How can a perception result in the end of a perceiver?
On a subjective idealist account, there are only perceivers and their perceptions. Some of those perceptions involve death. We see that living things die, and once dead, no longer behave as if they are perceivers. Furthermore, we often perceive causes for their deaths.
Let's say I perceive someone pointing a gun at me with the intention of ending my life. The person pulls the trigger, and they experience me turn into a corpse. I no longer am experienced by anyone as a perceiver.
The question is why would any perception result in the end of perceiving for a perceiver? Compare this to a dream. I can experience someone shooting me in a dream, and my experiences will continue. From an idealist perspective, what makes perception different? Why should a perceived bullet have a different result from a dream or imagined bullet?
Is there something special about perception for the subjective idealist that gives perception more weight? Is the perceived bullet afforded powers that an imagined one lacks?
Let's say I perceive someone pointing a gun at me with the intention of ending my life. The person pulls the trigger, and they experience me turn into a corpse. I no longer am experienced by anyone as a perceiver.
The question is why would any perception result in the end of perceiving for a perceiver? Compare this to a dream. I can experience someone shooting me in a dream, and my experiences will continue. From an idealist perspective, what makes perception different? Why should a perceived bullet have a different result from a dream or imagined bullet?
Is there something special about perception for the subjective idealist that gives perception more weight? Is the perceived bullet afforded powers that an imagined one lacks?
Comments (9)
You wrote:
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I’m a Subjective Idealist.
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…from the point of view of their survivors. But as soon as you speak of matters from the point of view of your survivors, then you’ve left the Subjective account.
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It wouldn’t.
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Who says it did? In the shooter’s perception you’re dead. What about for you? You never experience a time when there’s no experience.
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You’re mixing two entirely different accounts.
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Some near-death-experiences don’t sound unlike the kind of dream that you speak of. NDEs are experiences at and near the very beginning of death.
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As for afterwards, from your own point of view, it’s as Shakespeare said, “To sleep, perchance to dream.” I don’t think anyone would disagree with the suggestion that (if there isn’t reincarnation) when this life ends, it ends in sleep, ever more deep sleep.
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As for the “dream” part, we can set that aside, for the purpose of this discussion, along with the reincarnation issue.
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But that doesn’t mean that you reach an experience of no experience at all. How could you experience it? It’s a meaningless notion.
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Neither ends your experience.
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Sure. Your experience is what it’s about.
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One difference between “real” life and a dream is that experience in life tends to be self-consistent. Seemingly inconsistent things can happen, but are often or usually later consistently explained. It seems to go without saying that we expect them to be at least potentially consistently explainable later.
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Someone objected to me, “Why is the life-experience possibility-story consistent?” It’s because it’s a complex system of inter-referring abstract if-then facts. There’s no such thing as mutually-inconsistent facts.
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If you regard someone’s experience-story as being “created” or “written”, on the fly, so to speak, as it plays out, then someone could say, “What makes it consistent?” For example, the day you were born, how could you know about the laws of physics, etc. Well, you weren’t “writing” that story as it happened.
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You and your surroundings are the two complementary halves of a life-experience possibility-story. That story isn’t being “written” as it happens. It’s timelessly there, as a possibility-story, a complex logical system. It’s already timelessly there, across the time in that’s in that story, even though your experience is sequentially in terms of that time.
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That sounds like positing an assumption or brute-fact, but it’s natural and to be expected if your life-experience is a timeless possibility-story, a logical system.
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Of course dreams don’t usually have inconsistency that you know of at the time, do they? After you wake up, and tell someone about the dream, you mention that one thing turned into another thing, But, when it happened, you probably didn’t remember that it was supposed to be what it previously was.
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I mention all that because you asked about differences between dream and waking life.
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Michael Ossipoff
It doesn't have an end, but are you sure that it has a remembered beginning?
...is something that I didn't do.
Though reincarnation is implied by my metaphysics, my metaphysics doesn't depend on or appeal to reincarnation.
In fact, I explicitly said:
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
and
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Experience doesn't end, whether there's reincarnation or not. I made that explicit in my previous post here.
Demonstrable? Are we getting Science-Worshippy?
Not only is reincarnation not demonstrable or provable, but I suggest that past lives are completely indeterminate (not just unknowable).
I suggest that reincarnation is metaphysically implied and supported. But of course you won't agree if you're a Materialist. We can and must leave that question aside if you're a Materialist. If you wanted to talk about it, we'd first have to talk about your Materialism. For example, Materialism doesn't hold up well in discussion.
Arguing reincarnation wasn't my purpose,which is why I said the things that I quoted above.
Reincarnation isn't appealed to or depended on by the things that i said in m previous post.
