Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
Nap, interrupted.
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Toodles.
~~ Paul
~~ Paul
Is it possible to perceive a world which is external to our perceptions?
- Thread starter UndercoverElephant
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Bodhi Dharma Zen
Advaitin
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Cant agree more! this is the last resorts of people like Ian, or Lifegazer, but intelligent people do not need to attack no one, just discuss their ideas. To bad that Geoff is gone!
BTW, I believe that the first flaw in EVERY argument is the assumptions made by language alone, to simple utter a "simple" sentence like the one he wants us to accept. Guess I will need to wait to the end of summer for his opinion
...snip...
BTW, I believe that the first flaw in EVERY argument is the assumptions made by language alone, to simple utter a "simple" sentence like the one he wants us to accept. Guess I will need to wait to the end of summer for his opinion
I agree but as long as everyone is aware that even the "simplest" statement requires assumptions then you can make some progress in a discussion as long as you keep an eye out for those initial assumptions to ensure they don't come back and bite you.
Upchurch
Papa Funkosophy
That's all I'm saying. Well, that and personal attacks are counter productive.
UndercoverElephant
Pachyderm of a Thousand Faces
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The merits of the Argument from Hallucination for the conclusion that it is impossible directly to perceive physical objects.
G.S.Dann, Feb 2006
The Argument from hallucination
The Argument from hallucination is probably the strongest of all the arguments against direct realism. “Hallucination” refers to an experience which is phenomenologically indistinguishable from the veridical perception of an object, but which concerns no object at all which actually exists, such as in the case of a brain in the vat (BITV).
The Argument runs as follows:
P1: The BITV is immediately aware of something that looks like external physical object X.
P2: No X is actually present.
P3: They must therefore be aware must be something other than an external physical object X.
P4. But there is no qualitative or phenomenal difference between the objects of awareness in cases of hallucination and or perception.
P5: Given this indistinguishability, we should conclude that since the objects of immediate awareness in hallucination are not external physical objects, the objects of immediate awareness in veridical perception aren’t physical objects either.
Conclusion: Direct Realism is false. The objects of immediate awareness in hallucination and in veridical perception are something other than external physical objects. They are sense-data, ideas, etc….
Pierre Le Morvan’s 2004 paper(1) claims to defeat it in the following way:
“First, even if we suppose for the sake of argument that [sense-data] are the objects of immediate awareness in cases of hallucination, we need not accept that they are also the objects of immediate awareness in (veridical) perception. The proponent of the argument employs the principle that if x and y are phenomenally indistinguishable, x and y are ontologically indistinguishable. But why suppose that phenomenology is such a reliable guide to ontology? For counter-examples to this principle abound. For instance, could not a hologram of a cat appear phenomenally indistinguishable from a real cat?....Similarly, even if we suppose that a dagger-like sense-datum could appear phenomenally indistinguishable from a real dagger, this by itself gives us no compelling reason to suppose that the objects of awareness in hallucination and in (veridical) perception are ontologically of the same category, even if we suppose that sense-data (or ideas or the like) are the objects of awareness in hallucination.”
I think this response is confusing. If you accept that “the objects of immediate awareness” in the case of hallucination are “sense-data” then, if you want to be consistent, it does seem to imply that they are also the objects of immediate awareness in veridical perception. Conversely, if the objects of awareness during veridical perception are objects in the physical world then it would seem to follow that the objects of awareness during hallucination aren’t “sense data” at all – they would have to be objects in a hallucinated world. The author then goes on to say that there is no reason to conclude that the objects of awareness during hallucination are sense data, and that instead they could be, “states of the brain”, “mental images” or – Le Morvan’s choice - “physical space occupants.”
