All matter is a cognitive ‘hallucination,’ even the brain itself

If someone tells me there are only shades of red in a paint set, it would hardly be question-begging for me to then say that set will never produce paintings with shades of blue or green.

@Valmar 's observation follows from the Materialist claim that the fundamental stuff making up reality lacks all mental character. If matter has no thoughts, it would only follow that combinations of matter don't have thoughts. 

In fact AFAIK all Materialists seem to agree with us for almost all combinations with only brains being the special, mysterious exception for some...

I say "some" b/c in fairness there do seem to be Materialists who agree matter cannot have thoughts about anything ->


For myself I remain skeptical that there is "physical" stuff outside all experience yet generating the experiencer and all their experiences. Additionally it seems this "physical" stuff that supposedly comes before all experience will only ever be known through experience...that calls to mind your sig ->

If the existence of a thing is indistinguishable from its nonexistence, we say that thing does not exist. ---Yahzi

I think your color example does not get at the point, because color mixing is too simple. I think the claim that thought-free components cannot blend to form thought-ful results requires a proof and I have not seen one.

As humans, we can only know things through experience. I'm not sure, however, that we should elevate this fact to some grand level that suggests we preclude the possibility of things existing without us. Now, if there was some other way we could know things, and we had evidence that that other way does not occur, then that would be interesting.

~~ Paul

We will not reach an agreement on your claim that we cannot get abstractive capabilities from combinations of things that do not have such capabilities individually. I just don't follow your logic.

Because you are unwilling to consider the illogic of the concept of "emergence".

I don't care if we call the external world physical. It's simply clear that there is something other than our experiences.

The thing is, we only know of an "external world" within experience! We have never known something other than experiences! Indeed, all of our hypotheses are derived from experience! This is inescapable. Without experience, there would be not knowledge of anything ~ there would be no "external world".

I'm not saying that we are perceiving the external world exactly as it is. I'm only suggesting that we are perceiving it somewhat like it is, rather than constructing an elaborate interface to something that is completely different.

There is little to no difference ~ you're still essentially positing that we are perceiving it as it is.

Nothing is being constructed, either ~ there is no interface, as it were. There are merely interpretations based on how our bodies and minds understand how to deal with noumenal, shaping it into perceived phenomenal experience.

Interfaces only conceptually exist for systems where every element is of a common observed kind ~ physical-to-physical. For noumenal-to-phenomenal... there is no "interface". There is interpretation, as if by using a "dictionary" to figure out how to perceive such and such.

I don't know what you mean by a physical form shaping sensory data. It seems to me that we perceive some subset of all the external data, with that perception having more or less fidelity.

This is still naive realism... we live in a noumenal world which we are never directly privy to, nor do we have any reason to think we can be. Our physical senses interpret the noumenal into what we conceptualize as being "external", because that is how our senses, body and mind are designed to interpret.

Then we may significantly bias the data to fit various models of the world that we have developed in order to reduce brainpower, speed up responses, ignore nasty stuff, and so forth. Biases and errors can creep into the process at every level.

~~ Paul

Nothing is being... "biased". Stuff rather gets filtered out ~ not stuff that our senses cannot be aware of ~ but rather sensory stuff that is psychologically irrelevant. Of course, we may have subtle senses that clue us in on certain things that aren't important to be conscious of, apart from the traditional 5 senses.

You must have a really different concept of "generating" than I do. When we open up a skull, poke some neurons, and elicit an image, is that not the brain generating something?

No, because that is just correlation ~ there is no explicit image coming from the neurons. The image exists purely in the mind of the subject, having to be self-reported. Neuroscience has no idea what neurons actually do ~ nor anyone else, frankly. Guesses aren't really enough.

You may argue that it is not the brain, but instead some sort of immaterial mind, but there is even less evidence for that.

Nevermind all of the evidence from NDEs, OBEs, reincarnation, terminal lucidity, telepathy, etc, etc.

