On Wednesday, October 23, 2019 at 7:50:10 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > On 22 Oct 2019, at 13:25, Lawrence Crowell <[email protected] > <javascript:>> 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 > > Dreams are not very coherent. I think idealism can be made very suspect on a number of bases. The world we observe clearly presents evidence of its existence long before we were here. In fact it existed long before anything called life or biology. So the idealist might then point to the panpsychists who say even elementary particles have some unit of consciousness. The problem is that quantum mechanics would require there to be some sort of observable in association with an operator. Panpsychism would say there is some sort of quantum number involved with psychic existence. None exists. So then the idealist would say the past is an illusion and all the evidence of past cosmic existence is just a mental state or some sort. The problem here is this lends itself to delusions, in fact to solipsism, and if idealism is correct then maybe insanity is the norm. I choose not to go there.
LC > > > > 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] <javascript:>. > 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/54c065b6-74b7-4701-b871-9bd802d4f2bb%40googlegroups.com.