The first suggestion is a claim that during hallucination we are directly aware of neurons, and it is hard to figure out precisely what this is supposed to mean. The BITV isn’t likely report that it is experiencing a world of brain states. The second is even more confusing, since I’m not sure what the difference is supposed to be between “sense data” and “mental images”, and Le Morvan doesn’t give an account of how these things end up to be different or distinguishable. If hallucinators are aware of “mental images”, then why not make the same claim during veridical experiences? This sounds more like indirect realism. The third suggestion is explained in a footnote that hallucinations are classed as “extreme illusions where physical space occupants (e.g. air) appear to be radically different to how they are.” This final suggestion doesn’t apply to the BITV at all, since the BITV doesn’t have any access to anything whatsoever occupying physical space.
I would offer a different objection, based on QM, causality and a logically inevitable rejection of computationalism with regard to mind.
Penrose-Hameroff and the necessary rejection of computationalist functionalism
Contrary to the once-prevailing scientific orthodoxy of computationalism/functionalism (there is disagreement about the relationship between these two, I personally take them as effectively synonymous) with regard to mind, Sir Roger Penrose has claimed that there is something fundamental going on in human brains that goes beyond mere information processing. To summarise, Penrose claims that the computationalist model is logically incapable of explaining consciousness and that the only way to bridge the gap is to posit quantum mechanical effects in the brain at the point of observation. “The Emperor’s New Mind” (1989) and “Shadow’s of the mind” (1996) claim that the brain's conscious activity essentially transcends the forms or possibilities of computation. Penrose argues his case using mathematical logic (especially Gödel’s incompleteness theorem), Turing's machines and computabilities, quantum mechanics, and microbiology. Penrose demonstrates a problem, the answer to which cannot be reached by means of computation, and then demonstrates that we are capable of finding the solution anyway. The missing “non-computable” factor is related to a specific type of quantum computation involving what he termed “objective reduction” (“OR”), his solution to the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. Stuart Hameroff, a neuroscientist who read Penrose’s book, then suggested microtubules as candidate structures, since neurons are packed full of them and since they have a number of features which suggest they are capable of supporting what Penrose calls “Orchestrated Objective Reduction” of quantum states. There is a good article on Orch-OR available online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orch-OR). The conclusion, with which I agree, runs as follows:
“Orch-OR can account for all the enigmatic features of consciousness including timing, binding and the hard problem of consciousness. It is consistent with all known neurophysiology, but depends on proposed physics and biology. It has withstood numerous attempts at refutation, and is testable and falsifiable. Although controversial, it is the most complete theory of consciousness, spanning in detail physics, molecular biology, neuroscience, cognitive science and philosophy.”
Orch-OR and hallucinations
Whilst the precise details of Orch-OR are speculative and open to review, Penrose’s motivation for suggesting such a radical solution to the problem could turn out, once the dust has settled, to be unavoidable. If Orch-OR or a similar theory does turn out to be true then there are important implications for the argument from hallucination. What is being suggested is that the crucial difference between a consciousness-supporting brain and a non-conscious computing device is that there is an orchestrated collapse of quantum states occurring in the brain at the moment of conscious awareness. Quantum physicists have had to get used to the uncomfortable idea that apparently unrelated events in the physical world are intimately connected at the quantum level of reality leading to what are known as “superluminal connections”. For example, two “entangled” particles can be on opposite sides of the galaxy, and yet observing the state of one of them instantly demands a change in the state of the other, apparently contradicting Einstein. “Objective Reduction” refers to the reduction of many potential states to one objectively-existing state. Orch-OR implies that the collapse of wave functions describing the potential state of tubulin proteins in the neurons and the collapse of wave functions describing the potential state of objects in the perceived physical world are being orchestrated together, via superluminal connections.
If you accept the inevitability of invoking QM to fill the theoretical gap left by functionalism then it has consequences for what it means to be directly aware of an object. The brain state which occurs during veridical experiences is dependent not only on the correct nerve impulses being generated, but also on the orchestrated collapse of the state of the tubulin proteins. Both causal factors must be present for the experiences to qualify as direct experiences of objects.Since no such orchestrated objective reduction of quantum states could occur for the BITV there is no possibility of artificially generating the brain state in the BITV which is identical to a brain state which occurs during veridical experiences, since this would be prohibited by the laws of quantum physics in exactly the same way that they prohibit certain combinations of observed states of previously-entangled particles. If the BITV is not in the same state as the brain of a veridical perceiver then this is either a denial of P4 – that the BITV would experience something different to veridical experiences, or simply a claim that the thought experiment describes a physically impossible case.