No immaterial mind is forthcoming. So why rag on the materialists and not also the idealists?

Because Idealism has significantly different issues that do not overlap with Materialism's.

Now, if you are going to insist that such experiences must by definition be the result of an immaterial mind, then you are begging the question.

~~ Paul

It's not "begging the question" when you have arrived at the conclusion that minds are logically immaterial based on entire swaths of evidence ~ including very explicit personal experiences of immaterial minds.

I don't really understand what you are trying to say here. I agree that there are only micro features, but these can be assembled in ways to produce macro features that we find useful. Or in ways that generate interesting events in nature without our involvement. So to say that there is no "additive" micro feature and thus we can't get additive macro features is incorrect.

But I think I don't understand what you're trying to say.

~~ Paul

That the macro only exists for us conscious entities as an abstraction, as metaphor, even!

In a purely physical and chemical sense, there can only be micro features ~ nothing is being "generated" but more physical and chemical events. Our conceptualization of "generating interesting events" are based on we first top-down designing a system, and then bottom-up assembling it to produce those interesting events.

In purely physical and chemical systems, there are no additive features ~ there are just interactions within the system.

Everything else is just our abstraction, conceptualization and interpretations of sets of events as being of interest.

It doesn't have to be something that humans experience and interpret. Is there some sort of "salt attribute" in sodium and chlorine?

Now, if you are going to say that absolutely everything exhibits attributes only in view of humans experiencing those attributes, then you are giving consciousness a special position. And that would be smuggling in consciousness, would it not?

~~ Paul

You can't "smuggle in" consciousness when consciousness is posited to be the basis of knowledge.

Consciousness is special by virtue of the fact that it is, again, the basis for all of our knowledge.

I'm not sure you really comprehend what "smuggling in" something means ~ it means that you are using qualities of something to describe something else, while pretending or believing that the latter is responsible for the former.

Such as how Darwinians smuggle in intent and consciousness into Evolution by widespread use of language and descriptors that suggest that Evolution has intentionality and designs.

Because you are unwilling to consider the illogic of the concept of "emergence".


The thing is, we only know of an "external world" within experience! We have never known something other than experiences! Indeed, all of our hypotheses are derived from experience! This is inescapable. Without experience, there would be not knowledge of anything ~ there would be no "external world".


There is little to no difference ~ you're still essentially positing that we are perceiving it as it is.

Nothing is being constructed, either ~ there is no interface, as it were. There are merely interpretations based on how our bodies and minds understand how to deal with noumenal, shaping it into perceived phenomenal experience.

Interfaces only conceptually exist for systems where every element is of a common observed kind ~ physical-to-physical. For noumenal-to-phenomenal... there is no "interface". There is interpretation, as if by using a "dictionary" to figure out how to perceive such and such.


This is still naive realism... we live in a noumenal world which we are never directly privy to, nor do we have any reason to think we can be. Our physical senses interpret the noumenal into what we conceptualize as being "external", because that is how our senses, body and mind are designed to interpret.


Nothing is being... "biased". Stuff rather gets filtered out ~ not stuff that our senses cannot be aware of ~ but rather sensory stuff that is psychologically irrelevant. Of course, we may have subtle senses that clue us in on certain things that aren't important to be conscious of, apart from the traditional 5 senses.

If you could define "emergence," then I would consider whether it is logical. Do the attributes of salt emerge from the combination of sodium and chlorine?

Why would there necessarily be no external world without our experience of it? I would need some sort of proof of that claim.

I'm not sure why interpreting the noumenal is not the same as constructing an interface to it, but perhaps those are technical terms.

Your last two paragraphs seem to agree with what I was saying. Although I do not understand why you think we filter sensory inputs but never distort them. Is there some sort of error correcting mechanism?

~~ Paul

No, because that is just correlation ~ there is no explicit image coming from the neurons. The image exists purely in the mind of the subject, having to be self-reported. Neuroscience has no idea what neurons actually do ~ nor anyone else, frankly. Guesses aren't really enough.


