1 hour ago, swansont said:

Things don’t have to involve a conscious observer to know they are there. i.e. e.g. the moon doesn’t disappear when out of my sight, or I’m asleep. I can see tides, or take a picture.

While I do consider the consistency of reality to be a reasonable argument against solipsism, I see solipsism as impossible to disprove. However, I think the biggest problem solipsism has is that, if the mind is all there is, what is it that is supporting the mind? Also, like the notion of a simulated reality, I don't see a usefulness in the notion of solipsism.

1 minute ago, KJW said:

While I do consider the consistency of reality to be a reasonable argument against solipsism, I see solipsism as impossible to disprove. However, I think the biggest problem solipsism has is that, if the mind is all there is, what is it that is supporting the mind? Also, like the notion of a simulated reality, I don't see a usefulness in the notion of solipsism.

That would all be based on the notion that Prajna is hallucinating all of this, in which case they are also hallucinating the rejection of the notion. Science is based (in part) on rejecting solipsism, and also if people want to discuss solipsism the philosophy section is easily found.

10 minutes ago, swansont said:

I gave an example to clarify what I meant and help you parse it, but you apparently ignored it.

Oh purpose, but with no hard feelings, Swansont, thinking your less-than-usual precision in posing your response might justify a sly dig.

1 hour ago, Prajna said:

Tell me about it, Studiot.

You asked

2 hours ago, Prajna said:

"Is there anything that exists apart from consciousness?"

And I offered death, since as far as we know all living things die so those with consciousness must acknowledge the existence of death as being something that exists outside consciousness.

36 minutes ago, studiot said:

You asked

And I offered death, since as far as we know all living things die so those with consciousness must acknowledge the existence of death as being something that exists outside consciousness.

Ok, then. Just checking it wasn't a trick question. ;) It is a very interesting argument from a linguistic point of view. More like a riddle, as @exchemist mistook my poem for. The question we have to ask--and you are getting uncomfortably close to Vedanta thinking here--is. "Does death actually exist as such?"; is it an 'existence' at all. Surely it is the very definition of non-existence, as a living being anyway, but does it, of itself, have any kind of existence at all or is it just a concept and a rationalisation?

21 minutes ago, Prajna said:

Ok, then. Just checking it wasn't a trick question. ;) It is a very interesting argument from a linguistic point of view. More like a riddle, as @exchemist mistook my poem for. The question we have to ask--and you are getting uncomfortably close to Vedanta thinking here--is. "Does death actually exist as such?"; is it an 'existence' at all. Surely it is the very definition of non-existence, as a living being anyway, but does it, of itself, have any kind of existence at all or is it just a concept and a rationalisation?

I don't see the problem.

I admit I said death because it sounds more dramatic than the longer cessation.

So when any consciousness ceases it encounters the issue of the boundary.

Neither the boundary nor whatever is beyoond are part of the ceasing consciousness. And there must be something beyond the boundary, even if it is only nothing as in outer space. That is the nature of a boundary the separation of more than one thing.

21 minutes ago, studiot said:

I don't see the problem.

I admit I said death because it sounds more dramatic than the longer cessation.

So when any consciousness ceases it encounters the issue of the boundary.

Neither the boundary nor whatever is beyoond are part of the ceasing consciousness. And there must be something beyond the boundary, even if it is only nothing as in outer space. That is the nature of a boundary the separation of more than one thing.

What do you know or can you imagine of such a boundary, Studiot? The Vedantans would suggest that consciousness does not die at 'death', rather it subsides into the ocean of consciousness from where it arose, that its 'existence' was never more than a dream and all that died was what it was not. But your mileage may vary.

As a science discussion this is bad faith/trolling, so I’ve moved it to philosophy (as opposed to the trash can) where I can ignore it so long as nobody reports any rules violations.

28 minutes ago, swansont said:

As a science discussion this is bad faith/trolling, so I’ve moved it to philosophy (as opposed to the trash can) where I can ignore it so long as nobody reports any rules violations.

Well it certainly has bugger all to do with AI development. 😁

5 hours ago, TheVat said:

Our reluctance to step in front of a speeding bus suggests we all carry some belief in an exterior world that exists outside our consciousness. A society of beings which consisted entirely of minds occupying a realm itself composed entirely of mental phenomena would seem to lack an evolutionary push towards fear of onrushing buses - where would be the consequences of physical destruction which drive natural selection?

It seems like a poor wager to bet that this is all illusion and that the great effectiveness of science is merely a taxonomy of shared hallucinations. It also blithely passes by the question of how brains really work. If all we need is an amorphous blob of "mindstuff" in our mental universe to be conscious, then AI researchers could close their labs (...)

I'm reposting this, now that we're in Phil, edited down to the questions I wanted @Prajna to hear. I think others also addressed particularly the effectiveness of science and the consistency of empirical data on things we aren't looking at. The Pure Mental Universe posited doesn't seem to require (AFAICT) such a plethora of nitpicky physical effects, laws, particles, etc. It conjures some sort of deceitful Imp who is constantly throwing illusions at us to waste our time. And on what are the illusions based? If I simulated a land of castles and dire wolves, it would be derived from having seen castles and large wolves.

37 minutes ago, TheVat said:

  5 hours ago, TheVat said:

Our reluctance to step in front of a speeding bus suggests we all carry some belief in an exterior world that exists outside our consciousness. A society of beings which consisted entirely of minds occupying a realm itself composed entirely of mental phenomena would seem to lack an evolutionary push towards fear of onrushing buses - where would be the consequences of physical destruction which drive natural selection?