I now find myself in agreement with Le Morvan’s claim that there is “no compelling reason to suppose that the objects of awareness in hallucination and in (veridical) perception are ontologically of the same category”. In fact I now have a positive reason to suppose the opposite. These things must be in ontologically different categories, because they are the result of fundamentally different combinations of causal factors.
The argument from illusion
Let’s suppose that instead of the BITV we have a person wearing perfect 3D goggles and is connected to an artificial reality, or a trainee pilot in a flight simulator. The pilot looks out of the cockpit and is convinced he is seeing London from 30,000 ft when what he is actually looking at is a projected reflection in a curved mirror about six feet in front of him. This would be the argument from illusion instead of the argument from hallucination, and with respect to direct realism it suffers from the same flaw: that it doesn’t matter for direct realism whether or not you perceive something correctly or not. Seeing a bent stick when the actual stick is straight does not deny that you are seeing a real object in the real world. You perceive a stick, it looks bent. Likewise, you can mistake a mirror for London from the air, but this does not mean you do not directly perceive an object in the real world. You perceive a mirror which looks like London. The only difference is the complexity of the illusion and the level of difference between what the subject thinks he perceives and what he actually perceives. In the argument I have given what matters is not the subject’s belief about what he is seeing but instead the true source of the light – the actual object being perceived, and involved in the orchestrated collapse. One could object to this by claiming that even the brain in the vat (unlike the lucid dreamer) really does perceive something in the world – in this case it is the probe in its optic nerve. Isn’t this just an even more sophisticated illusion than the simulator? I don’t think so. The pilot veridically perceives a mirror/projector, even though he believes it to be something quite different, and there are superluminal connections between the mirror/projector and the pilot’s brain. Let’s say the illusion is shattered by a maintenance engineer walking between the pilot and the mirror. Now the pilot can perceive the mirror and projector as a mirror and projector. For the BITV, there is no circumstance under which he can perceive the probe as a probe. There may well have to be superluminal connections of some sort with the state of the probe and the computer driving it but there are no circumstances whereby the BITV can become veridically aware of these objects. It’s not an illusion because it cannot be shattered. The same would apply to lucid dreams.
The only way there can be light arriving at ones eyes which result in a hallucination and not an illusion is if the light came from nowhere at all – it just appeared out of thin air. But that would describe a situation to which the argument from QM I have given still applies (the same brain state can’t be produced), with the additional complication of being physically impossible for a second reason. Light cannot come from nowhere. So my conclusion is that all descriptions of hallucinations (where this means “experiences of objects which are indistinguishable from those occurring during veridical perception but concern completely non-existent objects”) are descriptions of situations which cannot occur, either because the correct neural state in unachievable, and thus no identical experience occurs, or because they stipulate physically impossible conditions of one sort or another. Therefore I conclude that the argument form hallucination fails to defeat direct realism if quantum mechanics is taken into account and Penrose’s objection to computationalism/functionalism is accepted.
Reference:
1 Pierre Le Morvan, "Arguments against direct realism and how to counter them", American Philosophical Quarterly 41, no. 3 (2004)
G.S.Dann, Feb 2006
The Argument from hallucination
The Argument from hallucination is probably the strongest of all the arguments against direct realism. “Hallucination” refers to an experience which is phenomenologically indistinguishable from the veridical perception of an object, but which concerns no object at all which actually exists, such as in the case of a brain in the vat (BITV).
The Argument runs as follows:
P1: The BITV is immediately aware of something that looks like external physical object X.
P2: No X is actually present.
P3: They must therefore be aware must be something other than an external physical object X.
P4. But there is no qualitative or phenomenal difference between the objects of awareness in cases of hallucination and or perception.
