What I call the "Mirroring Dashboard Problem" is the varied accounts that what we see of reality is a reflection of our own internal states. To give some examples:
- The claims that figures of light or other entities seen in transcendent experiences are figures from one's own religion or at least experience with religion. This is a big issue IMO for NDEs and Psychedelic experiences, where IIRC there are few - maybe just one - anecdote of someone experiencing a divine entity with traditional symbolism they had to be later informed of. (Thinking of Gabriel Robert's psychedelic experience with the goddess Tara.)
- The challenge of the Philip Experiment, and other claims of manifesting tulpas, where it seems we can create entities from our own psychic projections.
- Madden's argument that UFOs/aliens are attempted representations of entities beyond our own interface ("dashboard"). The oddities of these entities, especially when - for example - they resemble Nordic humans or clowns is not due to their true nature but rather people's mind/brains projecting an image onto something far outside our "cave" as Madden puts it.
- Shushan noting that a portion of Survival evidence suggests what we see of the afterlife is driven by what we want to see, to the point that there may even be a "first layer" in which our own beliefs and desires are mirrored back to us.
- These entities themselves may choose to project a "glamour" or "costume" to deceive people about who they really are, as per the claims of "screen memories" - for example the claims of seeing oddly sized (tiny or overly large) owls during claimed alien encounters.
I say this is a "problem" because it seems we may be caught in a veil of our or others' making, and as such cannot really ever say what is true about reality.
Of course there is a point where this enters into "hyper skepticism" territory, where we just adopt an overly conspiratorial mindset.
I don't have a particular stance, just been musing about this issue so figured I'd make a post about it.
- The claims that figures of light or other entities seen in transcendent experiences are figures from one's own religion or at least experience with religion. This is a big issue IMO for NDEs and Psychedelic experiences, where IIRC there are few - maybe just one - anecdote of someone experiencing a divine entity with traditional symbolism they had to be later informed of. (Thinking of Gabriel Robert's psychedelic experience with the goddess Tara.)
- The challenge of the Philip Experiment, and other claims of manifesting tulpas, where it seems we can create entities from our own psychic projections.
- Madden's argument that UFOs/aliens are attempted representations of entities beyond our own interface ("dashboard"). The oddities of these entities, especially when - for example - they resemble Nordic humans or clowns is not due to their true nature but rather people's mind/brains projecting an image onto something far outside our "cave" as Madden puts it.
- Shushan noting that a portion of Survival evidence suggests what we see of the afterlife is driven by what we want to see, to the point that there may even be a "first layer" in which our own beliefs and desires are mirrored back to us.
- These entities themselves may choose to project a "glamour" or "costume" to deceive people about who they really are, as per the claims of "screen memories" - for example the claims of seeing oddly sized (tiny or overly large) owls during claimed alien encounters.
I say this is a "problem" because it seems we may be caught in a veil of our or others' making, and as such cannot really ever say what is true about reality.
Of course there is a point where this enters into "hyper skepticism" territory, where we just adopt an overly conspiratorial mindset.
I don't have a particular stance, just been musing about this issue so figured I'd make a post about it.
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'
- Bertrand Russell
- Bertrand Russell