Nevermind all of the evidence from NDEs, OBEs, reincarnation, terminal lucidity, telepathy, etc, etc.


Because Idealism has significantly different issues that do not overlap with Materialism's.


It's not "begging the question" when you have arrived at the conclusion that minds are logically immaterial based on entire swaths of evidence ~ including very explicit personal experiences of immaterial minds.

We disagree on the accuracy and interpretation of the evidence. But, meanwhile, none of that evidence matters to the experiment with stimulating neurons. It does not come into play there. You say that the experiment does not generate the experience of an image, whereas it seems to me that it does. Just because it has to be self-reported does not mean it was not generated.

Whether you are begging the question depends on whether you claim that internal experience must be immaterial by definition.

~~ Paul

That the macro only exists for us conscious entities as an abstraction, as metaphor, even!

In a purely physical and chemical sense, there can only be micro features ~ nothing is being "generated" but more physical and chemical events. Our conceptualization of "generating interesting events" are based on we first top-down designing a system, and then bottom-up assembling it to produce those interesting events.

In purely physical and chemical systems, there are no additive features ~ there are just interactions within the system.

Everything else is just our abstraction, conceptualization and interpretations of sets of events as being of interest.

And yet those interactions result in attributes that are not present in the individual components, even without our observation. Water is a liquid, whereas hydrogen and oxygen are gases. So it seems to me that this whole idea that you can't get attribute X in a combination of components without first having attribute X in the individual components is incorrect.

~~ Paul

You can't "smuggle in" consciousness when consciousness is posited to be the basis of knowledge.

Consciousness is special by virtue of the fact that it is, again, the basis for all of our knowledge.

I'm not sure you really comprehend what "smuggling in" something means ~ it means that you are using qualities of something to describe something else, while pretending or believing that the latter is responsible for the former.

Such as how Darwinians smuggle in intent and consciousness into Evolution by widespread use of language and descriptors that suggest that Evolution has intentionality and designs.

I guess I don't understand what "smuggling in" is, and your explanation does not enlighten me.

If a person talks about evolution and uses some language suggesting intentionality without clarifying what they mean, I'm not sure why you would say that they have smuggled in intention. They have simply done a confusing job of describing some aspect of evolution.

But meanwhile, if you are going to posit consciousness as the basis of knowledge and assume that consciousness is immaterial, it seems to me that some smuggling is going on. I suppose the smuggling is alleviated if you make it clear what you are assuming.

~~ Paul

@Paul C. Anagnostopoulos 

Sorry if I missed it but I still don't get what the example of adders was meant to show?

Unless we're saying adders, books, and abacuses are all conscious entities? Yet AFAIK most if not all Physicalists would reject such a claim?

consciousness is immaterial

I would agree this statement is problematic, but that's because I don't know if any good evidence exists for this "material" stuff that supposedly exists outside all experience?

I think your color example does not get at the point, because color mixing is too simple. I think the claim that thought-free components cannot blend to form thought-ful results requires a proof and I have not seen one.

It's even worse for thoughts. If something in consensus experience - red paint - cannot make other stuff in consensus experience - blue & green shades - why would we expect that which has no private experience - in this case thoughts - to produce them by rearrangement and aggregation?

I don't know about "proof", that seems like a term better used in maths? However the argument I quoted here from the Materialist/Physicalist Rosenberg's Atheist Guide to Reality seems rather decisive.

As humans, we can only know things through experience. I'm not sure, however, that we should elevate this fact to some grand level that suggests we preclude the possibility of things existing without us. Now, if there was some other way we could know things, and we had evidence that that other way does not occur, then that would be interesting.

Things can exist without us humans, but AFACTell those things will also only ever be known by some experiencer. As such there doesn't seem to be any good reason to believe there is stuff outside of all experience, yet responsible for all experience by way of generating experiencers?