Metaphysical Idealism: The Only Coherent Ontology
P1: If there is no coherent relation between consciousness and a physical brain at time T, then consciousness cannot reduce to, emerge from, be a property of, or interact with a physical brain at time T
P2: There is no coherent relation between consciousness and a physical brain at time T
C: Consciousness cannot reduce to, emerge from, be a property of, or interact with a physical brain at time T
*Defense of P1*
This premise is trivially true. P2 will need defending.
*Defense of P2*
For A to have some relation to B there must be something about their existence essentially in common. Otherwise, their properties would not cohere ("speaking past each other") which means no coherent relation.
Incorporeal(1) essence(2) as non-extended(3) private(4) subjective(5) qualitative(6) experience(7)
Corporeal(1) movement(2) of extended(3) public(4) objective(5) quantitative(6) matter(7)
A property-to-property analysis shows no coherent relation between consciousness and a physical brain.
So what reasons do Physical Realists have for assuming a relation even though there is none? It's a two-fold misunderstanding:
1. Consciousness appears tightly correlated with physical brain activity
2.Consciousness feels localized in space with the body, experiencing the same space and time as the body and the rest of the universe
Certain states of consciousness only correlate tightly with perceptions of brain activity. However, perceptions of brain activity are certain states of consciousness themselves. This means that certain states of consciousness merely correlate tightly with other states of consciousness - not a physically real brain.
Since consciousness is not extended and is privately subjective, it is incoherent to say it can take up a localized region of publicly objective space. Regardless, the feeling of being localized in a physical landscape occurs in dreams and as well as right now. Therefore, self-evidently, such an experience cannot help Physical Realism.
P2: There is no coherent relation between consciousness and a physical brain at time T
C: Consciousness cannot reduce to, emerge from, be a property of, or interact with a physical brain at time T
*Defense of P1*
This premise is trivially true. P2 will need defending.
*Defense of P2*
For A to have some relation to B there must be something about their existence essentially in common. Otherwise, their properties would not cohere ("speaking past each other") which means no coherent relation.
Incorporeal(1) essence(2) as non-extended(3) private(4) subjective(5) qualitative(6) experience(7)
Corporeal(1) movement(2) of extended(3) public(4) objective(5) quantitative(6) matter(7)
A property-to-property analysis shows no coherent relation between consciousness and a physical brain.
So what reasons do Physical Realists have for assuming a relation even though there is none? It's a two-fold misunderstanding:
1. Consciousness appears tightly correlated with physical brain activity
2.Consciousness feels localized in space with the body, experiencing the same space and time as the body and the rest of the universe
Certain states of consciousness only correlate tightly with perceptions of brain activity. However, perceptions of brain activity are certain states of consciousness themselves. This means that certain states of consciousness merely correlate tightly with other states of consciousness - not a physically real brain.
Since consciousness is not extended and is privately subjective, it is incoherent to say it can take up a localized region of publicly objective space. Regardless, the feeling of being localized in a physical landscape occurs in dreams and as well as right now. Therefore, self-evidently, such an experience cannot help Physical Realism.
Comments (27)
Ex falso quodlibet.
So it's completely true.
No, a perception is consciousness. You seem to image an entity "consciousness" which could then have perceptions or not - which is empirically never the case. That is reification.
Consciousness has different modalities.
How would you know? All you relate to is consciousness. Because you call it such?
Switch off brain, and there goes consciousness. You assume that because a coherent relation is not detectable now, it will never be detectable because it does not exist. What kind of reasoning flaw is this, philosophers? :gasp:
There goes identity, not consciousness
One step further: There is no relation as there are no distinct entities.
I pity the poor, innocent chunk of dead flesh lying in the morgue, conscious, but not aware of itself. Wes Craven where are you? :groan:
The analogy of a television illustrates the brain/mind duality. Suppose there's a tv and some guy starts experimenting on it and correlates various parts of the tv with sound and vision. His experiments show that the film on tv is intimately related to the components of the tv and he therefore concludes that the television produces the film.
But this is not true. Correlation is not causation. The film is broadcast to the tv from a remote station. The television only structures the information so the human eye and ear can understand. The television does not produce, it configures.
If the mind is a non physical entity what is the brain for? It is there to enable the mind to partake in physical reality. And for this the brain needs to configure the mind's consciousness in human terms; it translates the mind's thoughts into a human context and allows the mind to engage with the physical world.
For this, a physical analogue of consciousness is required. This analogue is the five senses. The senses provide information from the physical world to the mind. But the mind is conscious in its own terms; it is aware, over and above physical consciousness.
There are strong arguments for this, the Wall of Woo notwithstanding.
It is a worry.
If one is going to go full idealist, then the chunk of dead flesh is just an idea, not a state of being, since the idea of mind-independent matter would be considered incoherent.
I'm not sure how idealists handle death, but I assume it would simply mean to end of experience, not one of decaying flesh. That's for others to experience.
Actually, I'd question more or less the entire opening post.
In an ontological sense, you'll have it that the Moon is not actually the Moon, but rather is Moon-experiences, a bit like a dream that exists only due to the dreamer.
All I can ever know is the experience, and so that's where the road ends, more or less literally.
The Moon = those Moon-experiences.
Solipsism. :confused: But OK, maybe that's the stance here.
So, idealism (mental monism) starts with conflating epistemics and ontology by universalizing self-dependence. (n)
Some points I've picked up from others:
The simplest coherent explanation is some sort of non-idealism (or realism). (y)
What would an idealist say in response to your critique?
