Is Separation Real? Is Objectivity Real?

[turingtest]

It's not about following or not following. It's about using scientific method to investigate and being ruthlessly honest about the results. Not everything initially makes sense.

Francis Crick, William James and many other luminaries all fell into the same trap. Like Loss Leader they were looking for a "place in the brain" where observation, or experiencing, was taking place.

It's instinct blindness. The brain has been hard-wired through it's evolutionary journey to absolutely regard the notion of not having a personal self as a MAJOR THREAT, pretty much as if a sabre-toothed tiger suddenly walked into your room. If someone walked up to you in a bar and said you don't exist... would you just take it? Doubt I would!



Psychological selfhood emerges from a variety of lower-order brain processes. It of course has immense social value. And likewise there is nothing inherently false about emergent properties. But not all the attributes and qualities ascribed to it are, in materialist terms, real.

Socially, of course there is an observer, an experiencer. I'm unlikely to be able to fight wild animals or get off with anyone if these aspects of selfhood are not emerging as they should.

But if I want to investigate the two questions in the subject of this thread then I need to be able to understand the difference between a socially useful illusion and material reality.

IR

This looks like fun; mind if I give it a try?

I was messing around with the delay functions on my Boss GT10 guitar processor the other day; there's one with a dual-delay, can be panned left-right, mixed mono, or made to cross each other in the stereo field, and another that's a little simpler, but can be added for extra layers. All the times are adjustable to thousandths of a second; with a little patience and experimentation, you can have delays that are fractionally resonant, for example, .500/second crossing with .250/sec with 1.750/sec at lush intervals, or you can mix them up with the delays being more random, so the intervals are more dissonant- .134/sec with .730 with 2.89, and any resonance is accidental.

It occurs to me that psychological selves- personalities- are like that, bundles of frequencies that are a sum that's not a number, but a quality; and, if they are mostly resonant, makes for a mostly smooth passage through life- the occasional odd timing is just a quirk that keeps things interesting. Or the timings can all be dissonant within the bundle, making for a jagged ride. And if you're lucky enough to find someone on your passage whose overall quality is similar to your own, you achieve a larger resonance. But you have to be careful- since frequency is a function of time, a very close match is still one that becomes a dissonance sooner or later; you can hope the cycle will eventually come around to resonance sooner or later, but divergence is the more likely outcome.

So, anyway, from this, it can be seen that-

No, I have to stop here, sorry. It's fun for a while, constructing chains of logic that go nowhere and do nothing, like when I was a kid and made those chains of construction-paper glued in loops. But after a bit, someone comes along with a pair of brutal "yeah, but" scissors, snip snip, which is all it takes to make you realize that all you ever really had was a colorful festoon, not capable of bearing any more useful weight than its own.

Right, IR?

 

[Donn]

… you realize that all you ever really had was a colorful festoon, not capable of bearing any more useful weight than its own.

Right, IR?

Wow. Schooling in G wizz Major!

Slowclap.

 

[tsig]

You don't know what I mean by experiencer? Fair enough. I mean this sense that someONE is experiencing. As opposed to simply a narrative being attended to.

IR

Sorry but it's all narrative, without words how do you make yourself real?

The story is the thing and all others merely actors reading a script that no one wrote.

 

[tsig]

Not particularly. I just guessed that as it was a pretty short sentence then probably you didn't know what I meant about "experiencer," perhaps.

You wrote - The "self" is an illusion created by physical processes. The question you don't seem to answer is: so what? So what if there is no single self?

I replied - Then you agree there is no observer and no experiencer? These are conceptual constructs not reality.

You said you didn't know what I meant.

If I expand it a bit then I'd say - If you agree that the self is an illusion - you know emerging from physical processes - then you'd be happy to agree that some of the qualities ascribed to this illusion could also be illusory. Not unreasonable, yes?

Two qualities ascribed to this illusion are that of being an observer or an experiencer. So I'm asking... is it clear that these two particular qualities cannot be real given the true nature of the self we've just agreed upon.

IR

I see, it's an illusion of illusion and all is illusion

 

[tsig]

false dichotomy

Separate bodies appear to exist in an apparent material universe, from self report different bodies have different sensation and perceptions.

So separate bodies which appear to exist experience different perceptions.

Also tools in the apparent world seem to be developed which can detect events in the apparent world.

Both the separate bodies and these tools may qualify as 'observers'.

The real question is what happens when a body meets a body comin' thru the rye?

 

[tsig]

You appear to have already made up your mind. So why don't you tell us what it is you think the point is. Everything is material, the self is an illusion ... and? So what? What conclusion would you like to draw from this?

"My woo is true"

I'm guessing.

 

[barehl]

The body is real.