P5: Given this indistinguishability, we should conclude that since the objects of immediate awareness in hallucination are not external physical objects, the objects of immediate awareness in veridical perception aren’t physical objects either.
Conclusion: Direct Realism is false. The objects of immediate awareness in hallucination and in veridical perception are something other than external physical objects. They are sense-data, ideas, etc….
Pierre Le Morvan’s 2004 paper(1) claims to defeat it in the following way:
“First, even if we suppose for the sake of argument that [sense-data] are the objects of immediate awareness in cases of hallucination, we need not accept that they are also the objects of immediate awareness in (veridical) perception. The proponent of the argument employs the principle that if x and y are phenomenally indistinguishable, x and y are ontologically indistinguishable. But why suppose that phenomenology is such a reliable guide to ontology? For counter-examples to this principle abound. For instance, could not a hologram of a cat appear phenomenally indistinguishable from a real cat?....Similarly, even if we suppose that a dagger-like sense-datum could appear phenomenally indistinguishable from a real dagger, this by itself gives us no compelling reason to suppose that the objects of awareness in hallucination and in (veridical) perception are ontologically of the same category, even if we suppose that sense-data (or ideas or the like) are the objects of awareness in hallucination.”
I think this response is confusing. If you accept that “the objects of immediate awareness” in the case of hallucination are “sense-data” then, if you want to be consistent, it does seem to imply that they are also the objects of immediate awareness in veridical perception. Conversely, if the objects of awareness during veridical perception are objects in the physical world then it would seem to follow that the objects of awareness during hallucination aren’t “sense data” at all – they would have to be objects in a hallucinated world. The author then goes on to say that there is no reason to conclude that the objects of awareness during hallucination are sense data, and that instead they could be, “states of the brain”, “mental images” or – Le Morvan’s choice - “physical space occupants.”
The first suggestion is a claim that during hallucination we are directly aware of neurons, and it is hard to figure out precisely what this is supposed to mean. The BITV isn’t likely report that it is experiencing a world of brain states. The second is even more confusing, since I’m not sure what the difference is supposed to be between “sense data” and “mental images”, and Le Morvan doesn’t give an account of how these things end up to be different or distinguishable. If hallucinators are aware of “mental images”, then why not make the same claim during veridical experiences? This sounds more like indirect realism. The third suggestion is explained in a footnote that hallucinations are classed as “extreme illusions where physical space occupants (e.g. air) appear to be radically different to how they are.” This final suggestion doesn’t apply to the BITV at all, since the BITV doesn’t have any access to anything whatsoever occupying physical space.
I would offer a different objection, based on QM, causality and a logically inevitable rejection of computationalism with regard to mind.
Penrose-Hameroff and the necessary rejection of computationalist functionalism
Contrary to the once-prevailing scientific orthodoxy of computationalism/functionalism (there is disagreement about the relationship between these two, I personally take them as effectively synonymous) with regard to mind, Sir Roger Penrose has claimed that there is something fundamental going on in human brains that goes beyond mere information processing. To summarise, Penrose claims that the computationalist model is logically incapable of explaining consciousness and that the only way to bridge the gap is to posit quantum mechanical effects in the brain at the point of observation. “The Emperor’s New Mind” (1989) and “Shadow’s of the mind” (1996) claim that the brain's conscious activity essentially transcends the forms or possibilities of computation. Penrose argues his case using mathematical logic (especially Gödel’s incompleteness theorem), Turing's machines and computabilities, quantum mechanics, and microbiology. Penrose demonstrates a problem, the answer to which cannot be reached by means of computation, and then demonstrates that we are capable of finding the solution anyway. The missing “non-computable” factor is related to a specific type of quantum computation involving what he termed “objective reduction” (“OR”), his solution to the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. Stuart Hameroff, a neuroscientist who read Penrose’s book, then suggested microtubules as candidate structures, since neurons are packed full of them and since they have a number of features which suggest they are capable of supporting what Penrose calls “Orchestrated Objective Reduction” of quantum states. There is a good article on Orch-OR available online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orch-OR). The conclusion, with which I agree, runs as follows:
“Orch-OR can account for all the enigmatic features of consciousness including timing, binding and the hard problem of consciousness. It is consistent with all known neurophysiology, but depends on proposed physics and biology. It has withstood numerous attempts at refutation, and is testable and falsifiable. Although controversial, it is the most complete theory of consciousness, spanning in detail physics, molecular biology, neuroscience, cognitive science and philosophy.”