Solipsism? First off, the argument was never "only my experience is real" that's a straw-man. The argument is that consciousness as an ontological category is all that is real because no relation can be had with the ontologically opposite known as the Physical. Other dissociated perspectives would be conscious just like me, so there is no reason I cannot infer about them because they are the same ontological category as me. This means I can have a relation with other conscious agents through a perceptual interface of 3D space and linear time experience (look up the Interface Theory of Perception). That's what's happening now. So no, Solipsism is not implied by my argument. I'm only doing away with a Physical world - that says nothing about other conscious agents
Also, Idealism is the view that only consciousness is real. Not only "ideas" are real like someone here implied.
Consciousness is a volitional essence appearing to itself phenomenally as this, that, the other etc. - Internal qualitative experiences are states of awareness such as: dreams, dissociated
perspectives, hallucinations, sensory modalities (touchy-feelings, smells, tastes, visual color pattern experience, audio perception), mystical insights, emotions, illusions/ "seeming", abstract thought/ mental constructs etc
Someone said our senses let us know about a physical world... That's literally what my argument refutes so what you said was incoherent. We sense a mental world through 3D perceptual encoding.
Consciousness upon examination has no physical properties in its essence (introspection verifies this and property analysis). This means no relation can be had with any ontologically opposite purely physical world. Our senses all verify a Geocentric universe too, does that mean we live in a Geocentric universe? All we verify with the senses is how they render reality to us - not how reality is. Our perceptual systems across five sensory modalities merely "stretch out" the world (transcendent consciousness system) for us into dimensions and extended geometric structures within perception right now.
This is because to experience reality as the universal consciousness system, means to become one with it - the climax of meditative experience. Not really good for dissociative fitness or replication.
Now what about this?
Novelty:
This is great and supports Idealism. We do get novelty, and this is only possible because we all the share the same ontological category.
If there was dead matter in between our conscious states no information would be able to get from one to the other. This is how we know that the transcendent realty beyond our consciousness must just be "more consciousness" - not brute physical reality.
Thre is no issue with me believing in other conscious agents and a transcendent consciousness system beyond me.
Error:
What makes us wrong are thoughts (states of consciousness) of things that are nonsense or not true that we can come to with reason.
Agreement:
I addressed this. We all agreed on a Geocentric universe, we all agreed on a Flat Earth.
Intersubjective-agreement across dissociated boundaries only tells us HOW we experience reality, it does not tell us what reality is ontologically. All we know is that it is patterned. This is due to the self-bifurcation of consciousness.
When someone with split-personalities dreams, the split-personalities all experience the same "physical" landscape in the dream from unique perspectives and all the personalies agree. But it's in the mind.
So we have real examples of intersubjective agreement of a physical world when it's just in the mind!
Think of us as split-personalities in a very stable and intense mind dreaming.
Constraints:
Of course there are constraints. If "mental" meant "conforming to our will" then I would never have nightmares and all my dreams would be models on boats with cocaine. Nobody would ever have hallucinations of things they cannot control etc. In a dream you can control it only if you lucid dream.
We can't lucid dream here because this reality is rendered from a more stable Mind than our finite unstable sub-minds.
My stance that Metaphysical Idealism is the only reasonable position holds.
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Oh, and brain activity is just a 3D perceptual rendering of someone's personal inner life. All objects in perception are like extended "icons" that represent the non-extended "file". Of course there will be tight correlations between them.
People are mistaking the image of a state for the cause of a state. Brain activity does not cause states of consciousness, brain activity is what states of consciousness look like across dissociative boundaries.
Mind does not pop in and out of existence, memory declenches and is lost but consciousness always remains. Of course when there is no memory of consciousness, it "feels" as if we were unconscious
"What about drugs? Hammers? Physical stuff changes consciousness".
No, they are just the icons that represent that change of consciousness. We change eachother's consciousness with the tool of the 3D perceptual interface but the icons cannot change the file.
Mentality exists, our human experiences can all flow from this.
Violation of simplicity?
Mentality exists PLUS some ontologically distinct world of the physical PLUS the ontologically distinct world somehow relates to an us even though there's no relation (nonsense)
Anyone else notice that the OP does not mention idealism?
What's that say about the argument?
A lot of questions. But not relevant until someone tells us what "consciousness" is. It's like asking the difference between rocks and ectoplasm.
When I try to put your argument together, it looks something like "not physical realism, hence Metaphysical Idealism".
Which is a bit like "it's not chalk, hence it is democracy".
Consciousness is a volitional essence appearing to itself phenomenally as this, that, the other etc. Such states of awareness include: dreams, dissociated perspectives, hallucinations, beliefs, sensory modalities, Introspection, emotions, illusions/ "seeming", abstract thought/ mental constructs etc
And Banno, I would love for you to tell me which Philosophy of Mind would be left, besides Idealism, if Physical Realism is false.
Well, off the top of my head...
Biological naturalism
Computationalism
Mind–body dualism
Eliminative materialism
Emergent materialism
Emergentism
Epiphenomenalism
Functionalism
Interactionism
Naïve realism
Neurophenomenology
Neutral monism
Occasionalism
Panpsychism
Parallelism
Phenomenalism
Physicalism
Property dualism
Representational
Solipsism
Substance dualism
Every single one you mentioned assumed Physical Realism is true, except for Solipsim
Is that your final answer?
Good for you. You win today's Fractured Terracotta Cup.