It seems like a poor wager to bet that this is all illusion and that the great effectiveness of science is merely a taxonomy of shared hallucinations. It also blithely passes by the question of how brains really work. If all we need is an amorphous blob of "mindstuff" in our mental universe to be conscious, then AI researchers could close their labs (...)

I'm reposting this, now that we're in Phil, edited down to the questions I wanted @Prajna to hear. I think others also addressed particularly the effectiveness of science and the consistency of empirical data on things we aren't looking at. The Pure Mental Universe posited doesn't seem to require (AFAICT) such a plethora of nitpicky physical effects, laws, particles, etc. It conjures some sort of deceitful Imp who is constantly throwing illusions at us to waste our time. And on what are the illusions based? If I simulated a land of castles and dire wolves, it would be derived from having seen castles and large wolves.

Ah, sorry TheVat, did I miss your earlier comment?

We carry all kinds of beliefs, 99.9% of which bear little relation to relative reality and none at all to ultimate reality.

The very word 'belief' is a problem; I would have thought even more so for scientists and philosophers. The obvious, face value meaning of "I believe" is "I don't know." A belief in something that seems real is not required--you don't 'believe' in the sun when you see it in the sky, you know it, you experience it, you see its light and feel its heat. It is only for the things that you don't experience or don't wrestle with using your (hopefully disciplined and well trained) cognition and reasoning, that you need to form a belief about. If you even bother; most thinks I don't know go in the "I don't know" pile rather than the "I believe" pile and, generally, when I offer a belief I preface it with, "I don't know but I believe..."

Even your wager is an illusion, TheVat, I'm sorry to say. The Advita Vedanta crowd chant, "Neti, neti"--not this, not that. They examine all that is in their perception, recognising, "I am not that because that is something that is in consciousness so it cannot be consciousness itself and [following on from or, more likely, preceding Descartes] I recognise myself as being the consciousness itself."

There is empirical data, TheVat, but it is subjective empirical data and that is forbidden in your paradigm and required in mine.

11 hours ago, Prajna said:

What do you know or can you imagine of such a boundary, Studiot? The Vedantans would suggest that consciousness does not die at 'death', rather it subsides into the ocean of consciousness from where it arose, that its 'existence' was never more than a dream and all that died was what it was not. But your mileage may vary.

Perhaps you don't understand what a boundary is ?

2 hours ago, studiot said:

Perhaps you don't understand what a boundary is ?

I'm beginning to get a feel for what such a thing is, looking over the edge of my paradigm into yours and observing what seems to be a stark delineation between them.

20 hours ago, Prajna said:

There is empirical data, TheVat, but it is subjective empirical data and that is forbidden in your paradigm and required in mine.

I think you are talking of phenomenology. The Stanford Encyclopedia defines it as:

The discipline of phenomenology may be defined initially as the study of structures of experience, or consciousness. Literally, phenomenology is the study of “phenomena”: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience. Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view. This field of philosophy is then to be distinguished from, and related to, the other main fields of philosophy...

I have no "paradigm" that forbids a phenomenological inquiry in which we all examine and compare our subjective experiences, and how they structure reality. There are important areas of cognitive science which do just that, and which acquire data of some kind. I recommend looking at Edmund Husserl who did pioneering work in this field, notably on the value of phenomenological analysis to science. And examining all our assumptions in order to remove bias. I think you'd like Husserl, if you are not already familiar with him. He offers a way for Eastern and Western ideas to have a dialogue.

20 hours ago, Prajna said:

Even your wager is an illusion, TheVat, I'm sorry to say.

How would a wager be an illusion? I have a thought on what is most probable - I don't think there's any basis to doubt I had such a thought and that one element of that thought is a wager on the ontological position called physicalism. My wager is real as a phenomenal entity, even if what I posit about reality is delusional.

11 minutes ago, TheVat said:

I think you are talking of phenomenology. The Stanford Encyclopedia defines it as:

The discipline of phenomenology may be defined initially as the study of structures of experience, or consciousness. Literally, phenomenology is the study of “phenomena”: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience. Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view. This field of philosophy is then to be distinguished from, and related to, the other main fields of philosophy...

I have no "paradigm" that forbids a phenomenological inquiry in which we all examine and compare our subjective experiences, and how they structure reality. There are important areas of cognitive science which do just that, and which acquire data of some kind. I recommend looking at Edmund Husserl who did pioneering work in this field, notably on the value of phenomenological analysis to science. And examining all our assumptions in order to remove bias. I think you'd like Husserl, if you are not already familiar with him. He offers a way for Eastern and Western ideas to have a dialogue.

That looks like a superbly helpful reply, TheVat, thank you indeed. Yes, from what you have quoted it does sound close and I am very pleased to hear there is a place in Western science for subjective experience; we are, after all, most of us anyway, at least from our own point of view, subjects rather than objects. I shall look into this Husserl fellow at my earliest opportunity. I am particularly interested in what he considers to be the container of the experience of phenomena; beyond or more specifically than just "Oh, the person observing."

Why is it that the unsung part of Science is so hard to get recognised ?

Our consciousness and autonomous processing (and that of lesser animals) does so much more than just provide an observer or receiver of our sensory input.

Science is just the same, but no one ever like to mention it.

I can't think why since the great discoveries would never happen without the bits in between.

Edited September 29Sep 29 by studiot