Orch-OR and hallucinations
Whilst the precise details of Orch-OR are speculative and open to review, Penrose’s motivation for suggesting such a radical solution to the problem could turn out, once the dust has settled, to be unavoidable. If Orch-OR or a similar theory does turn out to be true then there are important implications for the argument from hallucination. What is being suggested is that the crucial difference between a consciousness-supporting brain and a non-conscious computing device is that there is an orchestrated collapse of quantum states occurring in the brain at the moment of conscious awareness. Quantum physicists have had to get used to the uncomfortable idea that apparently unrelated events in the physical world are intimately connected at the quantum level of reality leading to what are known as “superluminal connections”. For example, two “entangled” particles can be on opposite sides of the galaxy, and yet observing the state of one of them instantly demands a change in the state of the other, apparently contradicting Einstein. “Objective Reduction” refers to the reduction of many potential states to one objectively-existing state. Orch-OR implies that the collapse of wave functions describing the potential state of tubulin proteins in the neurons and the collapse of wave functions describing the potential state of objects in the perceived physical world are being orchestrated together, via superluminal connections.
If you accept the inevitability of invoking QM to fill the theoretical gap left by functionalism then it has consequences for what it means to be directly aware of an object. The brain state which occurs during veridical experiences is dependent not only on the correct nerve impulses being generated, but also on the orchestrated collapse of the state of the tubulin proteins. Both causal factors must be present for the experiences to qualify as direct experiences of objects.Since no such orchestrated objective reduction of quantum states could occur for the BITV there is no possibility of artificially generating the brain state in the BITV which is identical to a brain state which occurs during veridical experiences, since this would be prohibited by the laws of quantum physics in exactly the same way that they prohibit certain combinations of observed states of previously-entangled particles. If the BITV is not in the same state as the brain of a veridical perceiver then this is either a denial of P4 – that the BITV would experience something different to veridical experiences, or simply a claim that the thought experiment describes a physically impossible case.
I now find myself in agreement with Le Morvan’s claim that there is “no compelling reason to suppose that the objects of awareness in hallucination and in (veridical) perception are ontologically of the same category”. In fact I now have a positive reason to suppose the opposite. These things must be in ontologically different categories, because they are the result of fundamentally different combinations of causal factors.
The argument from illusion
Let’s suppose that instead of the BITV we have a person wearing perfect 3D goggles and is connected to an artificial reality, or a trainee pilot in a flight simulator. The pilot looks out of the cockpit and is convinced he is seeing London from 30,000 ft when what he is actually looking at is a projected reflection in a curved mirror about six feet in front of him. This would be the argument from illusion instead of the argument from hallucination, and with respect to direct realism it suffers from the same flaw: that it doesn’t matter for direct realism whether or not you perceive something correctly or not. Seeing a bent stick when the actual stick is straight does not deny that you are seeing a real object in the real world. You perceive a stick, it looks bent. Likewise, you can mistake a mirror for London from the air, but this does not mean you do not directly perceive an object in the real world. You perceive a mirror which looks like London. The only difference is the complexity of the illusion and the level of difference between what the subject thinks he perceives and what he actually perceives. In the argument I have given what matters is not the subject’s belief about what he is seeing but instead the true source of the light – the actual object being perceived, and involved in the orchestrated collapse. One could object to this by claiming that even the brain in the vat (unlike the lucid dreamer) really does perceive something in the world – in this case it is the probe in its optic nerve. Isn’t this just an even more sophisticated illusion than the simulator? I don’t think so. The pilot veridically perceives a mirror/projector, even though he believes it to be something quite different, and there are superluminal connections between the mirror/projector and the pilot’s brain. Let’s say the illusion is shattered by a maintenance engineer walking between the pilot and the mirror. Now the pilot can perceive the mirror and projector as a mirror and projector. For the BITV, there is no circumstance under which he can perceive the probe as a probe. There may well have to be superluminal connections of some sort with the state of the probe and the computer driving it but there are no circumstances whereby the BITV can become veridically aware of these objects. It’s not an illusion because it cannot be shattered. The same would apply to lucid dreams.
