> On 22 Oct 2019, at 13:25, Lawrence Crowell <[email protected]> > wrote: > > On Tuesday, October 22, 2019 at 1:47:58 AM UTC-5, Cosmin Visan wrote: > Prove there is something outside consciousness! > > I think Samuel Johnson had a good reply to Bishop Berkeley on refuting > idealism, "If I kick this rock thusly," which Johnson did, "It then kicks > back." This is not a complete proof, but it works well enough FAPP.
Does it? Kicking a rock is a dream-able event, and usually, it kicks back in dream to (that’s too a dream-able event), so it is hardly an argument to convince oneself that we are in presence of a “real solid rock”. In my long work I call a dream “contra lucid” those dreams where we "test reality", and get convinced that we are not dreaming. That happens often to people interested in studying if we can know that we are not dreaming. Usually, people who train themselves in lucid dream will live the phenomenon of false awakening. They make a lucid dream, wake up, write the dream in their diary and then, wake up again. That can happen multiple time. Bertrand Russel claimed he got one hundred false awakening in succession. I think he meant “many”. With mechanism, it is not difficult to explain that we can know in a dream that we are dreaming, but we cannot know-for-sure, when awaken, that we are awake. It is comparable to “be wrong”. We can learn that we are wrong, but we cannot learn that we are not wrong. Likewise a machine can discover she is inconsistent, but she cannot justify that she is consistent. Bruno > > LC > > > On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 03:27:03 UTC+3, Lawrence Crowell wrote: > > Idealism is of course rather silly. The idea that all that exists is > consciousness is a "feel good" idea that is utterly preposterous. > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/556f8a1c-50f4-489c-aa4f-3feeb9ce0606%40googlegroups.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/556f8a1c-50f4-489c-aa4f-3feeb9ce0606%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/BF1AA849-AA00-46B4-AEF6-513FECBF8757%40ulb.ac.be.