Michael Ossipoff
I think it holds up pretty well. Trouble is when it comes to mind, at least consciousness. But that's a small part of the entire universe, so I'm not as sold on the hard problem as I used to be.
Sure, if you don't mind an unnecessary brute-fact
(Why is there the concretely, fundamentally, objectively existent world that you believe in?)
As I've said, I can't prove that the Materialist's concretely, fundamentally, objectively existent world doesn't superfluously exist, as an unnecessary brute-fact, an unverifiable and unfalsifiable proposition, along side of, and duplicating the events and relations of, the complex system of inter-referring abstract if-then facts about hypotheticals that i've been referring to.
The "Hard Problem of Consciousness" isn't a problem, even for Materialism. There's at least one branch of Materialism that knows that.
Michael Ossipoff
Ask a cosmologist. In general, why anything exists is a question everyone has a problem answering.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
And I wouldn't agree with that depiction of materialism.
Not really.
The metaphysics that I propose doesn't have or need a brute-fact, or any assumptions.
There are abstract if-then facts. No one denies that, And so there are complex systems of inter-referring abstract if-then facts.
Why is there the following if-then fact?:
If all Slitheytoves are brilling, and all Jaberwockeys are Slitheytoves, then all Jaberwockeys are brillig.
Does it really need an explanation for its origin or "existence"?
You might ask why there'd be any abstract facts if there were no experiencers. My answer is that the systems of inter-referring abstract facts that I discuss are the ones that have experiencers, as part of the system of inter-referring abstract facts.
So that question doesn't relate to my metaphysics.
And such systems of inter-referrng abstract facts don't need a "why" answer, any more than the "Slithytoves & Jaberwockeys" fact does.
Each system of inter-referring abstract if-then facts is quite independent and separate from anything else, and doesn't need a global "permission" or justification, or a larger context or medium in which to be.
The matter of abstract facts' independence from experiencers is an interesting issue, and it seems to me that there are things that can be said about it. But it doesn't bear on my metaphysics.
Michael Ossipoff
Have you ever delved into Berkeley’s dialogues? He has questioners raising many of these kinds of arguments and he always manages to answer them. See especially The Three Dialogues.
As I have tried to explain (and obviously failed) the meaning of Berkeley’s idealism is not what it is usually taken to mean. Berkeley is really talking about the nature of knowledge and experience, not the nature of objects and subjects. So when you think about objects, and the manner in which they persist or not, I think what B, is saying, is that what you’re always talking about, is your idea of an object, as all we ever know and experience, are ideas. If you read Berkeley he never says that objects disappear when not perceived although granted he does introduce God as the Uber-perceiver. (I think a more up-to-date metaphysic might be that the Universe knows itself by assuming the form of human being although I have yet to develop that idea.)
I'd said:
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
You replied:
Quoting Marchesk
Nor should you, when I don’t give any justification for what I say.
So let me say what I meant, and why I said that.
Then, if you still disagree, at least I’ll have have clarified what I meant, and what you disagree with.
I suggest the following:
Any fact about this physical world implies and corresponds to an if-then fact.
For example:
"There's a traffic roundabout at the intersection of 34th & Vine."
"If you go to 34th & Vine, then you'll encounter a traffic roundabout."
Additionally, any fact in this physical world is at least part of the "if " premise of some if-then statements, and is the "then" conclusion of other if-then facts.
For example:
A set of hypothetical physical-quantity values, and a hypothetical relation among them (called a "physical law") are parts of the "if " premise of an if-then clause.
...except that one of those quantity-values can be taken as the "then" conclusion of that if-then fact.
Obviously, a quantity-value can be part of the "if " premise of some if-then facts, and the "then" conclusion of other if-then facts.
There are infinitely-many complex systems of such inter-referring if-then facts about hypotheticals.
Inevitably, there's one system, among those infinitely-many logical systems, whose events and relations are those of your experience. There's no reason to believe that your experience is other than that.
I call that your life-experience possibility-story.
You’re in a life because you’re the protagonist in one of the infinitely-many life-experience possibility-stories.
I can't prove that the objectively, fundamentally, existent physical world that Materialists believe in doesn't superfluously, exist, as an unverifiable, unfalsifiable brute-fact alongside of, and duplicating the events and relations of, the if-then system that I've described.
We're used to declarative, indicative grammar, and it's convenient. But, as described here, this physical world can be described entirely by conditional grammar. Maybe we're too willing to believe in the grammar that we use..
Instead of one world of "is", infinitely-many worlds of "if".
This suggestion was apparently first made (in the West at least) by the physicist Michael Faraday, in 1844.
Michael Ossipoff