The only way there can be light arriving at ones eyes which result in a hallucination and not an illusion is if the light came from nowhere at all – it just appeared out of thin air. But that would describe a situation to which the argument from QM I have given still applies (the same brain state can’t be produced), with the additional complication of being physically impossible for a second reason. Light cannot come from nowhere. So my conclusion is that all descriptions of hallucinations (where this means “experiences of objects which are indistinguishable from those occurring during veridical perception but concern completely non-existent objects”) are descriptions of situations which cannot occur, either because the correct neural state in unachievable, and thus no identical experience occurs, or because they stipulate physically impossible conditions of one sort or another. Therefore I conclude that the argument form hallucination fails to defeat direct realism if quantum mechanics is taken into account and Penrose’s objection to computationalism/functionalism is accepted.
Reference:
1 Pierre Le Morvan, "Arguments against direct realism and how to counter them", American Philosophical Quarterly 41, no. 3 (2004)
Last edited:
Bodhi Dharma Zen
Advaitin
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"I see a monitor"
What composes this sentence? Language and concepts, presumible acquired from other individuals. So, those individuals must be as real as me. We all share some common perceptions, so it is logical to asume that even if those perceptions are not "things in themselfs" they are "really there". I believe Geoff will say that what is there is not a concrete, material monitor in front of us. I guess everyone of us, will agree with that.
But is this an indication about the belief in external solid objects is wrong? or just about that our beliefs can be doubted? My intuition leads to the latest. No more. Its irrelevant if I call the monitor "real" in an ontological sense (or material, or mental, or noumena). Its there. Is the question that bother us about what it "really" is?
What composes this sentence? Language and concepts, presumible acquired from other individuals. So, those individuals must be as real as me. We all share some common perceptions, so it is logical to asume that even if those perceptions are not "things in themselfs" they are "really there". I believe Geoff will say that what is there is not a concrete, material monitor in front of us. I guess everyone of us, will agree with that.
But is this an indication about the belief in external solid objects is wrong? or just about that our beliefs can be doubted? My intuition leads to the latest. No more. Its irrelevant if I call the monitor "real" in an ontological sense (or material, or mental, or noumena). Its there. Is the question that bother us about what it "really" is?
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
Nap, interrupted.
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Why we should conclude this?Geoff said:
Hang on. A few hours ago we were allowing sense data in direct realism. We said a causal chain was okay. Now, apparently, it isn't.
We don't even need a BIV. Set a baby down in front of a high-definition video and he might think it's the same thing as the actual scene.
I agree we can reject both of these ill-defined realisms, direct and indirect.
~~ Paul
Geoff,
Can you rephrase the question of this thread?:
"Is it possible to perceive a world which is external to our perceptions?"
Do you mean the world as itself? or do you mean the external world that is still not perceived or reachable to be perceived?
It is confusing...
Can you rephrase the question of this thread?:
"Is it possible to perceive a world which is external to our perceptions?"
Do you mean the world as itself? or do you mean the external world that is still not perceived or reachable to be perceived?
It is confusing...
Z
Variable Constant
The biggest problem with 'argument from hallucination' is that there is a part of the brain creating the sensory information perceived by other parts of the brain. Further, careful study of the 'hallucination' should reveal its unreal nature - for example, can that dagger of delusion pierce the flesh?
