is so you could say when it happens. Otherwise, the concept doesn't seem to have any meaning.

I just noticed your comment, 'Wittgenstein is psychedelic'. Taking the word psychedelic in it's true meaning, as simply mind expanding, — Jack Cummins

:lol: For sure Wittgenstein is that, it's part of his style. Heidegger can be one too, and others.

Of course, there are physical laws involved but the transmission of communication, especially in invisible forms seem to have a certain element of mystery. That is not because we cannot explain it, but the very fact that it is possible at all. It seems amazing that things work as they do so well and, as someone reminded me a couple of days ago we should not forget the basic principle of love, in the whole process of life. — Jack Cummins

:clap:

That's the right way to think about these things I think. All of it, at bottom, is utterly mysterious. Of course as applied to the world, then no, nothing is mysterious: the world is as it is and not some other way. If the world were another way, it would still be the world, and not, by-itself mysterious.

But for us as human beings almost any question we ask, we can rightly ask "but why this way?" We have to conclude this is as far as we can say it just is. But it's still totally baffling.

Does intuition has to play a role in this, as in, I have a particular kind of experience that reveals something to me about the world, but as soon I express it, it necessarily gets lost in the expression?

No to frustrate you, but the Tao has no rationality either. Forgive me for this, but I'm serious - the Tao that can be rationalized is not the eternal Tao. It can't be spoken. It can't be understood. It can't be analyzed. It can't be divided. It has no parts. Nothing is inside it. You can't think about it. It's not a concept or an idea. It's just a big blob, except the blob that can be spoken is not the eternal blob. — T Clark

I actually have a question about this.

If one can't speak about the Tao or know about it, what is one speaking of? It seems like like trying to capture a mirage in one's hands.

Mainländer tried to think of God in secular terms and essentially "thought" his way to a "simple union" or a "simple substance", don't now the correct word but it's very similar to the singularity. He did this before such a concept was discovered, still, it's quite surprising. Of course, one need not follow his idea of God committing suicide and the like, but at least in metaphysical speculation, it was a fruitful idea it seems to me.

As to your question, I'd have to ask why use these words differently? The problem with God talk tends to be the association of God with the good, the just, etc. Energy is a neutral term in that respect.

They serve different purposes though.

But speaking of it being subject and object can be a problem, we are both and we are also energy in some obscure manner. But energy itself need not be subjective.

I have to admit, I giggled at the title of the thread.

On a serious note, "significance" in relation to what? Who, outside our selves can measure or establish how significant we are in the universe?

I mean, when you look out at the night sky with a telescope, that's amazing stuff to see. But it's also our representation of it. In a sense, we create the universe we see to a large extent.

How far this goes, is hard to say. Do we make stars as Goodman suggests or are they already their?

It's a good question. But merely looking out at everything, is pretty astonishing and significant, irrespective of size.

Na man, it's fine. The vast majority of the time it's pretty childish and establishes no point.

But it can be amusing. As when Schopenhauer talked about his contemporaries, I think it's fantastic that he felt so strongly about his views.

This will be quite familiar to you, as he says such things many times:

"But the height of audacity in serving up pure nonsense, in stringing together senseless and extravagant mazes of words, such as had previously been known only in madhouses, was finally reached in Hegel, and became the instrument of the most barefaced general mystification that has ever taken place, with a result which will appear fabulous to posterity, and will remain as a monument to German stupidity."

This too, is fun to skim:

https://www.flavorwire.com/469065/the-30-harshest-philosopher-on-philosopher-insults-in-history

;)

:lol:

If you think about it, this opens out into the question of the sense in which 'the world' exists independently of the experiencing subject. In other words, if you wish to depict the world as existing 'from no perspective', what is being lost, or being concealed, in that depiction? There is a subjective pole to experience, and therefore reality, which is concealed by the objectivist stance. And that is the insight that gave rise to phenomenology. — Wayfarer

As long as experience is left out, the description is not complete at all. The subject of "mind independence" is one of the hardest of them all! I'm inclined to mostly agree with Schopenhauer on this topic, or varieties of idealists. Everything is a representation and when we are gone, what remains in the world is unknown or very very hard to mention.

Phenomenology very much highlights just how rich experience can be. It's also difficult, in my experience, to find people who do phenomenology in a way that is not very abstract and filled with lots of technicalities. In this respect, Tallis is excellent.

Well if that quote were applied to bats, then what you say is correct. But it's also true to say that we can't apply that quote to other animals either, nor people for that matter.

I take it that the point of Nagel's quote is that no matter how much we study the brain, given the methods we have, we'll be leaving out a crucial aspect of life. In that sense, Nagel is correct, or so it looks like to me.

What looked profound, "the subjective essence of the experience", begins to look more like mere wordplay. — Banno

Yeah, speaking about "subjectivity" and "objectivity" can be quite confusing if used too much, in that I agree. If he said something like the most important aspect of experience for us, then that might be more clear. But the gist of the quote looks correct to me.

There's a lot to say about that, but I have to get going, it's getting late here.

I agreed w/the quote, but I did not use those words - he was talking about people in that quote, not bats. Sure those words can be problematic, but in the context given, I think it's correct - perhaps with some slight modification.

I'll give you my thoughts tomorrow. Have a good one.

There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all.

:100:

That's spot on.

Unless one thinks that acting like a bat, or a dog,as a human being, says much about being that specific animal.

This does not mean the bat is not conscious, it could well be. Maybe it's on the borderline between consciousness and pure instinct. I think part of Nagel's point in choosing a bat is precisely to show an edge case.

On the other hand although we do not have direct evidence, it would be strange to deny dogs are conscious and behave in "intelligent" ways. The Gap by Suddendorf goes over some of the evidence, it's very interesting to see the "killjoy" and "romantic" interpretations on these issues...

How can you know that? If you believe that, then you cannot believe your own statement. You need to have a vague notion of correct knowledge or belief in order to state that "I don't believe we can know anything", otherwise you don't believe what you said and the statement is negated. :chin:

If done well, I think they can be very effective. But as noted, most of the time they aren't a good idea. There are degrees of insults too.

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage — javi2541997

I stopped after 1Q84, I read like 6 of his books in a row. But I wanted to read different authors.

I might try that one: some people say it's very good, other people not so much.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and 1Q84 — javi2541997

:cheer: :fire:

Both fantastic books! I'm re-reading this one and my next re-read is gonna be Hard-Boiled Wonderland, it was my favorite of his from what I can recall.

1Q84 was also great. :)

Haven't heard very good things about Killing Commendatore, so I'm very hesitant to read it...

If "know" is to have any meaning at all, then I'd say that experience is what I most intimately know about myself.

Currently reading:

Dance Dance Dance - Haruki Murakami
Writings 1902-1910 by William James
EuroTragedy: A Drama in Nine Acts by Ashoka Mody
Understanding Disney: Manufacturing Fantasy by Janet Wasko

I should have added, if you want to get a general sense of what its like to be a person, a good novel is as good an answer as you could get. And even doing that, it's still confusing. :)

Ah. I'm missing the main point, or the point altogether, full stop.

Either philosophers should stop "abstract" philosophizing and do something valuable in the world, by "doing things" or they are wasting time?

But this could be said of almost any activity at all. I don't follow.