The brain is real.

The perceptions are real.

The notion that these perceptions happen to someone cannot be substantiated under materialism.

I'm not following this. How do you define "perceptions" without having some type of awareness? Let's try a few examples:

The rug was perceived by the chair.
The cloud perceived its reflection in the lake.
The stream was perceptive enough to flow around the boulder.

Notice that all of these sound like mythology or children's stories? Even when something is capable of recording an event, this terminology still doesn't seem to fit:

The camera perceived the wedding.
The smoke was perceived by the smoke alarm.
The seismometer perceived the earthquake.

Admittedly we do tend to use the term for things that are not conscious in the way we are such as for insects, worms, or jellyfish. However, the fact that I'm writing this rather than a flatworm or jellyfish suggests a difference between them and myself.

The brain can construct stories that a someone exists and pay attention to these stories. But it cannot construct an actual psychological self.

Without a consciousness, the brain would be limited to fixed and environmentally reactive behavior. Since a story is neither fixed nor part of the environment, creation of such a story would seem to be impossible.

If you just step back for a second and evaluate how likely it is that a brain has a personal self, you can see it. It's an utter fantasy.

A brain is an independent unit. What would prevent a brain from having a self-evaluating process?

 

[LarryS]

I'm not following this. How do you define "perceptions" without having some type of awareness? Let's try a few examples:

The rug was perceived by the chair.
The cloud perceived its reflection in the lake.
The stream was perceptive enough to flow around the boulder.

Notice that all of these sound like mythology or children's stories? Even when something is capable of recording an event, this terminology still doesn't seem to fit:

The camera perceived the wedding.
The smoke was perceived by the smoke alarm.
The seismometer perceived the earthquake.

Admittedly we do tend to use the term for things that are not conscious in the way we are such as for insects, worms, or jellyfish. However, the fact that I'm writing this rather than a flatworm or jellyfish suggests a difference between them and myself.


Without a consciousness, the brain would be limited to fixed and environmentally reactive behavior. Since a story is neither fixed nor part of the environment, creation of such a story would seem to be impossible.


A brain is an independent unit. What would prevent a brain from having a self-evaluating process?

I don't think IR is referring to 'perceptions' - I think he would agree that:
the rock perceives the lake

is not reasonable, while
the brain perceives the lake

is reasonable.

Now regarding your highlighted above, doesn't materialism predict that even with consciousness, the brain generates fixed and environmentally reactive behavior? IOW, a more complex brain will generate more complex behavior, but that behavior is still fixed and environmentally reactive. What would be the mechanism for the brain to (re)act in any other way?

Or maybe what IR is getting at is that any sense of "I" is a misdiagnosis.

 

[LarryS]

IR, are either of these two statements coherent?

this brain perceives the lake
my brain perceives the lake

 

[Donn]

If you know what IR means, you know more than anyone else.

 

[Belz...]

You don't know what I mean by experiencer? Fair enough. I mean this sense that someONE is experiencing. As opposed to simply a narrative being attended to.

IR

Did you just finish an introductory class on philosophy?

 

[poblob14]

The real question is what happens when a body meets a body comin' thru the rye?

They have a little baby body, which, because it was rye bred, they name Reuben.

 

[tsig]

They have a little baby body, which, because it was rye bred, they name Reuben.

I tried to top it.

 

[poblob14]

I tried to top it.

I suggest Thousand Island dressing.

 

[Jono]

Is separation real, or merely a story?

IR

Is post-modernism really real? I mean really?!

 

[Darwin123]

Not particularly. I just guessed that as it was a pretty short sentence then probably you didn't know what I meant about "experiencer," perhaps.

You wrote - The "self" is an illusion created by physical processes. The question you don't seem to answer is: so what? So what if there is no single self?

I replied - Then you agree there is no observer and no experiencer? These are conceptual constructs not reality.

You said you didn't know what I meant.

If I expand it a bit then I'd say - If you agree that the self is an illusion - you know emerging from physical processes - then you'd be happy to agree that some of the qualities ascribed to this illusion could also be illusory. Not unreasonable, yes?

Two qualities ascribed to this illusion are that of being an observer or an experiencer. So I'm asking... is it clear that these two particular qualities cannot be real given the true nature of the self we've just agreed upon.

IR

You agreed to use the word 'observer' as in relativity. Good.

Now I can state that your question is meaningless, useless and uninteresting. You are jumbling words that have no physical meaning. With respect to the physical world as observed in relativity, your statements are self contradictory.

I couldn't in good conscience say that until you got more specific. Now I can leave the thread, never to return, without nagging doubt!

 

[Nay_Sayer]

Seperation is real, Odin told me so, Checkmate Robot.