It takes a brain in a pretty poor condition to create a hallucination that is indistinguishable from a regular perception, and in such a brain, we can clearly see that a LOT is going on that usually doesn't.
It does point to one fact, though: what we perceive is the direct result of neural signals. The source of those signals is always in question.
It takes a brain in a pretty poor condition to create a hallucination that is indistinguishable from a regular perception, and in such a brain, we can clearly see that a LOT is going on that usually doesn't.
It does point to one fact, though: what we perceive is the direct result of neural signals. The source of those signals is always in question.
How do you know P2?
Ever see the movie "gaslight"?
Questioning P2 means P3 is questioned...P4 calls P2 and P3 into question... and P5 starts with a "given" that invalidates P2 (and P3).
Sorry, what is this a proof of again? I may very well *agree* with the conclusion (can't say, actually), but I can't make heads or tails of the proof.
You have to assume P2 in an experiment.
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
Nap, interrupted.
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How did we jump from "That tree THERE" back to realism, with its two trees?
~~ Paul
~~ Paul
Excellent post.
UndercoverElephant
Pachyderm of a Thousand Faces
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If a brain in a vat is percieving a chair, then there is no actual external chair.
It's a summary of the argument from hallucination against direct realism with respect to external objects.
Are you just talking about the very first section of my essay?
If so, it's easy to explain it.
Z
Variable Constant
Actually, this is another false assumption. For all we know, the actual, external chair could be present, and being read for its properties, which are then translated to a signal and sent into the BIV. In a way, this is what happens with everything we perceive, actually - think of our brains as being 'in a vat' - an organic vat with data being fed us by our neural networks within our body. Replace those neural networks with silicon and microchips, and you've got essentially the same thing.
Of course, we can take those same artificial networks and hook them into a computer (which, of course, is what the original thought experiment assumes), and generate the same data without having a physical world chair. Yet, some would argue (and I would be among them) that the same data stored in a computer is, in essence, a form of reality as well. I'm very much a believer that we can create a wholly true reality within a virtual space a-la a very complex version of the Sims, perhaps. Hence, if the data about a chair exists in cyberspace, it is no less real with relation to its meta-reality than a chair in our space would be.
This, of course, brings into question the actual nature of our own reality...
Then, there's the question of whether the cyber-chair was created using data from a real chair, thereby giving the cyber-chair a sort of supported meta-reality from that angle... or whether it was, in fact, wholly imagined, like some kind of unicorn or chimera. Yet even our tales of chimeras have roots in the real - that is, we compose these mythical beasts based on beasts we have some awareness of.
The BIV experiment is also interesting, the more I think about it, because it makes me wonder about the potentially insubstantial reality of an imagined thing... truly, a line of thought that brings idealism more to the fore, I think.
Of course, there is a serious downfall in the idea of 'virtual reality' - simply enough, say we're all living in 'Reality 2006 v.4.22. Then the real sun goes supernova. All our brains and vats are vaporized (or, at least, poisoned with radioactive matter). So much for 'Reality 2006 v.4.22'.
Still, to the BIV, the reality he exists within is no less real than ours... until it ceases to exist, entirely.
...
OK, that was ALL over the place. I'm tired.
UndercoverElephant
Pachyderm of a Thousand Faces
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Let's change the thought experiment so there's definately no external chair. We are just feeding nerve-data that corresponds to seeing a chair.
This is needlessly complicated. The evidence suggests that there is no single set of nerve-data that would correspond to seeing a chair; rather, the ability to recognize a chair is learned through unique interaction with the environment. Assuming that there is some sort of signal we could send--(yes, in a thought-experiment, we can specify that this BIV is sent this perceived history, whereas another BIV might be sent another...and as someone here has already mentioned, the BIV is not merely a B, but an interactive organ with the rest of a body, which is quite different from a V, but again it is a thought experiment)--is too complicated. Why not try a simpler real world example? We see illusions all the time. We look, see something, look again, it was not what we thought it was. Does this imply that the "existence" of the thing we thought we saw the first time has some sort of "real" quality to it?